Israeli probe into deadly holy site stampede opens hearings
FILE - In this April 30, 2021 file photo, Israeli security officials and rescuers stand around the bodies of victims who died during Lag Baomer celebrations at Mt. Meron in northern Israel. An Israeli government commission investigating the deadly accident held its first day of hearings Sunday, Aug. 22, 2021, almost four months after the stampede at Mount Meron left 45 people dead. The April 29 incident was the deadliest civilian disaster in the country's history. (Ishay Jerusalemite/Behadrei Haredim via AP, File)
FILE - In this April 30, 2021 file photo, Israeli security officials and rescuers carry a body of a victim who died during a Lag Baomer celebrations, at Mt. Meron in northern Israel. An Israeli government commission investigating the deadly accident held its first day of hearings Sunday, Aug. 22, 2021, almost four months after the stampede at Mount Meron left 45 people dead. The April 29 incident was the deadliest civilian disaster in the country's history.
Sun, August 22, 2021
JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli government commission investigating a deadly accident at a Jewish pilgrimage site in April held its first day of hearings Sunday, almost four months after the stampede at Mount Meron left 45 people dead.
The April 29 incident at the Jewish festival in northern Israel was the deadliest civilian disaster in the country's history. Around 100,000 worshippers, mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews, attended festivities despite coronavirus regulations limiting outdoor assemblies to 500 people, and in spite of longstanding warnings about the safety of the site.
Hundreds of people bottlenecked in a narrow passageway descending the mountain, and a slippery slope caused people to stumble and fall. The resulting human avalanche killed 45 people and injured at least 150.
In June, the Israeli government approved the formation of an independent state commission of inquiry to investigate safety shortcomings at the Lag Baomer celebrations at Mount Meron.
A panel headed by former Supreme Court justice Miriam Naor began proceedings with testimony from Northern District police chief Shimon Lavi, the officer who was in charge of managing the event.
Lavi said the Mount Meron festivities are the Israel Police's most significant annual event, requiring extensive resources, planning and preparation. He said that out of safety concerns “there has been no limitation on attendance at Meron, that’s how it has been done for the last 30 years." Any attempt to limit entry and put up barricades could result in “bottlenecks and much greater disasters,” he said.
The site in northern Israel is believed to be the burial place of celebrated second-century sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. The tomb complex and adjoining structures are managed by the Religious Services Ministry’s department for holy places. Experts had long warned that the Mount Meron complex was inadequately equipped to handle the enormous crowds that flock there during the springtime holiday, and that existing infrastructure was a safety risk.
But April's gathering went forward this year nonetheless as powerful ultra-Orthodox politicians reportedly pressured then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other government officials to lift attendance restrictions.
Lavi said there had been “neglect for many years” and “a lack of understanding that the event grew over time and that the infrastructure was not adequate, rather a kind of band-aid.”
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/is ... 35098.html
JUDAISM
Reuters
Israeli rabbis ask pope to clarify remarks on Jewish law
Philip Pullella
Wed, August 25, 2021, 7:34 AM
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Israel's top Jewish religious authorities have told the Vatican they are concerned about comments that Pope Francis made about their books of sacred law and have asked for a clarification.
In a letter seen by Reuters, Rabbi Rasson Arousi, chair of the Commission of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel for Dialogue with the Holy See, said the comments appeared to suggest Jewish law was obsolete.
Vatican authorities said they were studying the letter and were considering a response.
Rabbi Arousi wrote a day after the pope spoke about the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, during a general audience on Aug. 11.
The Torah contains hundreds of commandments, or mitzvot, for Jews to follow in their everyday lives. The measure of adherence to the wide array of guidelines differs between Orthodox Jews and Reform Jews.
At the audience, the pope, who was reflecting on what St. Paul said about the Torah in the New Testament, said: "The law (Torah) however does not give life.
"It does not offer the fulfilment of the promise because it is not capable of being able to fulfil it ... Those who seek life need to look to the promise and to its fulfilment in Christ."
Rabbi Arousi sent the letter on behalf of the Chief Rabbinate - the supreme rabbinic authority for Judaism in Israel - to Cardinal Kurt Koch, whose Vatican department includes a commission for religious relations with Jews.
"In his homily, the pope presents the Christian faith as not just superseding the Torah; but asserts that the latter no longer gives life, implying that Jewish religious practice in the present era is rendered obsolete," Arousi said in the letter.
"This is in effect part and parcel of the 'teaching of contempt' towards Jews and Judaism that we had thought had been fully repudiated by the Church," he said.
IMPROVED RELATIONS
Relations between Catholics and Jews were revolutionised in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus and began decades of inter-religious dialogue. Francis and his two predecessors visited synagogues.
Two leading Catholic scholars of religious relations with Jews agreed that the pope's remarks could be seen as a troublesome setback and needed clarification.
"To say that this fundamental tenet of Judaism does not give life is to denigrate the basic religious outlook of Jews and Judaism. It could have been written before the Council," said Father John Pawlikowski, former director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
"I think it's a problem for Jewish ears, especially because the pope's remarks were addressed to a Catholic audience," said Professor Philip Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
"It could be understood as devaluing Jewish observance of the Torah today," Cunningham said.
Arousi and Pawlikowski said it was possible that a least part of the pope's teaching homily, known as a catechesis, was written by aides and that the phrase was not properly vetted.
Koch's office said on Wednesday he had received the letter, was "considering it seriously and reflecting on a response".
Francis has had a very good relationship with Jews. While still archbishop in native Buenos Aires, he co-wrote a book with one of the city's rabbis, Abraham Skorka, and has maintained a lasting friendship with him.
In his letter to Cardinal Koch, Arousi asked him to "convey our distress to Pope Francis" and asked for a clarification from the pope to "ensure that any derogatory conclusions drawn from this homily are clearly repudiated".
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/is ... -123442587.
Israeli rabbis ask pope to clarify remarks on Jewish law
Philip Pullella
Wed, August 25, 2021, 7:34 AM
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Israel's top Jewish religious authorities have told the Vatican they are concerned about comments that Pope Francis made about their books of sacred law and have asked for a clarification.
In a letter seen by Reuters, Rabbi Rasson Arousi, chair of the Commission of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel for Dialogue with the Holy See, said the comments appeared to suggest Jewish law was obsolete.
Vatican authorities said they were studying the letter and were considering a response.
Rabbi Arousi wrote a day after the pope spoke about the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, during a general audience on Aug. 11.
The Torah contains hundreds of commandments, or mitzvot, for Jews to follow in their everyday lives. The measure of adherence to the wide array of guidelines differs between Orthodox Jews and Reform Jews.
At the audience, the pope, who was reflecting on what St. Paul said about the Torah in the New Testament, said: "The law (Torah) however does not give life.
"It does not offer the fulfilment of the promise because it is not capable of being able to fulfil it ... Those who seek life need to look to the promise and to its fulfilment in Christ."
Rabbi Arousi sent the letter on behalf of the Chief Rabbinate - the supreme rabbinic authority for Judaism in Israel - to Cardinal Kurt Koch, whose Vatican department includes a commission for religious relations with Jews.
"In his homily, the pope presents the Christian faith as not just superseding the Torah; but asserts that the latter no longer gives life, implying that Jewish religious practice in the present era is rendered obsolete," Arousi said in the letter.
"This is in effect part and parcel of the 'teaching of contempt' towards Jews and Judaism that we had thought had been fully repudiated by the Church," he said.
IMPROVED RELATIONS
Relations between Catholics and Jews were revolutionised in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus and began decades of inter-religious dialogue. Francis and his two predecessors visited synagogues.
Two leading Catholic scholars of religious relations with Jews agreed that the pope's remarks could be seen as a troublesome setback and needed clarification.
"To say that this fundamental tenet of Judaism does not give life is to denigrate the basic religious outlook of Jews and Judaism. It could have been written before the Council," said Father John Pawlikowski, former director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
"I think it's a problem for Jewish ears, especially because the pope's remarks were addressed to a Catholic audience," said Professor Philip Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
"It could be understood as devaluing Jewish observance of the Torah today," Cunningham said.
Arousi and Pawlikowski said it was possible that a least part of the pope's teaching homily, known as a catechesis, was written by aides and that the phrase was not properly vetted.
Koch's office said on Wednesday he had received the letter, was "considering it seriously and reflecting on a response".
Francis has had a very good relationship with Jews. While still archbishop in native Buenos Aires, he co-wrote a book with one of the city's rabbis, Abraham Skorka, and has maintained a lasting friendship with him.
In his letter to Cardinal Koch, Arousi asked him to "convey our distress to Pope Francis" and asked for a clarification from the pope to "ensure that any derogatory conclusions drawn from this homily are clearly repudiated".
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/is ... -123442587.
Historic London Synagogue Fights to Stay Out of the Shadows
The 320-year-old Bevis Marks Synagogue claims that two new proposed office towers would block its sunlight and add to the sense of enclosure amid the skyscrapers of the financial district.
Renovation work is visible outside the entrance of the Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London.
LONDON — Rabbi Shalom Morris picked his way through a steel scaffold that construction workers were noisily dismantling as he showed a visitor around his 320-year-old synagogue, Bevis Marks. When the renovation is finished, there will be a new visitors center off the snug courtyard outside the building.
But Rabbi Morris was less preoccupied with his own construction project than two others for which developers are seeking approval next door. Both are office towers — 20 and 48 stories, respectively — and if they are built, he said, they would leave one of London’s most venerable houses of worship in near-permanent twilight.
“If this was next to St. Paul’s Cathedral, it wouldn’t happen,” said Rabbi Morris, 41, a former New Yorker who has overseen the synagogue, the oldest in Britain, for six years. “They’re willing, at best, to roll the dice and, at worst, to do lasting harm.”
It’s not that the rabbi has it in for all skyscrapers. Bevis Marks already nestles in a glass and steel forest of thrusting towers, many with goofy nicknames — the Gherkin, the Walkie Talkie, the Cheesegrater — which have transformed London’s financial district, known as the City, into a kind of Legoland version of Chicago.
But Rabbi Morris claims that these latest towers, to the immediate east and south of Bevis Marks, would be a “tipping point,” blocking the already precious London sunlight that now streams through its arched windows, from morning well into the afternoon. The synagogue’s landmark status limits it from augmenting its artificial light, which is supplied by 1920s sconces affixed to its supporting pillars.
Photos and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/worl ... 778d3e6de3
The 320-year-old Bevis Marks Synagogue claims that two new proposed office towers would block its sunlight and add to the sense of enclosure amid the skyscrapers of the financial district.
Renovation work is visible outside the entrance of the Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London.
LONDON — Rabbi Shalom Morris picked his way through a steel scaffold that construction workers were noisily dismantling as he showed a visitor around his 320-year-old synagogue, Bevis Marks. When the renovation is finished, there will be a new visitors center off the snug courtyard outside the building.
But Rabbi Morris was less preoccupied with his own construction project than two others for which developers are seeking approval next door. Both are office towers — 20 and 48 stories, respectively — and if they are built, he said, they would leave one of London’s most venerable houses of worship in near-permanent twilight.
“If this was next to St. Paul’s Cathedral, it wouldn’t happen,” said Rabbi Morris, 41, a former New Yorker who has overseen the synagogue, the oldest in Britain, for six years. “They’re willing, at best, to roll the dice and, at worst, to do lasting harm.”
It’s not that the rabbi has it in for all skyscrapers. Bevis Marks already nestles in a glass and steel forest of thrusting towers, many with goofy nicknames — the Gherkin, the Walkie Talkie, the Cheesegrater — which have transformed London’s financial district, known as the City, into a kind of Legoland version of Chicago.
But Rabbi Morris claims that these latest towers, to the immediate east and south of Bevis Marks, would be a “tipping point,” blocking the already precious London sunlight that now streams through its arched windows, from morning well into the afternoon. The synagogue’s landmark status limits it from augmenting its artificial light, which is supplied by 1920s sconces affixed to its supporting pillars.
Photos and more...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/worl ... 778d3e6de3
So You’ve Been Canceled: A Yom Kippur Atonement Guide
A friend of mine was publicly canceled. He deserved it and he knew it. He spent a year working with a rabbi and a therapist, during which time he tried to track down those he had hurt and apologize to them, often more than once. We can’t see inside one another’s hearts, but I believe in the sincerity of his change.
What I sometimes wonder — both in my role as a rabbi myself and as a denizen of our broader culture of accountability — is how my friend, or any one of us, can find a path back from shame to acceptance.
To answer the question, I turn to my religious tradition, which is predicated on the perhaps unfashionable belief that people can change. It’s a tenet that is especially on my mind as we approach Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on which Jews fast, pray and ask forgiveness of one another and of God. Not everyone observes this holiday, of course. But in its practices, I believe there is wisdom that can help all of us navigate the sometimes unforgiving nature of our contemporary culture.
There will always be things we cannot fully forgive and people who do not deserve to be restored to good reputation. And forgiving someone does not necessarily mean readmitting that person to your life. In most cases, however, Jewish teachings insist that fair judgment does not require damnation. Judaism, like many other world religions, maintains that human beings are capable of transformation. For example, one of the figures of the Talmud, Resh Lakish, began as a bandit and became one of the greatest rabbis of the age. His conversion was fueled by the belief of another rabbi, Johanan, who saw potential in him. The more we believe in judging by potential, that what a person does is not the sum of who they can be, the more likely we are to create a society that can help people move past shame.
Judaism offers a series of ideas and guidelines for how to cope with offense and foster forgiveness. On Yom Kippur, it’s traditional to wear white, not only because white shows the slightest stain, but to remind us of the shrouds in which we will one day be buried. We do not have forever; we must struggle to right our souls now.
If you have caused offense or harm, Yom Kippur does not magically buy you absolution. But the traditions surrounding the day do offer guidance for seeking forgiveness. First, you must apologize to those you’ve hurt, sincerely, as many as three times. The apology should not come weighed down with justification, but rather should acknowledge the other person’s hurt and express sincere regret.
Second, serious, sustained reflection is required to try to change who you are. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, also means return. To repent is to return to what once was, what became hidden through coarseness or impulse. It is also to return to God and to the community. But slow, careful restoration takes time. The one who is sorry today and expects to stride right back, unblemished, is naïve or conniving.
Third, you must change your ways. The sage Maimonides teaches that one who says to himself, “I’ll sin and then, repent” cannot be forgiven. Sorrow is not a strategy. It is a vulnerability and it is a promise.
And what if you are the one who has been hurt? Jewish tradition urges us to consider why it is so hard to forgive. There is a savage self-righteousness to public shaming. If I forgive you, truly forgive you, then I must restore moral parity; I am no better than you. Accepting that steals the satisfactions of resentment, but it is essential: Jewish law insists that once someone has been forgiven, you must never remind the person of that fact. To do so is to re-establish a hierarchy that true forgiveness disavows.
To forgive also forswears vengeance. When I have been hurt, I wish to see you hurt. There is both a personal and an abstract desire for justice: People who do bad things should be punished, and especially people who do bad things to me. We rarely admit to ourselves how often this desire to punish wrongdoing is a personal impulse in moralistic clothing.
It’s also worth noting that anger at others, even when merited, can be personally destructive. In the Bible, the words “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18) are preceded by “you shall not bear a grudge.” As has been aptly said, to bear a grudge is to drink poison hoping the other person will die. It gnaws away at us, embittering the life of the hater. Forgiving your neighbor is one way of loving them, and learning to love yourself.
Public shame is a powerful and sometimes necessary punishment. In the case of my friend, it made him realize that the trigger for his anger was in him, not in the conduct of others. But it can also be brutal, and I believe that too often, lifetimes are remembered by their worst moments, and complex personalities reduced to their basest elements.
On Yom Kippur, as Jews all over the world confess our sins, we will beat our chests, a sort of spiritual defibrillator to get our hearts beating anew. The liturgy asks of the “court on high” permission to pray with those who sin.
And who among us is exempt from that group? I stand each year with a congregation of people who have hurt one another, families and friends and strangers and co-workers. Like my friend, all of us seek to be forgiven — for we are imperfect and striving and in need of love.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/opin ... 778d3e6de3
A friend of mine was publicly canceled. He deserved it and he knew it. He spent a year working with a rabbi and a therapist, during which time he tried to track down those he had hurt and apologize to them, often more than once. We can’t see inside one another’s hearts, but I believe in the sincerity of his change.
What I sometimes wonder — both in my role as a rabbi myself and as a denizen of our broader culture of accountability — is how my friend, or any one of us, can find a path back from shame to acceptance.
To answer the question, I turn to my religious tradition, which is predicated on the perhaps unfashionable belief that people can change. It’s a tenet that is especially on my mind as we approach Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on which Jews fast, pray and ask forgiveness of one another and of God. Not everyone observes this holiday, of course. But in its practices, I believe there is wisdom that can help all of us navigate the sometimes unforgiving nature of our contemporary culture.
There will always be things we cannot fully forgive and people who do not deserve to be restored to good reputation. And forgiving someone does not necessarily mean readmitting that person to your life. In most cases, however, Jewish teachings insist that fair judgment does not require damnation. Judaism, like many other world religions, maintains that human beings are capable of transformation. For example, one of the figures of the Talmud, Resh Lakish, began as a bandit and became one of the greatest rabbis of the age. His conversion was fueled by the belief of another rabbi, Johanan, who saw potential in him. The more we believe in judging by potential, that what a person does is not the sum of who they can be, the more likely we are to create a society that can help people move past shame.
Judaism offers a series of ideas and guidelines for how to cope with offense and foster forgiveness. On Yom Kippur, it’s traditional to wear white, not only because white shows the slightest stain, but to remind us of the shrouds in which we will one day be buried. We do not have forever; we must struggle to right our souls now.
If you have caused offense or harm, Yom Kippur does not magically buy you absolution. But the traditions surrounding the day do offer guidance for seeking forgiveness. First, you must apologize to those you’ve hurt, sincerely, as many as three times. The apology should not come weighed down with justification, but rather should acknowledge the other person’s hurt and express sincere regret.
Second, serious, sustained reflection is required to try to change who you are. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, also means return. To repent is to return to what once was, what became hidden through coarseness or impulse. It is also to return to God and to the community. But slow, careful restoration takes time. The one who is sorry today and expects to stride right back, unblemished, is naïve or conniving.
Third, you must change your ways. The sage Maimonides teaches that one who says to himself, “I’ll sin and then, repent” cannot be forgiven. Sorrow is not a strategy. It is a vulnerability and it is a promise.
And what if you are the one who has been hurt? Jewish tradition urges us to consider why it is so hard to forgive. There is a savage self-righteousness to public shaming. If I forgive you, truly forgive you, then I must restore moral parity; I am no better than you. Accepting that steals the satisfactions of resentment, but it is essential: Jewish law insists that once someone has been forgiven, you must never remind the person of that fact. To do so is to re-establish a hierarchy that true forgiveness disavows.
To forgive also forswears vengeance. When I have been hurt, I wish to see you hurt. There is both a personal and an abstract desire for justice: People who do bad things should be punished, and especially people who do bad things to me. We rarely admit to ourselves how often this desire to punish wrongdoing is a personal impulse in moralistic clothing.
It’s also worth noting that anger at others, even when merited, can be personally destructive. In the Bible, the words “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18) are preceded by “you shall not bear a grudge.” As has been aptly said, to bear a grudge is to drink poison hoping the other person will die. It gnaws away at us, embittering the life of the hater. Forgiving your neighbor is one way of loving them, and learning to love yourself.
Public shame is a powerful and sometimes necessary punishment. In the case of my friend, it made him realize that the trigger for his anger was in him, not in the conduct of others. But it can also be brutal, and I believe that too often, lifetimes are remembered by their worst moments, and complex personalities reduced to their basest elements.
On Yom Kippur, as Jews all over the world confess our sins, we will beat our chests, a sort of spiritual defibrillator to get our hearts beating anew. The liturgy asks of the “court on high” permission to pray with those who sin.
And who among us is exempt from that group? I stand each year with a congregation of people who have hurt one another, families and friends and strangers and co-workers. Like my friend, all of us seek to be forgiven — for we are imperfect and striving and in need of love.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Having Trouble Finding Your Soul Mate? Let Mom Do It For You.
As vaccine rollout continues, the pressures of online dating are back. So is the idea of outsourcing the matchmaking to your Jewish parents.
It’s no secret that online dating can be a stultifying, painful and sometimes traumatizing experience.
But add to the general discomfort of small talk with a stranger or the fear of being stood up, the possibility of catching a virus mid-pandemic, and the pressures of finding “bashert” — a Hebrew term for one’s predestined partner, or soul mate — can seem existentially terrifying.
Even now, with the vaccine rollout continuing across the country, the emotional exhaustion of being alone with our apps for over a year of lockdown still remains for many.
Jessie Sweeney, 23, a student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, was single when she moved to Baltimore, Md., at the height of the pandemic. At first, she used a few different dating apps, like Hinge, to get to know people in the area, and made sure to keep her mother in the loop. “My mother, as Jewish mothers go, is very involved in my life,” Ms. Sweeney said.
Then, in July, Ms. Sweeney’s mother suggested she check out JustKibbitz, a new dating site intended to help the overswiped, overworked Jewish single find love in a post-pandemic world.
Unlike standard dating websites where members communicate directly with their prospective matches, JustKibbitz turns the process over to the parents, who make accounts showcasing their adult children, then arrange and, through digital gift cards for businesses like Starbucks, AMC and Chili’s, even pay for their dates.
Ms. Sweeney’s mother offered a proposal: she could create her daughter’s profile with photos from her camera roll and help her find “a nice Jewish boy you should go on a date with,” while Ms. Sweeney focused her energy on work and the law.
Ms. Sweeney was shocked by the idea, but amused. She said she trusted her mother’s judgment enough to agree: “I just laughed it off and let her do her thing.”
The concept of dating by proxy has long roots in Jewish tradition. In some Orthodox practices, Jewish singles embark on the shidduch, a process in which their families work with a dedicated shadchan, or matchmaker, to find the perfect life partner, the zivug.
Organizations like ChabadMatch and the Shidduch Center of Baltimore, which maintain large regional databases of shadchanim, have even begun offering digital meetings with some of their matchmakers in the Covid era. (Both ChabadMatch and the Shidduch Center declined to comment, with a representative from the Shidduch Center citing privacy concerns.)
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/styl ... iversified
As vaccine rollout continues, the pressures of online dating are back. So is the idea of outsourcing the matchmaking to your Jewish parents.
It’s no secret that online dating can be a stultifying, painful and sometimes traumatizing experience.
But add to the general discomfort of small talk with a stranger or the fear of being stood up, the possibility of catching a virus mid-pandemic, and the pressures of finding “bashert” — a Hebrew term for one’s predestined partner, or soul mate — can seem existentially terrifying.
Even now, with the vaccine rollout continuing across the country, the emotional exhaustion of being alone with our apps for over a year of lockdown still remains for many.
Jessie Sweeney, 23, a student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, was single when she moved to Baltimore, Md., at the height of the pandemic. At first, she used a few different dating apps, like Hinge, to get to know people in the area, and made sure to keep her mother in the loop. “My mother, as Jewish mothers go, is very involved in my life,” Ms. Sweeney said.
Then, in July, Ms. Sweeney’s mother suggested she check out JustKibbitz, a new dating site intended to help the overswiped, overworked Jewish single find love in a post-pandemic world.
Unlike standard dating websites where members communicate directly with their prospective matches, JustKibbitz turns the process over to the parents, who make accounts showcasing their adult children, then arrange and, through digital gift cards for businesses like Starbucks, AMC and Chili’s, even pay for their dates.
Ms. Sweeney’s mother offered a proposal: she could create her daughter’s profile with photos from her camera roll and help her find “a nice Jewish boy you should go on a date with,” while Ms. Sweeney focused her energy on work and the law.
Ms. Sweeney was shocked by the idea, but amused. She said she trusted her mother’s judgment enough to agree: “I just laughed it off and let her do her thing.”
The concept of dating by proxy has long roots in Jewish tradition. In some Orthodox practices, Jewish singles embark on the shidduch, a process in which their families work with a dedicated shadchan, or matchmaker, to find the perfect life partner, the zivug.
Organizations like ChabadMatch and the Shidduch Center of Baltimore, which maintain large regional databases of shadchanim, have even begun offering digital meetings with some of their matchmakers in the Covid era. (Both ChabadMatch and the Shidduch Center declined to comment, with a representative from the Shidduch Center citing privacy concerns.)
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/18/styl ... iversified
New Video: “Heavenly Palaces in Judaism: A Historical Travel Guideby Giulio Busi (Freie Universitaet Berlin)University College London, Institute of Jewish Studies 2021 Online Lecture Series”
Video:
https://www.academia.edu/video/1MazJ1?e ... re&pls=RVP
Description
Giulio Busi, Professor of Jewish Studies at the Freie Universitaet Berlin (Germany) and an expert on Jewish mysticism, presents his book "Heavenly Palaces in Judaism: A Historical Travel Guide" (2020), dedicated to the literature of the Hekhalot, or "Heavenly Palaces". The conference, promoted by the Institute of Jewish Studies of University College London, deals with aspects that have been little or not studied so far, such as the visualization of time by Jewish mystics and its transformation into space. Another theme touched on by Busi are the parallels between Jewish celestial travel and other traditions of the late ancient and medieval East, such as that of the Sabeans of Harran.
Video:
https://www.academia.edu/video/1MazJ1?e ... re&pls=RVP
Description
Giulio Busi, Professor of Jewish Studies at the Freie Universitaet Berlin (Germany) and an expert on Jewish mysticism, presents his book "Heavenly Palaces in Judaism: A Historical Travel Guide" (2020), dedicated to the literature of the Hekhalot, or "Heavenly Palaces". The conference, promoted by the Institute of Jewish Studies of University College London, deals with aspects that have been little or not studied so far, such as the visualization of time by Jewish mystics and its transformation into space. Another theme touched on by Busi are the parallels between Jewish celestial travel and other traditions of the late ancient and medieval East, such as that of the Sabeans of Harran.
THE LAST LICKS OF LIBERAL ZIONISM IN AMERICA
Over roughly the past decade, the coming intellectual exhaustion of “anti-Occupation, pro two-states” liberal Zionism in America has been repeatedly prophesied. Out of step with the material realities defended by the pro-Israel right and decried by the anti-Zionist left, ideologically frozen in Oslo-era two-state orthodoxy, and widely seen as naïve and ineffectual, liberal Zionism has found itself assailed from all sides. Still, it has shown some persistence.
This staying power reached its peak during the first Obama term, a period in which J Street, the liberal “Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine, Pro-Two States” group founded in 2007, was arguably at the height of its influence. The group deftly used Clinton-era Beltway connections and found an open ear in the Obama Administration.
But it’s no longer 2010. The interim decade has seen room for liberal maneuver in pro-Israel politics shrink considerably. Bibi’s open disdain for Obama and embrace of Trump has transformed an issue once considered broadly nonpartisan into a political football. All of which has resulted in liberal Zionism slowly losing its stranglehold on the most left-wing Israel-Palestine position available in mainstream American politics.
