Black Lives Matter (BLM) has taken over center stage in this unfolding horror story of the killing of George Floyd. It now has to be considered the nation’s most prominent and powerful organized black group. And that’s bad luck for us Jews, liberal and conservative, both religious and political-wise. Sadly, most Jewish organizations, those fueled by Jewish donors, willfully ignore the hate from blacks. They have jumped on the “systemic racism” and “intersectionality” bubkis-bandwagon and are playing follow the leader, with BLM calling out the marching cadence. We cannot emphasize enough the dangers to our own community we face from the new crop of black militants led by BLM.
We know the old ones well. Their charter and platform states that Israel is responsible for, “the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. Israel is an apartheid state..that sanctions discrimination and practices genocide against the Palestinian people.” So, of all the brutal nations in the world, BLM selectively chooses the Jewish State to demonize. Not Iran, Arabia, Somalia or China. They equate demonic Jewish Israel with our own nation by weaving in the preposterous claim that only when Israel stops persecuting Palestinians will blacks be liberated. No time line on this demand. A poster distributed throughout our universities by BLM and Students For Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters claims that Jews do well in many universities because of “Jewish Privilege.” So this crap of “White Privilege” envelopes Jews as well. A blinking, red, warning signal.
But Jonathan Greenblatt, who runs the ADL doesn’t get it. In a letter to the New York Jewish Week, he states, “And we are well aware that a small minority of leaders within the Black Lives Matter movement have supported anti-Israel, and at times anti-Semitic positions.” Not to worry, only a small minority. And Rabbi Avi S. Olitzky, of Minneapolis, of all places, writes, “We can argue and joust and cry about Israel another day. Today we have the categorical moral imperative to hear the pain of our black brothers and sisters. And I know in my heart of hearts that I have to stand with them. And so now and evermore we must all say, Black Lives Matter.” Sure, “Israel another day.” Not everyday. This mindless, dangerous rabbi has also expressed his admiration for Jew hating Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Enough said.
Jews have got to be literate enough to read the handwriting on the walls. We should have learned our lesson in dealing with black Jew haters like Rev. Wright, Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and Congressman Hank Johnson who called us “termites.” We Jews, only about 6 million, have done quite enough for blacks who number about 39 million. We started the NAACP, walked with Dr. King and have gone overboard in black communities giving scholarships to their kids. We ask, where is the reciprocity? When will they finally stand with us to support Israel? To condemn Jew haters in their midst? Good questions, no answers…..yet.
What do you get when you mix CNN’s relentless attacks on the police, since Trump’s election, to people “of color” while never portraying the great majority of police doing their jobs with grace and restraint whom the law abiding, hard working people “of color” appreciate for keeping them safe from the gangs, drug dealers and criminals in their own neighborhoods.
This is just the beginning of the destruction of businesses, small neighborhood stores which keep infrastructure going in depressed inner cities, the majority of whose residents detest and know these thugs breaking into upscale and appliance store windows are just that, thieves who pollute the legitimate grievance of a Black man’s wrongful death. They malign his memory and the true desire for justice for people “of color” and all people everywhere. Whites tripping over themselves to make excuses for these thugs only serves to enable and encourage them. Stop it. Find a legitimate “cause” to support if you are feeling guilty for being White. Martin Luther King Jr. would be appalled.
Sincerely Bob Katzenbaum
Cookies For Cops
Dear Editor:
Tomorrow I plan on bringing cookies, sodas and chocolates, along with hugs, to my local police station to say thank you for keeping us safe, for putting your lives on the line for us, for the overwhelming majority of police who act with grace and restraint, which mainstream media never reports.
So, pick a day and each week, drop off goodies, and smiles, to your police officers to show your gratitude. A small gesture, sorely needed right now, which goes a long way.
Sincerely Sally Humphrey
What’s Our Excuse?
Dear Editor:
The Jews of 1930’s Germany had an excuse for remaining silent. The ZOA and only a handful of other Jewish individuals are speaking out against the murderous bigoted targeting of synagogues and Jewish owned businesses, in the name of “protesting racial injustice.” Silence, post multiple synagogue killings and record numbers of hate crimes against Jews worldwide??? To all “progressive” and “reform” Jews, now hear this: standing up to Jew hate while also standing up against injustice are not mutually exclusive. Just ask the dead murdered Jews in Germany and Europe who were forced to be silent.
Daniel Greenfield, “The Los Angeles Pogrom That No Jewish Organization Will Talk About”, “…if we do remain silent, while chanting the cause of those who vandalized our houses of worship and shops, we will have neither decency nor respect. Black Lives Matter, the radical group leading the demonstrations, is anti-Semitic, formed in 2014 as a merger of activists from the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, and the anti-Semitic Black Panthers…BLM published a platform, (since removed) accusing Israel of committing “genocide”, as “apartheid”. It officially joined BLM with the anti-Semitic BDS campaign to boycott Israel.”
I marched with peaceful protesters in the 1970’s for civil rights and justice for all. But when the marches turned to bombings, violence and looting, the “cause” was lost in the burned out rubble. And perhaps the most significant difference between then and now is that we wouldn’t have tolerated or marched with anyone who was antisemitic, who targeted Jews or synagogues or Jewish owned businesses. And back then at least, Jews had the courage to speak up. Their moral compass was still intact, not yet muddied by morally confused and compromised “progressives”, by Jews who have lost their way, and who will be marched along with the rest of the Jews, when we are rounded up again.
Sincerely Rachel Ansforth
These Troubled Times
Dear Editor:
We live in a fractured society. Racial, religious and ethnic tensions are tearing away at the fabric of American life and the American soul. And, amidst it all, we are still reeling from a devastating pandemic.
As in all matters, and at all times, our Torah guides the way.
Kol hamerachem al habrios, merachamim olov min hashomayim. Whoever extends mercy to his fellow Man, is extended mercy from Heaven. (Tractate Shabbos 151b)
Indeed, as humans created in G-d’s image, we are enjoined to exercise kindness and compassion at all times. We must certainly strengthen these traits during times of challenge and distress.
Like all decent Americans, we are horrified by the senseless and ruthless killing of George Floyd, and we join in solidarity with the outpouring of hurt, anger and frustration expressed by responsible citizens protesting peacefully.
We are also greatly saddened by the frightening scenes of innocent bystanders and store owners under siege, threatened by violence and mayhem, and facing the prospect of lost livelihoods and uncertain futures. We are deeply distressed, as well, by the looting and vandalism that included assaults and provocations against citizens and law enforcement officers sworn to keep the peace and ensure the safety of our citizens.
So, it is at this very moment that we remember our Torah’s admonition that it is precisely by extending compassion, empathy, and understanding to the strangers, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens in our midst – regardless of our racial or ethnic backgrounds – that we will be shepherded safely through these troubled times, and at all times. That it is by feeling the pain of others and building a sense of community that we will merit Heaven’s healing and unifying embrace.
Let us commit ourselves to that. And, in doing so, we pray that the Merciful One will guide American society and its leaders to ensure the rights and safety of all citizens. May peace among, and respect for, all sectors of American society emerge from this national trauma.
George Floyd’s brutal death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Photo Credit: AP
By: Caroline Glick
Scattered among the thousands of cellphone videos depicting looting and destruction in the streets of America’s greatest cities are clips of a different sort. In these short videos, we see throngs of white people on their knees, bowing before black people and asking for forgiveness for their “white privilege” and the “structural racism” in the deplorable, irredeemable United States of America.
Earlier this week, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee former vice president Joe Biden symbolically embraced these genuflecting denunciations of “white privilege” as the official position of the Democratic Party. Biden had himself photographed on bended knee with a group of African Americans standing behind him during a visit to a church in Wilmington, Delaware.
These videos point to a socio-political phenomenon that sparked the riots throughout the country following George Floyd’s brutal death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. They also make clear the reason that the liberal media in the U.S. continues to back the protests despite the fact that from the outset they have involved wide-scale violence, destruction and looting.
Contrary to the narrative being pushed by the media and America’s elites, the riots are not an consequence of increased police brutality towards African Americans. As Heather McDonald documented this week in the Wall Street Journal, over the past several years, police violence against black people has decreased significantly.
The violence we are seeing is a result of the steep radicalization of progressive white Americans. Biden gave voice to this radicalization last summer when, during a campaign appearance in Iowa he said, “We choose truth over facts.”
Last year, political scientist Zach Goldberg published an article in Tablet online magazine where he presented statistical data demonstrating the depth and breadth of the radicalization of white progressives over the past ten years. Goldberg revealed that between 2010-2019, white progressives became the only demographic group in U.S. history to prioritize the interests of other groups over its own interests. White progressives prioritize the advancement of the interests of minorities and immigrants over their own and over those of American society as a whole. Moreover, as Goldberg showed, white progressive positions on race and immigration are more extreme than the positions black, Latino, and Asian progressives hold on these issues.
Goldberg argues that the massive increase in internet usage by white progressives over the past decade is responsible for the radicalization. Online platforms have created an information bubble which has created a warped presentation of reality to those inside the bubble. In this warped reality, race relations are far worse than they are in reality. Hence, those who inhabit this bubble prefer “truth” as presented in the bubble to facts.
Goldberg is undoubtedly correct that the more time people spend inside their internet bubble the more removed they become from objective reality. But internet isn’t the only source of the radicalization. The Obama presidency was also a factor.
When Barack Obama won the presidential race in 2008, many Americans believed his victory was proof the United States had overcome its racist past. Obama however, did not support this view. Throughout his tenure in office, Obama used the power of his position to resonate and legitimize positions on race that until then had been relegated to the leftist margins of American politics.
Obama cultivated the view that far from being a post-racial society, America is inherently racist and that American racism is structural – that is, it was baked in and impossible to overcome. In so doing, Obama gave credence to the false claim at the heart of the riots: that black Americans are under continuous, existential threat from the state as a whole and from law enforcement bodies first and foremost. Calls by Hollywood celebrities and Obama administration alumni to defund the police take this view to its logical endpoint.
A third cause of the radicalization of white progressives is the higher education system. The more radicalized campuses are, the more radicalized graduates become.
The radicalization of white progressive politics has been given its most dramatic expression in the refusal of progressive mayors and governors to act forthrightly to end the violence in their streets. Instead, we had the likes of New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio (whose daughter arrested for participating in the mayhem), stand with those burning his city.
In a letter to police sergeants in the New York Police Department, Ed Mullen, President of the Sergeants Benevolent Association gave expression to the distress of New York police officers. “I know we are losing our city,” Mullen wrote.
“We have no leadership, no direction, and no plan. I know that you are being held back and used as pawns,” he continued.
Protesters run as police officers fire rubber bullets during a protest over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man in police custody in Minneapolis, in Los Angeles, Saturday, May 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
He then asked the sergeants to hold the line.
“Remember,” he added, “you work for a higher authority.”
For American Jews, the violent riots constitute a challenge on several levels. First there is the challenge of squaring their political identity with their Jewish identity. As the 2014 Pew survey of American Jews showed, around half of American Jews identify as progressives. As progressives, many American Jews share the views of their non-Jewish progressive counterparts regarding the need to prioritize the interests of minority communities over their own interests.
But the Jews’ progressive desire to work on behalf of those demonstrating for African Americans places their political identity on a collision course with their Jewish identity. Black Lives Matter, the radical group leading the demonstrations, is an anti-Semitic organization. BLM was formed in 2014 as a merger of activists from the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, the anti-Semitic Black Panthers and Dream Catchers. In 2016, BLM published a platform that has since been removed from its website.
The platform accused Israel of committing “genocide” and referred to the Jewish state as an “apartheid” state. The platform accused Israel and its supporters of pushing the U.S. into wars in the Middle East. The platform also officially joined BLM with the anti-Semitic BDS campaign to boycott, divest and sanction Israel. BDS campaign leader Omar Barghouti acknowledged this week that the goal of the BDS campaign is to destroy Israel. BDS campaigns on U.S. campuses are characterized by bigotry and discrimination directed against Jewish students.
BLM’s platform’s publication was greeted with wall-to-wall condemnations by Jewish organizations from across the political spectrum. But today, Jewish progressive are hard-pressed to turn their backs on the group, despite its anti-Semitism. As white progressives, they believe they must fight America’s “structural racism” even at the cost of empowering social forces that reject their civil rights as Jews. As Jews, they feel that their rights should be protected. One progressive Jew tried to square the circle writing in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, “Today Jews need to support Black Lives Matter; tomorrow we can talk about Israel.”
