Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

The StandWithUs (SWU) Center for Combating Anti-Semitism (CCA) has offered a $10,000 reward to whomever provided the information that led to the arrest of the alleged perpetrator behind the recent vandalism of two Florida synagogues.

The two synagogues, Temple Emanu-El and Temple Sinai, were vandalized on July 15 with swastikas and other unspecified anti-Semitic graffiti. Both synagogues are located in Sarasota, Fla. On July 24, Victor Martinez, 21, was arrested in connection to the vandalisms.

If this man is convicted of these anti-Semitic hate crimes, it will be SWU and the Mizel Family Foundations pleasure to offer a monetary reward to the person who exhibited the courage AND DETERMINATION to come forward with information that was instrumental in allowing justice to be served here, CCA Director Carly Gammill said in a statement. It is our hope that if and when other anti-Semitic hate crimes occur, those who have helpful information will demonstrate the same fortitude and join us as we combat this societal disease.

Martinez was arrested after video footage showed him using an ATM near one of the synagogues on the night the vandalisms occurred. He faces a up to five years in jail and a fine of $5,000.

Temple Sinai President Ellen Bender told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that she was shocked at how young the alleged suspect is.

I hope he has some sort of education about what it means to be Jewish, Bender said. What it means to be part of a community, an interfaith community. I have no understanding where this kind of hate comes from.

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StandWithUs Offers $10,000 to Informant Who Led to Arrest of Suspect in Florida Synagogue Vandalisms - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

AMSTERDAM (JTA) In the United States, when Jews say they identify as part of the Jewish community, they are saying they belong to a broad cultural and religious framework. They could be referring to the community of Jews in their city, their state, the country at large or the world and it doesnt necessarily mean that they belong to a synagogue.

In Western Europe, that applies in some situations. In others, however, saying that one is part of a Community (capital C) carries different connotations. Thats because Jewish communities and congregations here are arranged in a system that is radically different than the one in the United States.

The European model is called Kultusgemeinde, German for cultural community. Most major cities have organizations called communities for instance, the Jewish Community of Milan, the Jewish Community of Berlin and so on. Membership usually involves genealogical vetting and an annual fee thats determined by income level. (For instance, belonging to the Jewish Community of Amsterdam, a nonprofit that deals with Jewish Orthodox affairs, on average costs over $600.)

Belonging to the communities comes with several tangible benefits, notably free access to Jewish schools in most countries with sizable Jewish populations. That typically costs American families tens of thousands of dollars.

But there are downsides to the model, too, including a culture of homogenization that leaves little room for religious innovation.

The U.S. equivalent would be belonging to the Jewish Community of Seattle, if that existed, instead of just a synagogue in the Washington city.

The decentralized American model and its Western European antithesis were born out of different historical circumstances and today have advantages and disadvantages that both shape and reflect some key differences of Jewish communal life in those parts of the world. Heres what belonging to a European Jewish Community means.

The origins

The Kultusgemeinde model came about in the 19th century in Central Europe because European governments wanted to oversee Jewish communities in an organized way, said Sergio DellaPergola, an expert on Jewish demography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

It ended up being, at times, a pretty effective tool for Jewish communities to pursue their interests through their own elected leadership, he said.

According to DellaPergola, who was born in Trieste, Italy, and raised as a member of the Jewish Community of Milan, the Kultusgemeinde model has allowed Jews to lobby governments effectively on core issues for centuries. It has helped them unite to successfully fight some attempts to curtail their religious freedoms; pool their communal resources in order to hire rabbis and other communal services; streamline fundraising; care for their poor; and make powerful political alliances, DellaPergola and other advocates of the European model said.

Some of the largest today are in places with large Jewish populations, such as Paris, London, Berlin and Amsterdam.

The nuts and bolts

Many Kultusgemeinde communities receive funding from their state or city governments, which tend to allocate those payments according to membership size. Being a state-recognized religious charity means a Community can receive tax-deductible donations. In Hungary and Italy, for example, taxpayers can choose one charity to which the government will transfer 1 percent of the sum it collects as income tax each year.

To become Kultusgemeinde members, applicants are vetted on their Jewishness. For Orthodox communities, applicants need to prove that their mothers are Jewish. In some cases, applicants also need to choose and commit to one synagogue in a given city under the Communitys jurisdiction.

Reform and Masorti congregations also operate on the Kultusgemeinde model in Europe. They are less strict regarding admissions, but they also have a vetting process.

Once in, members have access to communal facilities and services things like a bris or a wedding chuppah cost less for members. Besides schools and synagogues, the communities can include other organizations such as JCCs, libraries, eateries and even individual media outlets. In France, for instance, the Consistoire, an organization set up in the 19th century by local Jews on the request of Napoleon Bonaparte, operates one of the worlds newest and glitziest community centers, the $17 million European Center of Judaism.