This summer’s fallout over the decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling ice cream in the “occupied Palestinian territories” should be seen within this perspective. Has a dust-up over Israel in the domestic political arena ever been more striking in its absurd cultural symbolism? Ben & Jerry’s attempted the least offensive move they could possibly make which would still register as a coherent statement and found themselves on the receiving end of a cartoonishly hysterical temper tantrum from major American Jewish organizations and Israeli politicians alike. Any remaining scoops of Pro-Israel self-awareness, sense of proportion, or appreciation of the boomerang effect have melted away. The heavy-handed satire has written itself.
More...
https://religiondispatches.org/the-last ... in-america
Over roughly the past decade, the coming intellectual exhaustion of “anti-Occupation, pro two-states” liberal Zionism in America has been repeatedly prophesied. Out of step with the material realities defended by the pro-Israel right and decried by the anti-Zionist left, ideologically frozen in Oslo-era two-state orthodoxy, and widely seen as naïve and ineffectual, liberal Zionism has found itself assailed from all sides. Still, it has shown some persistence.
This staying power reached its peak during the first Obama term, a period in which J Street, the liberal “Pro-Israel, Pro-Palestine, Pro-Two States” group founded in 2007, was arguably at the height of its influence. The group deftly used Clinton-era Beltway connections and found an open ear in the Obama Administration.
But it’s no longer 2010. The interim decade has seen room for liberal maneuver in pro-Israel politics shrink considerably. Bibi’s open disdain for Obama and embrace of Trump has transformed an issue once considered broadly nonpartisan into a political football. All of which has resulted in liberal Zionism slowly losing its stranglehold on the most left-wing Israel-Palestine position available in mainstream American politics.
This summer’s fallout over the decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling ice cream in the “occupied Palestinian territories” should be seen within this perspective. Has a dust-up over Israel in the domestic political arena ever been more striking in its absurd cultural symbolism? Ben & Jerry’s attempted the least offensive move they could possibly make which would still register as a coherent statement and found themselves on the receiving end of a cartoonishly hysterical temper tantrum from major American Jewish organizations and Israeli politicians alike. Any remaining scoops of Pro-Israel self-awareness, sense of proportion, or appreciation of the boomerang effect have melted away. The heavy-handed satire has written itself.
More...
https://religiondispatches.org/the-last ... in-america
Inside the Unraveling of American Zionism
How a new generation of Jewish leaders began to rethink their support for Israel.
It began, as so much these days does, with a group chat. Early this year, around 20 rabbinical and cantorial students started a WhatsApp thread they eventually named “Rad Future Clergy.” Among them, they attended rabbinical schools in five different U.S. cities. Several of them first became friends while studying and working in a sixth city, Jerusalem, the capital of the land that both the Torah and Israel’s declaration of independence deem the place for “the ingathering of the exiles.”
In April, the texting heated up. A longstanding effort by a right-wing Jewish group to assume ownership of Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighborhood, was coming to a head. Israel’s government characterized the issue as a mere “real estate dispute,” which was true in a narrow sense but elided the winding history of the homes’ ownership — which changed hands as the land beneath them did over the course of two wars — as well as the Jewish group’s frank goal of altering East Jerusalem’s demographics to secure it permanently for Israel. Protests in the neighborhood spread to the nearby Temple Mount, a holy site for both Jews and Muslims, where riot police fired rubber bullets and Arab protesters threw stones following Friday prayers.
There have been weekly protests against the Sheikh Jarrah evictions for years, and the broader conflict is of course much older than that. But at no recent time has there seemed less of a chance that Israelis and Palestinians will reach a peace agreement that might establish a Palestinian state on land presently occupied or annexed by Israel. Israeli politics are so sclerotic that it required four elections in two years to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu, an unpopular prime minister facing corruption charges, with a coalition that, despite the historic presence of an Arab party, is unlikely to significantly alter the country’s approach to Palestinian issues. Israel’s newfound friendliness with powerful neighbors like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has actually lessened the international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians, whose own politics are static and divided.
In the second week of May, a few members of the group chat convened on Zoom and drafted an open letter calling on American Jews to adjust their orientation toward Israel. By this time, the conflict had begun to widen: Hamas, the militant Islamist party that controls the Gaza Strip, fired hundreds of rockets at Israeli towns in response to clashes on the Temple Mount; Israel retaliated with airstrikes against Hamas, which responded in turn with more rockets. Street fighting broke out between Jewish and Arab civilians in several Israeli cities. Eventually more than 250 were killed, including 12 civilians in Israel and over 100 in Gaza.
“Blood is flowing in the streets of the Holy Land,” the letter began. “For those of us for whom Israel has represented hope and justice, we need to give ourselves permission to watch, to acknowledge what we see, to mourn and to cry. And then, to change our behavior and demand better.” They urged Jews to rethink their support for American military aid to Israel, which totals roughly $3.8 billion annually. They insisted that Jewish educators complicate their teaching of Israel’s founding to convey “the messy truth of a persecuted people searching for safety, going to a land full of meaning for the Jewish people, full of meaning for so many other peoples, and also full of human beings who didn’t ask for new neighbors.”
The letter contained several provocations. It compared the Palestinians’ plight to that of Black Americans — a group whose struggles for civil rights have long been embraced by the same establishment the letter was calling out. “American Jews have been part of a racial reckoning in our community,” they said. “And yet,” they added, “so many of those same institutions are silent when abuse of power and racist violence erupts in Israel and Palestine.” It described in Israel “two separate legal systems for the same region,” and later called this system “apartheid.” It arrived amid war, violating the imperative many Jews felt to stand with Israel as the rockets fly. And it did not contain alongside its indictment of Israel’s actions a straightforward condemnation of Hamas’s aiming weapons at civilians.
There are an extraordinary 93 names at the bottom of the letter, which can still be seen on the Google Doc where it was posted. They hailed from eight institutions, virtually every one in the United States that trains rabbis and cantors — the vocalists who lead congregations in prayer — outside of Orthodox Judaism. (The conservative politics and strong pro-Israel outlook of Orthodox Judaism, which represents about 10 percent of American Jews, practically meant there would be no signers from Orthodox seminaries.) Some 17 percent of the institutions’ students signed the letter, according to figures provided by the schools, even though signatures were open only for a brief period of time, and even though virtually all the students I spoke to, signers or not, believed attaching their names to the letter meant risking career prospects. The signers’ breadth was underlined when the letter was published in The Forward, America’s most prominent Jewish newspaper, on May 13 under six bylines, deliberately chosen to represent a variety of schools. “It’s clear to me,” said Lex Rofeberg, a rabbi and co-host of the “Judaism Unbound” podcast, “that this list includes future leaders of American Judaism.”
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/maga ... 778d3e6de3
How a new generation of Jewish leaders began to rethink their support for Israel.
It began, as so much these days does, with a group chat. Early this year, around 20 rabbinical and cantorial students started a WhatsApp thread they eventually named “Rad Future Clergy.” Among them, they attended rabbinical schools in five different U.S. cities. Several of them first became friends while studying and working in a sixth city, Jerusalem, the capital of the land that both the Torah and Israel’s declaration of independence deem the place for “the ingathering of the exiles.”
In April, the texting heated up. A longstanding effort by a right-wing Jewish group to assume ownership of Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighborhood, was coming to a head. Israel’s government characterized the issue as a mere “real estate dispute,” which was true in a narrow sense but elided the winding history of the homes’ ownership — which changed hands as the land beneath them did over the course of two wars — as well as the Jewish group’s frank goal of altering East Jerusalem’s demographics to secure it permanently for Israel. Protests in the neighborhood spread to the nearby Temple Mount, a holy site for both Jews and Muslims, where riot police fired rubber bullets and Arab protesters threw stones following Friday prayers.
There have been weekly protests against the Sheikh Jarrah evictions for years, and the broader conflict is of course much older than that. But at no recent time has there seemed less of a chance that Israelis and Palestinians will reach a peace agreement that might establish a Palestinian state on land presently occupied or annexed by Israel. Israeli politics are so sclerotic that it required four elections in two years to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu, an unpopular prime minister facing corruption charges, with a coalition that, despite the historic presence of an Arab party, is unlikely to significantly alter the country’s approach to Palestinian issues. Israel’s newfound friendliness with powerful neighbors like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has actually lessened the international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians, whose own politics are static and divided.
In the second week of May, a few members of the group chat convened on Zoom and drafted an open letter calling on American Jews to adjust their orientation toward Israel. By this time, the conflict had begun to widen: Hamas, the militant Islamist party that controls the Gaza Strip, fired hundreds of rockets at Israeli towns in response to clashes on the Temple Mount; Israel retaliated with airstrikes against Hamas, which responded in turn with more rockets. Street fighting broke out between Jewish and Arab civilians in several Israeli cities. Eventually more than 250 were killed, including 12 civilians in Israel and over 100 in Gaza.
“Blood is flowing in the streets of the Holy Land,” the letter began. “For those of us for whom Israel has represented hope and justice, we need to give ourselves permission to watch, to acknowledge what we see, to mourn and to cry. And then, to change our behavior and demand better.” They urged Jews to rethink their support for American military aid to Israel, which totals roughly $3.8 billion annually. They insisted that Jewish educators complicate their teaching of Israel’s founding to convey “the messy truth of a persecuted people searching for safety, going to a land full of meaning for the Jewish people, full of meaning for so many other peoples, and also full of human beings who didn’t ask for new neighbors.”
The letter contained several provocations. It compared the Palestinians’ plight to that of Black Americans — a group whose struggles for civil rights have long been embraced by the same establishment the letter was calling out. “American Jews have been part of a racial reckoning in our community,” they said. “And yet,” they added, “so many of those same institutions are silent when abuse of power and racist violence erupts in Israel and Palestine.” It described in Israel “two separate legal systems for the same region,” and later called this system “apartheid.” It arrived amid war, violating the imperative many Jews felt to stand with Israel as the rockets fly. And it did not contain alongside its indictment of Israel’s actions a straightforward condemnation of Hamas’s aiming weapons at civilians.
There are an extraordinary 93 names at the bottom of the letter, which can still be seen on the Google Doc where it was posted. They hailed from eight institutions, virtually every one in the United States that trains rabbis and cantors — the vocalists who lead congregations in prayer — outside of Orthodox Judaism. (The conservative politics and strong pro-Israel outlook of Orthodox Judaism, which represents about 10 percent of American Jews, practically meant there would be no signers from Orthodox seminaries.) Some 17 percent of the institutions’ students signed the letter, according to figures provided by the schools, even though signatures were open only for a brief period of time, and even though virtually all the students I spoke to, signers or not, believed attaching their names to the letter meant risking career prospects. The signers’ breadth was underlined when the letter was published in The Forward, America’s most prominent Jewish newspaper, on May 13 under six bylines, deliberately chosen to represent a variety of schools. “It’s clear to me,” said Lex Rofeberg, a rabbi and co-host of the “Judaism Unbound” podcast, “that this list includes future leaders of American Judaism.”
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/maga ... 778d3e6de3
Not All Religious People Oppose Abortion
Nearly 30 years ago, my mother was one of the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the 1992 March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C. It was a pivotal moment for abortion rights at the Supreme Court, which was about to hear arguments in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Though she left me at home, the words on her sign — “Every child a wanted child” — made an impression. So did the fact that the buses to Washington were chartered by our synagogue. When she returned, I wore the neon pink “Choice” hat she’d bought to my classroom at Jewish day school and began to spread the word.
That anecdote is not unique in the Jewish American experience: For many Jews, abortion rights are an ethical value, passed on from parent to child, with community support. The latest Pew Religious Landscape Study, from 2014, found that 83 percent of Jews surveyed supported legal abortion in most or all cases, more than any other religious group surveyed.
A firm commitment to abortion rights isn’t just one of the socially liberal stances that progressive American Jews take. It’s also a belief rooted in our sacred texts, which — despite differing interpretations across time and denominations — consistently prioritize the ultimate well-being of the pregnant person over that of the fetus.
That’s why, as the right to an abortion stands on another legal precipice, thanks to laws in Texas and Mississippi being heard before the Supreme Court, so many Jewish feminists are furious and ready for a fight.
Today when we think about faith and reproductive rights, it’s easy to begin with the idea that religious groups oppose abortion. The modern anti-abortion movement, after all, arose as a coalition between conservative evangelicals and conservative Catholics.
But the Jewish stance is more complex, with roots in the Book of Exodus, where feticide is not treated as murder. The Talmud, where much of Jewish law is interpreted and where practice is hashed out, defines life as beginning when the baby’s head emerges from the mother’s body. Even in the once male-dominated rabbinate, the question of whose life takes precedence is clear.
“The principle in Jewish law is tza’ar gufah kadim, that her welfare is primary,” wrote Rabbi David M. Feldman for the Conservative movement of Judaism back in 1983, referring to the pregnant person. “The fetus is unknown, future, potential, part of the ‘secrets of God’; the mother is known, present, alive and asking for compassion.”
Her welfare is primary. In Jewish tradition, the pregnant person’s needs are central to the moral equation.
True, Orthodox Jews (and Orthodox Jewish organizations) are far more likely to take a political stand against abortion compared to Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Jews. But in recent years, as when New York State liberalized its abortion law, Orthodox Jews were divided as much on gender as on politics on the question: Interviewed by JTA, some Orthodox Jewish women expressed that they wanted the right to discuss the need for abortion with their rabbi and doctor, not with their political representatives.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Nearly 30 years ago, my mother was one of the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the 1992 March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C. It was a pivotal moment for abortion rights at the Supreme Court, which was about to hear arguments in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Though she left me at home, the words on her sign — “Every child a wanted child” — made an impression. So did the fact that the buses to Washington were chartered by our synagogue. When she returned, I wore the neon pink “Choice” hat she’d bought to my classroom at Jewish day school and began to spread the word.
That anecdote is not unique in the Jewish American experience: For many Jews, abortion rights are an ethical value, passed on from parent to child, with community support. The latest Pew Religious Landscape Study, from 2014, found that 83 percent of Jews surveyed supported legal abortion in most or all cases, more than any other religious group surveyed.
A firm commitment to abortion rights isn’t just one of the socially liberal stances that progressive American Jews take. It’s also a belief rooted in our sacred texts, which — despite differing interpretations across time and denominations — consistently prioritize the ultimate well-being of the pregnant person over that of the fetus.
That’s why, as the right to an abortion stands on another legal precipice, thanks to laws in Texas and Mississippi being heard before the Supreme Court, so many Jewish feminists are furious and ready for a fight.
Today when we think about faith and reproductive rights, it’s easy to begin with the idea that religious groups oppose abortion. The modern anti-abortion movement, after all, arose as a coalition between conservative evangelicals and conservative Catholics.
But the Jewish stance is more complex, with roots in the Book of Exodus, where feticide is not treated as murder. The Talmud, where much of Jewish law is interpreted and where practice is hashed out, defines life as beginning when the baby’s head emerges from the mother’s body. Even in the once male-dominated rabbinate, the question of whose life takes precedence is clear.
“The principle in Jewish law is tza’ar gufah kadim, that her welfare is primary,” wrote Rabbi David M. Feldman for the Conservative movement of Judaism back in 1983, referring to the pregnant person. “The fetus is unknown, future, potential, part of the ‘secrets of God’; the mother is known, present, alive and asking for compassion.”
Her welfare is primary. In Jewish tradition, the pregnant person’s needs are central to the moral equation.
True, Orthodox Jews (and Orthodox Jewish organizations) are far more likely to take a political stand against abortion compared to Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Jews. But in recent years, as when New York State liberalized its abortion law, Orthodox Jews were divided as much on gender as on politics on the question: Interviewed by JTA, some Orthodox Jewish women expressed that they wanted the right to discuss the need for abortion with their rabbi and doctor, not with their political representatives.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/opin ... 778d3e6de3
A Synagogue Feud Spills Into Public View: ‘Only Room for One Rabbi’
Rabbi Arthur Schneier abruptly fired Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt from Park East Synagogue, and long-simmering tensions publicly exploded in a way rabbinic rivalries rarely do.
Rabbi Arthur Schneier has spent decades shaping Park East Synagogue into one of the most prominent synagogues in New York, a public showcase for Modern Orthodox Judaism that has drawn visiting world leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI. He became synonymous with the synagogue and grew in stature by founding a school renamed in his honor and a nonprofit focused on human rights.
Ten years ago, he hired Benjamin Goldschmidt to be assistant rabbi, a dutiful job that has never been a steppingstone to the synagogue’s senior position. But Rabbi Goldschmidt, young and charismatic, quickly began to develop his own following by focusing on the spiritual needs of what he calls “the next generation of Jews.”
The relationship between the leaders grew strained as Rabbi Goldschmidt, 34, rose in popularity at a time when Park East members began to question who would take over when Rabbi Schneier, 91, was no longer able to lead.
In October, Rabbi Schneier abruptly fired Rabbi Goldschmidt, and those long-simmering tensions publicly exploded in a way rabbinic rivalries rarely do. One New York tabloid called the conflict “The Rabbi War,” and it has captivated much of the Jewish world for its acrimony, its allegations of unlawful behavior, and the generational questions it raises about the leadership of a prominent synagogue and the future of Modern Orthodox Judaism, which is increasingly shaped by the influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews and Russian speakers.
The accusations of betrayal and lawbreaking are extraordinary public attacks between influential rabbis that led Park East to decry its former employee’s actions as “a disgrace of the Rabbinate and Torah values” and have drawn the attention of an Israeli government minister who called for the younger rabbi to be rehired.
The conflict has split the synagogue: Schneier supporters remain there, while hundreds of other Park East members have joined the younger rabbi as he leads a rival Shabbat service down the street.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/nyre ... ews_dedupe
Rabbi Arthur Schneier abruptly fired Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt from Park East Synagogue, and long-simmering tensions publicly exploded in a way rabbinic rivalries rarely do.
Rabbi Arthur Schneier has spent decades shaping Park East Synagogue into one of the most prominent synagogues in New York, a public showcase for Modern Orthodox Judaism that has drawn visiting world leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI. He became synonymous with the synagogue and grew in stature by founding a school renamed in his honor and a nonprofit focused on human rights.
Ten years ago, he hired Benjamin Goldschmidt to be assistant rabbi, a dutiful job that has never been a steppingstone to the synagogue’s senior position. But Rabbi Goldschmidt, young and charismatic, quickly began to develop his own following by focusing on the spiritual needs of what he calls “the next generation of Jews.”
The relationship between the leaders grew strained as Rabbi Goldschmidt, 34, rose in popularity at a time when Park East members began to question who would take over when Rabbi Schneier, 91, was no longer able to lead.
In October, Rabbi Schneier abruptly fired Rabbi Goldschmidt, and those long-simmering tensions publicly exploded in a way rabbinic rivalries rarely do. One New York tabloid called the conflict “The Rabbi War,” and it has captivated much of the Jewish world for its acrimony, its allegations of unlawful behavior, and the generational questions it raises about the leadership of a prominent synagogue and the future of Modern Orthodox Judaism, which is increasingly shaped by the influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews and Russian speakers.
The accusations of betrayal and lawbreaking are extraordinary public attacks between influential rabbis that led Park East to decry its former employee’s actions as “a disgrace of the Rabbinate and Torah values” and have drawn the attention of an Israeli government minister who called for the younger rabbi to be rehired.
The conflict has split the synagogue: Schneier supporters remain there, while hundreds of other Park East members have joined the younger rabbi as he leads a rival Shabbat service down the street.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/nyre ... ews_dedupe
IS ZIONISM NO LONGER ABLE TO OFFER SOLUTIONS TO THE PRESENT REALITY?
Zionists just want to be happy.” – Hermann Cohen
I do not think it’s provocative to state that liberal Zionism is in crisis. By that I mean that the present iteration of liberal Zionism as a humanistic project of Jewish self-determination based on liberal democratic values is in a defensive mode in light of the realities in the state of Israel, both in its continued—perhaps permanent—occupation/annexation of millions of stateless Palestinians, and in its own self-fashioning, illustrated in part by the 2018 Nation State Law, essentially codifying Jewish supremacy, that cannot be defined as “liberal” by any stretch of the imagination. Many in the Zionist camp celebrate this ethnocentric turn. Most liberal Zionists do not. And yet most liberal Zionists remain steadfast in their defense of the state of Israel.
In a recent piece here on RD, “The Last Licks of Liberal Zionism in America,” Ilan Benattar used the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream kerfuffle this summer as an occasion to observe how liberal Zionism has lost its moorings mostly because its “liberalism” no longer connects in any coherent way to describe what Israel actually is in 2021. At best, Benattar argues, liberal Zionism is stuck in 2010; in the heyday of J-Street; before the acceleration of de-facto annexation; before the 2018 Nation State Law; before liberal Zionism’s most celebrated advocate, Peter Beinart, abandoned two-states; and before five Israeli elections illustrated pretty definitively that Israel is simply no longer a liberal country.
How then, does a professed liberal support a state that is illiberal? Benattar thus claims that liberal Zionism “has fallen into utter incoherence”; that is, its program seems divorced from reality if it still claims to support the actual state that exists, as opposed to some vision of a state that doesn’t. Electoral will matters.
More...
https://religiondispatches.org/is-zioni ... nt-reality
Zionists just want to be happy.” – Hermann Cohen
I do not think it’s provocative to state that liberal Zionism is in crisis. By that I mean that the present iteration of liberal Zionism as a humanistic project of Jewish self-determination based on liberal democratic values is in a defensive mode in light of the realities in the state of Israel, both in its continued—perhaps permanent—occupation/annexation of millions of stateless Palestinians, and in its own self-fashioning, illustrated in part by the 2018 Nation State Law, essentially codifying Jewish supremacy, that cannot be defined as “liberal” by any stretch of the imagination. Many in the Zionist camp celebrate this ethnocentric turn. Most liberal Zionists do not. And yet most liberal Zionists remain steadfast in their defense of the state of Israel.
In a recent piece here on RD, “The Last Licks of Liberal Zionism in America,” Ilan Benattar used the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream kerfuffle this summer as an occasion to observe how liberal Zionism has lost its moorings mostly because its “liberalism” no longer connects in any coherent way to describe what Israel actually is in 2021. At best, Benattar argues, liberal Zionism is stuck in 2010; in the heyday of J-Street; before the acceleration of de-facto annexation; before the 2018 Nation State Law; before liberal Zionism’s most celebrated advocate, Peter Beinart, abandoned two-states; and before five Israeli elections illustrated pretty definitively that Israel is simply no longer a liberal country.
How then, does a professed liberal support a state that is illiberal? Benattar thus claims that liberal Zionism “has fallen into utter incoherence”; that is, its program seems divorced from reality if it still claims to support the actual state that exists, as opposed to some vision of a state that doesn’t. Electoral will matters.
More...
https://religiondispatches.org/is-zioni ... nt-reality
Orthodox Jewish women's leadership is growing – and it's not all about rabbis
Michal Raucher, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, Rutgers University
Tue, December 14, 2021, 7:28 AM
<span class="caption">Opportunities are expanding for Orthodox Jewish women to formally study Jewish texts. This event in Jerusalem celebrated women who completed the 7 1/2-year cycle of daily study of the
Opportunities are expanding for Orthodox Jewish women to formally study Jewish texts. This event in Jerusalem celebrated women who completed the 7 1/2-year cycle of daily study of the Talmud. AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov
More Orthodox Jewish women around the world are following the path of ordination, though controversy over female rabbis continues in most Orthodox circles. But as more and more Orthodox women are showing, ordination is not the only route to religious leadership.
As a Jewish Studies professor who researches gender and religious authority, I have spent five years interviewing and observing Orthodox women who have been ordained. I have also spent several years researching the expansion of women’s leadership roles outside the rabbinate, and the growing acceptance of their authority.
Just a decade ago, only a handful of women had been ordained by Orthodox rabbis – decades after their peers in more liberal Jewish denominations. But in 2013, the “stained-glass ceiling” blocking women’s leadership shattered, as the first group of female rabbinical students graduated from a New York seminary called Yeshivat Maharat.
Today, almost 50 Orthodox women have been ordained at Yeshivat Maharat. But other roles for women are growing and changing more quickly, with many serving as guides to Jewish law, professionally trained rabbis’ wives and congregational scholars.
Yoatzot halacha: Female religious guides
Yoatzot halacha, who are “advisers” or “guides” to Jewish law (halacha), are women who have studied Jewish legal texts on topics such as sexuality, intimacy, pregnancy, birth and what Orthodox Judaism calls “family purity” laws, which deal with menstruation. They also provide counseling to Jewish women about a variety of issues related to marriage, relationships, sex and reproduction.
Training for yoatzot halacha, or yoatzot for short, began in 1997 at the Nishmat program in Israel. Graduates answer questions posed on the phone or online. When the first class graduated in 1999, many of them began working on the yoatzot hotline. Today, Nishmat’s yoatzot have answered over 100,000 questions.
Many yoatzot work in communities in the U.S., the U.K. and Israel. They can authoritatively answer questions about the laws of Taharat Hamishpacha, or “family purity,” and teach classes about them. Some yoatzot are hired by individual synagogues, while others are employed by a community, with their salary paid by multiple synagogues.
Yoatzot and their advocates make it clear that they are not rabbis and often define their authority as focusing on the laws of family purity. Yet they present an alternative mode of legal decision-making on these issues that sometimes cut ordained rabbis out of the picture.
In my own research, I’ve seen how the way yoatzot provide answers differs from a rabbi. When yoatzot answer questions about family purity, they answer based on their understanding of Jewish law as well as their own personal experiences observing these laws. It is precisely this expertise and empathy that draw Orthodox women to turn to yoatzot and not rabbis.
Yoatzot also answer questions brought anonymously through the website, which is a significant shift from how rabbis are used to answering legal questions one on one. They might also engage in longer conversations about marital happiness and sexual satisfaction.
The professionalization of the rebbetzin
For generations, the closest women could come to being religious leaders was to marry them instead. But in recent years, the role of the rabbi’s wife, called a rebbetzin, has become more professionalized, with formal training and institutional authority – as is true of many Christian preachers’ wives, as well.
The Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus has placed rabbinic couples on more than 20 college campuses in North America to mentor, teach and guide Jewish students. The program says it trains Orthodox rabbis and their wives to help Orthodox students on secular campuses “balance their Jewish commitments with their desire to engage the secular world.” Husbands’ positions are full time, while their wives’ are part time. They receive distinct training and are paid separately.
Even ultra-Orthodox rebbetzins formally serve as outreach activists to non-Orthodox Jews. Often, young couples will receive training for their future roles while living in Jerusalem for several years. The organization Ner LeElef, for example, trains men and women separately in the skills they will need as outreach activists. Women’s positions include traditional women’s tasks like cooking and hosting guests, as well as teaching classes and recruiting unaffiliated Jews into the ulta-Orthodox movement.
Many ultra-Orthodox rebbetzins leverage the internet to further their outreach. Women refer to their roles as one of spiritual leadership, not “clergy.” This term is meant to distinguish them from rabbis while simultaneously creating a unique leadership position.
Congregational scholars
Finally, Orthodox women have benefited from an increase in opportunities for them to study rabbinic texts, particularly the Talmud, which is often seen as a catalyst for their religious leadership.
The first women’s seminary opened in Israel in the 1980s, and since then, Orthodox women have had several more options for advanced Talmud study in the U.S. and Israel. Of note is the Drisha Scholars Circle, which until 2014 educated women in the same material that men would study for ordination. Yeshiva University in New York has been offering students a similar opportunity for advanced Talmud study through the Graduate Program in Advanced Talmud Studies for Women.