As white progressives radicalized over the past decade, radical Jewish progressives built a formidable Jewish organizational framework whose mission is to advance the progressive revolution. They have worked to recast Judaism itself as the apotheosis of progressive revolutionary ideals under the banner of “tikkun olam.”
In a letter to police sergeants in the New York Police Department, Ed Mullen, President of the Sergeants Benevolent Association gave expression to the distress of New York police officers. “I know we are losing our city,” Mullen wrote. Photo Credit: Facebook
Last week Tablet published a twenty-thousand word essay titled “Bend the Jews,” on Bend the Arc, the flagship organization spawned by those efforts.
Bend the Arc first rose to the attention of the general public in 2018 in the wake of the massacre of worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The organization quickly put out a statement blaming President Donald Trump for the massacre. When Trump came to the congregations to pay his respects, Bend the Arc organized demonstrations against him.
Bend the Arc may not have members. But it has an annual budget of tens of millions of dollars. $28 million of its budget comes from three non-Jewish foundations which have no other foothold in Jewish organizational life. On the other hand, one of the funders, the Rockefeller Foundation is well known for its generous support for radical anti-Israel and BDS groups.
To achieve its goal of reshaping the world views of American Jews, among other things, Bend the Arc trains Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist rabbinical students. It also pays the salaries of associate rabbis in various communities. With many synagogues long steeped in financial crisis due to dwindling membership, Bend the Arc’s ability to pay rabbis makes its involvement with synagogue hiring an attractive option for many communities. This is doubly true for synagogues whose members are progressive.
Black Lives Matter, the radical group leading the demonstrations, is an anti-Semitic organization. BLM was formed in 2014 as a merger of activists from the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, the anti-Semitic Black Panthers and Dream Catchers. In 2016, BLM published a platform that has since been removed from its website. Photo Credit: AP
As progressive politics paralyze Jews from acting against anti-Semites in their political camp, levels of anti-Semitic sentiment among white progressives are rising. As Goldberg reported, as white progressives became radicalized on issues related to minorities and immigration, they also turned against Israel. Today white progressives are hostile to Israel. And Goldberg argued that while they express support for Jews, “their sympathy toward and concern for Jews has become more conditional.”
What is it conditioned on? On Jews not being opposed by blacks or other minorities that are considered by white progressives to be less privileged than Jews are.
On the burning streets of America today, leftist Jew-hatred is on clear display. Although New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio has prevented New York police from taking firm action against looters and arsonists, he did instruct them to use all necessary force to prevent ultra-Orthodox Jewish children from going to school. Earlier this week police in Brooklyn chased a group of Hassidic children and their mothers off a playground in Williamsburg.
Even worse, synagogues have been vandalized in New York and Los Angeles. According to Yeshiva World News, 75 percent of Jewish-owned stores in an Orthodox enclave of Beverly Hills were looted last weekend. Graffiti in Los Angeles made clear that the businesses and neighborhoods were targeted deliberately because they are Jewish.
Between BLM’s establishment in 2014 and the publication of its platform in 2016, anti-Israel activists went to great lengths to create an utterly false conceptual linkage between the Palestinians and African Americans. Today, anti-Israel activists in the U.S. have stepped up their efforts to capitalize on the riots. Anti-Israel activists in Bethlehem painted a picture of George Floyd wearing a khaffiyeh and draped in a Palestinian flag on the separation barrier. Photos of the picture are being heavily promoted on social media.
Al Sharpton speaks out at George Floyd memorial: ‘Get your knee off our necks’ Photo Credit: AP
Democrats believe the riots will wreck President Trump’s reelection hopes. Polls this week indicate that at least in the short term, the unrest is hurting Trump’s chances of being reelected. Then again, it’s possible the chaos in the streets will strengthen public support for President Trump who voters may view as the last bulwark separating them from national destruction.
Whether Trump wins or loses in November, the radicalization of white progressives at the heart of the mayhem represents the greatest short and long-term threat to social cohesion in America. It also represents the greatest threat to the communal future of American Jewry, to relations between the American Jewish community and the rest of the Jewish world, and to U.S.-Israel relations.
The Al Sharpton who sounded this clarion call in the presence of George Floyd’s grieving family is the same Al Sharpton who goaded anti-Semitic rioters in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y., for three agonizing days during the summer of 1991. Photo Credit:: Robert Swanson via Wikimedia Commons.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is an apt example of the painful contradictions between fighting racism and fighting anti-Semitism
By: Ben Cohen
Fighting racism doesn’t necessarily mean fighting anti-Semitism. Fighting racism can sometimes involve elements of anti-Semitism. And fighting anti-Semitism can sometimes lead to accusations of racism.
If you study the trajectory of racial politics in America in the last 50 years or so, it’s difficult to avoid those three conclusions, as depressing as they are.
Even so, my purpose in raising them here isn’t to discourage American Jews from participating in the new civil-rights movement that has coalesced in the wake of the sickening police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Nor, with deep regret, am I raising them because I’ve come up with an ingenious proposal to resolve these contradictions once and for all. I am raising them only because we need to be clear-eyed about the challenges that lie ahead.
“Get your knee off our necks,” the Rev. Al Sharpton exclaimed at Floyd’s funeral in Minneapolis on June 4, capturing the anger of black communities across the United States at the seemingly unending cycle of police brutality. It is a call to action that resonates powerfully with many Jews (myself included) on the emotional and moral levels.
The problem is the spoiling role that historical memory can play at charged moments such as these.
The Al Sharpton who sounded this clarion call in the presence of George Floyd’s grieving family is the same Al Sharpton who goaded anti-Semitic rioters in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y., for three agonizing days during the summer of 1991.
“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house,” he declared at a rally in Harlem before delivering a eulogy at the funeral of Gavin Cato—the 7-year-old African-American boy whose tragic death in a car accident sparked the rioting—where he invoked the most chilling anti-Semitic tropes. “All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it,” Sharpton told the mourners. “No compromise, no meetings, no coffee klatch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’.”
Sharpton has never offered genuine contrition for these grotesque remarks, perhaps because they reflect what he genuinely believes, and certainly because there was never any political cost attached to articulating them, Thirty years later, he’s still around, commanding the attention of a new generation of activists. In the struggle against racism in America, you can rest assured they will be told that Sharpton’s record of anti-Semitism is a subordinate concern—not to say an irritation—and those who raise it must be doing so to discredit the goals of the movement.
Sharpton is an apt example of the painful contradictions between fighting racism and fighting anti-Semitism that I outlined at the beginning. The sectarian politics he represents is the antithesis of that iconic image, much treasured by American Jews, of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965 in Selma, Ala. But in the present political climate, it is the Sharpton approach to black-Jewish relations that has a much greater chance of prevailing.
So, and this is the question confronting the many Jews dedicated to rooting out the cancer of racism from our police departments and from our public institutions more generally, what are you supposed to think when you encounter anti-Semitism as an element in this very same struggle? And what do you do?
As I confessed earlier, I don’t have clear answers, partly because I think we are still diagnosing the nature of the problem. In the last five years, a campaign waged by anti-Zionist groups has pushed the false narrative that American police officers learned the methods of brutality from Israeli military personnel who tested them first on Palestinians. (The evidence provided is laughably flimsy. One claim I came across—that Minneapolis police were “trained” in crowd control by IDF officers—rested entirely on a link to a news report about a one-day anti-terrorism conference that was hosted by the Israeli Consulate in Chicago, which some Minneapolis officers apparently attended. In 2012.)
Yet this readiness to embrace the demonology of Zionism speaks to a deeper problem. Most of the anti-Semitism encountered in black communities in America doesn’t have anything to do with Israel or Zionism. Instead, it is an Americanized version of the Christian anti-Semitism that was adapted by European nationalists and socialists of various stripes over the last two centuries. Its core message is that capitalist democracy is a system designed by Jews to benefit Jews, who then cry out “anti-Semitism!” to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses.
Sharpton’s eulogy to Gavin Cato quoted above reflects the journey of those sentiments across the Atlantic.
In both American and Europe, racism against blacks and other communities of color has invariably been a feature of right-wing politics. Contrastingly, anti-Semitism has been a presence on left and right alike, who share the same prejudices about Jews even if they draw slightly different conclusions from them.
Despite the preponderance of Jews on the left, raising anti-Semitism as a specific concern in these milieus has historically been treated with suspicion, as an implicit threat to divide the progressive movement over Jewish tribal complaints. In the context of the civil-rights movement in the United States—a country where the historical role played by anti-Semitism has been negligible when compared with racism—complaints of anti-Semitism are frequently presented as a sinister attempt to legitimize the “white privilege” of the Jewish community with the cloak of discrimination.
We are dealing with an old and stubborn formula here, capable of causing real mischief in situations like the one we face as a society now. American Jews are strong enough in their identities not to cast aside the injustices faced by African-Americans simply because anti-Semitism is a factor in the movement against racism in this country. By the same token, we have little choice in recognizing that anti-Semitism will continue to come at us from all sides—and that we should expect, especially when it comes from the left, to have to deal with it on our own.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that he was going to seek to cut the budget for the LA Police Department by $100 million to $150 million. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
The obligation to pursue justice is not negotiable. Neither is the rule of law. Jews and all minorities need both to feel safe.
By: Jonathan S. Tobin
If your synagogue were under attack from a shooter, would you want a social worker to arrive in response to your 911 or a squad of armed policemen? You may think that when you’re in danger, a cop with a gun is your best chance of survival. But the murder of an African-American man by a Minneapolis policeman and America’s history of racism have led some to demand revolutionary change, rather than merely justice for the perpetrators and better police training. And to them, you’re part of the problem.
In the course of the last week, support for a movement to “defund the police” has spread across the nation. Protesters, liberal groups and many in the media have embraced the notion that the answer to police violence is to get rid of the police.
The actual facts about police shootings don’t back up the notion that there is an epidemic of police murders of unarmed African-Americans caused by systemic racism. But the perception that this is true has become so deeply embedded in the national consciousness that an idea about disarming and even abolishing the police, which would have been dismissed as a crackpot notion not long ago, is now being seriously debated in the mainstream media, and even advocated by some community leaders and politicians.
Indeed, as part of his response to the furor over the murder of George Floyd, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that he was going to seek to cut the budget for the LA Police Department by $100 million to $150 million.
While some will cheer if this money is diverted to programs to benefit the African-American community, it may not sound like such a good idea to some of the city’s citizens who want more security, rather than less, after this week’s protests led to rioting and looting. Among them are the LA Jews who were cleaning up the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel graffiti on one synagogue, as well as the owners of Jewish businesses that were attacked and looted.
In the wake of increased incidents of anti-Semitic violence in the last two years, including two murderous shooting attacks inside synagogues, American Jews have been rightly focused on providing greater security for their institutions. This has meant communities and Jewish organizations have been relying on greater cooperation with law-enforcement agencies and seeking a greater police presence at potential Jewish targets.
A report produced by the Secure Community Network, an initiative of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations created in response to this rising threat, recommended that synagogues hire police officers to guard them rather than security guards.
But the push for more police protection for vulnerable Jewish targets has placed even liberal groups like the Anti-Defamation League on the wrong side of an argument in which some Jews are joining with other leftists to denounce the whole idea of the police. Indeed, a group calling itself Jews for Racial and Economic Justice is promoting a campaign to demand that the New York City Council shift funding from the police to social services. As an op-ed in The New York Times recently argued, what we need are more social workers and less police.
According to an article in The Forward, the impetus for this movement is the belief that Jews of color see police as a threat to their security, rather than as protection. But support for this notion seems more about intersectional ideology in which Jews are labeled as white, and therefore, by definition, members of the oppressor class. Part of this is the effort by BDS groups like Jewish Voice for Peace to promote the anti-Semitic blood libel that Israel is training American cops to kill blacks.
The radicals who seek to exploit a unique moment in history think that divisions about race, President Donald Trump and the use of force to put down the rioting have all created an opportunity to get something more than just police reform.
Sensible people know that we don’t have to choose between justice and preserving the rule of law. And if anyone ought to know that, it is a Jewish community and other minority groups that depend on both in order to feel safe.
While the ideologues are successfully promoting the slogans about abolishing and defunding the police, polls show that both black and white Americans, including those who think the cops are prejudiced, want more police protection, not less.
Indeed, the problem in many poor urban areas with minority populations is that high crime rates and violence there are in part caused by neglect of these neighborhoods by law enforcement, rather than systemic racism and police violence.