Women who have received this high level of religious education have also been holding positions of leadership in synagogues.
Take Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York, which has a history of pushing boundaries regarding women’s involvement in synagogue ritual. In the early 1970s, it was among the first Orthodox synagogues in New York to hold a bat mitzvah, the girls’ version of a coming-of-age ceremony that was traditionally only available to boys. In the late 1990s, Lincoln Square Synagogue hired its first female congregational intern, and has had several since – many of whom completed advanced Talmud studies for women or had Ph.D.s in Jewish Studies.
Other Orthodox women with Ph.D.s serve in positions of congregational leadership elsewhere. Dr. Mijal Biton, for example, is not ordained but is the Rosh Kehilla, or “head of the community,” of The Downtown Minyan in New York.
As they offer classes and answer questions for women, female religious leaders are creating a new cadre of educated Orthodox women. Jewish philanthropies, meanwhile, are investing in women as congregational leaders in order to inspire the next generation. Together, they are formalizing new spaces for women within the Orthodox Jewish community and changing how girls in their communities see their own potential.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/or ... 44564.html
Michal Raucher, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, Rutgers University
Tue, December 14, 2021, 7:28 AM
<span class="caption">Opportunities are expanding for Orthodox Jewish women to formally study Jewish texts. This event in Jerusalem celebrated women who completed the 7 1/2-year cycle of daily study of the
Opportunities are expanding for Orthodox Jewish women to formally study Jewish texts. This event in Jerusalem celebrated women who completed the 7 1/2-year cycle of daily study of the Talmud. AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov
More Orthodox Jewish women around the world are following the path of ordination, though controversy over female rabbis continues in most Orthodox circles. But as more and more Orthodox women are showing, ordination is not the only route to religious leadership.
As a Jewish Studies professor who researches gender and religious authority, I have spent five years interviewing and observing Orthodox women who have been ordained. I have also spent several years researching the expansion of women’s leadership roles outside the rabbinate, and the growing acceptance of their authority.
Just a decade ago, only a handful of women had been ordained by Orthodox rabbis – decades after their peers in more liberal Jewish denominations. But in 2013, the “stained-glass ceiling” blocking women’s leadership shattered, as the first group of female rabbinical students graduated from a New York seminary called Yeshivat Maharat.
Today, almost 50 Orthodox women have been ordained at Yeshivat Maharat. But other roles for women are growing and changing more quickly, with many serving as guides to Jewish law, professionally trained rabbis’ wives and congregational scholars.
Yoatzot halacha: Female religious guides
Yoatzot halacha, who are “advisers” or “guides” to Jewish law (halacha), are women who have studied Jewish legal texts on topics such as sexuality, intimacy, pregnancy, birth and what Orthodox Judaism calls “family purity” laws, which deal with menstruation. They also provide counseling to Jewish women about a variety of issues related to marriage, relationships, sex and reproduction.
Training for yoatzot halacha, or yoatzot for short, began in 1997 at the Nishmat program in Israel. Graduates answer questions posed on the phone or online. When the first class graduated in 1999, many of them began working on the yoatzot hotline. Today, Nishmat’s yoatzot have answered over 100,000 questions.
Many yoatzot work in communities in the U.S., the U.K. and Israel. They can authoritatively answer questions about the laws of Taharat Hamishpacha, or “family purity,” and teach classes about them. Some yoatzot are hired by individual synagogues, while others are employed by a community, with their salary paid by multiple synagogues.
Yoatzot and their advocates make it clear that they are not rabbis and often define their authority as focusing on the laws of family purity. Yet they present an alternative mode of legal decision-making on these issues that sometimes cut ordained rabbis out of the picture.
In my own research, I’ve seen how the way yoatzot provide answers differs from a rabbi. When yoatzot answer questions about family purity, they answer based on their understanding of Jewish law as well as their own personal experiences observing these laws. It is precisely this expertise and empathy that draw Orthodox women to turn to yoatzot and not rabbis.
Yoatzot also answer questions brought anonymously through the website, which is a significant shift from how rabbis are used to answering legal questions one on one. They might also engage in longer conversations about marital happiness and sexual satisfaction.
The professionalization of the rebbetzin
For generations, the closest women could come to being religious leaders was to marry them instead. But in recent years, the role of the rabbi’s wife, called a rebbetzin, has become more professionalized, with formal training and institutional authority – as is true of many Christian preachers’ wives, as well.
The Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus has placed rabbinic couples on more than 20 college campuses in North America to mentor, teach and guide Jewish students. The program says it trains Orthodox rabbis and their wives to help Orthodox students on secular campuses “balance their Jewish commitments with their desire to engage the secular world.” Husbands’ positions are full time, while their wives’ are part time. They receive distinct training and are paid separately.
Even ultra-Orthodox rebbetzins formally serve as outreach activists to non-Orthodox Jews. Often, young couples will receive training for their future roles while living in Jerusalem for several years. The organization Ner LeElef, for example, trains men and women separately in the skills they will need as outreach activists. Women’s positions include traditional women’s tasks like cooking and hosting guests, as well as teaching classes and recruiting unaffiliated Jews into the ulta-Orthodox movement.
Many ultra-Orthodox rebbetzins leverage the internet to further their outreach. Women refer to their roles as one of spiritual leadership, not “clergy.” This term is meant to distinguish them from rabbis while simultaneously creating a unique leadership position.
Congregational scholars
Finally, Orthodox women have benefited from an increase in opportunities for them to study rabbinic texts, particularly the Talmud, which is often seen as a catalyst for their religious leadership.
The first women’s seminary opened in Israel in the 1980s, and since then, Orthodox women have had several more options for advanced Talmud study in the U.S. and Israel. Of note is the Drisha Scholars Circle, which until 2014 educated women in the same material that men would study for ordination. Yeshiva University in New York has been offering students a similar opportunity for advanced Talmud study through the Graduate Program in Advanced Talmud Studies for Women.
Women who have received this high level of religious education have also been holding positions of leadership in synagogues.
Take Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York, which has a history of pushing boundaries regarding women’s involvement in synagogue ritual. In the early 1970s, it was among the first Orthodox synagogues in New York to hold a bat mitzvah, the girls’ version of a coming-of-age ceremony that was traditionally only available to boys. In the late 1990s, Lincoln Square Synagogue hired its first female congregational intern, and has had several since – many of whom completed advanced Talmud studies for women or had Ph.D.s in Jewish Studies.
Other Orthodox women with Ph.D.s serve in positions of congregational leadership elsewhere. Dr. Mijal Biton, for example, is not ordained but is the Rosh Kehilla, or “head of the community,” of The Downtown Minyan in New York.
As they offer classes and answer questions for women, female religious leaders are creating a new cadre of educated Orthodox women. Jewish philanthropies, meanwhile, are investing in women as congregational leaders in order to inspire the next generation. Together, they are formalizing new spaces for women within the Orthodox Jewish community and changing how girls in their communities see their own potential.
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Once a Janitor, Now the Bar Mitzvah Photography King of Montreal
With a touch of chutzpah and “a little help from God,” Braulio Rocha, a Roman Catholic Portuguese immigrant, traded in his mop for a camera.
MONTREAL — Braulio Rocha, a Portuguese janitor at a Montreal synagogue, was about to begin his daily floor mopping routine some years ago when he heard a frantic voice: The photographer assigned to shoot a bris, a ritual circumcision, hadn’t shown up, and the baby’s grandmother was panicking.
Mr. Rocha, an amateur photographer, had recently arrived in Canada from Madeira with $50 in savings and a beat-up old Canon camera that he always carried with him in his car. Wearing his gray and blue polyester janitor’s uniform, a long key ring dangling from his pocket, he recalls, he summoned up the courage and asked the forlorn grandmother if he could shoot the baby’s bris — for free.
She agreed, and a new career was born.
Brisses soon led to bar mitzvahs, and six years later, Mr. Rocha, a 45-year-old Roman Catholic, has been called the bar mitzvah photography king of Montreal by rabbis and clients alike.
Mr. Rocha, who had never met a Jew before setting foot in Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in 2015, is now so in demand that he sometimes shoots five bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies a week, is booked for bar mitzvahs into 2023, and employs a team of eight assistant photographers. He recently expanded into Hasidic weddings.
He has also traded in his antiquated Canon for a $3,200 model, bought a Volvo SUV, and moved from his cramped apartment into a four-bedroom house in the suburbs, filled with Armani clothing.
“I remember thinking, ‘You’re just a janitor,’” he said on a recent day, recalling his big bris break as he sat in the pews of the synagogue’s imposing sanctuary. “But I said to myself, ‘It’s now or never.’ I guess you could say I’m the Canadian dream.”
Armed with a mix of chutzpah and a passion for photography he inherited from his father, who worked briefly as a photojournalist during Angola’s war of independence in the 1970s, Mr. Rocha credited Canada’s openness to immigrants for his good fortune.
Shaar Hashomayim, the oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in Canada, was founded in 1846, and shaped by immigrants from Europe, among them Lazarus Cohen, whose family went on to create one of Montreal’s largest clothing businesses. (Lazarus also happened to be the great-grandfather of Leonard Cohen, the Montreal-born gravelly voiced balladeer.)
Mr. Rocha said that hearing immigrant success stories like the one about the Cohen family had helped inspire him. “The Jews arrived in North America with nothing in their pockets, some survived genocide, and they rebuilt their lives and became successful,” he said. “I thought to myself: ‘If they did it, so can I.’”
Gideon Zelermyer, the Shaar’s cantor, who hired Mr. Rocha to shoot his son Max’s bar mitzvah, observed that a janitor reinventing himself as a bar mitzvah photography maven in a foreign country is a quintessentially Jewish story.
“There is a virtue in our community of welcoming strangers as we, too, were strangers in a strange land,” he said. “That is the story of Passover. There are times when you have to dust yourself off and move forward with life with a lot of uncertainty, and Braulio embodies that.”
Mr. Zelermyer observed that Mr. Rocha, a Tim Burton fan who likes to re-enact scenes from Hollywood films like the Indiana Jones series and “E.T.” in his bar mitzvah shoots, also stood out because of his flair for the dramatic.
In one of Mr. Rocha’s favorite images in his repertoire, he draws from the scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” when a shadowy light force emanates from the ark of the covenant and smites a group of Nazis. In his bar mitzvah version, however, Mr. Rocha said, the light envelopes the bar mitzvah boy or bat mitzvah girl and “blesses, protects and guides them.”
“My job is to write with light,” he said, explaining his craft.
The son of a salesman and a hairdresser, Mr. Rocha said his childhood in a working-class neighborhood of Funchal, Madeira’s picturesque capital, was tumultuous. He said his father, who lost his journalism job after his newspaper shut down, was forced to sell building materials. He put on a suit and tie every day, and went to construction sites, uninvited, to peddle his wares. He was often rebuffed, and he took out his frustration, Mr. Rocha said, by lashing out and throwing plates.
Mr. Rocha’s maternal grandmother is Black, and he said he always felt “different” in majority white Madeira. “Other kids taunted me, ‘Go back to Africa,’” he said. He found refuge taking nature photographs.
His home environment took its toll and Mr. Rocha, once a straight-A student, eventually dropped out of high school, getting a job as a waiter.
“I had zero ambition,” he said. “I was living with my mom. I spent my money on clubbing, girls and going to the gym.”
But he said his life changed forever one late evening in summer 2012 when he was bringing plastic bottles to a recycling bin in back of the restaurant, saw a woman strolling by and raced to intercept her, inviting her to have dinner. Much to his surprise, the woman, Sonia Vieira Ganança, whose family had emigrated from Madeira to Montreal, returned the next day.
The two began dating, kept in touch remotely by Skype after she went home, and six months later, she asked him to move to Canada. He was so broke, he recalled, she paid for the $1,000 plane ticket.
Mr. Rocha posing Sean Rosen, 13, for a bar mitzvah portrait.Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
Mr. Rocha suddenly found himself braving a Quebec winter, jobless, isolated and unable to speak French. After an initially rocky adjustment, he proposed to Sonia at a teahouse, hiding a $150 ring in a teacup. He said he found a sense of purpose after Sonia’s aunt, who worked in the Shaar’s kitchen, helped get him the janitor job.
He felt immediately at home at the synagogue, he said, and was particularly drawn by the spiritual meaning of a bar or bat mitzvah, the rite of passage in which a boy or girl affirms a commitment to Judaism. He would sometimes pause from vacuuming to sit in the pews and listen, entranced, to Cantor Zelermyer’s haunting voice singing prayers.
“I am a baptized Catholic, but in a synagogue I feel a very strong connection, something talks to me,” he said.
It was while dusting the pews and observing bar mitzvah photographers at work that the idea first entered his head that photographing bar mitzvahs was his “destiny.”
“I would see the photographers standing too close to the bar mitzvah boy, and the voice in my head would be saying: ‘No, no, no, it’s all wrong. You have God giving you this light, and you aren’t doing anything with it,’” he recalled. “But I was the janitor, so I kept dusting.”
Then came the bris epiphany.
The grandmother was so delighted with the resulting moody, cinematic photos that she paid him $130 for the job, an improvement on his $10-an-hour janitor salary.
Emboldened, Mr. Rocha asked the synagogue’s management if he could shoot other events. Within two years, he was photographing weddings and bar mitzvahs, for as much as $8,000, and, for a while, changing afterward into his janitor’s uniform to scrub toilets. Sometimes he worked such long days he slept on a synagogue pew.
Image
Mr. Rocha in the sanctuary of Shaar Hashomayim.
Mr. Rocha in the sanctuary of Shaar Hashomayim. Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
After word spread in the Jewish community about the janitor with the discerning eye, he had so many assignments that he retired his uniform, quitting his janitor job in 2019.
At a recent bar mitzvah photo session, Mr. Rocha effortlessly schmoozed the family and joshed with the pensive bar mitzvah boy to get him to smile. “So your dad doesn’t know that you steal his Scotch, eh?” he asked.
These days, Mr. Rocha, who has a 2-year old daughter, teaches bar mitzvah photography master classes to a 4,300-strong Facebook group. And now, when he enters the Shaar Hashomayim, former colleagues on the janitorial staff quip, “Hey Mr. C.E.O.!”
He feels so connected to Judaism that he considered converting, but has hesitated: “My family is very Catholic and I don’t think they’d be happy.” And old habits persist. Mr. Rocha frequently exclaims, “Jesus Christ, that shot is amazing!” when taking bar mitzvah photos in synagogue.
Whatever his religion, his career move was, in his view, divinely ordained.
“I feel so blessed for everything that has happened,” he said. “I see now that coming to Canada is God’s plan.”
Photos at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/worl ... 778d3e6de3
With a touch of chutzpah and “a little help from God,” Braulio Rocha, a Roman Catholic Portuguese immigrant, traded in his mop for a camera.
MONTREAL — Braulio Rocha, a Portuguese janitor at a Montreal synagogue, was about to begin his daily floor mopping routine some years ago when he heard a frantic voice: The photographer assigned to shoot a bris, a ritual circumcision, hadn’t shown up, and the baby’s grandmother was panicking.
Mr. Rocha, an amateur photographer, had recently arrived in Canada from Madeira with $50 in savings and a beat-up old Canon camera that he always carried with him in his car. Wearing his gray and blue polyester janitor’s uniform, a long key ring dangling from his pocket, he recalls, he summoned up the courage and asked the forlorn grandmother if he could shoot the baby’s bris — for free.
She agreed, and a new career was born.
Brisses soon led to bar mitzvahs, and six years later, Mr. Rocha, a 45-year-old Roman Catholic, has been called the bar mitzvah photography king of Montreal by rabbis and clients alike.
Mr. Rocha, who had never met a Jew before setting foot in Montreal’s Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in 2015, is now so in demand that he sometimes shoots five bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies a week, is booked for bar mitzvahs into 2023, and employs a team of eight assistant photographers. He recently expanded into Hasidic weddings.
He has also traded in his antiquated Canon for a $3,200 model, bought a Volvo SUV, and moved from his cramped apartment into a four-bedroom house in the suburbs, filled with Armani clothing.
“I remember thinking, ‘You’re just a janitor,’” he said on a recent day, recalling his big bris break as he sat in the pews of the synagogue’s imposing sanctuary. “But I said to myself, ‘It’s now or never.’ I guess you could say I’m the Canadian dream.”
Armed with a mix of chutzpah and a passion for photography he inherited from his father, who worked briefly as a photojournalist during Angola’s war of independence in the 1970s, Mr. Rocha credited Canada’s openness to immigrants for his good fortune.
Shaar Hashomayim, the oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in Canada, was founded in 1846, and shaped by immigrants from Europe, among them Lazarus Cohen, whose family went on to create one of Montreal’s largest clothing businesses. (Lazarus also happened to be the great-grandfather of Leonard Cohen, the Montreal-born gravelly voiced balladeer.)
Mr. Rocha said that hearing immigrant success stories like the one about the Cohen family had helped inspire him. “The Jews arrived in North America with nothing in their pockets, some survived genocide, and they rebuilt their lives and became successful,” he said. “I thought to myself: ‘If they did it, so can I.’”
Gideon Zelermyer, the Shaar’s cantor, who hired Mr. Rocha to shoot his son Max’s bar mitzvah, observed that a janitor reinventing himself as a bar mitzvah photography maven in a foreign country is a quintessentially Jewish story.
“There is a virtue in our community of welcoming strangers as we, too, were strangers in a strange land,” he said. “That is the story of Passover. There are times when you have to dust yourself off and move forward with life with a lot of uncertainty, and Braulio embodies that.”
Mr. Zelermyer observed that Mr. Rocha, a Tim Burton fan who likes to re-enact scenes from Hollywood films like the Indiana Jones series and “E.T.” in his bar mitzvah shoots, also stood out because of his flair for the dramatic.
In one of Mr. Rocha’s favorite images in his repertoire, he draws from the scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” when a shadowy light force emanates from the ark of the covenant and smites a group of Nazis. In his bar mitzvah version, however, Mr. Rocha said, the light envelopes the bar mitzvah boy or bat mitzvah girl and “blesses, protects and guides them.”
“My job is to write with light,” he said, explaining his craft.
The son of a salesman and a hairdresser, Mr. Rocha said his childhood in a working-class neighborhood of Funchal, Madeira’s picturesque capital, was tumultuous. He said his father, who lost his journalism job after his newspaper shut down, was forced to sell building materials. He put on a suit and tie every day, and went to construction sites, uninvited, to peddle his wares. He was often rebuffed, and he took out his frustration, Mr. Rocha said, by lashing out and throwing plates.
Mr. Rocha’s maternal grandmother is Black, and he said he always felt “different” in majority white Madeira. “Other kids taunted me, ‘Go back to Africa,’” he said. He found refuge taking nature photographs.
His home environment took its toll and Mr. Rocha, once a straight-A student, eventually dropped out of high school, getting a job as a waiter.
“I had zero ambition,” he said. “I was living with my mom. I spent my money on clubbing, girls and going to the gym.”
But he said his life changed forever one late evening in summer 2012 when he was bringing plastic bottles to a recycling bin in back of the restaurant, saw a woman strolling by and raced to intercept her, inviting her to have dinner. Much to his surprise, the woman, Sonia Vieira Ganança, whose family had emigrated from Madeira to Montreal, returned the next day.
The two began dating, kept in touch remotely by Skype after she went home, and six months later, she asked him to move to Canada. He was so broke, he recalled, she paid for the $1,000 plane ticket.
Mr. Rocha posing Sean Rosen, 13, for a bar mitzvah portrait.Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
Mr. Rocha suddenly found himself braving a Quebec winter, jobless, isolated and unable to speak French. After an initially rocky adjustment, he proposed to Sonia at a teahouse, hiding a $150 ring in a teacup. He said he found a sense of purpose after Sonia’s aunt, who worked in the Shaar’s kitchen, helped get him the janitor job.
He felt immediately at home at the synagogue, he said, and was particularly drawn by the spiritual meaning of a bar or bat mitzvah, the rite of passage in which a boy or girl affirms a commitment to Judaism. He would sometimes pause from vacuuming to sit in the pews and listen, entranced, to Cantor Zelermyer’s haunting voice singing prayers.
“I am a baptized Catholic, but in a synagogue I feel a very strong connection, something talks to me,” he said.
It was while dusting the pews and observing bar mitzvah photographers at work that the idea first entered his head that photographing bar mitzvahs was his “destiny.”
“I would see the photographers standing too close to the bar mitzvah boy, and the voice in my head would be saying: ‘No, no, no, it’s all wrong. You have God giving you this light, and you aren’t doing anything with it,’” he recalled. “But I was the janitor, so I kept dusting.”
Then came the bris epiphany.
The grandmother was so delighted with the resulting moody, cinematic photos that she paid him $130 for the job, an improvement on his $10-an-hour janitor salary.
Emboldened, Mr. Rocha asked the synagogue’s management if he could shoot other events. Within two years, he was photographing weddings and bar mitzvahs, for as much as $8,000, and, for a while, changing afterward into his janitor’s uniform to scrub toilets. Sometimes he worked such long days he slept on a synagogue pew.
Image
Mr. Rocha in the sanctuary of Shaar Hashomayim.
Mr. Rocha in the sanctuary of Shaar Hashomayim. Credit...Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
After word spread in the Jewish community about the janitor with the discerning eye, he had so many assignments that he retired his uniform, quitting his janitor job in 2019.
At a recent bar mitzvah photo session, Mr. Rocha effortlessly schmoozed the family and joshed with the pensive bar mitzvah boy to get him to smile. “So your dad doesn’t know that you steal his Scotch, eh?” he asked.
These days, Mr. Rocha, who has a 2-year old daughter, teaches bar mitzvah photography master classes to a 4,300-strong Facebook group. And now, when he enters the Shaar Hashomayim, former colleagues on the janitorial staff quip, “Hey Mr. C.E.O.!”
He feels so connected to Judaism that he considered converting, but has hesitated: “My family is very Catholic and I don’t think they’d be happy.” And old habits persist. Mr. Rocha frequently exclaims, “Jesus Christ, that shot is amazing!” when taking bar mitzvah photos in synagogue.
Whatever his religion, his career move was, in his view, divinely ordained.
“I feel so blessed for everything that has happened,” he said. “I see now that coming to Canada is God’s plan.”
Photos at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/worl ... 778d3e6de3
For Jews, Going to Services Is an Act of Courage
By Deborah E. Lipstadt
Dr. Lipstadt is a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University. She has been nominated by President Biden to be the State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism abroad.
Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, matir asurim. Blessed are you, God, sovereign of the universe, who frees the captives.
Look in virtually any prayer book of any stream of Judaism and you will find this prayer in the section known as Blessings of the Dawn. The invocation comes right at the beginning. So integral is this idea to the Jewish psyche, we praise God again for freeing captives during the Amidah, one of the liturgy’s most central prayers.
Late Saturday night, as news came of the safe conclusion of the hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, I — together with many other Jews around the world — recited that blessing. Tears, for many of us, flowed freely. We shared it. We posted it. We felt it.
Another tragedy had been averted. But the scars remain. They will take a long time to heal. I thought of the Beth Israel rabbi’s two daughters who waited all day to hear of their father’s fate. One rabbi recently told me that some of her colleagues’ children don’t want them to be congregational rabbis anymore. “It’s too dangerous.” They don’t want to have to worry every time their parent goes to the office. The parent’s office is the synagogue.
My rabbi, Adam Starr, posted to Facebook that on Sunday morning, when he went into synagogue for daily prayer, it felt like “an act of courage, defiance and faith.” Another friend told me that whenever she walks into a synagogue she makes a mental check of the nearest exit and figures out where the safest place to hide is. Under a pew? In a storage closet? Behind the ark, which holds the sacred Torah scrolls? She was shocked when I said I don’t do that. Yet.
Jews have learned to be afraid beyond the synagogue. In May during the Gaza conflagration, people eating at a kosher restaurant in Los Angeles were beaten up by a mob. In London, a phalanx of cars moved through Jewish neighborhoods chanting “Kill Jews, rape their daughters.” In Times Square in New York, a Jew wearing a kipa, or skullcap, was punched and pepper-sprayed.
When the attack is on a synagogue, during prayer, the pain is particularly intense. Each incident of vandalism — antisemitic graffiti at a Tucson synagogue, desecration of synagogues in the Bronx in the spring — or worse, arson at an Austin, Texas, synagogue this fall, is felt by Jews far beyond the confines of that specific community.
Jews have long thought of their synagogues as both a place to pray and a place to find community. As Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker noted after his heroic escape from the gunman in Colleyville, a synagogue is called a beit knesset, a house of gathering. That is why, when traveling abroad, even Jews who are not regular synagogue attendees often seek out the local synagogue.
For decades, when I got directions to synagogues in countries outside my own — be it in Germany, Turkey, Poland, Italy or Colombia — I would be advised that, to make my search easier, I didn’t have to know the precise address. When I got to the street on which the building was situated, I was told, I should just look for the police officers with the submachine guns. That’s where the synagogue would be. Also: Bring my passport. And be prepared for questions.
In some cities, synagogues ask that you call ahead to let them know you are coming. In Stockholm two years ago, the guard outside had been alerted to my coming. But he took no chances. So I found myself on a snowy street, reciting select prayers for him. Only after proving my bona fides did he let me in.
That was once an experience limited to when I traveled abroad. Now American Jews like myself experience it at home — in our own synagogues, and in those we attend in American cities across this country. We look across the street at the big church and can’t help but notice that there are no guards there.
A couple of summers ago, I was in the Berkshires on a Sunday morning driving through one of those innumerable picturesque small towns. Along the way, I passed a large church, right on the main street. It dated back to Revolutionary times. Something seemed off to me. The four large entry doors were wide open. Congregants stood happily greeting people as they entered. Then I realized what was discordant. No armed guard. No security check. No one told to “please use the side entrance, because it’s more secure.” Just an open invitation: Come in. Welcome.
I have not walked through the main entrance to my synagogue since October 2018, after the shootings at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue. For over three years now, that door has remained locked. When I asked why, I was told, “It’s too wide open; it can’t be made secure.” I understood. You won’t find wide-open doors at any synagogue in Europe or North America. It is only after you get past the guards that you find welcome, though welcome is still there for those who seek it.
It is not just the large synagogues that fear for security. I hear from students that they think twice about going to Hillel services, the campus Jewish chaplaincy. Some out of fear for physical safety. Some out of worry about the slings and barbs that might come from other students in the dorm. I met parents whose child had been accepted to a very selective college. He wears a kipa and was struggling with whether to replace it for the next four years with a baseball cap. Increasingly I hear: Jews are contemplating going underground.
We are shaken. We are not OK. But we will bounce back. We are resilient because we cannot afford not to be. That resiliency is part of the Jewish DNA. Without it, we would have disappeared centuries ago. We refuse to go away. But we are exhausted.
Rabbi Cytron-Walker credited his survival to the active-shooter training and security courses that he and his congregants took in order to prepare for just such a moment. He knew to stay calm and knew the right moment to fling a chair at his captor and dash for the exit with the other captives. The Jewish community offers such training on a regular basis to an array of Jewish institutions, especially to our synagogues and our schools.
It is not radical to say that going to services, whether to converse with God or with the neighbors you see only once a week, should not be an act of courage. And yet this weekend we were once again reminded that it can be precisely that.
Among those morning blessings that are part of Blessings of the Dawn is one that thanks God for opening up the eyes of the blind. Jewish eyes did not need to be opened. But this week we wonder if the eyes of our non-Jewish friends and neighbors, particularly the ones who didn’t call to see if we were OK, have been opened just a bit.
There is an additional blessing during these early prayers that thanks God for allowing us to stand tall and straight. We are standing tall and we are standing straight.
But we are checking for the exits.
Deborah E. Lipstadt is a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University. She has been nominated by President Biden to be the State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism abroad.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/opin ... pe=Article
By Deborah E. Lipstadt
Dr. Lipstadt is a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University. She has been nominated by President Biden to be the State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism abroad.
Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, matir asurim. Blessed are you, God, sovereign of the universe, who frees the captives.
Look in virtually any prayer book of any stream of Judaism and you will find this prayer in the section known as Blessings of the Dawn. The invocation comes right at the beginning. So integral is this idea to the Jewish psyche, we praise God again for freeing captives during the Amidah, one of the liturgy’s most central prayers.
Late Saturday night, as news came of the safe conclusion of the hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, I — together with many other Jews around the world — recited that blessing. Tears, for many of us, flowed freely. We shared it. We posted it. We felt it.
Another tragedy had been averted. But the scars remain. They will take a long time to heal. I thought of the Beth Israel rabbi’s two daughters who waited all day to hear of their father’s fate. One rabbi recently told me that some of her colleagues’ children don’t want them to be congregational rabbis anymore. “It’s too dangerous.” They don’t want to have to worry every time their parent goes to the office. The parent’s office is the synagogue.
My rabbi, Adam Starr, posted to Facebook that on Sunday morning, when he went into synagogue for daily prayer, it felt like “an act of courage, defiance and faith.” Another friend told me that whenever she walks into a synagogue she makes a mental check of the nearest exit and figures out where the safest place to hide is. Under a pew? In a storage closet? Behind the ark, which holds the sacred Torah scrolls? She was shocked when I said I don’t do that. Yet.
Jews have learned to be afraid beyond the synagogue. In May during the Gaza conflagration, people eating at a kosher restaurant in Los Angeles were beaten up by a mob. In London, a phalanx of cars moved through Jewish neighborhoods chanting “Kill Jews, rape their daughters.” In Times Square in New York, a Jew wearing a kipa, or skullcap, was punched and pepper-sprayed.
When the attack is on a synagogue, during prayer, the pain is particularly intense. Each incident of vandalism — antisemitic graffiti at a Tucson synagogue, desecration of synagogues in the Bronx in the spring — or worse, arson at an Austin, Texas, synagogue this fall, is felt by Jews far beyond the confines of that specific community.
Jews have long thought of their synagogues as both a place to pray and a place to find community. As Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker noted after his heroic escape from the gunman in Colleyville, a synagogue is called a beit knesset, a house of gathering. That is why, when traveling abroad, even Jews who are not regular synagogue attendees often seek out the local synagogue.
For decades, when I got directions to synagogues in countries outside my own — be it in Germany, Turkey, Poland, Italy or Colombia — I would be advised that, to make my search easier, I didn’t have to know the precise address. When I got to the street on which the building was situated, I was told, I should just look for the police officers with the submachine guns. That’s where the synagogue would be. Also: Bring my passport. And be prepared for questions.
In some cities, synagogues ask that you call ahead to let them know you are coming. In Stockholm two years ago, the guard outside had been alerted to my coming. But he took no chances. So I found myself on a snowy street, reciting select prayers for him. Only after proving my bona fides did he let me in.
That was once an experience limited to when I traveled abroad. Now American Jews like myself experience it at home — in our own synagogues, and in those we attend in American cities across this country. We look across the street at the big church and can’t help but notice that there are no guards there.
A couple of summers ago, I was in the Berkshires on a Sunday morning driving through one of those innumerable picturesque small towns. Along the way, I passed a large church, right on the main street. It dated back to Revolutionary times. Something seemed off to me. The four large entry doors were wide open. Congregants stood happily greeting people as they entered. Then I realized what was discordant. No armed guard. No security check. No one told to “please use the side entrance, because it’s more secure.” Just an open invitation: Come in. Welcome.
I have not walked through the main entrance to my synagogue since October 2018, after the shootings at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue. For over three years now, that door has remained locked. When I asked why, I was told, “It’s too wide open; it can’t be made secure.” I understood. You won’t find wide-open doors at any synagogue in Europe or North America. It is only after you get past the guards that you find welcome, though welcome is still there for those who seek it.
It is not just the large synagogues that fear for security. I hear from students that they think twice about going to Hillel services, the campus Jewish chaplaincy. Some out of fear for physical safety. Some out of worry about the slings and barbs that might come from other students in the dorm. I met parents whose child had been accepted to a very selective college. He wears a kipa and was struggling with whether to replace it for the next four years with a baseball cap. Increasingly I hear: Jews are contemplating going underground.
We are shaken. We are not OK. But we will bounce back. We are resilient because we cannot afford not to be. That resiliency is part of the Jewish DNA. Without it, we would have disappeared centuries ago. We refuse to go away. But we are exhausted.
Rabbi Cytron-Walker credited his survival to the active-shooter training and security courses that he and his congregants took in order to prepare for just such a moment. He knew to stay calm and knew the right moment to fling a chair at his captor and dash for the exit with the other captives. The Jewish community offers such training on a regular basis to an array of Jewish institutions, especially to our synagogues and our schools.
It is not radical to say that going to services, whether to converse with God or with the neighbors you see only once a week, should not be an act of courage. And yet this weekend we were once again reminded that it can be precisely that.
Among those morning blessings that are part of Blessings of the Dawn is one that thanks God for opening up the eyes of the blind. Jewish eyes did not need to be opened. But this week we wonder if the eyes of our non-Jewish friends and neighbors, particularly the ones who didn’t call to see if we were OK, have been opened just a bit.
There is an additional blessing during these early prayers that thanks God for allowing us to stand tall and straight. We are standing tall and we are standing straight.
But we are checking for the exits.
Deborah E. Lipstadt is a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University. She has been nominated by President Biden to be the State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism abroad.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/opin ... pe=Article
The Bat Mitzvah Question I Wasn’t Expecting: ‘Are We Safe at Synagogue?’
In many synagogues in America, especially large congregations like the one my family and I attend, children receive a date for their bar or bat mitzvah years in advance. This is the day that a child stands in front of the congregation and assumes the responsibilities of an adult, reading from the Torah and offering a commentary on the week’s teaching. It is a time of enormous celebration; it requires months of preparation.
So we knew, already in early 2019, that our daughter Orli would become a bat mitzvah on Jan. 15, 2022. It seemed auspicious: It would be the week of her 13th birthday; it was Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, a time of national introspection; and the portion of the Torah assigned to that week was resonant. In it the Jews cross the Red Sea, fleeing slavery, and enter the wilderness.
In the intervening years, our family began to better understand wandering in the wilderness, not only from the endless drag of the pandemic but also because some months after Orli received her bat mitzvah date, a CT scan revealed her liver was laden with tumors. Through two years of surgeries, chemotherapy and extended hospital stays, we held on to the idea that she might still stand in front of the congregation.
In families like ours, joy has a specific urgency. It cannot be delayed. We refused to move the date, even when Covid and Omicron changed our ability to invite everyone we wanted to see. Facing morphing uncertainties and vulnerability, we adapted. We did not have to reach deep to say the prayer of thanks for allowing us to reach this moment.
In congregations like my own, we do not use our phones on Shabbat, so we were unaware that around the time Orli began to recite from the Torah, 1,300 miles away, at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, a man had taken the rabbi and congregants hostage. Later that night, when we learned what was still unfolding, my partner and I whispered to each other, hoping to shield Orli and her sister, Hana, a moment longer, to delay the inevitable question we knew we’d be asked: “Will it happen to us?” Orli had asked me the same question the week after Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was attacked in October 2018. She worried that we could be bombed. In other words: Are we safe at synagogue?
To these questions, I can offer no concrete answer. I do not want to lie, though I am tempted to simply insist we will be fine. I tell them: Our synagogue is well fortified. But my uncertainty in a time of hate and violence, not unlike my uncertainty in the face of illness, destabilizes me. It is unsettling to allow your children to know, early on, just how very little control you really have. Vulnerability is always jarring; it is somehow more terrible when you are meant to be a comforting presence. Plus, I have no good models for these queries.
When I was a child, I had little to challenge my belief in my parents’ ability to keep us healthy. Conversations about fear were largely retrospective. We grew up with our Holocaust refugee relatives who had fled destitution and destruction to deliverance in an American promised land. The past was terrible, but we were in the present.
My children, meanwhile, are familiar with mediports, home fluids and daily pill regimens. The girls intimately know the difference between minor surgeries and major ones. They have grown accustomed to our synagogue’s metal detectors, bag checks and security guards; they know by name the permanent security officer at the door. Indeed, the officer knows Orli’s story well. When he saw us arrive on that Saturday morning for the bat mitzvah, he and my partner, Ian, embraced. They both cried.
In “Beshalach” (“When He Let Go”), the Torah portion read on Jan. 15, the Israelites celebrate their freedom, then panic in the face of uncertainty. They bitterly complain to Moses, who has led them out of Egypt, that they fear death by thirst or starvation awaits them in the wilderness. The portion ends with a battle with the Amalekites, a conflict, the Torah tells us, that continues from generation to generation. The Amalekites become a stand-in for a mythical eternal enemy, a symbol of any evil that subsequently arises against the Jewish community.
As the months of Orli’s illness turned into years, and even when her scans were finally clear this past summer, uncertainty remained. In her sermon, Orli pushed back against the idea of an omnipresent God, or a God that favored Jews, or even God at all. She told the congregation she understood what it meant to feel alone, even abandoned. No deity had shown up in her hospital room, she said. Perhaps, she said, divinity was in being present for each other. When one of our rabbis offered Orli a blessing, she did not say that our daughter’s life would face no further hardship, but rather that hardships would be faced with the support of her community.
Illness has, at various points in these last two odd years, displaced my kids from their home, their sense of surety in what tomorrow will bring and in their belief that we can protect them. Security breaches have shifted their sense of safety. And yet, both experiences have shown us the capacity of our hearts not just to break, but also to stubbornly repair. We are far from the only community to feel insecure; we are not the only family to have experienced trauma. We have seen this country reckon with violence, and we recognize now it was a privilege to think we were protected. We have all felt alone in these last two illness-bounded years. Instead, we might see ourselves as together, but in a different, uncharted way, bound up in an effort to protect one another.
Orli’s middle name is Chaim, for my grandfather who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna at age 26. He was known for his knack for reinvention and unmitigated joy, even in the face of unimaginable loss. Upon my bat mitzvah, some 30 odd years before Orli’s, he sent me a letter: Now that I was coming of age in the Jewish community, he offered the words Moses says to Joshua as he assumes the mantle of leadership. They are words meant to gird oneself in the face of challenge and responsibility, of obstacles and uncertainty. It is a command not to back down but to forge ahead. And so he did not write mazel tov, or congratulations, but hazak v’ematz, have strength and be courageous: The expression is not an endpoint, but a beginning.
Sarah Wildman is a staff editor and writer in Opinion. She is the author of “Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/23/opin ... 778d3e6de3
In many synagogues in America, especially large congregations like the one my family and I attend, children receive a date for their bar or bat mitzvah years in advance. This is the day that a child stands in front of the congregation and assumes the responsibilities of an adult, reading from the Torah and offering a commentary on the week’s teaching. It is a time of enormous celebration; it requires months of preparation.
So we knew, already in early 2019, that our daughter Orli would become a bat mitzvah on Jan. 15, 2022. It seemed auspicious: It would be the week of her 13th birthday; it was Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, a time of national introspection; and the portion of the Torah assigned to that week was resonant. In it the Jews cross the Red Sea, fleeing slavery, and enter the wilderness.
In the intervening years, our family began to better understand wandering in the wilderness, not only from the endless drag of the pandemic but also because some months after Orli received her bat mitzvah date, a CT scan revealed her liver was laden with tumors. Through two years of surgeries, chemotherapy and extended hospital stays, we held on to the idea that she might still stand in front of the congregation.
In families like ours, joy has a specific urgency. It cannot be delayed. We refused to move the date, even when Covid and Omicron changed our ability to invite everyone we wanted to see. Facing morphing uncertainties and vulnerability, we adapted. We did not have to reach deep to say the prayer of thanks for allowing us to reach this moment.
In congregations like my own, we do not use our phones on Shabbat, so we were unaware that around the time Orli began to recite from the Torah, 1,300 miles away, at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, a man had taken the rabbi and congregants hostage. Later that night, when we learned what was still unfolding, my partner and I whispered to each other, hoping to shield Orli and her sister, Hana, a moment longer, to delay the inevitable question we knew we’d be asked: “Will it happen to us?” Orli had asked me the same question the week after Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was attacked in October 2018. She worried that we could be bombed. In other words: Are we safe at synagogue?
To these questions, I can offer no concrete answer. I do not want to lie, though I am tempted to simply insist we will be fine. I tell them: Our synagogue is well fortified. But my uncertainty in a time of hate and violence, not unlike my uncertainty in the face of illness, destabilizes me. It is unsettling to allow your children to know, early on, just how very little control you really have. Vulnerability is always jarring; it is somehow more terrible when you are meant to be a comforting presence. Plus, I have no good models for these queries.
When I was a child, I had little to challenge my belief in my parents’ ability to keep us healthy. Conversations about fear were largely retrospective. We grew up with our Holocaust refugee relatives who had fled destitution and destruction to deliverance in an American promised land. The past was terrible, but we were in the present.
My children, meanwhile, are familiar with mediports, home fluids and daily pill regimens. The girls intimately know the difference between minor surgeries and major ones. They have grown accustomed to our synagogue’s metal detectors, bag checks and security guards; they know by name the permanent security officer at the door. Indeed, the officer knows Orli’s story well. When he saw us arrive on that Saturday morning for the bat mitzvah, he and my partner, Ian, embraced. They both cried.
In “Beshalach” (“When He Let Go”), the Torah portion read on Jan. 15, the Israelites celebrate their freedom, then panic in the face of uncertainty. They bitterly complain to Moses, who has led them out of Egypt, that they fear death by thirst or starvation awaits them in the wilderness. The portion ends with a battle with the Amalekites, a conflict, the Torah tells us, that continues from generation to generation. The Amalekites become a stand-in for a mythical eternal enemy, a symbol of any evil that subsequently arises against the Jewish community.
As the months of Orli’s illness turned into years, and even when her scans were finally clear this past summer, uncertainty remained. In her sermon, Orli pushed back against the idea of an omnipresent God, or a God that favored Jews, or even God at all. She told the congregation she understood what it meant to feel alone, even abandoned. No deity had shown up in her hospital room, she said. Perhaps, she said, divinity was in being present for each other. When one of our rabbis offered Orli a blessing, she did not say that our daughter’s life would face no further hardship, but rather that hardships would be faced with the support of her community.
Illness has, at various points in these last two odd years, displaced my kids from their home, their sense of surety in what tomorrow will bring and in their belief that we can protect them. Security breaches have shifted their sense of safety. And yet, both experiences have shown us the capacity of our hearts not just to break, but also to stubbornly repair. We are far from the only community to feel insecure; we are not the only family to have experienced trauma. We have seen this country reckon with violence, and we recognize now it was a privilege to think we were protected. We have all felt alone in these last two illness-bounded years. Instead, we might see ourselves as together, but in a different, uncharted way, bound up in an effort to protect one another.
Orli’s middle name is Chaim, for my grandfather who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna at age 26. He was known for his knack for reinvention and unmitigated joy, even in the face of unimaginable loss. Upon my bat mitzvah, some 30 odd years before Orli’s, he sent me a letter: Now that I was coming of age in the Jewish community, he offered the words Moses says to Joshua as he assumes the mantle of leadership. They are words meant to gird oneself in the face of challenge and responsibility, of obstacles and uncertainty. It is a command not to back down but to forge ahead. And so he did not write mazel tov, or congratulations, but hazak v’ematz, have strength and be courageous: The expression is not an endpoint, but a beginning.
Sarah Wildman is a staff editor and writer in Opinion. She is the author of “Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/23/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Before He Died, the Writer Roberto Calasso Had the Old Testament on His Mind
In "The Book of All Books," the great Italian polymath offers his interpretation of biblical stories.
Book Review
THE BOOK OF ALL BOOKS
By Roberto Calasso
Translated by Tim Parks
“The Book of All Books” is one of the last in a series of studies of myth by Roberto Calasso, who died in Milan this past July, at the age of 80. For much of his career Calasso owned and ran the distinguished Italian publishing house Adelphi, but he also managed to bring forth a dazzling array of essays and book-length studies on such subjects as prehistoric humans, modern thought, the publishing industry, Tiepolo, Kafka, Baudelaire, Hitchcock, Central Europe, Freud and the Indian Vedas — as if there were no limits to his curiosity or his knowledge.
Moving with confident ease through texts in French, English, Spanish, German, Latin, ancient Greek, Sanskrit and Hebrew (not to mention his native Italian), Calasso is among those rare people, ever diminishing in number, who can persuade you that it is still possible to grasp almost the whole of human culture. It is something of a conjuring trick, of course, but an impressive one. At its best, as in his celebrated 1988 study of Greek myth, “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,” it is thrilling.
The subject of “The Book of All Books” is the Hebrew Bible, and Calasso’s principal technique, as in “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,” is to select and retell a great many stories. This is more interesting than it sounds, in part because his selection is cunning and his narrative gifts considerable.
Calasso begins not, as we might have expected, with Adam and Eve in the garden; that story doesn’t come until Page 287 of almost 400 pages of text. He begins instead with Saul, David and Solomon, and in retelling their stories he indulges in some of the pleasures of fiction-making: “It was one of the first days of spring and David was napping on the roof after lunch. Then he got up and began to look around. He heard water splashing, but couldn’t work out where. He leaned out and saw ‘a woman taking a bath, and the woman was very beautiful to look at.’” It is not unreasonable to surmise that, as he walked on the roof, David’s attention was drawn by a sound of splashing, but the account in II Samuel says only that “from the roof he saw a woman washing herself.” So too the details of the first days of spring, the nap, the lunch, the puzzlement about where the sound was coming from, and the leaning out in order to see are all surmises. As Calasso puts it, “The Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission, of not saying what everyone would like to know.” He undertakes repeatedly to fill in the blanks.
But the principal interest of “The Book of All Books” lies not in its fictional embellishments but in the stories themselves. Most of us have lost the practice of daily Bible reading that characterized earlier generations, just as we have lost the deep dive into ancient Greece that was once a standard part of secondary school education. I think of myself as reasonably familiar with the Bible, and yet I found myself checking again and again to be sure that Calasso was not making it all up: “When he climbed up to Bethel a swarm of boys surrounded him, jeering: ‘Climb on up, baldie! Climb on up, baldie!’ Elisha looked up, sent them a withering look, and cursed them. Then ‘two she-bears came out of the forest and tore apart 42 of the boys.’” The “withering” is a tiny invention — in Hebrew, as far as I can tell, Elisha just gives them a look — but otherwise it is all there in II Kings 2:23-24.
Apart from remarking that “not everyone considered him a benefactor,” Calasso relates this little story about the prophet Elisha without comment. It appears, along with other anecdotes, to convey both the power and weirdness of the Hebrew prophets. “These men,” he remarks, “shared a certain spitefulness, spoke with great vehemence and as a matter of principle deployed only two registers: condemnation and consolation, vast deserts of condemnation, that is, relieved by rare oases of inconceivable sweetness.” Their character traits reach a climax in the weirdest of all the prophets, Ezekiel, and it is with Ezekiel’s supremely strange visions that Calasso’s book approaches its end.
Ezekiel brings fully into focus the key principles that, in Calasso’s view, weave together all the diverse stories that he retells and that define the destiny and the identity of the Jews. (Notably, it is as Jews — not as Hebrews or Israelites in their historical and geographical particularity — that he identifies the figures in his book.) The first of these principles is separation. Yahweh insists that his people be different, and zealously maintain this difference, from all the surrounding peoples, just as he insists that he, Yahweh, be their only god. All manifestations of the desire to be like others — for example, to have kings, the way the surrounding peoples do — arouse his blinding wrath.
In a chapter-length digression, Calasso gives an account of Freud’s late essay “Moses and Monotheism” as a tormented attempt to undo this founding separation, Freud argued that Moses was himself a foreigner, an Egyptian marked in the ancient custom of Egypt by circumcision. What had seemed like the defining Abrahamic sign of tribal distinction for all males was in fact a sign of assimilation. “Assimilation came before separation,” as Calasso sums up Freud’s argument, “and that separation had been introduced by an Egyptian, hence the Jew had no real nature of his own.” But try telling that to Ezekiel.
On one occasion, Yahweh told Ezekiel the story of Jerusalem as if it were the story of a woman. Yahweh took the woman out of the filth and blood in which she had been tainted at birth, washed and anointed her, dressed her in fine clothes and bedecked her with jewels. And what did she do? She opened her legs to any stranger who passed by. “You prostituted yourself with the sons of Egypt, with their big members, whoring more and more to vex me,” Calasso writes, taking on the voice of Yahweh. Now, the prophet declares bitterly, the consequences of this gross infidelity have been made clear: Jerusalem has fallen to its enemies and the people of Israel have been carried into captivity in Babylon.
Exile from Jerusalem means exile from the other great principle on which, in Calasso’s view, the whole of Jewish identity was founded: sacrifice. Yahweh has always demanded sacrifice — the practice appears as early as the story of Cain and Abel, and was renewed when Noah’s ark reached dry land. But after the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, there was one place and one place only where the Jews could fulfill their obligation to offer Yahweh his daily holocaust — the priestly killing of the designated animal, the draining of its blood over the altar and the burning of its body. Pagans could sacrifice to their worthless gods anywhere they wished; if one site was unavailable, another would always do. But for the Jews — and for their one true god — there were no alternatives.
Calasso’s insistence on the centrality of sacrifice is the key to an organizing thread that runs half-hidden through his sprawling book. That thread is what in Christian theology is called supersessionism, that is, the notion that the Hebrew Bible is the “Old Testament” and that Jesus Christ, as disclosed in the “New Testament,” has superseded the Mosaic covenant. The separation that marked the Jews off from the rest of humanity has been healed by Jesus’ message of universal salvation, and the sacrifice — the killing of the innocent creature in keeping with God’s implacable demand — has been at once abrogated and fulfilled by the Crucifixion and by the ritual consumption of the Savior’s blood and body. If we wonder why Calasso’s imagination lingers over the bather, it is because she figures in the genealogy of Jesus. And if we ask ourselves why Elisha, the baldie, makes his odd appearance, it is because he brought back to life a dead child, just as Jesus brought back to life the dead Lazarus.
That the last chapter of Calasso’s book is called “The Messiah” is therefore not surprising. Jesus has been hovering just below the surface — and occasionally rising into visibility — throughout the vast array of stories. What is surprising is that the final pages are not about the Messiah at all. Rather they are about what the Jews did after Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and therefore, made it impossible to continue offering the daily sacrifice to Yahweh. They turned to reading. The Jews did not imagine that the daily recitation of the Torah was a burden that would be lifted at the longed-for end of days. On the contrary, the coming of the Messiah would mean only that there was more time for the Torah, without any vexation or interruption. “To substitute sacrifice with study”: This was the great innovation of rabbinical Judaism, an innovation that committed the Jews to the dream of a life centered on ceaseless, boundless study. It is not difficult to glimpse the polymathic spirit of Roberto Calasso drawn to this dream.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/book ... 778d3e6de3
In "The Book of All Books," the great Italian polymath offers his interpretation of biblical stories.
Book Review
THE BOOK OF ALL BOOKS
By Roberto Calasso
Translated by Tim Parks
“The Book of All Books” is one of the last in a series of studies of myth by Roberto Calasso, who died in Milan this past July, at the age of 80. For much of his career Calasso owned and ran the distinguished Italian publishing house Adelphi, but he also managed to bring forth a dazzling array of essays and book-length studies on such subjects as prehistoric humans, modern thought, the publishing industry, Tiepolo, Kafka, Baudelaire, Hitchcock, Central Europe, Freud and the Indian Vedas — as if there were no limits to his curiosity or his knowledge.
Moving with confident ease through texts in French, English, Spanish, German, Latin, ancient Greek, Sanskrit and Hebrew (not to mention his native Italian), Calasso is among those rare people, ever diminishing in number, who can persuade you that it is still possible to grasp almost the whole of human culture. It is something of a conjuring trick, of course, but an impressive one. At its best, as in his celebrated 1988 study of Greek myth, “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,” it is thrilling.
The subject of “The Book of All Books” is the Hebrew Bible, and Calasso’s principal technique, as in “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,” is to select and retell a great many stories. This is more interesting than it sounds, in part because his selection is cunning and his narrative gifts considerable.
Calasso begins not, as we might have expected, with Adam and Eve in the garden; that story doesn’t come until Page 287 of almost 400 pages of text. He begins instead with Saul, David and Solomon, and in retelling their stories he indulges in some of the pleasures of fiction-making: “It was one of the first days of spring and David was napping on the roof after lunch. Then he got up and began to look around. He heard water splashing, but couldn’t work out where. He leaned out and saw ‘a woman taking a bath, and the woman was very beautiful to look at.’” It is not unreasonable to surmise that, as he walked on the roof, David’s attention was drawn by a sound of splashing, but the account in II Samuel says only that “from the roof he saw a woman washing herself.” So too the details of the first days of spring, the nap, the lunch, the puzzlement about where the sound was coming from, and the leaning out in order to see are all surmises. As Calasso puts it, “The Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission, of not saying what everyone would like to know.” He undertakes repeatedly to fill in the blanks.
But the principal interest of “The Book of All Books” lies not in its fictional embellishments but in the stories themselves. Most of us have lost the practice of daily Bible reading that characterized earlier generations, just as we have lost the deep dive into ancient Greece that was once a standard part of secondary school education. I think of myself as reasonably familiar with the Bible, and yet I found myself checking again and again to be sure that Calasso was not making it all up: “When he climbed up to Bethel a swarm of boys surrounded him, jeering: ‘Climb on up, baldie! Climb on up, baldie!’ Elisha looked up, sent them a withering look, and cursed them. Then ‘two she-bears came out of the forest and tore apart 42 of the boys.’” The “withering” is a tiny invention — in Hebrew, as far as I can tell, Elisha just gives them a look — but otherwise it is all there in II Kings 2:23-24.
Apart from remarking that “not everyone considered him a benefactor,” Calasso relates this little story about the prophet Elisha without comment. It appears, along with other anecdotes, to convey both the power and weirdness of the Hebrew prophets. “These men,” he remarks, “shared a certain spitefulness, spoke with great vehemence and as a matter of principle deployed only two registers: condemnation and consolation, vast deserts of condemnation, that is, relieved by rare oases of inconceivable sweetness.” Their character traits reach a climax in the weirdest of all the prophets, Ezekiel, and it is with Ezekiel’s supremely strange visions that Calasso’s book approaches its end.