The police are not perfect. Some can be bullies or corrupt. And as we saw in Minneapolis, some are capable of murder. But the overwhelming majority of officers are brave individuals who do a difficult and dangerous job with a far greater chance of suffering injury or death in the line of duty than their critics want to admit. And if you’re in trouble, then they’re likely to be your best bet for survival—no matter your race or religion.
The impulse to demonize law enforcement or to treat all efforts to maintain public order—and to defend the safety and the property of citizens at risk from rioters—as illegitimate or evidence of fascist oppression is madness.
Fashionable liberal opinion has been hijacked by extremists who teach contempt for American ideals, and who see the country and our police as irredeemably racist. But it’s also particularly foolish for a community that has endured a surge of anti-Semitic attacks in the last year to join with those who wish to abolish or defund to the point of irrelevance the only group that can deter or adequately respond to such incidents. Any Jewish group that wants to defund the police isn’t just wrong. Those who succumb to this delusion will have on their hands the blood of future victims of violence that only the cops could stop.
Relatives of the late taxi driver who became a real estate billionaire, Tamir Sapir, is said to be battling with another member of the clan over $102 million worth of the estate. Sapir is pictured here to the left of President Donald Trump. Photo Credit: ordoabchao.ca
By: JV Staff
Alex Sapir is president and CEO of the Sapir Organization, a group of privately and publicly held real estate companies which he runs with his sister, Zina Sapir, since his father’s death in 2014. He is the son of Georgian billionaire Tamir Sapir, who founded the organization. Photo Credit: The Real Deal
Tamir Sapir, Former Taxi Drive Turned Real Estate Billionaire
The Sapir family is reportedly at it again.
Relatives of the late taxi driver who became a real estate billionaire, Tamir Sapir, is said to be battling with another member of the clan over $102 million worth of the estate.
Rotem Rosen, who is currently in the process of ending his marriage to Sapir’s daughter Zina, says the Sapir Organization owes him for services rendered involving selling properties. By his estimation, that includes the building at 11 Madison Ave, which sold five years ago for an eye-popping $2.6 billion. Photo Credit: hauteliving.com
Sapir’s son in law Rotem Rosen is entitled to nothing, according to Sapir’s son Alex. The comment was included in Manhattan Surrogate Court papers.
Rosen, who is currently in the process of ending his marriage to Sapir’s daughter Zina, says the Sapir Organization owes him for services rendered involving selling properties. By his estimation, that includes the building at 11 Madison Ave, which sold five years ago for an eye-popping $2.6 billion.
Rosen formerly served as chief executive officer of the Sapir Organization. His argument in court has reportedly centered on his being excluded following what he terms a “falling out” with Alex three years ago. According to spokespersons for Sapir’s family, Rosen has, in fact, received payment for services rendered, and is entitled to nothing more.
Court papers show that Rotem Rosen, who is close friends with President Donald Trump, is renting a $50,000 a month penthouse at Trump Park Avenue… The couple married in 2007 in a lavish wedding hosted by President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Photo Credit: AP
As therealdeal.com has reported, Sapir Corp. went private last week. Shareholders in Israel gave the thumbs up to a buyout plan of the real estate investment firm set as a loftier price than was original envisioned. The price: a nifty $5.54 million, or approximately 19.26 million shekels. A similar move was made, and failed, in 2017.
Sapir’s estate “had sunk to a measly $600 million by the time he died, according to court records,” according to the New York Post. “He was once slammed with $150,000 in fines when the feds discovered a gross collection of elephant tusks, animal hides and barstools upholstered in python and anaconda skins about his Florida yacht.”
Owned, Developed, Managed
Certainly, there is still plenty of moolah to fight over. The Sapir Organization is, as its web site points out, a multidisciplinary real estate investor, operator and developer currently led by Sapir’s son, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alex Sapir. “The firm has owned, developed and managed more than 7 million square feet of Manhattan real estate, including some of the world’s most iconic commercial assets throughout various cycles.
The portfolio spans multiple property classes, including commercial, residential and hospitality assets. The firm’s holdings in Manhattan include 260-261 Madison Avenue and 2 Broadway, which currently serves as the MTA headquarters of New York City.”
Two years ago, management launched Sapir Corp Ltd., a publicly traded real estate development company listed on the Tel-Aviv stock exchange. “Through Sapir Corp Ltd.,” the company noted, “Mr. Sapir has expanded the geography of the firm’s portfolio to Miami, Florida, which currently includes over 1M square feet of ground up, mixed-use development, and a luxury condo development in Surfside, Florida. In New York, the Sapir Corp portfolio also includes NoMo SoHo and 218 Madison Avenue.”
Two years ago, management launched Sapir Corp Ltd., a publicly traded real estate development company listed on the Tel-Aviv stock exchange. Photo Credit: sapircorp.com
260 and 261 Madison Avenue were purchased by The Sapir Organization in 1997. Together, the properties hold a combined 1 million square feet. Located at the epicenter of Midtown East and steps from Grand Central Terminal, 261 Madison Ave. is a 28-story classic Manhattan office building, designed in the mid-century international style, updated for the 21st century. Freshly renovated spaces have been given a modern industrial redesign to emphasize natural light, openness, utility and a cutting edge design. The building is home to WeWork, Knotel, the acclaimed restaurant Zuma, major law firms and national banking institutes, while also serving as headquarters of The Sapir Organization.
2 Broadway is an office building at the south end of Broadway, near Bowling Green Park in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. It was built on the site of the New York Produce Exchange, and now houses the headquarters of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It is probably better known for its appearance in motion pictures. The building was featured prominently throughout the comedy-drama film The Apartment (1960), produced and directed by Billy Wilder, as the building in which the characters played by stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray work. It was also a filming location in the thriller Mirage (1965), with Gregory Peck and Diane Baker.
Property and Politics
2 Broadway is an office building at the south end of Broadway, near Bowling Green Park in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. It was built on the site of the New York Produce Exchange, and now houses the headquarters of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Photo Credit: Wikipedia
In 1995, Sapir bought 2 Broadway for $20 million, with the MTA as the only tenant in the building. The MTA signed a 49-year lease in July 1998, shortly after selling its New York Coliseum. Shortly after, according to Wikipedia, Sapir and the MTA agreed to conduct $39 million worth of renovations to 2 Broadway. “However, the renovations had become delayed and over budget, and Sapir and the MTA became involved in numerous lawsuits and countersuits. By 2000, the renovations were expected to cost $135 million. By 2003, the cost of the renovations had risen to $435 million.” Part of the budget increase was attributed to corruption by contractors who were renovating the buildings. One such contractor was later ordered to pay restitution to the MTA for corruption.
Strangely, the controversy has also been tapped by those on the political Left as a tool with which to pummel the Trump Administration. England’s DailyMail.com has used the Sapir/Rosen contest to try and paint President Donald Trump in a negative light. Its coverage back in February repeatedly stressed Rosen’s alleged connection to the president:
“Court papers show that Rosen, who is close friends with President Donald Trump, is renting a $50,000 a month penthouse at Trump Park Avenue… The couple married in 2007 in a lavish wedding hosted by President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida… Rosen went with Trump to Moscow for Miss Universe in 2012, invested heavily in his failed Trump SoHo hotel, and is believed to have pulled strings to try to make Trump Tower Moscow a reality.”
Sacramento Real Estate Mogul Michael Lyon Back in Jail
Michael Lyon used to be a high-powered real estate CEO. Now he is back in jail on drug charges. His name was seen all over Sacramento homes at one point. He once headed the largest real estate firm in the region, along with a number of other companies, and was a philanthropic mainstay for charity groups ranging from the UC Davis Children’s Hospital to Loaves and Fishes, Sacramento Bee reported. Photo: Sacramento County Probation Department
Michael Lyon used to be a high-powered real estate CEO. Now he is back in jail on drug charges. His name was seen all over Sacramento homes at one point.
He once headed the largest real estate firm in the region, along with a number of other companies, and was a philanthropic mainstay for charity groups ranging from the UC Davis Children’s Hospital to Loaves and Fishes, Sacramento Bee reported.
Lyon, 64 years old, was let out of a state prison in 2019 having spent a segment of his 76-month sentence from 2018 stemming from a conviction on charges of electronic eavesdropping and videotaping connected to sex tapes filmed in 2013 and 2014.
Michael Lyon was sentenced than six years in prison for secretly filming the women he paid for sex, concluding the fall of a man whose name for decades was all but synonymous with home ownership in Sacramento, The Bee stated.
The women had no idea they were being videotaped until they were contacted by Sacramento district attorney’s investigators in 2015 and never would have agreed had they known; prosecutors argued.
This was the second time he faced similar charges. Lyon pleaded guilty in 2011 to felony counts of electronic eavesdropping and served a portion of his one-year sentence in the county jail and on home detention. He later settled a civil suit for $2.5 million and an apology to former nannies, babysitters and friends who said he had secretly taped them in bathrooms, bedrooms and showers.
In early April, Lyon returned to the prison amid allegations of drug and parole violations. Less than a year after being released from prison. Methamphetamines became his new poison, once clandestine pornography was out of question, KCRA reported.
According to online sources, Lyon was placed under arrest on a felony charge of possession for sale of controlled substances. There was also a misdemeanor count of possession of dangerous drug-controlled substances.
Sacramento Police spokesman Officer Karl Chan wrote in an email to The Sacramento Bee that “Officers conducted a parole search on Mr. Lyon, and during the course of the search located narcotics. He was arrested in the 300 block of Las Palmas Avenue.”
Lyon’s fall from grace reads like something out of Homer. His success began to fracture in 2009 with the end of a more than two-decade marriage to Kimarie Lyon. In the course of what the Bee termed an “extraordinarily nasty” divorce, the one-time wife “told federal investigators that her husband “had spent approximately $300,000 in one or two months on hookers, drugs and pornography,” according to a confidential law enforcement document reviewed by The Bee.”
The one-time mogul “was once one of the most prominent business and philanthropic figures in the Sacramento region, and until his legal troubles headed the Lyon Real Estate firm and other companies,” according to the Bee. “He was a Boy Scout leader and civic activist who donated time and money to various charitable causes. But his weakness for prostitutes and secret videotapes led to a stunning fall from grace that began with an acrimonious divorce.”
The Strange Case of “Lucky Luke” Brugnara
Luke Brugnara first became involved in Las Vegas real estate in 1999, when he attempted to buy the Desert Inn for $270 million but lost out to an all-cash offer from Sun International and Steve Wynn. Photo Credit: Facebook
It was nearly five years ago – October of 2015, to be exact – that the strange case of “Lucky Luke” Brugnara was, in the words of San Francisco Weekly, “finally over.”
Brugnara was born in the Sunset District of San Francisco, the son of a “juvenile hall manager”. He went to school at St. Ignatius College Preparatory, a private preparatory Jesuit school. Brugnara was a competitive flycaster during his teenage years and set several national accuracy flycasting records in the American Casting Association which still stand today. Brugnara graduated from San Diego State University in 1987.
Brugnara started his real estate career in San Francisco in 1993 by buying a note for $1.5M for the Kress Building at 939 Market Street, foreclosing on the note, and then borrowing $3M against the property. Brugnara’s proceeded buy and sell a series of office buildings in San Francisco. In 1997, he owned 500,000 square feet of office space in downtown San Francisco, SF Gate reported in an article called “Young Gun” .
In November 1999, Brugnara bought the Silver City Casino and the Las Vegas Shopping Plaza on the Las Vegas Strip for $40 million, with plans to replace it with a larger casino and hotel, but converted the property into a shopping center in 2004 after the Nevada Gaming Commission denied him a gambling license in 2001. Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Brugnara first became involved in Las Vegas real estate in 1999, when he attempted to buy the Desert Inn for $270 million but lost out to an all-cash offer from Sun International and Steve Wynn. In November 1999, he bought the Silver City Casino and the Las Vegas Shopping Plaza on the Las Vegas Strip for $40 million, with plans to replace it with a larger casino and hotel, but converted the property into a shopping center in 2004 after the Nevada Gaming Commission denied him a gambling license in 2001, The Las Vegan documented.
Gaming Commission had cited poor financial recordkeeping, claims that Brugnara had failed to file tax returns, conflicts with San Francisco regulators, and allegations that Brugnara had made death threats. In response, Brugnara stated that the Nevada Gaming Commissioners were “a bunch of wind-up dolls” representing Las Vegas incumbents, and threatened to file suit, but eventually decided not to do so, preferring to re-apply and address the Gaming Commission’s concerns, Las Vegas Sun reported.