Ezekiel brings fully into focus the key principles that, in Calasso’s view, weave together all the diverse stories that he retells and that define the destiny and the identity of the Jews. (Notably, it is as Jews — not as Hebrews or Israelites in their historical and geographical particularity — that he identifies the figures in his book.) The first of these principles is separation. Yahweh insists that his people be different, and zealously maintain this difference, from all the surrounding peoples, just as he insists that he, Yahweh, be their only god. All manifestations of the desire to be like others — for example, to have kings, the way the surrounding peoples do — arouse his blinding wrath.
In a chapter-length digression, Calasso gives an account of Freud’s late essay “Moses and Monotheism” as a tormented attempt to undo this founding separation, Freud argued that Moses was himself a foreigner, an Egyptian marked in the ancient custom of Egypt by circumcision. What had seemed like the defining Abrahamic sign of tribal distinction for all males was in fact a sign of assimilation. “Assimilation came before separation,” as Calasso sums up Freud’s argument, “and that separation had been introduced by an Egyptian, hence the Jew had no real nature of his own.” But try telling that to Ezekiel.
On one occasion, Yahweh told Ezekiel the story of Jerusalem as if it were the story of a woman. Yahweh took the woman out of the filth and blood in which she had been tainted at birth, washed and anointed her, dressed her in fine clothes and bedecked her with jewels. And what did she do? She opened her legs to any stranger who passed by. “You prostituted yourself with the sons of Egypt, with their big members, whoring more and more to vex me,” Calasso writes, taking on the voice of Yahweh. Now, the prophet declares bitterly, the consequences of this gross infidelity have been made clear: Jerusalem has fallen to its enemies and the people of Israel have been carried into captivity in Babylon.
Exile from Jerusalem means exile from the other great principle on which, in Calasso’s view, the whole of Jewish identity was founded: sacrifice. Yahweh has always demanded sacrifice — the practice appears as early as the story of Cain and Abel, and was renewed when Noah’s ark reached dry land. But after the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, there was one place and one place only where the Jews could fulfill their obligation to offer Yahweh his daily holocaust — the priestly killing of the designated animal, the draining of its blood over the altar and the burning of its body. Pagans could sacrifice to their worthless gods anywhere they wished; if one site was unavailable, another would always do. But for the Jews — and for their one true god — there were no alternatives.
Calasso’s insistence on the centrality of sacrifice is the key to an organizing thread that runs half-hidden through his sprawling book. That thread is what in Christian theology is called supersessionism, that is, the notion that the Hebrew Bible is the “Old Testament” and that Jesus Christ, as disclosed in the “New Testament,” has superseded the Mosaic covenant. The separation that marked the Jews off from the rest of humanity has been healed by Jesus’ message of universal salvation, and the sacrifice — the killing of the innocent creature in keeping with God’s implacable demand — has been at once abrogated and fulfilled by the Crucifixion and by the ritual consumption of the Savior’s blood and body. If we wonder why Calasso’s imagination lingers over the bather, it is because she figures in the genealogy of Jesus. And if we ask ourselves why Elisha, the baldie, makes his odd appearance, it is because he brought back to life a dead child, just as Jesus brought back to life the dead Lazarus.
That the last chapter of Calasso’s book is called “The Messiah” is therefore not surprising. Jesus has been hovering just below the surface — and occasionally rising into visibility — throughout the vast array of stories. What is surprising is that the final pages are not about the Messiah at all. Rather they are about what the Jews did after Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and therefore, made it impossible to continue offering the daily sacrifice to Yahweh. They turned to reading. The Jews did not imagine that the daily recitation of the Torah was a burden that would be lifted at the longed-for end of days. On the contrary, the coming of the Messiah would mean only that there was more time for the Torah, without any vexation or interruption. “To substitute sacrifice with study”: This was the great innovation of rabbinical Judaism, an innovation that committed the Jews to the dream of a life centered on ceaseless, boundless study. It is not difficult to glimpse the polymathic spirit of Roberto Calasso drawn to this dream.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/book ... 778d3e6de3
The New York Times
A Jewish Teacher Criticized Israel. She Was Fired.
Liam Stack
Fri, February 4, 2022, 8:06 AM·7 min read
Jessie Sander, a teacher, lost her job at a Jewish school in suburban Westchester County after synagogue leaders called a meeting to discuss a blog post she had written about Israel. (Natalie Keyssar/The New York Times)
Jessie Sander, a teacher, lost her job at a Jewish school in suburban Westchester County after synagogue leaders called a meeting to discuss a blog post she had written about Israel. (Natalie Keyssar/The New York Times)
Last summer, Jessie Sander had been on the job at a Jewish school in Westchester County, New York, for less than a month when a meeting with her boss took an unexpected turn. Was she comfortable working at a Zionist institution? he asked.
Her boss, Rabbi David E. Levy of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, had come across a recent blog post she had written that renounced Zionism and sharply criticized Israel, Sander, 26, said in a lawsuit filed on Jan. 25. The rabbi had questions: Did she support Hamas? When she called herself “anti-Zionist,” what did that mean?
Sander, who is Jewish, explained her beliefs to the rabbi and said she would not discuss politics in her classes. The rabbi said he agreed with much of what she said and later praised her as a good role model for their students, Sander said.
Then, one week later, Levy and Eli Kornreich, the temple’s executive director, fired her. When she asked why, Kornreich said “it’s just not a good fit,” she recalled. “In the earlier meeting, I was like, ‘Wow, here’s a manager who gets it and says, ‘No one should fire you for your political beliefs,’ then at the next meeting it was, ‘Oh, except for me.’”
Levy and Kornreich declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement to the community, Warren Haber, the synagogue president, said it “made this termination decision after much consideration and in accordance with WRT’s religious mission.”
Haber said the synagogue’s work was based on the religious principle of Clal Yisrael, which calls for “strengthening our commitment to Israel and the Jewish people of all lands and working to establish understanding and commonality among the various expressions of Judaism.”
The firing of Sander drew rebukes from left-wing Jewish groups and highlighted a generational divide over Israel among American Jews that is driving some of Judaism’s most delicate internal debates: What is the relationship between Zionism and Jewish identity? When it comes to Israel, should there be limits to what employees or members of Jewish institutions can believe or say?
Sander began her job at the school last July and was fired 15 days later. Since then, she said, she has worked four part-time jobs to support herself, none of which provide health insurance or other benefits.
Her lawsuit, which was filed before New York State Supreme Court in Westchester, accuses the school of violating labor law by firing her “because of her uncompensated lawful recreational activity, outside of work hours, off the employer’s premises and without use of the employer’s equipment or other property.” It seeks her reinstatement to her old job, plus compensatory damages.
Debate over Israel, including sometimes strong criticism of its policies, is not unusual at synagogues in the United States, especially those that follow the Reform movement. The Union of Reform Judaism, an umbrella group of Reform congregations, describes itself as a movement that “accepts and supports the foundational aim of Zionism: the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people.”
At Westchester Reform Temple, rabbis have criticized Israel in the past. In his Rosh Hashana sermon in September, Rabbi Jonathan Blake criticized “extremists, cynical political officials and wealthy patrons” in Israel for promoting “a grandiose vision of Jewish totalitarianism in the biblical Holy Land.”
But their critiques never challenge the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, as opposed to a state whose structure favors no ethnic or religious group.
In the blog post, published on May 20 during last year’s conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza, Sander and a co-author, Elana Lipkin, wrote that they embraced a position that “rejects the Zionist claim to the land of Palestine.”
The post continued, “Zionism is not equivalent to, or a necessary component of, Jewish identity.”
They also described Israeli actions against the Palestinians as genocide and accused Jewish institutions in the United States of spreading “one-sided narratives and propaganda” about the conflict.
Marc Stern, chief legal officer of the American Jewish Committee, said Sander’s lawsuit may have little chance of success because the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that religious institutions have broad leeway in employment matters.
“It seems to me a complete nonstarter that any court would say that some doctrine — whether Zionism or any other doctrine — is or is not part of the faith that a school wants to pass on to students,” Stern said.
“The plaintiff in this case is saying, ‘My individual right to speak is being infringed upon,’ and that may be true,” he said. “But that comes up against other peoples’ right to say, ‘We want to form a community of people that share one set of beliefs, so you’re not welcome here.’”
“You can go and find another synagogue, or form a new synagogue, but you can’t force other people to accept your views,” he said.
Sander said she grew up in a Reform congregation in upstate New York, where she was elected president of the youth group and her mother taught Hebrew school, she said.
She described her family as Zionist but said she began to question those beliefs as a teenager in Hebrew school, when her class read a short story that included a debate between an Israeli and a Palestinian character.
“The Jewish tradition involves questioning and wrestling with complex ideas, which is one of the things I love about Judaism and especially Reform Judaism,” she said. “We are constantly in dialogue with these ideas that are way older than we are.”
Sander’s views on Zionism reflect a growing shift among younger Jewish Americans. According to a major survey published last year by the Pew Research Center, slightly less than half of American Jews under the age of 29 described themselves as feeling an emotional attachment to Israel, compared with more than two-thirds of Jews over 65.
The survey also found that 27% of young American Jews said caring about Israel was not an important part of what being Jewish meant to them, a belief shared by only 8% of those over 65.
That dynamic has begun to assert itself in the city’s politics as well. During Israel’s conflict with Hamas last year, mayoral candidate Andrew Yang walked back a statement of support for Israel that might have once seemed like political boilerplate after U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called it “utterly shameful.”
Blake, in his Rosh Hashana sermon, identified that trend as a source of concern.
He cited a 2021 survey of 800 Jewish voters from the Jewish Electorate Institute that found 25% of respondents believed Israel was an “apartheid state” and 22% said it was “committing genocide against the Palestinians.”
“In such an emotionally charged milieu, with such hysterical rhetoric framing the public conversation around Israel, is it any wonder that our students feel worried and confused?” he said. “We should all feel worried and confused. I know I do.”
Peter Beinart, a Jewish writer who argues in favor of creating a single democratic state in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said younger American Jews have seen “a different snippet of history,” resulting in different attitudes than their parents and grandparents when it comes to Israel.
“For older American Jews it was easier to see Israel as a David versus an Arab Goliath,” he said. But younger people “are more likely to see Israel as a regional superpower that is fundamentally confronting the Palestinians, who are a stateless population that lack in various ways basic rights.”
Beinart is one of 78 Jewish writers, academics and activists who signed a public letter in support of Sander. He said he thought Jewish institutions should welcome people who hold a wide range of views about Israel.
“What I think synagogues need to do is host these conversations,” he said. “They need to be places for people who have strong views and for people who, frankly, don’t know what they really think, which is also a lot of people.”
Sander, previously a public school special-education teacher in New York City, was hired to teach the Hebrew language and a leadership class at the Jewish Learning Lab, the educational arm of Westchester Reform Temple. She said she believed the conversation with Levy about her political beliefs, held within the first few days of working at the school, was the reason she was fired.
At one point in the discussion, Levy asked her if she was “calling for a second Holocaust,” Sander said. “I physically remember the feeling I got in my chest,” she continued. “That is when I realized the conversation took a more serious turn and was a conversation about my career and future employment.”
© 2022 The New York Times Company
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bob-cost ... irculation
A Jewish Teacher Criticized Israel. She Was Fired.
Liam Stack
Fri, February 4, 2022, 8:06 AM·7 min read
Jessie Sander, a teacher, lost her job at a Jewish school in suburban Westchester County after synagogue leaders called a meeting to discuss a blog post she had written about Israel. (Natalie Keyssar/The New York Times)
Jessie Sander, a teacher, lost her job at a Jewish school in suburban Westchester County after synagogue leaders called a meeting to discuss a blog post she had written about Israel. (Natalie Keyssar/The New York Times)
Last summer, Jessie Sander had been on the job at a Jewish school in Westchester County, New York, for less than a month when a meeting with her boss took an unexpected turn. Was she comfortable working at a Zionist institution? he asked.
Her boss, Rabbi David E. Levy of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, had come across a recent blog post she had written that renounced Zionism and sharply criticized Israel, Sander, 26, said in a lawsuit filed on Jan. 25. The rabbi had questions: Did she support Hamas? When she called herself “anti-Zionist,” what did that mean?
Sander, who is Jewish, explained her beliefs to the rabbi and said she would not discuss politics in her classes. The rabbi said he agreed with much of what she said and later praised her as a good role model for their students, Sander said.
Then, one week later, Levy and Eli Kornreich, the temple’s executive director, fired her. When she asked why, Kornreich said “it’s just not a good fit,” she recalled. “In the earlier meeting, I was like, ‘Wow, here’s a manager who gets it and says, ‘No one should fire you for your political beliefs,’ then at the next meeting it was, ‘Oh, except for me.’”
Levy and Kornreich declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement to the community, Warren Haber, the synagogue president, said it “made this termination decision after much consideration and in accordance with WRT’s religious mission.”
Haber said the synagogue’s work was based on the religious principle of Clal Yisrael, which calls for “strengthening our commitment to Israel and the Jewish people of all lands and working to establish understanding and commonality among the various expressions of Judaism.”
The firing of Sander drew rebukes from left-wing Jewish groups and highlighted a generational divide over Israel among American Jews that is driving some of Judaism’s most delicate internal debates: What is the relationship between Zionism and Jewish identity? When it comes to Israel, should there be limits to what employees or members of Jewish institutions can believe or say?
Sander began her job at the school last July and was fired 15 days later. Since then, she said, she has worked four part-time jobs to support herself, none of which provide health insurance or other benefits.
Her lawsuit, which was filed before New York State Supreme Court in Westchester, accuses the school of violating labor law by firing her “because of her uncompensated lawful recreational activity, outside of work hours, off the employer’s premises and without use of the employer’s equipment or other property.” It seeks her reinstatement to her old job, plus compensatory damages.
Debate over Israel, including sometimes strong criticism of its policies, is not unusual at synagogues in the United States, especially those that follow the Reform movement. The Union of Reform Judaism, an umbrella group of Reform congregations, describes itself as a movement that “accepts and supports the foundational aim of Zionism: the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people.”
At Westchester Reform Temple, rabbis have criticized Israel in the past. In his Rosh Hashana sermon in September, Rabbi Jonathan Blake criticized “extremists, cynical political officials and wealthy patrons” in Israel for promoting “a grandiose vision of Jewish totalitarianism in the biblical Holy Land.”
But their critiques never challenge the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, as opposed to a state whose structure favors no ethnic or religious group.
In the blog post, published on May 20 during last year’s conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza, Sander and a co-author, Elana Lipkin, wrote that they embraced a position that “rejects the Zionist claim to the land of Palestine.”
The post continued, “Zionism is not equivalent to, or a necessary component of, Jewish identity.”
They also described Israeli actions against the Palestinians as genocide and accused Jewish institutions in the United States of spreading “one-sided narratives and propaganda” about the conflict.
Marc Stern, chief legal officer of the American Jewish Committee, said Sander’s lawsuit may have little chance of success because the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that religious institutions have broad leeway in employment matters.
“It seems to me a complete nonstarter that any court would say that some doctrine — whether Zionism or any other doctrine — is or is not part of the faith that a school wants to pass on to students,” Stern said.
“The plaintiff in this case is saying, ‘My individual right to speak is being infringed upon,’ and that may be true,” he said. “But that comes up against other peoples’ right to say, ‘We want to form a community of people that share one set of beliefs, so you’re not welcome here.’”
“You can go and find another synagogue, or form a new synagogue, but you can’t force other people to accept your views,” he said.
Sander said she grew up in a Reform congregation in upstate New York, where she was elected president of the youth group and her mother taught Hebrew school, she said.
She described her family as Zionist but said she began to question those beliefs as a teenager in Hebrew school, when her class read a short story that included a debate between an Israeli and a Palestinian character.
“The Jewish tradition involves questioning and wrestling with complex ideas, which is one of the things I love about Judaism and especially Reform Judaism,” she said. “We are constantly in dialogue with these ideas that are way older than we are.”
Sander’s views on Zionism reflect a growing shift among younger Jewish Americans. According to a major survey published last year by the Pew Research Center, slightly less than half of American Jews under the age of 29 described themselves as feeling an emotional attachment to Israel, compared with more than two-thirds of Jews over 65.
The survey also found that 27% of young American Jews said caring about Israel was not an important part of what being Jewish meant to them, a belief shared by only 8% of those over 65.
That dynamic has begun to assert itself in the city’s politics as well. During Israel’s conflict with Hamas last year, mayoral candidate Andrew Yang walked back a statement of support for Israel that might have once seemed like political boilerplate after U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called it “utterly shameful.”
Blake, in his Rosh Hashana sermon, identified that trend as a source of concern.
He cited a 2021 survey of 800 Jewish voters from the Jewish Electorate Institute that found 25% of respondents believed Israel was an “apartheid state” and 22% said it was “committing genocide against the Palestinians.”
“In such an emotionally charged milieu, with such hysterical rhetoric framing the public conversation around Israel, is it any wonder that our students feel worried and confused?” he said. “We should all feel worried and confused. I know I do.”
Peter Beinart, a Jewish writer who argues in favor of creating a single democratic state in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said younger American Jews have seen “a different snippet of history,” resulting in different attitudes than their parents and grandparents when it comes to Israel.
“For older American Jews it was easier to see Israel as a David versus an Arab Goliath,” he said. But younger people “are more likely to see Israel as a regional superpower that is fundamentally confronting the Palestinians, who are a stateless population that lack in various ways basic rights.”
Beinart is one of 78 Jewish writers, academics and activists who signed a public letter in support of Sander. He said he thought Jewish institutions should welcome people who hold a wide range of views about Israel.
“What I think synagogues need to do is host these conversations,” he said. “They need to be places for people who have strong views and for people who, frankly, don’t know what they really think, which is also a lot of people.”
Sander, previously a public school special-education teacher in New York City, was hired to teach the Hebrew language and a leadership class at the Jewish Learning Lab, the educational arm of Westchester Reform Temple. She said she believed the conversation with Levy about her political beliefs, held within the first few days of working at the school, was the reason she was fired.
At one point in the discussion, Levy asked her if she was “calling for a second Holocaust,” Sander said. “I physically remember the feeling I got in my chest,” she continued. “That is when I realized the conversation took a more serious turn and was a conversation about my career and future employment.”
© 2022 The New York Times Company
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bob-cost ... irculation
Re: JUDAISM
Associated Press
German dictionary changes definition of 'Jew' after outcry
KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
Wed, February 16, 2022, 7:23 AM
BERLIN (AP) — The leading dictionary of standard German has changed its definition of Jew, or “Jude” in German, after a recent update caused an uproar in the country’s Jewish community — a move reflecting the sensitivities that persist eight decades after the Holocaust.
The Duden dictionary had recently added an explanation to its online edition saying that “occasionally, the term Jew is perceived as discriminatory because of the memory of the National Socialist use of language. In these cases, formulations such as Jewish people, Jewish fellow citizens or people of the Jewish faith are usually chosen.”
This explanation led to an outcry from leading Jewish groups and individuals who stressed that identifying themselves or being called Jews is not discriminatory, in contrast to what Duden's definition implied.
The head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Joseph Schuster, said last week that for him the word “Jew” is neither a swear word nor discriminatory.
"Even if ‘Jew’ is used pejoratively in schoolyards or only hesitantly by some people, and the Duden editors are certainly well-meaning in pointing out this context, everything should be done to avoid solidifying the term as discriminatory,” Schuster said.
The executive director of the Central Council of Jews, Daniel Botmann, wrote on Twitter “Is it okay to say Jew? Yes! Please don't say ‘Jewish fellow citizens’ or ‘people of the Jewish faith’. Just JEWS. Thank you!”
The publisher of Duden reacted to the criticism and updated its definition again Monday to reflect the Jewish community's input.
“Because of their antisemitic use in history and in the present, especially during the Nazi era, the words Jew/Jewess have been debated for decades," the entry on the dictionary's website now says. "At the same time, the words are widely used as a matter of course and are not perceived as problematic. The Central Council of Jews in Germany, which has the term itself in its name, is in favor of its use.”
During the Third Reich, Germany's Nazis and their henchmen murdered 6 million European Jews. After the end of World War II, Germany's once-thriving Jewish community of some 600,000 had been reduced to 15,000.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, around 200,000 Jews from Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics immigrated to Germany, bringing renewed Jewish life to the country.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ge ... 19006.html
German dictionary changes definition of 'Jew' after outcry
KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
Wed, February 16, 2022, 7:23 AM
BERLIN (AP) — The leading dictionary of standard German has changed its definition of Jew, or “Jude” in German, after a recent update caused an uproar in the country’s Jewish community — a move reflecting the sensitivities that persist eight decades after the Holocaust.
The Duden dictionary had recently added an explanation to its online edition saying that “occasionally, the term Jew is perceived as discriminatory because of the memory of the National Socialist use of language. In these cases, formulations such as Jewish people, Jewish fellow citizens or people of the Jewish faith are usually chosen.”
This explanation led to an outcry from leading Jewish groups and individuals who stressed that identifying themselves or being called Jews is not discriminatory, in contrast to what Duden's definition implied.
The head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Joseph Schuster, said last week that for him the word “Jew” is neither a swear word nor discriminatory.
"Even if ‘Jew’ is used pejoratively in schoolyards or only hesitantly by some people, and the Duden editors are certainly well-meaning in pointing out this context, everything should be done to avoid solidifying the term as discriminatory,” Schuster said.
The executive director of the Central Council of Jews, Daniel Botmann, wrote on Twitter “Is it okay to say Jew? Yes! Please don't say ‘Jewish fellow citizens’ or ‘people of the Jewish faith’. Just JEWS. Thank you!”
The publisher of Duden reacted to the criticism and updated its definition again Monday to reflect the Jewish community's input.
“Because of their antisemitic use in history and in the present, especially during the Nazi era, the words Jew/Jewess have been debated for decades," the entry on the dictionary's website now says. "At the same time, the words are widely used as a matter of course and are not perceived as problematic. The Central Council of Jews in Germany, which has the term itself in its name, is in favor of its use.”
During the Third Reich, Germany's Nazis and their henchmen murdered 6 million European Jews. After the end of World War II, Germany's once-thriving Jewish community of some 600,000 had been reduced to 15,000.
After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, around 200,000 Jews from Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics immigrated to Germany, bringing renewed Jewish life to the country.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/ge ... 19006.html
Re: JUDAISM
THE ENIGMATIC ROLE OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT
As noted recently in the New York Times and elsewhere, the Jews of Ukraine have plenty of reason for concern. History has not been kind to the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe: from pogroms to the Holocaust, the memory of historical trauma is very much alive. But as Russia commences a war in Ukraine, history isn’t the only reason for Ukraine’s Jewish community to be afraid.
A not-so-latent anti-semitism lies at the heart of Putin’s propaganda machine, and appeals to anti-semitic sentiments have been a central theme in the kultur politik advanced by both Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in the Putin era. For example, whatever sympathy Russia does get from the West relies in no small part on shared anti-semitism and a perception that Russia (and frequently Russian Orthodoxy) are essentially anti-Jewish. This strategy has been on full display with respect to Ukraine. To be clear, there is a certain irony to this, since Putin’s government and Kirill’s patriarchate have arguably been some of the least openly anti-semitic in Russian history (notably a very low bar), a fact underscored by the support Putin enjoys among Russian Jews.
That being said, there is one particular Jewish person that Putin and his regime clearly hate: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And there’s apparently no concern about allowing anti-semitic tropes to govern their treatment of him. For example, in October of last year, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council (and former president) Dmitry Medvedev published a shocking, expletive-filled attack on Ukraine and its president.
In addition to repeating the Putin regime’s persistent claim that Ukraine has no distinct cultural identity and that Moscow is the sole and rightful heir of the Kievan Rus, Medvedev referred to Zelenskyy as “a man with certain ethnic roots” and suggested that Zelenskyy has concealed his Jewish identity to serve the interests of Ukrainian nationalists. Medvedev went even further and suggested that Zelenskyy’s “betrayal” of Russia made him akin to a Sonderkommando, Jewish prisoners in Nazi death camps forced to help dispose of those killed in the gas chambers.
But the threat isn’t just directed at Zelenskyy. This week US officials sent a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights revealing that, according to credible US intelligence, Russian forces in the disputed regions intended to target Russian and Belorussian dissidents living in Ukraine, including religious and ethnic minorities, journalists, and LGBT activists. And state-controlled Russian media continue to push theories alleging that the Ukrainian government meddled in the 2016 US election at the direction of George Soros (a theory that may very well be shared by Rudy Giuliani), who often figures prominently in anti-semitic conspiracy theories, both in the US and abroad.
What’s truly fascinating about the entire thing is that the Kremlin has gone out of its way to make its recent not-so-terrible track record with Jews a central part of its propaganda against Ukraine, a nation which, it has routinely asserted, is not some bastion of pro-Western sentiment, but rather a regressive violator of human rights. Ukraine, according to Russian propaganda, is the structurally anti-semitic country while Russia is just trying to help out the Jews of Ukraine.
Which brings us to the most realistic and imminent threat for Ukraine’s Jewish community. There is a real danger that Russia will covertly perpetuate anti-semitic violence, blame that violence on Ukrainian nationalists, and then use it as pretext to commit further violence in the country. After all, even as late as last night, Putin was suggesting that his objective in the Ukraine is to “de-Nazify” the country.
Eastern Europe’s Jewish community is quite used to being used as pawns in the games of history. And as the next chapter in that complicated and often dark history commences, there is little reason to believe this time will be any different.
https://religiondispatches.org/the-enig ... e-conflict
As noted recently in the New York Times and elsewhere, the Jews of Ukraine have plenty of reason for concern. History has not been kind to the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe: from pogroms to the Holocaust, the memory of historical trauma is very much alive. But as Russia commences a war in Ukraine, history isn’t the only reason for Ukraine’s Jewish community to be afraid.
A not-so-latent anti-semitism lies at the heart of Putin’s propaganda machine, and appeals to anti-semitic sentiments have been a central theme in the kultur politik advanced by both Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in the Putin era. For example, whatever sympathy Russia does get from the West relies in no small part on shared anti-semitism and a perception that Russia (and frequently Russian Orthodoxy) are essentially anti-Jewish. This strategy has been on full display with respect to Ukraine. To be clear, there is a certain irony to this, since Putin’s government and Kirill’s patriarchate have arguably been some of the least openly anti-semitic in Russian history (notably a very low bar), a fact underscored by the support Putin enjoys among Russian Jews.
That being said, there is one particular Jewish person that Putin and his regime clearly hate: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And there’s apparently no concern about allowing anti-semitic tropes to govern their treatment of him. For example, in October of last year, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council (and former president) Dmitry Medvedev published a shocking, expletive-filled attack on Ukraine and its president.
In addition to repeating the Putin regime’s persistent claim that Ukraine has no distinct cultural identity and that Moscow is the sole and rightful heir of the Kievan Rus, Medvedev referred to Zelenskyy as “a man with certain ethnic roots” and suggested that Zelenskyy has concealed his Jewish identity to serve the interests of Ukrainian nationalists. Medvedev went even further and suggested that Zelenskyy’s “betrayal” of Russia made him akin to a Sonderkommando, Jewish prisoners in Nazi death camps forced to help dispose of those killed in the gas chambers.