In 1998, Brugnara was sued by the SF City Attorney for improper disposal of medical waste at his Medico-Dental Building. In 2000, the San Francisco Superior Court decided against Brugnara, and imposed a $1 million penalty, SF Gate reported.
A decade later the troubles of “Lucky Luke” continued to mount,
In 2010 Brugnara pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion related to the sale of $45 million in commercial property and violations of the Endangered Species Act for blocking an opening in a private dam to prevent trout migration, according to Wikipedia. “He was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison on the tax charges. Brugnara’s later request to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial was denied by the trial judge, and the decision was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011. Brugnara was released from prison in 2012.”
Bragnara did not learn his lesson, only 2 years later “Lucky Luke” was back in court on more serious charges.
Citing ABC 7, the publication reported that the one-time real estate mogul had been given a sentence of seven years in federal prison. The sentence was the cherry on the icing of a cinematic spree of “art scams, jailhouse escapes, and courtroom theatrics.”
“Brugnara, a San Francisco native who made a fortune snapping up commercial office buildings in the city, along with casinos and shopping plazas in Las Vegas (and a mansion once leased to singer Michael Jackson), has a checkered legal history,” noted sfweekly.com. “Per ABC 7, Brugnara pleaded guilty to “filing false tax returns, failing to report $45 million in capital gains, and violating the Endangered Species Act for poaching steelhead trout on his land in Gilroy.”
In May 2014, Brugnara was charged with mail fraud for refusing to pay for $11 million in art delivered to his Sea Cliff estate, Wikipedia added. “While awaiting trial on these charges, Brugnara was furloughed into the custody of his attorney, and escaped from the San Francisco federal courthouse. He was recaptured a week later in Los Gatos, California.”
Brugnara represented himself in the trial, which was tried before Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California. By the end of the trial Judge Alsup had sentenced Brugnara to 471 days in prison for contempt due to Brugnara’s conduct during the trial, including routinely ignoring Judge Alsup’s evidentiary and procedural rulings, yelling at witnesses, throwing tantrums, and insulting the government’s attorneys, including calling U.S. District Attorney Robin Harris a “Nazi” in front of the jury, Courthouse news reported. Brugnara was convicted on six of the nine counts he faced, and sentenced to seven years in prison
Brugnara made news once again, so to speak, in October of 2019 when his seven-bedroom, six-bathroom home with spectacular views of the Golden Gate bridge was listed for sale for $15 million through Sotheby’s. According to reports, Brugnara had purchased the property at 224 Sea Cliff Avenue through one of his companies in 2002 at a cost of $7 million.
“The home had been where comedian Cheech Marin lived while filming Nash Bridges, with a 2003 Forbes article describing the Hollywood figure’s art collection, hung on the home’s walls, as a trigger for Brugnara’s own artistic passion,” reported Australia’s domain.com.
“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.”
That was the frank assessment of an internal report at Facebook’s corporate headquarters in 2018. The algorithms employed by Facebook – deciding what ads and posts we see based on our past behavior on the site – were designed to inflame our passions. If a user clicked on a political post, for instance, Facebook would suggest further reading a similar point of view, but with one crucial difference: the new suggested content would be of an ever more extreme nature. This would ensure that Facebook users would see “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.”
Online hate is a “disease” that spreads according to Princeton Professor Joel Finkelstein, who studies extremism on the internet. He’s examined hate speech on American online message boards, and has found startling similarities between some popular American sites and radical Islamist message boards. Photo Credit: Twitter
The report drew on two years of internal research and painted a troubling picture of social media users being manipulated to become ever more extreme and radical. In 2017, Facebook formed a committee called “Common Ground” made up of engineers and researchers to assess how divisive content was being shared on Facebook. What they found was deeply troubling. The algorithms governing Facebook’s user experience were designed to maximize “user engagement”. Success was judged by the length of time users spent on Facebook, the number of posts and articles they shared, and the number of “likes” and other reactions they clicked. The most effective way to do this, the committee found, was to feed users ever more extreme content.
Instead of acting on the internal report, Facebook experts shelved it. They felt that changing the algorithms would weaken the addictive hold that the site held for many of its users. The report was buried, and only reported recently by the Wall Street Journal.
This means that for years, billions who regularly use Facebook have been unwitting subjects in an experiment of mass radicalization. Our emotions have been manipulated, our dislikes and hatreds amplified, and we’ve been fed an ever-increasing diet of content that’s designed to provoke outrage. What’s the result? Just look around: it’s not hard to find division and hatred permeating every facet of modern society. While it’s hard to know exactly where all this bad feeling came from, viewing angry, screaming social media posts can hardly help.
It’s not only Facebook: a whole host of other media have found that stoking hatred and extreme views is a winning formula, racking up user engagement while diminishing our civility and stoking division. Just eight years ago in 2012, researchers at Emory University in Atlanta polled US voters and found that fewer than half felt deep anger towards candidates or voters from the other party. By 2016, that changed and nearly 70% of Americans reported feeling deep anger at those who supported candidates from the opposite political party.
The shooter in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, who murdered eleven Jewish worshippers, and the attacker who shot fifty people in two mosques in New Zealand a few months later, both acted after viewing extremist content online on popular social media sites. Photo Credit: AP
“We find that as animosity toward the opposing party has intensified,” noted Stanford University researchers in 2018, “(anger) has taken on a new role as the prime motivator in partisans’ political lives… today it is out-group animus (hatred towards one’s political opponents) rather than in-group favoritism (supporting one’s favored candidate) that drives political behavior.”
Online hate is a “disease” that spreads according to Princeton Professor Joel Finkelstein, who studies extremism on the internet. He’s examined hate speech on American online message boards, and has found startling similarities between some popular American sites and radical Islamist message boards. In both cases, users exposed to divisive messages can become radicalized. In some cases, Dr. Finkelstein has found that radical content viewed online can mutate into the “real” world, motivating some people to commit hateful acts after viewing extreme content online.
The shooter in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, who murdered eleven Jewish worshippers, and the attacker who shot fifty people in two mosques in New Zealand a few months later, both acted after viewing extremist content online on popular social media sites. “Both attackers were enmeshed in online communities that exposed them to content designed to make them hateful and potentially violent,” Dr. Finkelstein found.
Extremist content is poisoning the current atmosphere of protests and riots sparked by the murder of George Floyd. “On Twitter and Facebook,” the New York Times recently reported, “hundreds of posts are circulating” providing distorted, hateful and flat out wrong information and conspiracy theories, fanning the flames of mistrust and hatred. Social media posts about George Floyd surged in the days after his death. Nearly nine million posts mentioned him in a given day: that’s more than the number of social media posts that mentioned pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong (1.5 million) or the Yellow Vest protests that rocked France last year (just under a million mentions on social media per day at its peak). Many of these posts were inflammatory, stirring up yet more hatred and ill feelings.
With the aid of social media, we’re increasingly talking past each other, demonizing our perceived opponents and embracing extremism and anger. While it’s not easy to resist the siren lure of ever more extreme social media, there are few concrete steps we can take today that offer a powerful antidote to the current stew of anger, recrimination and outrage that many of us view daily online and elsewhere.
Get off social media.
Heavy social media use is associated with poor mental health. One large study found that people who spent more time on social media were three times as likely as people who were “light” users of social media to be depressed. Social Media use was “significantly” associated with increased depression. Another study found that young people who interacted with social media for two hours a day or more were much more likely to rate their mental health as “poor” than those who used social media only occasionally or not at all.
Interacting with people in the real world is much more satisfying – and can protect us from viewing extreme content online. Try turning off social media; consider taking a week-long detox. Shabbat is a reprieve from social media and other electronics.
Be a more discerning media consumer.
“When people are fearful they seek information to reduce uncertainty,” explains Stanford Communications Professor Jeff Hancock, who has studied the role of extreme and misleading social media posts in the current coronavirus pandemic. “This can lead people to believe information that may be wrong or deceptive because it helps make them feel better, or allows them to place blame about what’s happening” elsewhere, he warns. With so many people fearful and anxious about the state of the world today, radical social media posts can offer a reassuringly simple lens through which to view current events.
Instead of blindly accepting extreme posts, take the time to look where they came from. Are they from a reputable source? Can you verify them elsewhere? A few weeks ago a friend of mine posted a long article on Facebook purporting to be from a medical expert at a major hospital; to my friend’s chagrin, it turned out the author of the article didn’t exist, and much of the information contained in it was wrong. Sadly, that’s the case with many social media posts.
Prof. Hancock suggests subscribing to a few reputable news sources and getting our news from there. If a story looks interesting on social media, check it out on mainstream news sites to make sure they’re true and to get a background to the story.
Take the time to listen to other people’s points of view.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks likes to tell the story of attending a conference years ago. After the first day, his wife asked him how it was going. “The speaking is brilliant,” he told her; “the listening is nonexistent.” It’s all too easy to assume that we know what other people are going to say, or to dismiss our interlocutors. To truly learn and grow, however, we have to take the time to listen to others – to hear their stories and strive to understand their points of view.
This isn’t easy to do in the universe of social media of course, where loudness and brio are prioritized over real listening. But if we truly want to engage with other people, we have to take the time to truly pay attention to what they have to say and spend time imagining the world from other people’s points of view.
Watch your words.
Online words can have real world consequences. Connect Safely, a Silicon Valley organization that helps monitor social media use, has noted that Facebook and other social media sites frequently contain offensive words and phrases used to demonize ethnic minorities and other social groups. Words like “animals”, “garbage”, “trash”, “invaders” and calling people names of insects or diseases dehumanize groups of people online.
Make a decision not to use these terms and only speak about people respectfully. This can go a long way in helping to keep online exchanges civil, and tone down the outrage in social media posts.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) (left center) next to Rep. Elise Sefanik (R-N.Y.) (right center) along with officials from organizations, including Hadassah and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, following the passage of the Never Again Holocaust Act by the U.S. House of Representatives. Credit: Phi Nguyen, Official House of Representatives Photographer.
By “giving educators the tools they need to teach about the Holocaust and the dangers of anti-Semitism and hate, I believe we can stop anti-Semitism before it starts,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who introduced the newly signed Never Again Education Act in the U.S. House of Representatives.
By: Jackson Richman
Amid the rise in anti-Semitism in the United States and abroad, President Trump signed the Never Again Education Act into law on Friday as part of Jewish American Heritage Month, one month after the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The story behind the passage of this landmark legislation is one that transcended the usual partisan politics of Washington, D.C., bringing together Jewish and Christian groups, and liberal and conservative lawmakers in a rare display of bipartisanship to have a measurable impact on awareness and understanding of the ramifications of the Holocaust.
“Unfortunately, we have an seen a significant spike in anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism over the past few years, and these undeniably disturbing events spurred action,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who introduced the bill in the House and who has waged a multi-decade effort to pass such legislation.
Citing an Anti-Defamation League report released this month that showed that 2019 consisted of the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in four decades, she said that “both sides of the aisle saw how urgent this is, and this bill was bipartisan from the start.”
The new law seeks to expand the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s education programming to teachers nationwide, requiring the museum to develop and disseminate resources to improve awareness and understanding of the Holocaust and its lessons.
There will be $2 million allocated annually for this year and each of over the next four years to the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund, administered by the USHMM’s governing body, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Private donations for the fund would also be permitted.
Maloney, the 13-term lawmaker who represents New York’s 12th Congressional District, noted her experience as a former educator played a role in pushing for the bill whereby “education is a key tool in fighting all forms of hate and bigotry, and by reaching children in the classroom, we can make sure they learn understanding and acceptance rather than discrimination.”
Anti-Semitism must not only be punished but also prevented, she said. By “giving educators the tools they need to teach about the Holocaust and the dangers of anti-Semitism and hate, I believe we can stop anti-Semitism before it starts,” said Maloney.
‘Support was built inch by inch’
The bill had the support of “more than 50 national organizations and more than 250 local partners,” according to Maloney, who credited the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Hadassah and the Jewish Federations of North America as “instrumental” in getting the legislation passed.
Janice Weinman, executive director and CEO, Hadassah. Source: Screenshot.
Hadassah CEO and executive director Janice Weinman told JNS that she attended the New York Congressional Breakfast hosted by the New York Jewish Community Relations Council in early 2018.
“I heard Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney speak about her nearly 20-year fight to strengthen Holocaust education, and I knew this was the prescription America needed to guarantee the promise of ‘Never Again,’ ” said Weinman. “And I knew it was right for Hadassah to lead the effort because we are a Zionist organization with a large national membership that believes in the power of information and education to change the world.”
“Our national president, volunteers around the country and I talked about Never Again everywhere we went for the next year-and-a-half,” she continued. “And everyone was energized by the possibility that this bill could one day become the law of the land if we fought hard enough. And fight we did.”
Hadassah director of government relations Karen Barall told JNS that Hadassah appealed to the organization’s 300,000 members and other Jewish groups.
“We started to invite representatives from other large organizations to meetings Hadassah was arranging on Capitol Hill, and our first targets were the 55 co-sponsors from the previous Congress,” she said. “Support was built inch by inch, one office at a time, and was supplemented by a grassroots effort.”
“Before and after meetings, Hadassah chapters from the representative’s district would organize to contact their offices expressing their support for the bill. Their phone calls, emails and social-media posts certainly helped to solidify support. It took more than a year to reach 300 co-sponsors, and Hadassah engaged nearly all of them one way or another.”
Ultimately, the bill had 302 co-sponsors in the Democratic-led House—205 Democrats and 97 Republicans.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.). Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
While garnering support in the House, Hadassah recruited Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who was very responsive to our request from the start” and, meeting with Republican senators, got a receptive audience in Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.).
“North Dakota does not have a large Jewish population, but Senator Cramer didn’t see this as a Jewish issue,” said Weinman. “He saw this as an American issue.”
Rosen and Cramer were joined by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
Rosen told JNS that the Senate vote happened after “significantly increasing the number of co-sponsors of the bipartisan Senate bill and laying the groundwork for the House bill to clear committee and receive a vote from the full Senate.”
The Senate version was slightly different from the U.S. House of Representatives one, which the Senate ultimately passed, in that the former had the U.S. Department of Education—and not the USHMM—oversee the expansion of Holocaust education in the United States.
Fulfilling the promise of ‘Never Again’
As to Rosen being the leading sponsor of the bill, she pointed to her time when she was president of Congregation Ner Tamid in Nevada, where she “heard the stories of so many Holocaust survivors, stories of resilience in the face of certain death, stories of loss as so many were taken from us.”
After first being elected to Congress in 2017, first as a congresswoman from Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, “I asked myself, what can I do as a legislator to fulfill the promise of the words ‘Never Again’ and ensure that they mean Never Again for anyone? I truly believe that education is the most powerful tool we have in the fight against hate and bigotry.”
Other groups that lobbied for the bill—an effort that included being in contact with congressional offices—included Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress), the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).
JFNA worked “closely with Jewish communal agencies to connect with Holocaust survivors and encourage them to sign on to a letter in support of the bill. This grassroots effort collected more than 1,800 signatures from survivors in 38 states—350 community groups from every single state helped galvanize political support,” JFNA spokesperson Rebecca Dinar told JNS.
For example, in Southeast Florida’s Broward County, which is “home to one of the largest concentrations of Holocaust survivors,” Evan Goldman, vice president for community planning and government relations at the Jewish Federation of Broward County, “spearheaded the local effort to engage survivors in signing the online letter” and “emphasized the importance of collaboration in making it happen,” according to Dinar.
In Chicago, where there’s a large community of Holocaust survivors, Yonit Hoffman, director of Holocaust Community Services at CJE SeniorLife—a Federation-funded agency that serves 1,700 survivors on a regular basis—led the effort to garner 452 signatures onto the letter.
“We do lots of education, training and advocacy around their stories, which are less heard and less represented in museums and other educational settings,” she told JFNA for a story on their website.
The RJC’s legislative affairs committee “wrote to every Republican in Congress urging them to co-sponsor the bill,” the organization’s spokesperson, Neil Strauss, told JNS.
“Once the House passed its version of the bill, we began visiting Republican Senate offices, usually joined by colleagues from Hadassah and other groups supporting the bill, but we were forced to shift to most advocacy via email” due to the coronavirus pandemic making in-person meetings “impossible,” said Strauss.
Student ambassadors of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Bringing the Lessons Home” program tour the “Tour of Faces” in the permanent exhibition. The program trains high school students in the Washington, D.C. area to become museum docents. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The RJC put such an emphasis on the importance of the bill that the organization even withdrew its support for the four House Republicans who voted against it.
Reps. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Tom Rice (R-S.C.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) cited conservative dogma on spending and the need to have small-sized government.
In response to Norman and Arrington, RJC executive director Matt Brooks told Jewish Insider that “there comes a time when you have to take votes that go beyond process. And, I think, especially now with this time of rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. and around the world, the symbolism of this and the importance of the government standing up and showing its support for Holocaust education outweighs any process concerns.”
Brooks noted that others in the Republican caucus may have had similar misgivings or concerns about this process, but “they did the right thing, and looked beyond that to stand up against anti-Semitism and to stand with the Jewish community. So we remain disappointed in their votes. We think that they voted absolutely the wrong way on that, no matter how they want to justify it.”
At the end of the day, said Brooks, “we don’t think that this vote is a reflection of their views on anti-Semitism, but it makes it so that we will not be supporting any of those individuals going forward.”
The Anti-Defamation League, in addition to its lobbying efforts, had an action alert on its website in order to allow people to better engage with members of Congress about the matter, ADL CEO and national director Jonathan Greenblatt told JNS.
Meanwhile, “AJCongress has always supported legislation promoting Holocaust education,” Akri Cipa, a policy analyst at the organization, told JNS.
Cipa cited a Pew Research study in January that only “strengthened” his organization’s “conviction” over the need for the Never Again Education Act.
The study showed that less than half of Americans, some 45 percent, know that 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust, while 29 percent weren’t sure or had no answer. (Simultaneously, 69 percent of respondents correctly said that the Holocaust was between the years 1930 and 1950, while 63 percent of respondents correctly defined the Nazi-created ghettos as “parts of town where Jews were forced to live.”)
Netflix has premiered a four-part documentary series titled Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, which raised expectations again that the mystery man and his web of powerful acquaintances would be dragged into the cleansing light of day
A new Netflix documentary series looks at the dark underbelly of the rich and infamous.
By: Mark Tapson
By comparison to the history-making events of 2020, the sordid saga of shadowy, uber-rich hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein, whose sex-trafficking trial temporarily dominated the news cycle last year, now seems foggily distant and even insignificant. His suspicious suicide while in custody spawned conspiracy theories and internet memes, and then – just as suspiciously – any highly-anticipated exposés of the rich and powerful who might have cavorted with underage girls on Epstein’s infamous “Orgy Island” disappeared into a black hole, and the news media went back to hating President Trump.
Now Netflix has premiered a four-part documentary series titled Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, which raised expectations again that the mystery man and his web of powerful acquaintances would be dragged into the cleansing light of day. Based on the 2016 book Filthy Rich: The Billionaire’s Sex Scandal – The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein by bestselling novelist James Patterson (journalists John Connolly and Tim Malloy are credited as authors as well), the series instead just drags viewers through the repellent Epstein’s mucky lifestyle but unfortunately offers no new revelations or insights into the man or any of his hedonistic friends in high places.
I was primarily curious to see how the documentary would handle former President Bill Clinton’s role in the controversy, partly because Epstein buddy Clinton is conspicuously absent from the series trailer (see below), and partly because author Patterson, who appears in the documentary himself, has at least a professional relationship with Clinton; they have collaborated on two thriller novels. Hillary’s infamously predatory husband is indeed presented in the documentary as being a friend of Epstein and as having flown on his private jet over two dozen times, but all this was all common knowledge before the Netflix series.
A former Epstein employee does claim in the film that he saw Clinton on his boss’ private island, and one of Epstein’s girls affirms that Bill was there but “I never saw him doing anything improper.” Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena has issued a blanket denial of any insinuation that Bill ever participated in Epstein’s pedophiliac shenanigans or even visited any of Epstein’s residences: “This was a lie the first time it was told, and it isn’t true today, no matter how many times it’s repeated.” Hillary unsurprisingly is neither seen nor heard from in the series. That’s as far as the series delves into the Epstein-Clinton connection.
Filthy Rich spends more time covering disgraced British Prince Andrew’s involvement, including showing footage of his epic fail of a BBC interview in which he claimed that he couldn’t possibly be the “profusely sweating” man described by one of Epstein’s girls because he was suffering from a medical condition at that time that didn’t allow him to sweat. He also claimed that he had no recollection of that same girl, whom he was photographed hugging on Epstein’s island. An employee at the island also asserts in the documentary that in 2004 he saw the Prince getting frisky in a pool there with the same girl, who was topless. This new salacious detail, however, is little more than an extra nail in the coffin of Andrew’s public life.
The show briefly features a few other figures either loosely associated with Epstein or accused of complicity in what a prosecutor in the show calls Epstein’s “molestation pyramid scheme.” Photos of him together with Donald Trump appear repeatedly throughout the series, although none of Epstein’s victims interviewed for the documentary ever suggested Trump was a party to anything. Also among them is world-famous attorney Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein during his prostitution solicitation case in 2008 and who obtained for his client a “sweetheart deal” of only 18 months, of which Epstein served only 13 in a minimum-security facility before serving probation under the loosest form of house arrest imaginable.
Dershowitz was accused by Virginia Roberts Giuffre of having had sex with her “multiple times” on Epstein’s private island. She is one of half a dozen Epstein victims interviewed for the series, women who were underage at the time and who ultimately went to law enforcement for help. But they were powerless to damage the influential Epstein, who had the connections and the money to shut down media exposés (such as a whitewashed Vanity Fair profile) and to avoid police investigations. Dershowitz vehemently denies Giuffre’s account on-camera, and indeed, convincingly proved his innocence in a lawsuit and then in a short book he wrote about it called Guilt by Association. In that book he speculated that Giuffre’s public accusation was part of a scheme to buy her silence from privately-accused wealthy alleged abusers by threatening to do to them what she had done to Dershowitz and to Al and Tipper Gore (both also not guilty): accuse them publicly.
In the process, Dershowitz appears to have demolished Giuffre’s credibility, which tends to cast a shadow over at least her portion of the Netflix series, in which she is the most prominently featured victim (she was also, at the time, the same young girl at the center of the allegations against Prince Andrew and who confirms she saw Bill Clinton on Epstein’s island.)
The final episode of the series focuses on how the #MeToo movement and Epstein’s arrest empowered some of his victims to come forward with their stories, only to be denied justice and closure when Epstein presumably committed suicide in his jail cell. The series addresses the suspicious circumstances of his death and presents details of an autopsy that concluded it was more consistent with murder than suicide, but again – nothing conclusive or new.
In the end, the Netflix series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich is an interesting-enough overview of his perverse tale, but it unsatisfyingly avoids the revelations viewers hunger for about the politicians, princes, and other notables in orbit around Epstein. Besides the hundreds, and possibly thousands of girls whose lives were inestimably damaged by Epstein and his alleged procurer girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell (who remains at large), the real tragedy is that Epstein was at the center of a sex-trafficking nexus for the rich and powerful, and the trail leading to their exposure came to a dead end in his jail cell.
(Front Page Mag)
Mark Tapson is the Shillman Fellow on Popular Culture for the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Niv Ashkenazi’s new album featuring instruments and music by composers that were affected by the Holocaust.
By: Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
When Niv Ashkenazi was 23, fresh out of completing his MA at the renown musical school Juilliard, he received an invitation that would change his life. Would he like to play some violins that have a unique connection to the Holocaust?
The invitation came from Amnon Weinstein, a Tel Aviv violin restorer and his son Avshalom. Amnon’s parents Moshe and Golda were Holocaust survivors: both musicians, after the Holocaust they found refuge in Israel and opened a violin shop in Tel Aviv. Amnon and Avshalom built on their legacy, collecting violins, particularly instruments that were played during the darkest days of the Holocaust. They founded “Violins of Hope” which educates audiences around the world about the Holocaust, explaining the incredible stories behind musical instruments. Some were played in concentration camps; some were played by musicians murdered in the Holocaust; at least one was used to transport explosives by a young Jewish resistance fighter to blow up a Nazi outpost.
Niv tried each of the remarkable instruments the Weinsteins had brought, savoring their unique feel and sounds. “You can feel the history behind them,” he noted in a recent Aish.com exclusive interview.
One violin in particular intrigued him: a wooden violin with two Jewish stars inlaid into the wood, a small metal star on the front of the instrument and a large Jewish star made of inlaid shell on the back. The front of the violin was noticeably darker than the back. “I didn’t like it at first,” Niv recalls. Yet the more he played, the more the violin seemed to speak to him. “It grew on me.”