But the threat isn’t just directed at Zelenskyy. This week US officials sent a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights revealing that, according to credible US intelligence, Russian forces in the disputed regions intended to target Russian and Belorussian dissidents living in Ukraine, including religious and ethnic minorities, journalists, and LGBT activists. And state-controlled Russian media continue to push theories alleging that the Ukrainian government meddled in the 2016 US election at the direction of George Soros (a theory that may very well be shared by Rudy Giuliani), who often figures prominently in anti-semitic conspiracy theories, both in the US and abroad.
What’s truly fascinating about the entire thing is that the Kremlin has gone out of its way to make its recent not-so-terrible track record with Jews a central part of its propaganda against Ukraine, a nation which, it has routinely asserted, is not some bastion of pro-Western sentiment, but rather a regressive violator of human rights. Ukraine, according to Russian propaganda, is the structurally anti-semitic country while Russia is just trying to help out the Jews of Ukraine.
Which brings us to the most realistic and imminent threat for Ukraine’s Jewish community. There is a real danger that Russia will covertly perpetuate anti-semitic violence, blame that violence on Ukrainian nationalists, and then use it as pretext to commit further violence in the country. After all, even as late as last night, Putin was suggesting that his objective in the Ukraine is to “de-Nazify” the country.
Eastern Europe’s Jewish community is quite used to being used as pawns in the games of history. And as the next chapter in that complicated and often dark history commences, there is little reason to believe this time will be any different.
https://religiondispatches.org/the-enig ... e-conflict
CHICAGO SYNAGOGUE EXCORIATED FOR SHIFT FROM ‘NON’ TO ‘ANTI’ ZIONISM — MAYBE THE PROBLEM ISN’T THE ‘ANTI’ BUT THE ‘ZIONIS
Progressive synagogue Tzedek Chicago, founded in 2015 and led by Rabbi Brant Rosen, recently made an announcement that elicited strong reactions in much of the Jewish press and beyond. Opting to change their identity from “non-Zionist” to “anti-Zionist,” they released the following statement:
While we appreciate the important role of the land of Israel in Jewish tradition, liturgy and identity, we do not celebrate the fusing of Judaism with political nationalism…We are anti-Zionist, openly acknowledging that the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation-state in historic Palestine resulted in an injustice against the Palestinian people – an injustice that continues to this day.
The fusion of Judaism and nationalism is an important and complex point as that was the initial protest against Zionism in many liberal Jewish circles in America. Zionism “nationalizes” the Jew, and Judaism, in ways that ostensibly subverted the normalization of the Jew as citizen in the post-emancipated Diaspora. This is how it was articulated in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of Reform Judaism in America which stated that “we [Jews] no longer consider ourselves a nation, but a religious community.”
While Reform Judaism no longer holds to this maxim, it did serve as the cornerstone of the denomination for much of its existence. The decision of Tzedek Chicago (which is not Reform) to drop the more neutral non-Zionist stance in favor of an anti-Zionist one reflects that sentiment. Apparently, judging by the response in much of the Jewish world, the prefix anti simply cannot be applied to Zionism, even as it can be applied to many other issues. The question is: why?
Asked to clarify the synagogue’s decision, Rosen, a former Reconstructionist rabbi, said, “a non-Zionist is someone for whom Israel and Zionism is a topic they are neutral on … it’s not an identity, it’s a descriptive statement.”
By contrast, he said, an anti-Zionist takes a more proactive stance and clearly “opposes the very concept of an exclusively Jewish nation-state in historic Palestine.”
It’s important to note that opposing an exclusively Jewish state in historic Palestine was not always an “anti-Zionist” position. In fact, it was not uncommon among many Zionists including Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, Ernst Akiva Simon, Hannah Arendt and many others. And as Hebrew University professor Dmitry Shumsky shows in his book Beyond the Nation State, many of the more mainstream Zionists didn’t envision a “Jewish” state but something closer to the binational state that non- and anti-Zionists are now promoting. But today if one believes in a truly binational state or, put otherwise, a liberal democracy, from the river to the sea, one is no longer viewed as a Zionist, even if one claims to be.
These issues can be debated from many directions, but I’d like to focus on why non-Zionism is quietly tolerated while anti-Zionism evokes the ire of many Zionists, making the anti the enemy, not only of Israel, but of the Jews. (I speak here only of Jewish anti-Zionists as they are the ones who are viewed as the “enemy within.”) So why have anti-Zionists become the enemy of the Jews?
Anxiety of the prefix
I suggest we’re living in a time of the “anxiety of the prefix.” In a 2005 essay entitled, “Hyphenated-Jews and the Anxiety of Identity,” philosopher Berel Lang explored the notion of the hyphen that both divides and connects the Jew (and other ethnic minorities) from their Americanness. Should American Jews be hyphenated citizens? Jewish-American or American Jew; hyphen or no hyphen. Jews as an ethnos, like Irish-Americans, or Jews as carrier of a religion, like American Catholics? The American Jew lives in the anxiety of the hyphen, and flourishes there. The hyphen allows for considerable leeway in terms of legitimate negotiation between one’s Jewish and American identity.
Today it seems that the complex negotiation of that identity for American Jews has moved from the hyphen to the prefix, given the role of Zionism in their identity. For many no prefix is required; one does not need to say they are “pro-Zionist,” Zionist is sufficient. And many who self-identify as Zionists do so even as the meaning of that term is far from clear. In fact, many self-affirming Zionists aren’t even aware that there are various kinds of Zionism. Secular, religious, socialist, muscular, humanistic, liberal, neoliberal, reactionary.
But today, at least in America, for better or worse, much of that has settled into a simple maxim of supporting the state of Israel—sometimes critically, but never overly so. Of course, what even is legitimate critique? It is the Zionist who decides. The Zionist both defines the term and polices its boundaries.
Since Zionism has become ubiquitous in American Jewry, what do those who choose not to identify as Zionists call themselves? Zionism has become so deeply embedded in American Jewry one cannot simply ignore it; one must either accept it or reject it. And if one rejects it, one must modify that rejection. Just saying you’re not a Zionist is not quite sufficient today. You must say more. You need a prefix to define your negation.
Just as the hyphen negotiates the relationship between Jewishness and Americanness, the prefix negotiates one’s relationship to Zionism. Now, of course, by debating the very meaning of Zionism itself we can also debate what the non or anti prefix actually means. My interest, however, is a bit different; to explore the function of non or anti in relation to what Zionism means, and why those prefixes cause so much anxiety for those who don’t require a prefix at all—that is, for those who simply identify as “Zionists.”
Why is this anti so different?
Let’s briefly look at the term anti in relation to other Jewish norms. Jewish Orthodoxy, for example, is a position that pledges fidelity to traditional theological precepts and a belief in the authority of the law (halakha) as traditionally defined and codified. There are many forms of Orthodoxy but one thing most share is the belief that non-Orthodox Judaism is errant. So Orthodox Judaism isn’t just non-non-Orthodox, it’s anti-non-Orthodox—it maintains that non-Orthodoxy is simply a distortion of the tradition.
This is not only the view of ultra-Orthodox Jews but many Modern Orthodox Jews as well: for example, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who was very clear in his highly negative views of non-Orthodox Judaism that can only be described as an anti position. I’ve had Orthodox teachers who refused to step into a Reform synagogue the same way they refused to step into a church. I don’t say this judgmentally. The category of anti is a perfectly legitimate one, rooted in the biblical notion of monotheism as anti idolatry.
Why then is “anti-Zionism” so different; as if to say, I can be an Orthodox Jew who refuses to step into a Reform synagogue, or an anti-Orthodox Conservative Jew who, for reasons of egalitarianism, refuse to be counted in an Orthodox minyan that doesn’t include women (I know many of those too), but being an anti-Zionist is somehow anathema? Religion tolerates an anti category, as it should, but Zionism somehow cannot.
This is not as new as we may think. In 1977, historian of Zionism Arthur Hertzberg wrote the following:
“the only offense for which Jews can be ‘excommunicated’ in the US today is not to participate in these efforts [to support Israel]. Intermarriage, ignorance of the Jewish heritage, or lack of faith do not keep anyone from leadership in the American Jewish community today. Being against Israel or apathetic in its support does.”
Allowing Zionism to define its own terms
One hears a variety of arguments about why opposing Zionism is illegitimate by definition. First, that the majority of American Jews are Zionists. This is true. But a large majority of American Jews are not Orthodox and Orthodox Jews (who make up about 10% of American Jews) have no trouble being anti-non-Orthodox—i.e. to maintain that non-Orthodox Judaism is a distortion. One could argue that half the world’s Jews live in Israel. This is true. But the other half live in the diaspora and one regularly hears Israelis say that there’s no future for Jews in the diaspora (in Zionist nomenclature, “negation of the diaspora”) and they’re not viewed as the enemy of the Jews.
What one is anti about when one defines oneself as anti-Zionist is a good question. In some cases, if it stands in opposition to the very existence of the state of Israel or the denial of the land of Israel as a Jewish homeland—that is, if it singles out Israel as invalid by definition—this moves close to a form of antisemitism. Thus, some forms of anti-Zionism certainly cross over into antisemitism. But let us read Rosen carefully.
Tzedek Chicago “opposes the very concept of an exclusively Jewish nation-state in historic Palestine.” Not against a “Jewish nation-state” but “an exclusively Jewish nation-state.” This isn’t a claim against the land of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. In that regard “Jewish” could be attached to the nation-state that exists there. Just not exclusively, because it’s also the homeland of another people who now make up close to a quarter of the population of the state’s borders and about half the population of the land of Israel. Tzedek Chicago is thus allowing Zionism to define its own terms, “an exclusively Jewish-state,” and defines itself as anti that definition.
Why give Zionism the power to define itself in such a manner? Perhaps because the 2018 Nation State Law states that Israel is only (read: exclusively) the state of the Jewish people and those non-Jews who hold Israeli citizenship, have no collective rights, only individual rights. Non-Jews can be citizens of the state of Israel but it is not really their country, it is the country exclusively of the Jewish people.
Think, for example of what it is for a Palestinian Israeli to sing the Israeli National Anthem. The anthem not only excludes them, it erases them. It erases close to one quarter of the state’s population. This all sounds eerily like the French emancipation of the Jews, “to the Jew everything, to the Jewish people nothing.” Not something Jews today would find very appealing in the democracies where they live.
Zionism is a multi-faceted thing. I can’t imagine anyone being opposed to the renaissance of Hebrew culture or the flourishing of the Hebrew language, the arts, and the development of Jewish humanistic values, the religious value of living in the land of Israel. Even ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists agree with the latter. The anti of anti-Zionism is thus very specific: it is opposed to the chauvinistic Zionist foundations of the socio-political reality called Israel.
And here anti-Zionists are not necessarily anti-Israel. Israel is a nation-state. Zionism is an ideology. Many anti-Zionists would support the state of Israel if it were not based on what Chaim Ganz calls “proprietary Zionism”; that is, that the land of Israel, all of it, belongs to the Jews as a foundation of its political program and the starting point of any kind of negotiation.
Why so defensive?
Some anti-Zionists believe that Zionism was necessary as an ideology to establish a new state where Jews could find refuge and exercise self-determination. But ideologies change with time. John O’Sullivan developed Manifest Destiny in America in the mid nineteenth century to justify westward expansion and the decimation of Native Americans. But the only Americans who believe that today are white supremacists. To say that Zionism was necessary doesn’t mean it also has to still be relevant.
When ideologies become dogmatic they can often run counter to the flourishing of political realities. I think that’s part of what some anti-Zionists like Tzedek Chicago are claiming. Cultivating a new political ideology that promotes the flourishing of all of a state’s citizens is a true aspiration. Some anti-Zionists don’t think Zionism is capable of that. It certainly hasn’t been up to now.
Perhaps the problem with being anti-Zionist isn’t with the anti, but the Zionist. The Zionist who can’t tolerate anti-Zionism is no better than the anti-Zionist who can’t tolerate Zionism. It seems to me something is deeply wrong with a Zionism that cannot understand, much less tolerate—even as it disagrees with—a foundational critique of itself. What is it that makes Zionism so defensive?
Perhaps we need to begin re-thinking a new, more inclusive national ideology outside of Zionism that can better promote the flourishing of all who live between the river and the sea. Because right now it seems clear that Zionism has failed in doing so. That would include a new national anthem and a new political framework for true equality for all its citizens. Israel is a highly developed country bursting with possibility. And a country stuck with an ideology that impedes equality, justice, and fairness. Maybe the true messianic move is not to defend Zionism, but to let it go. Maybe the anti-Zionists are on to something, if we only allow ourselves to listen.
https://religiondispatches.org/chicago- ... e-zionism/
Re: JUDAISM
The Daily Beast
Were There Actually 12 Tribes of Israel?
Candida Moss
Sat, April 30, 2022, 10:21 PM
Alamy
In 1644 Antonio Montezinos, a Portuguese traveler originally known as Aharon Levi, returned to Amsterdam with an astonishing story about the people he had encountered in the proverbial depths of South America. During his visit a native guide, named Francisco, took him deep into the mountains. A week into the journey he met a community of indigenous people who identified themselves to him as the Lost Tribes of Israel. Montezinos, who was originally known as Aharon Levi, was startled and astonished.
The story might have amounted to nothing had he not passed it along to a prominent rabbi named Menasseh Ben Israel. Ben Israel used it as the basis for his influential work Hope of Israel, a compendium of information about the whereabouts of the Lost Tribes of Israel, which was published in 1650. The book was intended to inspire his fellow Jews who had suffered and would continue to suffer social marginalization, legal oppression, and violent persecution at the hands of antisemitic Christian Europeans. But it was also taken up by Christians: first British colonizers who claimed that Native Americans were descended from the lost tribes of Israel. And, more famously, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who both identify themselves (who, genealogically were the descendants of European settlers) and Native Americans with Israel. For Ben Israel the “Jewish Indian” theory was about hope, for the British it was related to anxieties about linking the “New World” to the “Old.” The idea that America—or any people or nation—could “Become Israel” was enormously popular.
If you have read the Hebrew Bible, saw Disney’s Prince of Egypt, or watched Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat then you almost certainly know about the 12 tribes of Israel. In many ways Israel is sort of synonymous with Jewishness and Judaism, people use it to refer to a nation, an identity, and a central group who share in God’s promises to Abraham and are the favored people of God. What you might not have known is that the history or, rather, histories of Israel are constantly evolving. A new book, Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel: New Identities across Time and Space, by Dr. Andrew Tobolowsky, who teaches at William & Mary, looks set to revolutionize how we think about the traditional story.
As it has come down to us, the biblical narrative is very Israel focused. In Genesis, the patriarch Jacob (the one who steals Esau’s birthright, has a vision of a ladder, and walks with a limp after losing a match to an angel) had 12 sons (and a daughter, but people are fairly disinterested in her). The tribes of Israel are the descendants of these sons. They migrated to Egypt during a famine and were led out of captivity by Moses. They violently conquer the Holy Land with Joshua, and each tribe was given its own portion of land. After that they were governed by first Judges and then monarchs like Saul, David, and Solomon. So far, so united.
After the death of Solomon (ca. 930 BCE), things fractured. The Kingdom of Israel was divided into two Kingdoms: the Northern (which retained the name Israel and was occupied by most of the tribes) and the Southern, also known as Judah. In the eighth century BCE, the Assyrian army captured the Israelite capital of Samaria and carried the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom off into exile. While 1 Kings 11-12 is explicit that there were ten tribes in the Northern Kingdom, it’s unclear both how many tribes were located in Judah and which specific tribes went from the Northern Kingdom into exile. As Tobolowsky put it to me “there actually is no text that says, ‘these are the ten tribes of Israel that were exiled,’ or ‘these are the tribes who survived.’”
The members and descendants of the ten tribes who were forcibly migrated by the Assyrians are now known as the “Lost Tribes of Israel” and, like other lost peoples and things of the Bible –say the Ark of the Covenant, Enoch, or the Holy Grail—the lost tribes of Israel gleam with mysterious significance. Where are they? Will their descendants one day return to their homelands as the descendants of Judah did after the Babylonian exile?
Over the past few thousand years many individuals and groups have claimed either to know where the lost tribes are or to be their descendants. One famous example is Beta Israel, or Ethiopian Jews, who identify with the lost tribe of Dan. Discussions about the identification or histories of the lost tribes are often discarded as fanciful-after-the-fact mythologies that appropriate “real” Israelite identity for something else, while the biblical history of Israel is the “real history.” Dr. Andrew Tobolowsky’s book Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel challenges us to rethink this distinction and explores the multiple histories of Israel that exist outside of Europe and the Middle East.
While Tobolowsky isn’t really focused on the historical problems with the traditional narrative about Israel (nor does it have to be, there are plenty of other histories problematizing everything from the Exodus to the Battle of Jericho, to even the existence of King David), he admits there are some difficult historical details in the story. It’s clear, he told me, that there is some kind of tradition about tribes in ancient Israel. He pointed to Judges 5, a passage that, he said, “many scholars think is the oldest text in the Hebrew Bible” that tells the story of a war between the Canaanites and the tribes of Israel. If you go read Judges 5, he said, you’ll notice that it “doesn’t include 12 tribes…In fact, none of the tribes most associated with the kingdom of Judah even appear in Judges 5.” In other words, the oldest literary layers in the Hebrew Bible may talk about tribes but not in the way that the traditional history does.
What’s interesting, he said, is that most of our biblical stories about the 12 tribes were written in a much later period by Judahite authors. This might lead us to be skeptical of the historical accuracy of these stories. “It’s a possibility,” he added “that the 12 tribes tradition was developed by Judahites, in a relatively late period.” But even if these traditions grew “out of an older, and genuinely historical Israelite tribal tradition… the vast majority of tribal descriptions we have are from a much later period, by mostly Judahite authors, and mostly in a world where even the Hebrew Bible tells us not all the tribes were still around.” In other words, and “regardless of anything else, we still have to ask… why are all late Judahite authors so interested in describing and redescribing [the tribes of Israel]. Why does [this history] matter to them, and what are they trying to do with it?”
This is the gap that Tobolowsky fills in his book. Whether you’re the kind of person who thinks that the 12 tribes are a complete fiction or the sort who thinks that they actually existed as discrete groups, people haven’t really been asking why ancient Judahites suddenly got interested in them hundreds of years later. The curious part is that it’s not just biblical authors who are fascinated by the 12 tribes: “all over the world”, said Tobolowsky, “people have been doing the same thing with the same tradition.” Why is that? Why are people interested in retelling this history and interweaving their personal and communal histories with it?
For the authors who wrote the Hebrew Bible, said Tobolowsky, this particular version of Israel’s history and identity had to do with positioning Israel against the Samaritans. The Samaritans were likely descended from the original Israelites (those who were not carried off by the Assyrians). Narratively clearing Samaria of legitimate descendants of Israel does some work in legitimizing Judah. “For these [Judahite] groups, their stories are about claiming a sort of local legacy and history, and you can sometimes see that in how their visions are designed to compete with each other.” What this means, though, is that the Israel of the Hebrew Bible, is, in fact, Judah’s Israel. It’s not, he said, “some sort of neutral, ‘original Israel’ it’s one of many versions of what Israel was” and just like other versions of Israel’s history it had real-world power.
For other groups, from antiquity to the present day, who claim this lineage “it’s more about the prestige ancient Israel has as the ‘chosen people,’ or it’s about positioning yourself as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.” The 12 tribes of Israel have a certain kind of divine cache, pedigree, or role to play in the end times. “From the medieval period on,” said Tobolowsky, “a lot of these visions are about the end of the world, bringing about the restoration of Israel by recovering the lost tribes and so on. In these cases, it’s about describing your group as one tasked with a sacred mission in the cosmic scheme. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament imbue Israel with a lot of significance, and all the world’s Israels understand themselves as heirs to that significance.”
The number of different social, political, and religious groups who root their identities in Israelite history is surprisingly large. Tobolowsky told me that whenever he talks about his book someone will tell him about a new group he previously hadn’t heard about. One of his favorites, however, were the House of David baseball teams. These were semi-famous “Harlem Globetrotter-esque squads that traveled the country in the 1910s and ’20s and did all kinds of tricks and often wore big, fake beards… They would do things other teams of that time wouldn’t necessarily do, like play some of the great Negro Leagues teams. But it turns out their main goal was to serve as a kind of fundraising arm for a new religious movement, the ‘House of David.’ This was headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan and had among its goals the ‘ingathering’ of the 12 tribes of Israel.”
As bizarre as it sounds, this isn’t a one-off of a story, there are plenty of examples of groups using the idea of Israel to do particular kinds of political, religious, fundraising, and social work.
For some readers all of this might seem iconoclastic, if not anti-Israel, or even antisemitic but that isn’t the case. Tobolowsky, who is Jewish himself, said that “one of the major points of the book is that lots of people besides the Jews think they’re descendants of Israel, too.” In some of these cases, he added, those who identify as descendants of Israel, “are marginalized groups who enjoy sometimes precious few rights by virtue of their perceived descent, and any time you talk about identity that’s something you should be very, very careful about.”
Equally important, he added, is that scholars are thinking in more complicated ways about identity: “We now know ‘national’ identities change all the time, whether you’re biologically descended from some original group or not, so if presenting that identity differently from the original group means you’re not ‘really’ them – well, every identity is fake then.” In other words, Tobolowsky isn’t saying that more traditional understandings of Jewish identity are somehow fraudulent, he is saying that identity is constantly in flux and constantly being built out of inherited notions of the past. “We can set aside questions of who that past really belongs to in order to dig into what is being built and how that is happening.”
The question of what’s historically true, he said, is sort of beside the point. It’s tempting to distinguish between the “biblical story” and the story of the “Lost Tribes” but, whatever their histories, “all of all these groups are using the exact same tradition in the exact same ways for many of the same reasons.” The story of the Israels of the world is fantastic and arguably brings people together to think about their commonalities and shared traditions. But that will not happen if we can’t see that history and insist on policing a single vision of Israel’s history.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/we ... 28728.html
Were There Actually 12 Tribes of Israel?
Candida Moss
Sat, April 30, 2022, 10:21 PM
Alamy
In 1644 Antonio Montezinos, a Portuguese traveler originally known as Aharon Levi, returned to Amsterdam with an astonishing story about the people he had encountered in the proverbial depths of South America. During his visit a native guide, named Francisco, took him deep into the mountains. A week into the journey he met a community of indigenous people who identified themselves to him as the Lost Tribes of Israel. Montezinos, who was originally known as Aharon Levi, was startled and astonished.
The story might have amounted to nothing had he not passed it along to a prominent rabbi named Menasseh Ben Israel. Ben Israel used it as the basis for his influential work Hope of Israel, a compendium of information about the whereabouts of the Lost Tribes of Israel, which was published in 1650. The book was intended to inspire his fellow Jews who had suffered and would continue to suffer social marginalization, legal oppression, and violent persecution at the hands of antisemitic Christian Europeans. But it was also taken up by Christians: first British colonizers who claimed that Native Americans were descended from the lost tribes of Israel. And, more famously, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who both identify themselves (who, genealogically were the descendants of European settlers) and Native Americans with Israel. For Ben Israel the “Jewish Indian” theory was about hope, for the British it was related to anxieties about linking the “New World” to the “Old.” The idea that America—or any people or nation—could “Become Israel” was enormously popular.
If you have read the Hebrew Bible, saw Disney’s Prince of Egypt, or watched Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat then you almost certainly know about the 12 tribes of Israel. In many ways Israel is sort of synonymous with Jewishness and Judaism, people use it to refer to a nation, an identity, and a central group who share in God’s promises to Abraham and are the favored people of God. What you might not have known is that the history or, rather, histories of Israel are constantly evolving. A new book, Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel: New Identities across Time and Space, by Dr. Andrew Tobolowsky, who teaches at William & Mary, looks set to revolutionize how we think about the traditional story.
As it has come down to us, the biblical narrative is very Israel focused. In Genesis, the patriarch Jacob (the one who steals Esau’s birthright, has a vision of a ladder, and walks with a limp after losing a match to an angel) had 12 sons (and a daughter, but people are fairly disinterested in her). The tribes of Israel are the descendants of these sons. They migrated to Egypt during a famine and were led out of captivity by Moses. They violently conquer the Holy Land with Joshua, and each tribe was given its own portion of land. After that they were governed by first Judges and then monarchs like Saul, David, and Solomon. So far, so united.
After the death of Solomon (ca. 930 BCE), things fractured. The Kingdom of Israel was divided into two Kingdoms: the Northern (which retained the name Israel and was occupied by most of the tribes) and the Southern, also known as Judah. In the eighth century BCE, the Assyrian army captured the Israelite capital of Samaria and carried the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom off into exile. While 1 Kings 11-12 is explicit that there were ten tribes in the Northern Kingdom, it’s unclear both how many tribes were located in Judah and which specific tribes went from the Northern Kingdom into exile. As Tobolowsky put it to me “there actually is no text that says, ‘these are the ten tribes of Israel that were exiled,’ or ‘these are the tribes who survived.’”
The members and descendants of the ten tribes who were forcibly migrated by the Assyrians are now known as the “Lost Tribes of Israel” and, like other lost peoples and things of the Bible –say the Ark of the Covenant, Enoch, or the Holy Grail—the lost tribes of Israel gleam with mysterious significance. Where are they? Will their descendants one day return to their homelands as the descendants of Judah did after the Babylonian exile?
Over the past few thousand years many individuals and groups have claimed either to know where the lost tribes are or to be their descendants. One famous example is Beta Israel, or Ethiopian Jews, who identify with the lost tribe of Dan. Discussions about the identification or histories of the lost tribes are often discarded as fanciful-after-the-fact mythologies that appropriate “real” Israelite identity for something else, while the biblical history of Israel is the “real history.” Dr. Andrew Tobolowsky’s book Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel challenges us to rethink this distinction and explores the multiple histories of Israel that exist outside of Europe and the Middle East.
While Tobolowsky isn’t really focused on the historical problems with the traditional narrative about Israel (nor does it have to be, there are plenty of other histories problematizing everything from the Exodus to the Battle of Jericho, to even the existence of King David), he admits there are some difficult historical details in the story. It’s clear, he told me, that there is some kind of tradition about tribes in ancient Israel. He pointed to Judges 5, a passage that, he said, “many scholars think is the oldest text in the Hebrew Bible” that tells the story of a war between the Canaanites and the tribes of Israel. If you go read Judges 5, he said, you’ll notice that it “doesn’t include 12 tribes…In fact, none of the tribes most associated with the kingdom of Judah even appear in Judges 5.” In other words, the oldest literary layers in the Hebrew Bible may talk about tribes but not in the way that the traditional history does.
What’s interesting, he said, is that most of our biblical stories about the 12 tribes were written in a much later period by Judahite authors. This might lead us to be skeptical of the historical accuracy of these stories. “It’s a possibility,” he added “that the 12 tribes tradition was developed by Judahites, in a relatively late period.” But even if these traditions grew “out of an older, and genuinely historical Israelite tribal tradition… the vast majority of tribal descriptions we have are from a much later period, by mostly Judahite authors, and mostly in a world where even the Hebrew Bible tells us not all the tribes were still around.” In other words, and “regardless of anything else, we still have to ask… why are all late Judahite authors so interested in describing and redescribing [the tribes of Israel]. Why does [this history] matter to them, and what are they trying to do with it?”