Before long Niv had developed a unique relationship with the distinctive violin, and he learned about its history. It was handmade in the early 1900s in Yugoslavia. While the name of the owner has been lost to history, the Jewish stars on his violin indicate that he was possibly a wedding violinist; at that time it was common for Jewish musicians to decorate their violins and other instruments with Jewish Stars of David. The lighter color on the back of the violin indicates that it was likely hung on the owner’s wall as a piece of art when it wasn’t being played; the beautiful Jewish star on its back would have provided color and beauty in its Jewish owner’s home.
It’s possible that the original owner of the violin was murdered in the Holocaust. Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein spent years lovingly restoring it and made Niv an offer: would he like to keep the violin on a permanent loan, playing it and telling its story? Niv jumped at the chance. Now, he’s played it on his new album, “Violins of Hope”, making sure that a new generation can learn about the Holocaust through music.
Some of the pieces were written by Jewish composers who were killed in the Holocaust; others were written by those who escaped from Nazi Europe or who tried to tell the story of the Holocaust in music. Many of the stories behind the pieces on the album are harrowing – their history deserves to be better known.
One such track is “Serenade”, the only surviving known piece by the Jewish composer Robert Dauber. Robert’s father Adolf was a world-famous violinist and conductor, and Robert followed in his footsteps, becoming an accomplished musician and composer. He was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp while he was still a teenager. Theresienstadt was designed by the Nazis as a “model” camp where Jews were forced to pretend that they were enjoying an idyllic existence for the benefit of international visitors. The Nazis made propaganda films in the camp to show the world that they were supposedly treating Jews well even while imprisoning them. Inspectors from the Red Cross even toured Theresienstadt and allowed themselves to be convinced that the conditions there were benign.
Robert Dauber was allowed to play in the Theresienstadt orchestra, made up of Jewish prisoners, and he wrote “Serenade” there when he was twenty. He was later sent to Auschwitz and then to Dachau where he died of typhoid in 1945. The beauty of his other compositions is lost to us, but in Niv’s masterful playing and a piano accompaniment, audiences can once again hear the luscious, joyous melody that Robert Dauber created, even amid his darkest time.
Another notable inclusion in the album is Trois pieces de concert by the celebrated Jewish composer Szymon Laks. When Germany invaded Paris in 1940, Laks was already a famous composer. Born in 1902 in Warsaw, he was already well known in musical circles when the Nazis deported him, along with thousands of other Jews, to Auschwitz.
One of his first sights in that hellhole was the camp band, made up of miserable, starved, prisoners, setting up. Despite his musical fame, Laks was sent to do backbreaking manual labor and nearly died. Eventually, he managed to get transferred to the Auschwitz prisoner band. The concertmaster at the time was a non-Jewish Polish musician named Jan Zaborski who’d been arrested and sent to Auschwitz for the “crime” of giving false birth certificates to Jews in order to save their lives. Zaborski died in Auschwitz and Laks eventually became leader of the orchestra, using his position to try and improve the lot of the prisoners who were forced to play music for Nazi guards.
Laks requested that his musicians receive more practice time, which meant that they had to spend fewer hours performing back-breaking labor elsewhere in the camp. One day, Laks was ordered to have his musicians perform outside in the middle of a blizzard. Laks told the Nazi guards that the freezing cold snow might harm the instruments. (Clearly, no concern was given to the Jewish men who were playing the instruments.) Laks was successful and the orchestra was excused for playing outdoors in the storm.
At the end of the war Laks, with the other members of the Auschwitz orchestra, were moved to Dachau, then were forced on a death march. After three days, the exhausted prisoners were liberated by the American Army. Laks returned to Paris and continued his musical career, but many of his earlier compositions were destroyed. Trois pieces de concert is a fragment of his earlier work, composed before the end of the Holocaust. Written for cello and violin, it’s a lilting, melodic piece full of beauty and joy.
Working on “Violins of Hope” was an intensely personal experience for Niv, and helped bring him together with his new wife Leah Kohn, who produced the album. Niv had been playing his Holocaust-era violin in concerts and educational settings for a few years already, and had been thinking about creating a Holocaust-theme album with it. “When I mentioned it” to Leah, a classmate of his from Julliard, “she said she’d been thinking the same thing. We wanted to represent the life of this instrument.” The couple began collaborating on the album. Last September, they married.
For Leah, depicting the Holocaust is a personal mission: her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Her mother’s mother survived Auschwitz, where most of her relatives perished, and Leah’s grandfather survived the Mauthausen death camp. They were “miraculously” reunited after the war, Niv explains. Working on “Violins of Hope” was a way to honor their memories.
Compassion is a mighty force of strength that transforms sorrow into joy.
By: Slovie Jungreis-Wolff
How do we keep our world intact when it feels as if everything we’ve known is falling apart?
Finding ourselves under lockdown, anxious and confused about all the unrest and illness can bring us to a place of sadness. There is uncertainty mixed with grief. We worry about our future, our children’s future. We worry about our country.
Amidst all the chaos we have the power to bring light.
King David says it best: “The world is built through kindness.” When the universe around you is falling down you have the ability to raise it up. Compassion becomes a mighty force of strength that transforms sorrow into joy. Every time you connect with another soul you create a link of unity. Hope for the future is born.
Friday afternoon, I was about to turn off my computer to get ready for Shabbos. I noticed an email that had popped into my inbox. The subject intrigued me. “Touching base. It’s been over 40 years”.
I began to read the message.
Slovie,
I don’t know if you remember me. We went to camp together and I’m pretty sure we haven’t spoken since then.
Anyway, while quarantined, my husband started looking through old papers. I found the attached card you sent me some 43 years ago.
I don’t remember the incident. However the fact that you sent me a card, and I kept it, shows how much the Hakaras Hatov (gratitude) meant to me. I thought you would enjoy seeing a card that you and your father jointly wrote.
Quick 40+ update. I’m married for 41 years, thank God blessed with kids and grandchildren. I would love to meet you and say hi if you ever come to my neighborhood. You are always invited if you need a place to stay.
Have a nice Shabbos
The letter was signed along with a phone contact.
And there below was a sight that took my breath away.
A photo attachment of a New Year card in my teenaged scrawl along with my father’s bold handwriting. I had no recollection of the card or the incident but seeing my father’s distinct script brought me back to being my ‘Daddy’s little girl’. I read and reread my father’s words and then my own, and got a picture of the story. My heavy trunk needed schlepping. It was the last day of camp and everyone was busy with their own stuff. This one girl stopped whatever she was doing and helped us lug the trunk and duffel bag to my father’s car. Before Rosh Hashanah I had sent her a thank you note. What made me now stop and pause were my father’s words at the bottom of the card.
You have recently fulfilled the mitzvah of ‘hakem takem immo’ (helping one lift their burden) by helping to carry Slovie’s trunk. Thank you. May you be written and inscribed for a good new year.
Rabbi Jungreis
I felt a tear slide down my cheek.
Besides feeling as if I had received a hug from above after all these years, I could not believe that my father had actually taken the interest and the time to add to my teenage letter. It struck me what a force of light he must’ve been for me growing up, in subtle ways I could not even appreciate at the time. What I had taken as simply ordinary was in truth extraordinary.
I called the number and we reconnected. We reminisced, caught up and wished each other a Good Shabbos. And I was touched to my very core.
It was not just a young girl on a hot summer day who had taken the time to stop what she was doing, see the need, and help me and my father. At this moment the kindness took on a new life of its own.
43 years later, that young girl who is now a grandmother stopped what she was doing and returned my father’s words back to me. Greater than carrying my loaded trunk was her carrying the load in my heart; missing my father while trying to make sense of the world we live in. Once again she stopped and thought of me, not even realizing the great impact her message would make.
We are all feeling vulnerable. Connecting with others unlocks the constraints we are enduring. Knowing that we have/had parents, friends and family who love us, care for us, and watch over us empowers us as we grope with the darkness.
We all have the ability to reconnect with someone now and create a moment of kindness.
Think of someone who has impacted your life. It can be someone from long ago like a third grade teacher you’ve never forgotten, a mentor, an aunt or uncle who used to take you on family trips, or a friend who had been there for you but you’ve lost touch. Think of the person who helped you get your first job or invited you for a Shabbos that ignited a spark within.
Take out a moment from your day and find the time to say thank you. Reconnect and build a bridge between souls.
Now think of the people in your life whom you take most for granted. Your parents, your grandparents, your family, or good friends. You know they will be there for you. You know you’ve gone through challenges and strains; maybe you had words and encounters that hurt. But you’ve also discovered the power of friendship, of loyalty and love. When there was no one else to sooth your pain they had listening hearts; a balm for your soul. You have stories that bond. Memories and private jokes that only the two of you share.
Take out a moment from your day and find the time to say thank you. Reconnect and build a bridge between souls.
We combat darkness with light, desperation with hope, and anguish with consolation.
Let us build our world through kindness.
(And thank you R. for taking the time to reconnect and bringing me solace and joy.)
The path that you will begin to walk will be lit with a radiant brightness, guiding you to a place that was always there for the taking. The gift of G‑d’s mitzvahs. Photo Credit: Rivka Korf Studio
I am a 34-year-old happily married woman with two children. I adore and love my husband of 17 years more and more each day. And yet, there came a point in my life where I was searching for more. Something I could not quite identify. Perhaps a new and exciting intimate world with my life partner, perhaps something else. The truth is, I didn’t quite know what I was looking for. In my head, I had my own personal mystery to solve.
Enter my friend Amanda Spiro (Sculnick), who I’ve known most of my life but lost contact with for a while. In those intervening years, Amanda became Torah-observant, married and had two children. She re-entered my life at the right time and the right place. It was a reconnection that goes beyond what can be expressed in words, but I will try.
The Questions
Our friendship was rekindled at a challah bake Amanda was leading in her house for a few of my friends, all of whom were interested and curious in what Judaism has to offer. Once I saw her again—how she lived, her quiet peacefulness—I quickly realized that she held the missing piece of my life, which was still a mystery, but getting closer to being resolved.
After that evening, it was as though we had never lost contact, speaking to each other not daily, but hourly! Whether it was to check in on how the days were going, how the kids were, planning her Shabbat menu … the list was endless.
Early into our new-old friendship, she brought up visiting the mikvah, gently asking if I’d ever been. My response was a simple and innocent one: Why do I need to go to the mikvah? I’m not religious. I have an amazing intimate life, so why would I choose to refrain from intimacy and physical contact with my husband?
The Piece of the Puzzle
After many conversations, many questions and many answers, I am proud to say that I now go to the mikvah on a regular basis.
Before you read on, know this: I did not write this piece as an advertisement for the mikvah. This comes from the depth of my soul, written from my heart. It’s just the simple truth. The mikvah has brought me closer to my husband, has brought me closer to G‑d and has actually taught me the true meaning of absence making the heart grow fonder.
The quality of our intimacy and the connection that I have with my husband is so much greater—not as I first thought it would be. Not one kiss or touch is taken for granted on the days when intimacy is encouraged.
Along with learning about the mikvah, I saw not only the beauty that Judaism has to offer, but slowly, the hand of G‑d in life’s little details. Little did I know that G‑d was setting in place the tools I would desperately need in my life, more than I ever could have imagined.
An Unexpected Bonus
I began learning about the inner secrets of the mikvah on a weekly basis with Mrs. Chani Carlbach, one of the foremost teachers on this subject. As time went on, I slowly realized that Judaism has unlimited facets, like an uncut diamond. There are levels and depths that enhance the beauty and act of each mitzvah we do. My life as a wife, mother, daughter and friend were becoming deeply enriched. And then …
On March 26, 2020, in the middle of the lockdown during the pandemic, my beloved mother, Bracha bas Fraida, was struck with COVID-19. It is a relentless, non-discriminatory illness. Through my newfound learning, I instinctively knew that I had to do two things simultaneously: steel myself for what was coming—gathering all the strength in my body to do so—while at the same time hand over the process of curing my mother to the professionals and to G‑d. I had to let go of the dream that I was in control.
Over the next seven weeks, I ran the gamut of every emotion one can have. It was brutal. At the same time, I was learning to delve deeper into what it means to “believe in G‑d.” I always knew there were no atheists in a foxhole, and now I was living it.
My mother would always tell me that she really feels when people are praying for her, and that’s what I did every day. My Shabbat candles seem to be the brightest I have ever lit in my life.