This is the gap that Tobolowsky fills in his book. Whether you’re the kind of person who thinks that the 12 tribes are a complete fiction or the sort who thinks that they actually existed as discrete groups, people haven’t really been asking why ancient Judahites suddenly got interested in them hundreds of years later. The curious part is that it’s not just biblical authors who are fascinated by the 12 tribes: “all over the world”, said Tobolowsky, “people have been doing the same thing with the same tradition.” Why is that? Why are people interested in retelling this history and interweaving their personal and communal histories with it?
For the authors who wrote the Hebrew Bible, said Tobolowsky, this particular version of Israel’s history and identity had to do with positioning Israel against the Samaritans. The Samaritans were likely descended from the original Israelites (those who were not carried off by the Assyrians). Narratively clearing Samaria of legitimate descendants of Israel does some work in legitimizing Judah. “For these [Judahite] groups, their stories are about claiming a sort of local legacy and history, and you can sometimes see that in how their visions are designed to compete with each other.” What this means, though, is that the Israel of the Hebrew Bible, is, in fact, Judah’s Israel. It’s not, he said, “some sort of neutral, ‘original Israel’ it’s one of many versions of what Israel was” and just like other versions of Israel’s history it had real-world power.
For other groups, from antiquity to the present day, who claim this lineage “it’s more about the prestige ancient Israel has as the ‘chosen people,’ or it’s about positioning yourself as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.” The 12 tribes of Israel have a certain kind of divine cache, pedigree, or role to play in the end times. “From the medieval period on,” said Tobolowsky, “a lot of these visions are about the end of the world, bringing about the restoration of Israel by recovering the lost tribes and so on. In these cases, it’s about describing your group as one tasked with a sacred mission in the cosmic scheme. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament imbue Israel with a lot of significance, and all the world’s Israels understand themselves as heirs to that significance.”
The number of different social, political, and religious groups who root their identities in Israelite history is surprisingly large. Tobolowsky told me that whenever he talks about his book someone will tell him about a new group he previously hadn’t heard about. One of his favorites, however, were the House of David baseball teams. These were semi-famous “Harlem Globetrotter-esque squads that traveled the country in the 1910s and ’20s and did all kinds of tricks and often wore big, fake beards… They would do things other teams of that time wouldn’t necessarily do, like play some of the great Negro Leagues teams. But it turns out their main goal was to serve as a kind of fundraising arm for a new religious movement, the ‘House of David.’ This was headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan and had among its goals the ‘ingathering’ of the 12 tribes of Israel.”
As bizarre as it sounds, this isn’t a one-off of a story, there are plenty of examples of groups using the idea of Israel to do particular kinds of political, religious, fundraising, and social work.
For some readers all of this might seem iconoclastic, if not anti-Israel, or even antisemitic but that isn’t the case. Tobolowsky, who is Jewish himself, said that “one of the major points of the book is that lots of people besides the Jews think they’re descendants of Israel, too.” In some of these cases, he added, those who identify as descendants of Israel, “are marginalized groups who enjoy sometimes precious few rights by virtue of their perceived descent, and any time you talk about identity that’s something you should be very, very careful about.”
Equally important, he added, is that scholars are thinking in more complicated ways about identity: “We now know ‘national’ identities change all the time, whether you’re biologically descended from some original group or not, so if presenting that identity differently from the original group means you’re not ‘really’ them – well, every identity is fake then.” In other words, Tobolowsky isn’t saying that more traditional understandings of Jewish identity are somehow fraudulent, he is saying that identity is constantly in flux and constantly being built out of inherited notions of the past. “We can set aside questions of who that past really belongs to in order to dig into what is being built and how that is happening.”
The question of what’s historically true, he said, is sort of beside the point. It’s tempting to distinguish between the “biblical story” and the story of the “Lost Tribes” but, whatever their histories, “all of all these groups are using the exact same tradition in the exact same ways for many of the same reasons.” The story of the Israels of the world is fantastic and arguably brings people together to think about their commonalities and shared traditions. But that will not happen if we can’t see that history and insist on policing a single vision of Israel’s history.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/we ... 28728.html
WHO’S ‘REALLY’ JEWISH
WHO’S ‘REALLY’ JEWISH: THE SEFARDI FLORIDIAN, THE ASHKENAZI CALIFORNIAN, OR THE NEW YORK JEW BY CHOICE? ‘AUTHENTICITY’ IS A TRAP
Jared Armstrong was raised Jewish in the United States and wants nothing more than to become an Israeli citizen and pursue his career as a professional basketball player for one of Israel’s leading teams. But Israeli authorities have challenged the extent of his Jewishness, potentially jeopardizing his career and also his dream of becoming Israeli. His experience raises the specter that Judaism is falling into an authenticity trap about who “looks” Jewish, “seems” Jewish, and is Jewish “enough.” Somehow this Black Jewish American basketball player doesn’t meet that increasingly subjective standard.
This isn’t only to Israel’s detriment and to that of Mr. Armstrong—but it’s also emblematic of an authenticity trap that we see within American Judaism and other religious communities. Whenever we conflate “traditional” with “authentic,” we reject the possibility that change is inherent to tradition and that authenticity can be used to exclude others.
Mourners in our communities demand that clergy bury people the “right way,” often when they’ve never before observed any traditional Jewish observance. Brides circle grooms seven times in a ritual that’s rarely understood, even as it centers ancient patriarchy. (For more on ‘Traditional Marriage’ rituals and realities, see Jay Michaelson’s viral piece, Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves.) Sweltering in the heat of the summer, Hasidic Jews in Dallas dress in the anachronistic and unseasonable clothing of their brethren from the 17th Century Pale of Settlement, even though none of our ancient ancestors in the Second Temple period wore anything of the sort.
Centuries of rabbis have attempted to eliminate or alter the Kol Nidrei prayer from Erev Yom Kippur services, only to repeatedly discover that the experience of the prayer—a prayer likely linked to Conversos, Jews posing as Catholics during and after the Spanish Inquisition—is the anchor of authenticity for many Jews.
The bereavement ritual of sitting shiva has inspired its own digital platforms that delineate authentic mourning practices to enable mourners and comforters alike to know proper scripts and behaviors. Those looking for magical expressions of Judaism may find numerous ways to buy protective talismans and healing cups purported to be blessed by rabbis and imbued with kabbalistic power.
In mythologizing the look and sound of a ‘real’ Jew, and the feeling of the ‘real’ ritual, we diminish the depth and diversity of Judaism, and place Jewishness into narrow focus. Who’s more authentic, the Sefardi Floridian, the Ashkenazi Californian, or the New York Jew By Choice?
Is it more authentic to gamble with a dreidel on Chanukah (or is it Hanukkah?) despite millennia of prohibitions against gambling, or for a rising Bat Mitzvah to chant from the Torah despite the taboo of such female-identified leadership for much of Jewish history? Is a German drinking song a more authentic melody for the hymn Adon Olam than “Take Me Out to the Ballgame?”
The authenticity trap encourages myopia and ducks the inherent complexity and re-mixings found throughout Jewish history. It serves to bolster the identity of the few at the cost of belonging for so many others; and while it plays into the insecurities of modern American Judaism, it does so at the expense of seeing a Judaism that is more than a selective retrospective gaze.
When examining the retrospective focus of many Jewish institutions over a century of dramatic change in America, one must note who wins from this posture of stasis. It’s those with the most accumulated privilege—people who look and sound and just plain seem like “authentic” Jewish leaders—the straight, cisgendered white male rabbis like us.
In 2017 every single one of the top 28 earning Jewish non-profit executives were men, and in 2021 still 16 of the 17 largest Jewish federations are led by men. According to the Reform Pay Equity Initiative, women still earn just four-fifths of what their male counterparts do within Jewish institutions. Rabbis are the highest paid clergy in America. Together, those data show just how much the subjective notion of authenticity conforms to the contours of power.
Yet as the myth of the ‘sage on a stage’ continues to unravel, and the doors of some legacy institutions close, the allure of authenticity at the expense of empowerment will wane. Ultimately, a broader definition of authentic connection to Jewish tradition may enable our Diaspora to realize its potential. A return to the era of the early rabbis may be afoot, in which we all learn and teach, pray and gather, lead and reimagine. The distinction between lay leader and clergy, institution and network are already beginning to blur. Their continued confluence is our path forward.
The majesty of our tradition comes from learning and practicing, not possessing it and claiming to speak for its entirety. Contests over “authenticity” tend to trap power and belonging in the space of the few and the privileged. In reducing our reliance upon it, we may extend a sense of belonging to all who seek it.
https://religiondispatches.org/whos-rea ... -is-a-trap
Jared Armstrong was raised Jewish in the United States and wants nothing more than to become an Israeli citizen and pursue his career as a professional basketball player for one of Israel’s leading teams. But Israeli authorities have challenged the extent of his Jewishness, potentially jeopardizing his career and also his dream of becoming Israeli. His experience raises the specter that Judaism is falling into an authenticity trap about who “looks” Jewish, “seems” Jewish, and is Jewish “enough.” Somehow this Black Jewish American basketball player doesn’t meet that increasingly subjective standard.
This isn’t only to Israel’s detriment and to that of Mr. Armstrong—but it’s also emblematic of an authenticity trap that we see within American Judaism and other religious communities. Whenever we conflate “traditional” with “authentic,” we reject the possibility that change is inherent to tradition and that authenticity can be used to exclude others.
Mourners in our communities demand that clergy bury people the “right way,” often when they’ve never before observed any traditional Jewish observance. Brides circle grooms seven times in a ritual that’s rarely understood, even as it centers ancient patriarchy. (For more on ‘Traditional Marriage’ rituals and realities, see Jay Michaelson’s viral piece, Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves.) Sweltering in the heat of the summer, Hasidic Jews in Dallas dress in the anachronistic and unseasonable clothing of their brethren from the 17th Century Pale of Settlement, even though none of our ancient ancestors in the Second Temple period wore anything of the sort.
Centuries of rabbis have attempted to eliminate or alter the Kol Nidrei prayer from Erev Yom Kippur services, only to repeatedly discover that the experience of the prayer—a prayer likely linked to Conversos, Jews posing as Catholics during and after the Spanish Inquisition—is the anchor of authenticity for many Jews.
The bereavement ritual of sitting shiva has inspired its own digital platforms that delineate authentic mourning practices to enable mourners and comforters alike to know proper scripts and behaviors. Those looking for magical expressions of Judaism may find numerous ways to buy protective talismans and healing cups purported to be blessed by rabbis and imbued with kabbalistic power.
In mythologizing the look and sound of a ‘real’ Jew, and the feeling of the ‘real’ ritual, we diminish the depth and diversity of Judaism, and place Jewishness into narrow focus. Who’s more authentic, the Sefardi Floridian, the Ashkenazi Californian, or the New York Jew By Choice?
Is it more authentic to gamble with a dreidel on Chanukah (or is it Hanukkah?) despite millennia of prohibitions against gambling, or for a rising Bat Mitzvah to chant from the Torah despite the taboo of such female-identified leadership for much of Jewish history? Is a German drinking song a more authentic melody for the hymn Adon Olam than “Take Me Out to the Ballgame?”
The authenticity trap encourages myopia and ducks the inherent complexity and re-mixings found throughout Jewish history. It serves to bolster the identity of the few at the cost of belonging for so many others; and while it plays into the insecurities of modern American Judaism, it does so at the expense of seeing a Judaism that is more than a selective retrospective gaze.
When examining the retrospective focus of many Jewish institutions over a century of dramatic change in America, one must note who wins from this posture of stasis. It’s those with the most accumulated privilege—people who look and sound and just plain seem like “authentic” Jewish leaders—the straight, cisgendered white male rabbis like us.
In 2017 every single one of the top 28 earning Jewish non-profit executives were men, and in 2021 still 16 of the 17 largest Jewish federations are led by men. According to the Reform Pay Equity Initiative, women still earn just four-fifths of what their male counterparts do within Jewish institutions. Rabbis are the highest paid clergy in America. Together, those data show just how much the subjective notion of authenticity conforms to the contours of power.
Yet as the myth of the ‘sage on a stage’ continues to unravel, and the doors of some legacy institutions close, the allure of authenticity at the expense of empowerment will wane. Ultimately, a broader definition of authentic connection to Jewish tradition may enable our Diaspora to realize its potential. A return to the era of the early rabbis may be afoot, in which we all learn and teach, pray and gather, lead and reimagine. The distinction between lay leader and clergy, institution and network are already beginning to blur. Their continued confluence is our path forward.
The majesty of our tradition comes from learning and practicing, not possessing it and claiming to speak for its entirety. Contests over “authenticity” tend to trap power and belonging in the space of the few and the privileged. In reducing our reliance upon it, we may extend a sense of belonging to all who seek it.
https://religiondispatches.org/whos-rea ... -is-a-trap
Re: JUDAISM
Reuters
Senior Israeli lawmaker warns of "religious war" over Jerusalem moves
FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Jewish visitors gesture as Israeli security forces secure the area at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem
Mon, May 23, 2022, 8:07 AM
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior Israeli lawmaker said on Monday the country risked "religious war" after a court ruled in favour of Jews who had tried to pray at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and as nationalists planned a march near the flashpoint site.
Palestinian factions have denounced Israeli moves in Jerusalem's Old City, the heart of their decades-old conflict, and reiterated threats that echoed their warnings in the run-up to the May 2021 war in Gaza.
Jerusalem Magistrates' Court on Sunday rescinded a restraining order against three Jews who had prayed while visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Jews revere the site as vestige of two ancient temples, but are barred from worship there under an Israeli pact with Muslim authorities. The mosque is Islam's third-holiest shrine.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office said it would appeal the ruling. Bennett, who heads a weak coalition government, must also decide whether to green-light an annual Israeli flag march in the Old City next Sunday.
Ram Ben-Barak, chairman of parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, came out against the lower court ruling and voiced concern about the planned route of the march, which includes the Muslim quarter of the Old City.
"I think that during this sensitive period care must be taken," he told Kan radio. "We should not, with our own hands, cause a religious war here or all kinds of provocations that are liable to ignite the Middle East."
The flag march celebrates Israel's capture of the Old City in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel deems all of Jerusalem its capital - a status not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want to establish their own capital in the city.
Weeks of clashes in East Jerusalem last year, including in the Al-Aqsa compound, helped ignite a war in Gaza last May that killed at least 250 Palestinians and 13 people in Israel.
After months of relative calm, tensions have risen again in recent weeks, leaving many dead, with repeated raids by Israeli forces in the West Bank, and attacks by militants on Israelis.
Police and Palestinians also clashed in the mosque area last month on numerous occasions during the holy month of Ramadan.
Ben-Barak, whose centrist party is in the coalition, predicted that Bennett would wait until the night before the march to decide on its final route to prevent possible conflict.
"It is not always worth paying this price for a demonstration that is all about spectacle and little else."
Speaking in Gaza, a senior official with Islamic Jihad, Khaled Al-Batsh, said that going ahead with the flag march would be a "message of war" against Palestinians.
"The Palestinians will confront the flag march and the resistance will do all it should to protect the Al Aqsa mosque and the sacred sites," Batsh said in a statement.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Additional reporting by Nidal Al Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/se ... 48235.html
Senior Israeli lawmaker warns of "religious war" over Jerusalem moves
FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Jewish visitors gesture as Israeli security forces secure the area at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem
Mon, May 23, 2022, 8:07 AM
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior Israeli lawmaker said on Monday the country risked "religious war" after a court ruled in favour of Jews who had tried to pray at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and as nationalists planned a march near the flashpoint site.
Palestinian factions have denounced Israeli moves in Jerusalem's Old City, the heart of their decades-old conflict, and reiterated threats that echoed their warnings in the run-up to the May 2021 war in Gaza.
Jerusalem Magistrates' Court on Sunday rescinded a restraining order against three Jews who had prayed while visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Jews revere the site as vestige of two ancient temples, but are barred from worship there under an Israeli pact with Muslim authorities. The mosque is Islam's third-holiest shrine.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office said it would appeal the ruling. Bennett, who heads a weak coalition government, must also decide whether to green-light an annual Israeli flag march in the Old City next Sunday.
Ram Ben-Barak, chairman of parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, came out against the lower court ruling and voiced concern about the planned route of the march, which includes the Muslim quarter of the Old City.
"I think that during this sensitive period care must be taken," he told Kan radio. "We should not, with our own hands, cause a religious war here or all kinds of provocations that are liable to ignite the Middle East."
The flag march celebrates Israel's capture of the Old City in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel deems all of Jerusalem its capital - a status not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want to establish their own capital in the city.
Weeks of clashes in East Jerusalem last year, including in the Al-Aqsa compound, helped ignite a war in Gaza last May that killed at least 250 Palestinians and 13 people in Israel.
After months of relative calm, tensions have risen again in recent weeks, leaving many dead, with repeated raids by Israeli forces in the West Bank, and attacks by militants on Israelis.
Police and Palestinians also clashed in the mosque area last month on numerous occasions during the holy month of Ramadan.
Ben-Barak, whose centrist party is in the coalition, predicted that Bennett would wait until the night before the march to decide on its final route to prevent possible conflict.
"It is not always worth paying this price for a demonstration that is all about spectacle and little else."
Speaking in Gaza, a senior official with Islamic Jihad, Khaled Al-Batsh, said that going ahead with the flag march would be a "message of war" against Palestinians.
"The Palestinians will confront the flag march and the resistance will do all it should to protect the Al Aqsa mosque and the sacred sites," Batsh said in a statement.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Additional reporting by Nidal Al Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Crispian Balmer)
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/se ... 48235.html
Re: JUDAISM
Moroccan Jews return to their roots with Meknes pilgrimage
Moroccan Jews return to their roots with Meknes pilgrimage
The Jewish cemetery in Meknes is one of 160 across Morocco that have benfited from a renovation programme launched in 2010
The Jewish community in Morocco has dwindled to just 3,000 people but Israel boasts 700,000 Jews of Moroccan origin and the kingdom hopes the recent restoration of diplomatic ties will boost the number who visit
Moroccan Jews return to their roots with Meknes pilgrimage
The Jewish cemetery in Meknes is one of 160 across Morocco that have benifited from a renovation program launched in 2010
The Jewish community in Morocco has dwindled to just 3,000 people but Israel boasts 700,000 Jews of Moroccan origin and the kingdom hopes the recent restoration of diplomatic ties will boost the number who visit
For some of the Israelis among the pilgrims, it is the first time they have been back to Morocco since they emigrated decades ago
Fri, May 20, 2022, 9:32 AM
Dozens of Jews travelled to the Moroccan city of Meknes this week for the first pilgrimage of its kind since the 1960s, after the Muslim kingdom restored the city's Jewish cemetery.
Their return to the graveyard, which bears witness to a centuries-old Jewish presence in the North African country, came a year and a half after Rabat restored ties with Israel, which has a large community of Moroccan Jews.
The pilgrims, including many with Moroccan heritage, took part in ceremonies under heavy security on Wednesday and Thursday to honour "tsadikim", prominent rabbis, buried at the site.
"It's a huge source of pride to come to Meknes in the footsteps of my ancestors who rest here," said Israeli rabbi Niddam, 31, who was visiting Morocco for the first time.
French-Moroccan worshipper Andre Derhy, 86, said he was lost for words.
"It's wonderful to return to the city of my birth after so many years," he said.
The cemetery was founded in 1682 for Jews of the Meknes mellah, or Jewish quarter.
It was one of 160 across Morocco to benefit from a renovation programme since 2010.
Morocco, which had had a Jewish community since antiquity, was one of the main destinations for Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century.
By the 1940s the community numbered some 250,000 -- but a mass exodus after the founding of Israel in 1948 reduced it to just 3,000.
Many of Israel's 700,000 Jews of Moroccan origin have kept close ties with the country.
This week, those links were visible as 100 or so candle-bearing pilgrims walked among the white tombstones.
Some prayed fervently at the shrine of rabbi Raphael Berdugo, a 19th-century "master of the Torah".
"This gathering is proof that you can turn a field of ruins into a place that keeps alive the memory of Moroccan Jews," said Serge Berdugo, head of Morocco's Jewish council.
Rabat's normalisation with Israel prompted only muted protests in Morocco despite widespread public support for the Palestinian cause.
Yousseph Israel, from the northern city of Tetouan, said Morocco "has always been an example of religious co-existence".
Israel is a judge at the Hebrew court in Casablanca; Jews in Morocco are allowed to have family cases settled under Jewish law.
Israeli rabbi Niddam said that even before re-establishing ties after a decades-long hiatus, "Morocco and Israel always had peaceful relations. Lots of Israelis visited the kingdom without any problem."
Morocco is now hoping that newly-established air links with Israel will boost the number of Jewish visitors from around 60,000 per year to as many as 200,000.
Gilles Berdugo, an Israeli citizen originally from Meknes, said he was returning to the country for the first time since he left in 1970 at the age of 11.
"All my memories came back, it was like I'd never left the country," he said.
For his son, Avishai, it "is like we've finally found a missing piece of the family puzzle".
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/je ... 47352.html
Moroccan Jews return to their roots with Meknes pilgrimage
The Jewish cemetery in Meknes is one of 160 across Morocco that have benfited from a renovation programme launched in 2010
The Jewish community in Morocco has dwindled to just 3,000 people but Israel boasts 700,000 Jews of Moroccan origin and the kingdom hopes the recent restoration of diplomatic ties will boost the number who visit
Moroccan Jews return to their roots with Meknes pilgrimage
The Jewish cemetery in Meknes is one of 160 across Morocco that have benifited from a renovation program launched in 2010
The Jewish community in Morocco has dwindled to just 3,000 people but Israel boasts 700,000 Jews of Moroccan origin and the kingdom hopes the recent restoration of diplomatic ties will boost the number who visit
For some of the Israelis among the pilgrims, it is the first time they have been back to Morocco since they emigrated decades ago
Fri, May 20, 2022, 9:32 AM
Dozens of Jews travelled to the Moroccan city of Meknes this week for the first pilgrimage of its kind since the 1960s, after the Muslim kingdom restored the city's Jewish cemetery.
Their return to the graveyard, which bears witness to a centuries-old Jewish presence in the North African country, came a year and a half after Rabat restored ties with Israel, which has a large community of Moroccan Jews.
The pilgrims, including many with Moroccan heritage, took part in ceremonies under heavy security on Wednesday and Thursday to honour "tsadikim", prominent rabbis, buried at the site.
"It's a huge source of pride to come to Meknes in the footsteps of my ancestors who rest here," said Israeli rabbi Niddam, 31, who was visiting Morocco for the first time.
French-Moroccan worshipper Andre Derhy, 86, said he was lost for words.
"It's wonderful to return to the city of my birth after so many years," he said.
The cemetery was founded in 1682 for Jews of the Meknes mellah, or Jewish quarter.
It was one of 160 across Morocco to benefit from a renovation programme since 2010.
Morocco, which had had a Jewish community since antiquity, was one of the main destinations for Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century.
By the 1940s the community numbered some 250,000 -- but a mass exodus after the founding of Israel in 1948 reduced it to just 3,000.
Many of Israel's 700,000 Jews of Moroccan origin have kept close ties with the country.
This week, those links were visible as 100 or so candle-bearing pilgrims walked among the white tombstones.
Some prayed fervently at the shrine of rabbi Raphael Berdugo, a 19th-century "master of the Torah".
"This gathering is proof that you can turn a field of ruins into a place that keeps alive the memory of Moroccan Jews," said Serge Berdugo, head of Morocco's Jewish council.
Rabat's normalisation with Israel prompted only muted protests in Morocco despite widespread public support for the Palestinian cause.
Yousseph Israel, from the northern city of Tetouan, said Morocco "has always been an example of religious co-existence".
Israel is a judge at the Hebrew court in Casablanca; Jews in Morocco are allowed to have family cases settled under Jewish law.
Israeli rabbi Niddam said that even before re-establishing ties after a decades-long hiatus, "Morocco and Israel always had peaceful relations. Lots of Israelis visited the kingdom without any problem."
Morocco is now hoping that newly-established air links with Israel will boost the number of Jewish visitors from around 60,000 per year to as many as 200,000.
Gilles Berdugo, an Israeli citizen originally from Meknes, said he was returning to the country for the first time since he left in 1970 at the age of 11.
"All my memories came back, it was like I'd never left the country," he said.
For his son, Avishai, it "is like we've finally found a missing piece of the family puzzle".
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/je ... 47352.html
Re: JUDAISM
The Independent
Rabbi charged with raping followers in Jerusalem saying ‘it would cleanse their sins’
Holly Bancroft
Tue, June 7, 2022, 7:50 AM
At a court hearing in May, a police officer said that the evidence revealed ‘a man who controlled his victims highhandedly’
A rabbi has been charged with rape, sodomy and indecent assault in Jerusalem after he allegedly claimed he was cleansing his victims of their sins by committing sex acts on them.
Rabbi Moshe Yazdi, 59, was arrested on 27 April and has also been accused of defrauding his victims, The Times of Israel reported.
According to the indictment, Yazdi has been accused of defrauding seven women and telling his followers that they needed to be absolutely obedient to his orders. He has allegedly worked as a rabbi in Jerusalem’s Amudei Hashalom community since the 1990s.
He claimed to be one of 36 righteous people who, according to some Jewish traditions, ensure the continued existence of the world, the indictment reportedly said.
He also allegedly convinced his victims that their past sins had left “sparks of impurity” inside them. He claimed these “sparks” could only be removed through sex acts with him, prosecutors detailed in the indictment.
Yazdi also reportedly directed the women to transfer money to a number of different bank accounts in order to evade tax.
The charges against him range from alleged crimes committed over a decade ago and one as recent as a year and a half ago.
A rabbinic court has banned Yazdi from teaching, meeting with, or advising women following complaints, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Ten women have filed complaints against Yazdi, according to the paper, with some of the alleged crimes being committed on brides on their wedding day.
At a court hearing in May, a police officer said that the evidence revealed “a man who controlled his victims highhandedly and with an iron fist, separating them from their families and even demanding that they separate from their spouses.”
The officer said that Yazdi has provided justifications for the alleged sex acts, saying that they “were meant to save Jewish lives and even prevent terror attacks”.
“It’s impossible to call his actions and character anything but pure evil,” he said.
Yazdi’s attorney, David Halevi, said that the police were “demonising” his client.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/ ... 12617.html
Rabbi charged with raping followers in Jerusalem saying ‘it would cleanse their sins’
Holly Bancroft
Tue, June 7, 2022, 7:50 AM
At a court hearing in May, a police officer said that the evidence revealed ‘a man who controlled his victims highhandedly’
A rabbi has been charged with rape, sodomy and indecent assault in Jerusalem after he allegedly claimed he was cleansing his victims of their sins by committing sex acts on them.
Rabbi Moshe Yazdi, 59, was arrested on 27 April and has also been accused of defrauding his victims, The Times of Israel reported.
According to the indictment, Yazdi has been accused of defrauding seven women and telling his followers that they needed to be absolutely obedient to his orders. He has allegedly worked as a rabbi in Jerusalem’s Amudei Hashalom community since the 1990s.