Thanks to the kindness of G‑d and the prayers of many people, my mother is on the road to recovery. In my heart, I know it’s because G‑d wanted her still to be with us and her grandchildren. I also know that during the worst part of her illness, my mother felt our prayers.
A Guiding Light
I am a regular at Amanda’s Shabbat table and have met many of her wonderful, warm and gracious friends. I have figured out, slowly but surely, that one’s willpower can change almost anything. But most of all, I am beyond thankful to G‑d for bringing me back to my friend.
If I had to share one thought with people, it would be that when you meet or reconnect with someone who can reconnect you with your soul, grab her hand and don’t let go. In reality, it is G‑d tapping you on the shoulder, telling you, “My beloved Jewish daughter, I have not forgotten you.”
The path that you will begin to walk will be lit with a radiant brightness, guiding you to a place that was always there for the taking. The gift of G‑d’s mitzvahs.
Miriam spoke disparagingly about Moshe Rabbeinu. Because of this, she contracted tzaras, and for seven days she was sent outside the camp of Israel. Photo Credit: Facebook
By: Rabbi Ben Tzion Shafier
And Miriam and Aaron spoke about Moshe regarding the Kushis woman that he took, for he took a Kushis woman. – Bamidbar 12:1
Miriam spoke disparagingly about Moshe Rabbeinu. Because of this, she contracted tzaras, and for seven days she was sent outside the camp of Israel.
Rashi explains how these events unfolded. Miriam had been standing next to Moshe’s wife, Tzipporah, when they heard that two men were prophesying in the camp. Tzipporah exclaimed, “Woe to the wives of these men! Now their husbands will separate from them, as my husband did from me.” When Miriam heard this, she went to Aaron and said, “We are also prophets. We don’t separate from our spouses. Why should our brother Moshe be different?”
For this statement, Miriam was punished. Rashi concludes from this incident that if Miriam, who didn’t intend any harm to Moshe, was so severely rebuked, surely one who intends to disparage his friend will be punished.
What Was Her Sin?
This Rashi is difficult to understand. What was Miriam’s transgression? She witnessed her brother doing something that in her estimation was wrong. She didn’t go blabbing the news all over town. She went directly to spiritual giant, the Kohain Gadol, Moshe’s brother Aaron, to ask for his advice. If she was correct and Moshe was acting improperly, then Aaron would validate her assessment. If she was wrong, he would correct her. What was her transgression? Her intentions were pure. Her actions were discreet. Where is her wrongdoing?
The answer to this question is based on understanding what the Torah considers slander. The Rambam explains that the definition of lashon harah is, “Words that hurt, words that damage.” Whether damaging a man’s reputation, harming his career, or spoiling his standing in the community – they are words that that cause harm.
There are, however, times when lashon harah is permitted. If someone speaks for a constructive purpose and that speech meets exact Torah guidelines, then it is a mitzvah. In that case, the report isn’t considered disparaging. Quite the opposite, since we are obligated to protect our fellow Jews from harm, sometimes we must inform others of what we know. But that is the point: Torah law defines what constitutes slander and what is a mitzvah. The line between the two is often very thin.
What If I Misjudge?
The Chofetz Chaim writes that to permit the telling of disparaging information, a person must have first-hand knowledge of the facts, and there can be no room for misinterpretation. No room for error. If there is another possible explanation which shows the act in a different light, then he is forbidden to speak.
Miriam’s Transgression
This seems to be the answer to Rashi. HASHEM rebuked Miriam and Aaron both, saying, “Why did you suspect my servant, Moshe? Moshe was on such a lofty level that you should have realized that what he did was justified and proper. You should have judged him favorably. Because you judged him incorrectly, you mistook his intentions and determined his actions to be improper. You were wrong, and you should have recognized that. He is my servant, loyal and obedient, pure and untainted, an angel walking in the form of a man. You should have realized that he is in a different league than any other man, and you should have judged him favorably.”
That was Miriam’s’ transgression — not judging her brother properly. She miscalculated. Everything she did after that was correct, but it was all based on her error. Her mistake was in her initial assessment, which then led to her to slander her brother unintentionally. But unintentional slander is slander nevertheless.
This Rashi teaches us a vital concept. How many times do we hear people say, “This isn’t lashon harah; it’s l’toeles (for a constructive purpose),” or, “About a person like him, it’s mitzvah to talk.” And they are correct. If according to the halacha this is “a constructive purpose,” or if by Torah standards this man is a rasha, then it is a mitzvah to repeat what happened. But if not, it’s a sin. And that’s the question. Is it or isn’t it?
And so we have to ask ourselves how certain we are that what we’re saying meets the Torah’s definition of a “constructive purpose.” Do we know what the Torah’s requirements are to consider a person a rasha? And even more, how many times is our conclusion deeply colored by our own hurt feelings, or by a grudge that we bear, or some other bias blinding us to the truth?
It’s Difficult to Judge Correctly
Rashi is teaching us is that if we misjudge a situation and reach a conclusion that is unfounded, we may think that we are doing a mitzvah, but in fact we will be held liable for slander. While our intentions might be pure, because of our lack of caution, we could needlessly spoil a man’s reputation or damage his business, or stop a shidduch and we will then be liable for the harm. What we thought was a mitzvah was in fact an egregious sin. We wronged an innocent man, and that is something that we may never be able to repair.
Rabbi Shafier is the founder of the Shmuz.com – The Shmuz is an engaging, motivating shiur that deals with real life issues.
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Each and every time we commence our studies, we must strive to view ourselves as we stood at Mt. Sinai, when we declared “Na’aseh v’nishma”–“We will fulfill the Torah–study and plumb its infinite wisdom.
By: Rabbi Osher Jungreis
In this week’s parsha (Numbers 8:1), Aaron is commanded to kindle the lights of the menorah, but a most unusual word is used in this connection–“behaaloscha” which, literally translated means “when you elevate” rather than “K’sheh tadlik”–“When you light.”
There is a profound teaching therein. The menorah is symbolic of the Torah, and we must at all times bear in mind that studying the Torah is not just undertaking another study; observing the mitzvot is not just another life style, but it is the very essence of our lives, the very fiber of our being through which we are elevated and realize our purpose in life. Therefore, the words that is used is “elevating” rather than “lighting”.
In this week’s parsha (Numbers 8:1), Aaron is commanded to kindle the lights of the menorah, but a most unusual word is used in this connection–“behaaloscha” which, literally translated means “when you elevate” rather than “K’sheh tadlik”–“When you light.” Photo Credit: Temple Institute
Every aspect of the service is significant. When the Kohen lights the menorah, he must do so standing on a step although the menorah was only fifty four inches in height and it would have been a simple matter to kindle the light without standing on a step-stool. But here again, is a symbolic teaching–we cannot just open the books and start studying.
Rather, we must prepare ourselves emotionally, mentally, and spiritually for the awesome task of immersing ourselves in G-d’s Book. Each and every time we commence our studies, we must strive to view ourselves as we stood at Mt. Sinai, when we declared “Na’aseh v’nishma”–“We will fulfill the Torah–study and plumb its infinite wisdom. If we adopt such as attitude, we will discover that absolutely nothing can limit our spiritual growth, and we will truly experience spiritual elevation.
Following the instructions regarding the commandment of the menorah, the passage goes on to say, “Vayas Kein Aharon”–“And Aaron did thus…” (Numbers 8:30)
Rashi, the great commentator states that this verse is in praise of Aaron who fulfilled the command exactly as instructed. This is difficult to understand, for even a lesser person than Aaron wouldn’t have deviated from G-d’s command, how much more so Aaron.
But once again the Torah teaches us an important lesson. It is easy to be enthusiastic when we undertake a new project, but to keep that enthusiasm going when the novelty wears off is a real test of character. We all have visions when facing new challenges. We go under the chuppah certain that we will be the best husbands and wives.
When we become parents, we are certain that we will be the best mothers and fathers, but very soon, our dreams are shattered, our enthusiasm fades, and we revert back to our old ways. Aaron however, was different. Throughout his thirty-nine years of service, he retained his enthusiasm as on the day when he first received the commandments. Indeed, “Aaron did thus…”
There is yet another teaching to the menorah. The soul of man is a candle of G-d (Proverbs). Buried deep in the crevices of our neshamas is the light of G-d–a love of Torah. We need only kindle it. So if we seek meaning and purpose in life, elevation and spirituality, we need only kindle the light of Torah in our souls. It’s as easy as that.
The number of deaths in the top six countries, as a percent of all the deaths worldwide, is the United States (about 28%), the United Kingdom (about 10.5%), Italy (almost 9%), Brazil (almost 8%), France (about 7.75%), and Spain (just over 7%). Russia is in 14th place and has about 1.5% of the total deaths. Photo Credit: AP
By: Ariel Natan Pasko
Just recently, the Jewish people experienced the Revelation of God at Mount Sinai, AGAIN!
The holiday of Shavuot just occurred. Jewish holidays are called a Moed, a private appointment time with the God of Israel, the God of their fathers and mothers.
Fifty days after Pesach/Passover, leaving slavery, leaving the Egyptian exile, the exile of the spirit behind; Moses leads the people to Mount Sinai, where they experience an unimaginable, synesthesiatic revelation, “seeing” God’s voice, the thunder, and sound of the shofar.
“And all the people saw the voices…”
“The voices: They saw what was audible, which is impossible to see elsewhere. Voices emanating from the mouth of the Almighty. Many voices, voices coming from every direction, and from the heavens, and from the earth,” (Rashi on Exodus 20:15, from Mechilta d’Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai).
A spiritual experience, of a magnitude never encountered by any other nation, before or after. As Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi, author of “Sefer HaKuzari” said, all other religions started with a “prophetic revelation” to one individual, who told others about it, and then believers started to follow the “prophet.” Not so, with Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, an entire nation experienced the prophetic revelation of God at Mount Sinai, and Jews have remembered this for over 3,300 years.
And what did they SEE? “I am the Lord Your God [the God of creation], who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage [the God of history]” (Exodus 20:2).
The Rambam (Maimonides), in his Sefer HaMitzvot, lists Positive Commandment #1, the First Mitzvah, to believe in the Divinity: to believe that there is a cause and a reason, which is the maker of all creations. As The Exalted One has said, “I am the L-rd, your God, Who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
Rambam then asks, Why does God identify Himself as the One who took us out of Egypt? Why not as the Creator of the universe? Certainly the creation of the universe, is a far greater feat than the Exodus from Egypt.
He answers, We did not witness creation, but we did witness the Exodus from Egypt. Because of this, we owe it to God to believe in Him and follow His commandments.
Demonstrators protest the death of George Floyd, Sunday, May 31, 2020, near the White House in Washington. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
When God created the world, He created nature. When He took us out of Egypt, He broke the system of nature, and we saw this happen. Every day we must remember that God not only created the universe, but that He continues to create it ex nihilo every single moment, and can transcend nature at will. The fact that the First Commandment is given in the singular (“I am your [singular] God”), tells us that God cares about the welfare of each individual person, and therefore continues to bring us out of our personal Egypt, our constraints and challenges, every single day.
The Rambam then points out, that the fact that God mentions the Exodus from Egypt in His First Commandment, reassures us that just as He took us out of the Egyptian exile, so will He take us out of this final exile [as He is doing in our day] with the coming of Mashiach, the Messiah.
Just as the God of Israel is Redeeming the Jewish people from its global exile and suffering today, showing how He is constantly involved in Jewish history and destiny, so too, is he punishing those who most oppressed the Jewish people, throughout the ages.
Recently I saw the data from John Hopkins University, for the CoronaVirus pandemic, the total number of confirmed cases has exceeded 6.23 million globally, almost 30% in the United States. The top seven infected countries are the US, followed by Brazil (about 8%), Russia (almost 7%), the United Kingdom (about 4.5%), Spain (almost 4%), and Italy (almost 4%), and France (about 3%).
The number of deaths in the top six countries, as a percent of all the deaths worldwide, is the United States (about 28%), the United Kingdom (about 10.5%), Italy (almost 9%), Brazil (almost 8%), France (about 7.75%), and Spain (just over 7%). Russia is in 14th place and has about 1.5% of the total deaths.
Three other countries near the top, who receive dishonorable mention are Germany, Iran, and Turkey.
After China, the first major epicenters of the virus outbreaks were in Korea, Iran and Italy.
It was very evenly spaced out across the globe by-the-way, to go into all Asia, E. & W. Europe, and from Europe and China ==> into USA. God’s Hand could be seen again.