He claimed to be one of 36 righteous people who, according to some Jewish traditions, ensure the continued existence of the world, the indictment reportedly said.
He also allegedly convinced his victims that their past sins had left “sparks of impurity” inside them. He claimed these “sparks” could only be removed through sex acts with him, prosecutors detailed in the indictment.
Yazdi also reportedly directed the women to transfer money to a number of different bank accounts in order to evade tax.
The charges against him range from alleged crimes committed over a decade ago and one as recent as a year and a half ago.
A rabbinic court has banned Yazdi from teaching, meeting with, or advising women following complaints, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Ten women have filed complaints against Yazdi, according to the paper, with some of the alleged crimes being committed on brides on their wedding day.
At a court hearing in May, a police officer said that the evidence revealed “a man who controlled his victims highhandedly and with an iron fist, separating them from their families and even demanding that they separate from their spouses.”
The officer said that Yazdi has provided justifications for the alleged sex acts, saying that they “were meant to save Jewish lives and even prevent terror attacks”.
“It’s impossible to call his actions and character anything but pure evil,” he said.
Yazdi’s attorney, David Halevi, said that the police were “demonising” his client.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/ ... 12617.html
Re: JUDAISM
Russia slams Israel over church land ruling
AFP Published June 16, 2022 1
MOSCOW: Russia said on Wednesday it was “deeply concerned” after Israel’s top court ruled that a Jewish settler group legally purchased an east Jerusalem property from the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Ateret Cohanim organisation, which seeks to “Judaize” Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, bought three buildings from the church in a controversial deal struck in secret in 2004.
The church brought charges against Ateret Cohanim, claiming the properties were acquired illegally and without its permission.
“We are deeply concerned about the situation regarding the Christian presence in Jerusalem,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement, a week after Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed the church’s appeal.
“Such a decision is predictably detrimental to interfaith peace and raises legitimate concerns about the position of the Christian community in the Holy Land,” she added.
Tensions between Russia and Israel have heightened since the start of the former’s military intervention in Ukraine, with Moscow accusing Israel of supporting the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv.
In April, Russia asked Israel to hand over ownership of the contested Alexander Nevsky Church in Jerusalem after the transfer — approved by the previous Israeli government — was halted.
Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2022
https://www.dawn.com/news/1695079/russi ... urch-land-
AFP Published June 16, 2022 1
MOSCOW: Russia said on Wednesday it was “deeply concerned” after Israel’s top court ruled that a Jewish settler group legally purchased an east Jerusalem property from the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Ateret Cohanim organisation, which seeks to “Judaize” Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, bought three buildings from the church in a controversial deal struck in secret in 2004.
The church brought charges against Ateret Cohanim, claiming the properties were acquired illegally and without its permission.
“We are deeply concerned about the situation regarding the Christian presence in Jerusalem,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement, a week after Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed the church’s appeal.
“Such a decision is predictably detrimental to interfaith peace and raises legitimate concerns about the position of the Christian community in the Holy Land,” she added.
Tensions between Russia and Israel have heightened since the start of the former’s military intervention in Ukraine, with Moscow accusing Israel of supporting the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv.
In April, Russia asked Israel to hand over ownership of the contested Alexander Nevsky Church in Jerusalem after the transfer — approved by the previous Israeli government — was halted.
Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2022
https://www.dawn.com/news/1695079/russi ... urch-land-
Re: JUDAISM
Associated Press
Pope orders online release of WWII-era Pius XII Jewish files
The Vatican has long defended its World War II-era pope, Pius XII, against criticism that he remained silent as the Holocaust unfolded, insisting that he worked quietly behind the scenes to save lives. Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Kertzer’s “The Pope at War,” which comes out Tuesday, June 7, 2022 in the United States, citing recently opened Vatican archives, suggests the lives the Vatican worked hardest to save were Jews who had converted to Catholicism or were children of Catholic-Jewish “mixed marriages.”
Vatican Jews
The Vatican has long defended its World War II-era pope, Pius XII, against criticism that he remained silent as the Holocaust unfolded, insisting that he worked quietly b
NICOLE WINFIELD
Thu, June 23, 2022, 9:42 AM
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has ordered the online publication of 170 volumes of its Jewish files from the recently opened Pope Pius XII archives, the Vatican announced Thursday, amid renewed debate about the legacy of its World War II-era pope.
The documentation contains 2,700 files of requests for Vatican help from Jewish groups and families, many of them baptized Catholics, so not actually practicing Jews anymore. The files were held in the Secretariat of State's archives and contain requests for papal intervention to avoid Nazi deportation, to obtain liberation from concentration camps or help finding family members.
The online publication of the files comes amid renewed debate about Pius’ legacy following the 2020 opening to scholars of his archives, of which the “Jews” files are but a small part. The Vatican has long defended Pius against criticism from some Jewish groups that he remained silent in the face of the Holocaust, saying he used quiet diplomacy to save lives.
One recent book that cites the newly opened archives, “The Pope at War,” by Pultizer Prize-winning historian David Kertzer, suggests that the people the Vatican was most concerned about saving were Jews who had converted to Catholicism, the offspring of Catholic-Jewish mixed marriages or otherwise related to Catholics.
Kerzer asserts that Pius was loath to intervene on behalf of Jews, or make public denunciations of Nazi atrocities against them, to avoid antagonizing Adolf Hitler or Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
The Vatican's foreign minister Paul Gallagher said it was hoped that the digital release of the “Jews” files would help scholars with research, but also descendants of those who had requested Vatican help, to “find traces of their loved ones from any part of the world.”
In an article for the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Gallagher said the files contained requests for help, but without much information on outcomes.
“Each of these requests constituted a case which, once processed, was destined for storage in a documentary series entitled ‘Jews,’” he wrote.
“The requests would arrive at the Secretariat of State, where diplomatic channels would try to provide all the help possible, taking into account the complexity of the political situation in the global context,” Gallagher wrote.
He cited one case found in the files: A Jew who was baptized Catholic in 1938, Werner Barasch, who sought help from the pope in 1942 to be freed from a concentration camp in Spain. According to the archives, his request was forwarded to the Vatican embassy in Madrid, but the documentation then went cold.
“As for the majority of requests for help witnessed by other cases, the result of the request was not reported,” Gallagher wrote. “In our hearts we immediately inevitably hope for a positive outcome, the hope that Werner Barasch was later freed from the concentration camp and was able to reach his mother overseas.”
Subsequent online research, including at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, found that Barasch did indeed survive and was able to join his mother in the United States in 1945, Gallagher reported.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/po ... 06404.html
Pope orders online release of WWII-era Pius XII Jewish files
The Vatican has long defended its World War II-era pope, Pius XII, against criticism that he remained silent as the Holocaust unfolded, insisting that he worked quietly behind the scenes to save lives. Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Kertzer’s “The Pope at War,” which comes out Tuesday, June 7, 2022 in the United States, citing recently opened Vatican archives, suggests the lives the Vatican worked hardest to save were Jews who had converted to Catholicism or were children of Catholic-Jewish “mixed marriages.”
Vatican Jews
The Vatican has long defended its World War II-era pope, Pius XII, against criticism that he remained silent as the Holocaust unfolded, insisting that he worked quietly b
NICOLE WINFIELD
Thu, June 23, 2022, 9:42 AM
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has ordered the online publication of 170 volumes of its Jewish files from the recently opened Pope Pius XII archives, the Vatican announced Thursday, amid renewed debate about the legacy of its World War II-era pope.
The documentation contains 2,700 files of requests for Vatican help from Jewish groups and families, many of them baptized Catholics, so not actually practicing Jews anymore. The files were held in the Secretariat of State's archives and contain requests for papal intervention to avoid Nazi deportation, to obtain liberation from concentration camps or help finding family members.
The online publication of the files comes amid renewed debate about Pius’ legacy following the 2020 opening to scholars of his archives, of which the “Jews” files are but a small part. The Vatican has long defended Pius against criticism from some Jewish groups that he remained silent in the face of the Holocaust, saying he used quiet diplomacy to save lives.
One recent book that cites the newly opened archives, “The Pope at War,” by Pultizer Prize-winning historian David Kertzer, suggests that the people the Vatican was most concerned about saving were Jews who had converted to Catholicism, the offspring of Catholic-Jewish mixed marriages or otherwise related to Catholics.
Kerzer asserts that Pius was loath to intervene on behalf of Jews, or make public denunciations of Nazi atrocities against them, to avoid antagonizing Adolf Hitler or Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
The Vatican's foreign minister Paul Gallagher said it was hoped that the digital release of the “Jews” files would help scholars with research, but also descendants of those who had requested Vatican help, to “find traces of their loved ones from any part of the world.”
In an article for the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Gallagher said the files contained requests for help, but without much information on outcomes.
“Each of these requests constituted a case which, once processed, was destined for storage in a documentary series entitled ‘Jews,’” he wrote.
“The requests would arrive at the Secretariat of State, where diplomatic channels would try to provide all the help possible, taking into account the complexity of the political situation in the global context,” Gallagher wrote.
He cited one case found in the files: A Jew who was baptized Catholic in 1938, Werner Barasch, who sought help from the pope in 1942 to be freed from a concentration camp in Spain. According to the archives, his request was forwarded to the Vatican embassy in Madrid, but the documentation then went cold.
“As for the majority of requests for help witnessed by other cases, the result of the request was not reported,” Gallagher wrote. “In our hearts we immediately inevitably hope for a positive outcome, the hope that Werner Barasch was later freed from the concentration camp and was able to reach his mother overseas.”
Subsequent online research, including at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, found that Barasch did indeed survive and was able to join his mother in the United States in 1945, Gallagher reported.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/po ... 06404.html
CITING JEWISH LAW, FLORIDA SYNAGOGUE CHALLENGES ABORTION BAN
CITING JEWISH LAW, FLORIDA SYNAGOGUE CHALLENGES ABORTION BAN — BUT HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH ‘RELIGIOUS REQUIREMENT’ ARGUMENTS
Days before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a Florida synagogue filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s abortion ban on the grounds that it violates Jews’ religious freedom. Halakhah, or Jewish law, the suit argues, often permits and sometimes requires abortion if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s health. Thus, any ban infringes on Jews’ right to free exercise.
As a Jewish woman who supports unrestricted and unapologetic access to abortion, I desperately hope the plaintiffs win. At the same time, as an expert in Jewish sexual ethics—and as a feminist—I have some concerns about the religious freedom argument, both in this case and in the broader discourse on Judaism and abortion. By relying, even implicitly, on halakhic precedent to define the “Jewish position” on abortion, such arguments still place outsized authority over pregnant people in the hands of a disproportionately patriarchal structure. And by framing the “Jewish position” as straightforward and unified, they risk oversimplifying the very conversation about religion and reproduction they seek to expand.
First off: the lawsuit is correct that Jewish law not only permits but requires abortion in many circumstances. Authorities ranging from the 11th century commentator Rashi and the 12th century legalist Maimonides to the 20th century Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg have ruled that abortion is permitted because of a pregnant person’s mental distress, and that when that person’s life is in danger, the obligation to save a life in fact requires abortion. Even in cases where abortion is prohibited, this is generally based less upon an appeal to the value of fetal life—which the tradition characterizes most strongly as a “doubtful” or “potential” soul—but rather on the grounds that, for example, one is not permitted to mutilate one’s body, which ultimately belongs to God.
Yet it is precisely this litany of overwhelmingly male voices spilling gallons of ink over the details of conception, pregnancy, and birth, and serving as gatekeepers for the decisions of women and others who can get pregnant regarding their reproduction, that makes this argument risky. Indeed, this legacy directly influences systems in which access to abortion is gatekept, even if the abortions themselves tend to be ultimately permitted.
While Israel, for example, permits abortion in many cases, it requires anyone seeking an abortion to justify their decision before a committee—a system that, as Jewish Studies professor Michal Raucher reminds us, “reflects the belief that women cannot or should not make this decision on their own,” even if it approves most requests. And even in the US, as Raucher also reminds us, this gatekeeping logic can be just as easily wielded to argue for the restriction of abortion as it can for permitting it.
Highlighting these traditions also emphasizes the ways Jewish views on abortion have differed from how the Christian Right has defined “religious” values and, in doing so, attempts to reclaim the domain of “religion” in public discourse. It asks us to have a conversation about religion and reproduction on a broader scale.
This conversation is both necessary and overdue. However, if it is to avoid essentializing religious traditions and, just as importantly, avoid erasing internal movements for accountability, justice, and liberation, it must recognize complexity within those traditions as well as between them. As I’ve already noted, the same sources that liberal Jews deploy to argue for protecting abortion access can also be used to curtail reproductive agency. Furthermore, not all Jews—including the 33% of American Jews affiliated with the Reform movement—consider halakhah authoritative. For those Jews, other factors inform both their Jewishness and their reproductive politics as much as or more than the legal tradition and what it does or doesn’t permit.
Such a conversation must also avoid making reductive claims about “the Jewish position” or “the Christian position” on abortion. As the lawsuit itself recognizes, not only Judaism, but other traditions, including Islam and Christianity, have had and continue to have far more nuanced understandings around abortion, contraception, personhood, and reproduction than regnant white evangelical rhetoric about “religion” would have us believe. Indeed, as scholar of American religions R. Marie Griffith notes, prior to the late 1960s and 70s, even organizations such as the Southern Baptist Convention were far more sanguine about abortion than they are now.
Let me reiterate: I fervently hope this lawsuit succeeds. I hope it establishes legal precedent, and I hope it helps spark a national conversation about both the complexity of religious voices and practices surrounding abortion, contraception, and reproductive matters broadly.
But these hopes are precisely why I believe we’ve got to stop making claims about “the Jewish position on abortion.” Doing so oversimplifies not only the range of Jewish discourse on the matter, but the range of discourses within other traditions as well, including Islam and, yes, Christianity. And it runs the risk of equating “the Jewish position” with “halakhic precedent”—a system that has been, until the last decades of the 20th century, more or less exclusively male. Leaning too hard on the ways in which halakhic precedent indeed does, at times, not only permit but even require abortion functions to erase Jewish women and other Jews who can get pregnant. It simply replaces one form of dogmatism with another.
What is indisputable is that Jews—of all religious affiliations—have abortions. Jews who can get pregnant need and will continue to need safe and easily accessible abortion. These people’s experiences and stories are just as important, and should carry comparable normative force, as halakhic precedent. Religion, as the excellent podcast Keeping It 101 reminds us, is people. Abortion access is a Jewish value because abortion is something Jews need. It need not be written for it to be “written,” so to speak.
https://religiondispatches.org/citing-j ... arguments/
Days before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a Florida synagogue filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s abortion ban on the grounds that it violates Jews’ religious freedom. Halakhah, or Jewish law, the suit argues, often permits and sometimes requires abortion if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s health. Thus, any ban infringes on Jews’ right to free exercise.
As a Jewish woman who supports unrestricted and unapologetic access to abortion, I desperately hope the plaintiffs win. At the same time, as an expert in Jewish sexual ethics—and as a feminist—I have some concerns about the religious freedom argument, both in this case and in the broader discourse on Judaism and abortion. By relying, even implicitly, on halakhic precedent to define the “Jewish position” on abortion, such arguments still place outsized authority over pregnant people in the hands of a disproportionately patriarchal structure. And by framing the “Jewish position” as straightforward and unified, they risk oversimplifying the very conversation about religion and reproduction they seek to expand.
First off: the lawsuit is correct that Jewish law not only permits but requires abortion in many circumstances. Authorities ranging from the 11th century commentator Rashi and the 12th century legalist Maimonides to the 20th century Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg have ruled that abortion is permitted because of a pregnant person’s mental distress, and that when that person’s life is in danger, the obligation to save a life in fact requires abortion. Even in cases where abortion is prohibited, this is generally based less upon an appeal to the value of fetal life—which the tradition characterizes most strongly as a “doubtful” or “potential” soul—but rather on the grounds that, for example, one is not permitted to mutilate one’s body, which ultimately belongs to God.
Yet it is precisely this litany of overwhelmingly male voices spilling gallons of ink over the details of conception, pregnancy, and birth, and serving as gatekeepers for the decisions of women and others who can get pregnant regarding their reproduction, that makes this argument risky. Indeed, this legacy directly influences systems in which access to abortion is gatekept, even if the abortions themselves tend to be ultimately permitted.
While Israel, for example, permits abortion in many cases, it requires anyone seeking an abortion to justify their decision before a committee—a system that, as Jewish Studies professor Michal Raucher reminds us, “reflects the belief that women cannot or should not make this decision on their own,” even if it approves most requests. And even in the US, as Raucher also reminds us, this gatekeeping logic can be just as easily wielded to argue for the restriction of abortion as it can for permitting it.
Highlighting these traditions also emphasizes the ways Jewish views on abortion have differed from how the Christian Right has defined “religious” values and, in doing so, attempts to reclaim the domain of “religion” in public discourse. It asks us to have a conversation about religion and reproduction on a broader scale.
This conversation is both necessary and overdue. However, if it is to avoid essentializing religious traditions and, just as importantly, avoid erasing internal movements for accountability, justice, and liberation, it must recognize complexity within those traditions as well as between them. As I’ve already noted, the same sources that liberal Jews deploy to argue for protecting abortion access can also be used to curtail reproductive agency. Furthermore, not all Jews—including the 33% of American Jews affiliated with the Reform movement—consider halakhah authoritative. For those Jews, other factors inform both their Jewishness and their reproductive politics as much as or more than the legal tradition and what it does or doesn’t permit.
Such a conversation must also avoid making reductive claims about “the Jewish position” or “the Christian position” on abortion. As the lawsuit itself recognizes, not only Judaism, but other traditions, including Islam and Christianity, have had and continue to have far more nuanced understandings around abortion, contraception, personhood, and reproduction than regnant white evangelical rhetoric about “religion” would have us believe. Indeed, as scholar of American religions R. Marie Griffith notes, prior to the late 1960s and 70s, even organizations such as the Southern Baptist Convention were far more sanguine about abortion than they are now.
Let me reiterate: I fervently hope this lawsuit succeeds. I hope it establishes legal precedent, and I hope it helps spark a national conversation about both the complexity of religious voices and practices surrounding abortion, contraception, and reproductive matters broadly.
But these hopes are precisely why I believe we’ve got to stop making claims about “the Jewish position on abortion.” Doing so oversimplifies not only the range of Jewish discourse on the matter, but the range of discourses within other traditions as well, including Islam and, yes, Christianity. And it runs the risk of equating “the Jewish position” with “halakhic precedent”—a system that has been, until the last decades of the 20th century, more or less exclusively male. Leaning too hard on the ways in which halakhic precedent indeed does, at times, not only permit but even require abortion functions to erase Jewish women and other Jews who can get pregnant. It simply replaces one form of dogmatism with another.
What is indisputable is that Jews—of all religious affiliations—have abortions. Jews who can get pregnant need and will continue to need safe and easily accessible abortion. These people’s experiences and stories are just as important, and should carry comparable normative force, as halakhic precedent. Religion, as the excellent podcast Keeping It 101 reminds us, is people. Abortion access is a Jewish value because abortion is something Jews need. It need not be written for it to be “written,” so to speak.
https://religiondispatches.org/citing-j ... arguments/
Re: JUDAISM
The Presbyterian Church voted to declare Israel an apartheid state. Jewish organizations are calling the move antisemitic.
Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert
Fri, July 15, 2022 at 10:12 PM
Jewish organizations argued the move is antisemitic, calling the allegation "offensive and false."
"[T]here is a fundamental difference between antisemitism and the right to critique the policies of Israel," read a letter by the church.
In a move Jewish organizations are condemning as antisemitic, the Presbyterian Church USA voted to declare that the actions of the Israeli government against the people of Palestine meets the legal definition of apartheid.
Commissioners of 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted 266 to 116 in their annual meeting to make public the church's stance that both affirms the right of Israel to provide security to its borders and criticizes human rights offenses perpetrated against Palestinians.
"In 2018, Israel passed a nation-state law, which declares the distinction between Jews and non-Jews fundamental and legitimate, and permits institutional discrimination in land management and development, housing, citizenship, language and culture. This decision among many other practices have confirmed that the policies and practices of Israel constitute apartheid," read a letter by Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, stated clerk of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church.
The clerk's letter added the Presbyterian Church, which consists of over 1.7 million members, recognizes the legitimacy of the Israeli state but it opposes continuing occupation of Palestine, which it declared to be "illegitimate, illegal under international law, and an enduring threat to peace in the region."
Nelson has previously described Israeli policies toward Palestinians as "enslavement," angering some Jewish organizations. The latest letter has garnered similar reactions, with some accusing the clerk and the Presbyterian Church itself of being antisemitic.
"Jewish Federations are not surprised by the latest antisemitic action taken by Presbyterian Church USA PC (USA) in its vote to adopt a resolution calling Israel an apartheid state. There was a time when their words mattered. That time is long gone." The Jewish Federations of North America said in a statement. "This resolution does nothing to further peace or foster a better future for Christians, Jews, and Muslims; Palestinians or Israelis. Its only intention is to demonize the Jews and Israel with the offensive and false allegation of apartheid."
Rabbi Noam E. Marans, director for interreligious and intergroup relations for the American Jewish Committee told The Washington Post the Presbyterian Church's stance is a "tragedy."
"Presbyterians and Jews in the pews need and want each other in order to address the issues that are most challenging in America today," Marans told The Post. "This prevents that from happening."
The letter written on behalf of Presbyterian leadership stated that the church remains "committed" to combating antisemitism, as well as all forms of violence and discrimination.
"At the same time, we are convinced that there is a fundamental difference between antisemitism and the right to critique the policies of Israel deemed illegal under international law," Nelson's letter read.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/pr ... 14827.html
Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert
Fri, July 15, 2022 at 10:12 PM
Jewish organizations argued the move is antisemitic, calling the allegation "offensive and false."
"[T]here is a fundamental difference between antisemitism and the right to critique the policies of Israel," read a letter by the church.
In a move Jewish organizations are condemning as antisemitic, the Presbyterian Church USA voted to declare that the actions of the Israeli government against the people of Palestine meets the legal definition of apartheid.
Commissioners of 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted 266 to 116 in their annual meeting to make public the church's stance that both affirms the right of Israel to provide security to its borders and criticizes human rights offenses perpetrated against Palestinians.
"In 2018, Israel passed a nation-state law, which declares the distinction between Jews and non-Jews fundamental and legitimate, and permits institutional discrimination in land management and development, housing, citizenship, language and culture. This decision among many other practices have confirmed that the policies and practices of Israel constitute apartheid," read a letter by Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, stated clerk of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church.
The clerk's letter added the Presbyterian Church, which consists of over 1.7 million members, recognizes the legitimacy of the Israeli state but it opposes continuing occupation of Palestine, which it declared to be "illegitimate, illegal under international law, and an enduring threat to peace in the region."
Nelson has previously described Israeli policies toward Palestinians as "enslavement," angering some Jewish organizations. The latest letter has garnered similar reactions, with some accusing the clerk and the Presbyterian Church itself of being antisemitic.
"Jewish Federations are not surprised by the latest antisemitic action taken by Presbyterian Church USA PC (USA) in its vote to adopt a resolution calling Israel an apartheid state. There was a time when their words mattered. That time is long gone." The Jewish Federations of North America said in a statement. "This resolution does nothing to further peace or foster a better future for Christians, Jews, and Muslims; Palestinians or Israelis. Its only intention is to demonize the Jews and Israel with the offensive and false allegation of apartheid."
Rabbi Noam E. Marans, director for interreligious and intergroup relations for the American Jewish Committee told The Washington Post the Presbyterian Church's stance is a "tragedy."
"Presbyterians and Jews in the pews need and want each other in order to address the issues that are most challenging in America today," Marans told The Post. "This prevents that from happening."
The letter written on behalf of Presbyterian leadership stated that the church remains "committed" to combating antisemitism, as well as all forms of violence and discrimination.
"At the same time, we are convinced that there is a fundamental difference between antisemitism and the right to critique the policies of Israel deemed illegal under international law," Nelson's letter read.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/pr ... 14827.html
"Shalom Aleichem" (Jewish Hymn) - Vitaliia Dupliakina
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XdJ-fnBkh0
Shalom Aleichem
Peace be upon you
Vitaliia Dupliakina gracefully sings "Shalom Aleichem" accompanied by Natalia Burnagiel (violin), Michalina Jastrzębska (cello), Maciej Erbel (drums) and Jakub Niewiadomski (piano).
"Shalom Aleichem" (Peace be upon you) is a traditional Hebrew song sung by Jews every Friday night upon returning home from synagogue prayer. It signals the arrival of the Shabbat, welcoming the angels who accompany a person home on the eve of the Shabbat. The custom of singing "Shalom Aleichem" on Friday night is now nearly universal among religious Jews.
This liturgical poem was written by the Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) of Safed in the late 16th or early 17th century. According to teachings in the Talmud (central text of Rabbinic Judaism), two angels accompany people on their way back home from synagogue on Friday night—a good angel and an evil angel. If the house has been prepared for the Shabbat ("the lamp has been lit, the table set, and his couch spread"), the good angel utters a blessing that the next Shabbat will be the same, and the evil angel is forced to respond "Amen". But if the home is not prepared for Shabbat, the evil angel expresses the wish that the next Shabbat will be the same, and the good angel is forced to respond "Amen". The hymn is assumed to be based on this teaching.
Shabbat is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the week—i.e., Saturday. On this day, religious Jews remember the biblical stories describing the creation of the heaven and earth in six days and the redemption from slavery and The Exodus from Egypt, and look forward to a future Messianic Age. Since the Jewish religious calendar counts days from sunset to sunset, Shabbat begins in the evening of what on the civil calendar is Friday.
Shalom Aleichem!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XdJ-fnBkh0
Shalom Aleichem
Peace be upon you
Vitaliia Dupliakina gracefully sings "Shalom Aleichem" accompanied by Natalia Burnagiel (violin), Michalina Jastrzębska (cello), Maciej Erbel (drums) and Jakub Niewiadomski (piano).
"Shalom Aleichem" (Peace be upon you) is a traditional Hebrew song sung by Jews every Friday night upon returning home from synagogue prayer. It signals the arrival of the Shabbat, welcoming the angels who accompany a person home on the eve of the Shabbat. The custom of singing "Shalom Aleichem" on Friday night is now nearly universal among religious Jews.
This liturgical poem was written by the Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) of Safed in the late 16th or early 17th century. According to teachings in the Talmud (central text of Rabbinic Judaism), two angels accompany people on their way back home from synagogue on Friday night—a good angel and an evil angel. If the house has been prepared for the Shabbat ("the lamp has been lit, the table set, and his couch spread"), the good angel utters a blessing that the next Shabbat will be the same, and the evil angel is forced to respond "Amen". But if the home is not prepared for Shabbat, the evil angel expresses the wish that the next Shabbat will be the same, and the good angel is forced to respond "Amen". The hymn is assumed to be based on this teaching.
Shabbat is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the week—i.e., Saturday. On this day, religious Jews remember the biblical stories describing the creation of the heaven and earth in six days and the redemption from slavery and The Exodus from Egypt, and look forward to a future Messianic Age. Since the Jewish religious calendar counts days from sunset to sunset, Shabbat begins in the evening of what on the civil calendar is Friday.
Shalom Aleichem!