But why Korea? North Korea has been helping Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas for years with, nuclear, missile, and tunnel technologies. North Korean pilots flew Egyptian MIG-21s against Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and always supported the PLO, i.e. Palestinian statehood. See my article,
“North Korea: There is an Israeli Connection.”
Why Iran? Well threatening Israel’s destruction for over 40 years, and then a nuclear holocaust for the last 10 years, means something. The God of Israel “neither slumbers nor sleeps,” (Psalms 121:4).
And Italy? The Romans burnt down the Second Temple, robbed the temple treasury, destroyed Judea, murdered over a million Jews and dragged countless others off to slavery. The Coliseum in Rome, was built by Jewish slaves with money from the temple treasury. Christianity set up headquarters in Rome at the Vatican, and the Catholic Church has persecuted Jews for 1,600+ yrs.
Notice, most of the worse CoronaVirus outbreaks, have been in Catholic areas of Europe. The God of Israel is remembering the Church’s millennia long persecution of Jews, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, etc. For example, Italy (the Vatican), France (Burnt Talmuds), Spain (the Inquisition). The Catholic areas of Germany, have been hit worse than the Protestant areas, and we know what Germany has done to Jews in the past.
But why Brazil? As a Portuguese colony, Catholicism was the official religion, and anti-Semitic persecutions followed the Jews from the old world to the new world. Brazil was not free of the inquisition until Brazilian independence in 1822. Roman Catholicism remained the state religion, but the constitution proclaimed some tolerance of other religions, yet anti-Semitism persisted.
Anti-Semitism grew in Brazil in the 1900s, and reached its peak during 1933–1945, with the rise of Nazism in Germany. Brazil locked its doors to Jewish refugees from Europe during the Holocaust. Between 1937 and 1950, more than 16,000 visas to European Jews, most attempting to escape the Nazis, were denied by Brazilian governments.
England, the United Kingdom, Britain? Well that one’s obvious, they were pretty bad to us too…
The first blood libel in Europe occurred in England in 1144. The English participated in the Crusades, killing and looting Jews, in England itself, on their way to the liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims.
Then, Jews were forcibly thrown out of England from 1290 until the 1650s.
The British declared the Balfour Declaration in 1917, to support the Zionist goal of establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, and received the Palestine Mandate from the League of Nations to carry out that mission.
Yet, during the mandate period, they perfidiously helped the Arabs living in the mandate to thwart Jewish national aspirations. They allowed many Arabs from the surrounding countries to enter the mandate area, while limiting Jewish immigration to it, even during the darkest days before and during the Holocaust. Their policies toward Israel have been lukewarm at best, since.
Russia, the former Soviet Union, why them? Again obvious, pogroms, persecution, and the Pale of Settlement, under the Czars, and things only went downhill from there under the communists. The Soviet Union persecuted Jews, for wanting to learn Hebrew and practice Judaism. They supported the Arab states politically and militarily during the Cold War period, against Israel, and denied Jews the right to make Aliyah, i.e. leave the Soviet Union and move to Israel.
Even today’s Russia, is playing a two-faced game. Although Putin has had better relations with Israel than during Soviet times, he’s been allied with Iran and Turkey in Syria. Certainly no friends of Israel.
Which brings us to the United States. Why has God hit America so hard? Hasn’t America been good to the Jews, isn’t it the “Goldene Medina?” Maybe that’s the problem?
First of all, America refused entry to the MS St. Louis, a ship laden with Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Then, America did nothing in particular to save Jews during the Holocaust. Roosevelt even ignored all requests to bomb the railroad tracks leading into the murder camps.
On one hand America has been so good to the Jews that they’re assimilating in record numbers (a Silent Holocaust), yet anti-Semitism has sizzled under the surface for decades, and has been boiling over more recently. How long before the current riots turn anti-Semitic?
President Trump has been good to the Jewish people, and done God’s will, in recognizing Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and towns in Judea and Samaria. But Trump went too far (something HaShem, the God of Israel, didn’t want), in talking about a “Palestinian” state, and Netanyahu has sinned also, in agreeing to recognize other’s “rights” to our/HaShem’s Land.
Like an overconfident poker player, Trump has overplayed his hand… “Deal of the Century” get it?
He’s also made the biggest blunder, in talking about keeping the status quo on the Temple Mount, i.e. denying Jewish rights, when we all know that God’s House, the Third Temple, is going to be built there soon.
If you think about it for a moment, there’s definitely a pattern here. Starting in mid-January 2020, each weekly Torah reading, since the beginning of Sefer Shemot (the Book of Exodus), has related HIGHLY to what had been going on in the world at the time. The plagues, the exodus, the golden calf, building the Mishkan (Tabernacle), and soon the “Sin of the Spies.”
Back at the beginning of February, I was telling people out here, in Israel, that the Coronavirus hit America at about the same time, as the ten plagues had been being read in the weekly Torah readings, and the announcement that Trump’s partition plan, was going to be unveiled the following week, on January 28th. See my article, “The Likud and Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook.”
The exact chronology is: on Tuesday of that week – the first announced case of CoronaVirus was found in Washington state (no coincidence, note the name). On Thursday of that week, the White House announced that they were inviting Netanyahu, the following week, to unveil the “Deal of the Century.”
Do you see God’s Hand?
The return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the redemptive process, as promised by God, through his prophets (see the Hebrew Bible), has been unfolding in the last couple generations, it won’t be stopped by the Trump Plan, the CoronaVirus, or anything.
Many Rabbis have given three causes, for the CoronaVirus, (a slightly too GALUT/EXILE-CENTRIC perspective, because it ignores the most important reason) in my humble opinion.
The World’s Sexual Promiscuity (Health)
2.LaShone HaRa (Slander/Evil Speech) (Hate)
Excessive Materialism (Money)
I’ve been telling people similar things, for the last several months…
But, let me end with this, and what about you? The Jews still in Galut?
HaShem is shaking the YIDDEN up worldwide!!! He’s brought:
Disease – the CoronaVirus ==> Health.
Rising anti-Semitism ==> Hate.
Economic collapse ==> To end Money/Power Idolatry & Jews’ false sense of security.
Interestingly, we read about the Golden Calf during this period too, and what symbolizes, modern idolatry, more than money today!
Now, the biggest reason (in my humble opinion) for this pandemic, and all that’s occurred in the last six months.
The God of Israel is carrying out Kibbutz Galuyot (the ingathering of the exiles), just as He promised in the Book of Ezekiel, “…So says the Lord God: Behold I will take the children of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them from every side, and I will bring them to their land,” (Ezekiel 36:21). The redemption of the Jewish people continues.
All this will lead the Jews in the exile to:
Think really seriously, about moving to Israel ==> a massive wave of Aliyah is brewing.
Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Isaac Herzog recently said, “…We are preparing for increased Aliyah once the crisis is over…”
Aliyah, is itself TSHUVA, it is the Tikkun (repair) for the “Sin of the Spies,” who despised the GOOD LAND! That Torah reading by-the-way, Parshat Shlach, is coming up in less than two weeks.
Pesach (Chag HaGeula – the holiday of redemption) culminated in the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, on Shavuot. But the plan was to bring the Jews into the Land of Israel, if not for the “Sin of the Spies.” Remember, 80% of the Jews never even made it out of Egypt…
The author writes: “For years I felt rejected by my Hasidic neighbors. The pandemic changed all that.”
By: Joseph Rosen
I live on a Montreal block in Mile End, once the neighborhood of Mordecai Richler, which is now 50-per-cent Hasidic Jews – an ultra-Orthodox sect that prays three times a day, and wears black hats imitating 18th-century Polish aristocracy.
While I live among them as a secular Jew, and have friendly relations with some neighbors, the Hasidim separate themselves from me and my social world. For many in the neighborhood, including me, social distance with our counterparts is nothing new.
But COVID-19 quarantine protocols, while physically distancing me from secular society, have brought me socially closer to my Hasidic neighbors. Morning and night, their voices sing out in prayer: ancient Middle Eastern melodies float through the pandemic-emptied street, bringing archaic echoes of spiritual yearning to the urban streetscape. Fathers, sons, grandfathers and grandsons – it’s only ever men – cluster together on front stoops, lean out from balconies, and dot the sidewalk. Melancholic songs ring up and down the street in passionate call and response, and passersby stare in wonder. After weeks of this outdoor synagogue, I see that the Hasidim have something to teach us seculars about what it means for a community to reconnect in a COVID-19 world.
My first response wasn’t so romantic. Hearing noises coming from my balcony, I stepped outside and was surprised to see four Hasidic brothers praying on the adjacent balcony. I went downstairs to see that my neighbor’s front stoop was the center of the service, and immediately worried that this religious ritual might increase my family’s risk of infection.
Years ago, my neighbor put up a green plastic fence to separate our front stoops. I felt rejected. Since COVID-19, the same neighbor brings out a Torah scroll on a portable table, and I find the front of my house at the heart of their religious services. Because Orthodox Jews must pray communally in a “minyan” of at least 10 men, the Hasidim were in a bind when the government shuttered all religious buildings and forbade religious services. Rabbis, in accordance with government directives, forbade having minyans in person. Improvising, as Jews have often done living under regimes that forbid Jewish practice, my Orthodox neighbors took to the streets so that, while remaining two meters apart, they could continue to pray together. Instead of hiding in caves and basements – as Jews sometimes had to do in centuries past – the new coronavirus has driven them outdoors.
One morning my curiosity overcame my fear and I walked out to the sidewalk when I heard them chanting. As much as I enjoy secular life, I found myself missing a sense of spiritual connection. It was cold, with a smattering of April snow on the ground. In addition to COVID-19, we have to survive what Montreal calls “spring” together.
My neighbor had started praying with his son, and he watched for others to emerge from their front doors. White tallit – prayer shawls embroidered with silver and blue – covered their heads. They wore tefillin: black leather boxes containing parchment inscribed with Hebrew verses, which are wrapped with leather straps onto the forehead and arm. My neighbor walked up and down the sidewalk looking to connect with other Hasidim as they came out across the street and down the block. Silent, so as not to interrupt the order of prayers, they made hand gestures to each other like third base coaches, holding up fingers to indicate how many were praying. My neighbor signaled to a man a few houses away who peeked into his neighbor’s window: two fingers. When they identified a minyan of 10 they said Kaddish. The prayer is recited by mourners for 11 months after a close relative dies. In Judaism, one doesn’t mourn alone – but surrounded by community.
The first Montrealer to die of COVID-19 was a 67-year-old Hasid who went to a synagogue two blocks away from me. Online news articles about the community became a hotspot of anti-Semitic ranting. The Hasidim felt immediately targeted. “The level of hatred, the level of focus, of scapegoating, has gone beyond anything we have seen before,” said one Hasid. When a janitor was seen cleaning a synagogue, a neighbor called the police and eight cop cars showed up. There are reports of verbal attacks on the street, and Hasidim being told to stick with “Jewish stores.”
A few unfortunately timed weddings, big families and travel back and forth may explain why my co-religionists were initially hit harder than other communities. And as friends and I joked, after Justin Trudeau warned against “speaking moistly,” energetic schmoozing might have been a factor in the Jewish transmission rate (JR0).
Some argue that they have been socially irresponsible, but the Hasidim are not libertarian yahoos: It is their communal commitments that have made them – and potentially my front yard – more vulnerable to the coronavirus. We worshippers of the secular indulge in unnecessary COVID-19 risks, too. Some go for runs in busy parks. Others order delivery from Pizza Pizza. My COVID-19 vices are social: ringing a friend’s doorbell to sing happy birthday to their child, midnight scotch drinking with friends (at two meters) and visiting my girlfriend across town (at nowhere near two meters). The risks we take are based on what we value most.
The Hasidim pray together. And my neighbors, facing the green fence, sing loudly right onto my stoop, potentially increasing my viral exposure. The coronavirus highlights how permeable the borders are between our bodies, and how much our private choices affect everyone around us.
After stepping onto the sidewalk that morning, I strolled up and down the block, seeing a Hasid every three or four houses. The silver embroidery on their tallit flashed brightly in the sun, imparting a splendor one does not see indoors. One man shouted his prayer from out of his open window on the second floor. I didn’t understand the words, and the singing wasn’t classically “beautiful” like the choirs in more mainstream synagogues and churches. But his voice rang out with a pained yearning that resonates in this time of uncertainty. At various points congregants yelled, so that all can hear, “Amen,” pronounced “Oh-MAIN,” meaning “so be it!”