Operating outside the Kultusgemeinde model in relatively small Jewish communities means a huge disadvantage in terms of funding and recognition, said Emile Schrijver, a professor of Jewish book history at the University of Amsterdam and director of the citys Jewish Cultural Quarter (a nongovernmental organization that is not a Kultusgemeinde, but serves as the umbrella structure for five Jewish museums and institutions).

The pros

The centralized model of organization can reap great benefits.

In the Netherlands and Belgium, Kultusgemeinde organs the Belgian CCOJB and the Central Jewish Organization of the Netherlands have served as legal entities that were necessary to fight proposed national bans on kosher slaughter, which would have dealt a major blow to observant communities. This fight succeeded in the Netherlands in 2012 and is currently being fought by the Belgian Kultusgemeinde community.

In France, where Napoleon essentially forced the Jews there to form the Kultusgemeinde-like Consistoire, that structure is now disseminating aid to help thousands of French Jews overcome the financial repercussions of the coronavirus crisis.

The central design of the community means there is a clear address, in Frances case, for financial issues, DellaPergola said, noting the Fonds Social Juif Unifi, or United Jewish Social Fund, where Jews can get assistance.

The Kultusgemeinde model also means that Western European Jews have chief rabbis who act as a supreme religious authorities and, at times, help give Jews a voice in social debates. In England, for example, Britains current and former chief rabbis (Ephraim Mirvis and Jonathan Sacks, respectively) have helped amplify the claims of anti-Semitism surrounding the Labour Party in national media, partially because of the authority that their title assumes.

Then theres the free schooling.

Many European governments, including France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Italy, have agreed to allow religious Jewish schools to operate as public schools as long as they also teach the minimum required curriculum. This mixing of church and state has led to repeated clashes between education officials and Jewish faculty who critics say fail to teach such subjects as evolution and sexual education.

The cons (and costs)

In normal times, being a member of a Kultusgemeinde community can get expensive.

Even after paying several hundreds of dollars a year for membership a tax-deductible expense in most European countries additional substantial payments are required for rabbinical and other services at ceremonies such as weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs.

(The situation is different in the revived Jewish communities of post-communist Eastern Europe, where membership fees are mostly covered by external donations, government funding and Holocaust restitution funds.)

The model also has pitted multiple communities against each other for government recognition and funds and led to decades-long tensions between the in crowd and the outsiders. Its even started legal battles.

In Hungary, a notable fight between two competing federations of Kultusgemeinden has gone on for years. It pits the Mazsihisz federation, which is largely Neolog, a local denomination akin to Masorti or Conservative, against EMIH, the Chabad-affiliated Orthodox federation of communities.

In Poland, a 2012 court ruling forced the Orthodox Jewish Community of Warsaw to allow in a non-Orthodox congregation called Ec Chaim. When the non-Orthodox congregation joined the Community, some local Reform Jews a minority within the Jewish population of most European countries dismissed Ec Chaim as a sham group meant only to give the illusion of inclusion while other non-Orthodox communities remained outside the umbrella.

We are prone for infighting, and when you create a polity and give it leaders, they will become targets, increasing the impression of division, DellaPergola said.

The model also disincentivizes attempts at modernization in many Western European communities including the largest of them in France, where some 500,000 Jews live. That in turn alienates younger Jews,said Nigel Savage, who was born in Britain and is the CEO of Hazon, an environmental organization based in New York City.

Whether over the costs, or this sense of conservatism, the numbers show that the model is becoming less popular. In the Netherlands, where there are 45,000 Jews, less than a quarter are community members, whereas before the Holocaust about 75% of Dutch Jews were members, said Ruben Vis, the secretary-general of the Orthodox Organization of Jewish Communities in the Netherlands, or NIK.

In the United Kingdom, where 250,000 Jews live, a report from 2017 showed that only about 80,000 Jewish households, many of them older individuals, are registered members. That figure constituted a 20% decrease in membership from 1990.

The American influence

DellaPergola still favors the European model, in part because he believes the American alternative has been less successful at bringing Jews together over common causes.

I think that attempts to achieve union end up increasing it, and thats preferable to the chaos that defines Jewish communal life in the United States, DellaPergola said.

That chaos, he says, is also costing U.S. Jewry money.

In the American Jewish community there is crazy replication and overlaps, which arguably leads to a certain waste of money, said Savage, who has lived in New York for 20 years. At this point there are far too many synagogues and synagogue buildings, for example.

But, he added, the adaptive freedom that Jewish communities have in the U.S. has led to an explosion of creativity thats being exported across the Jewish world.

Savage referenced the establishment in 2018 of Adamah, the first Jewish environmental farm in the United Kingdom, styled after the successes of that growing movement in the U.S. The creation in 2013 of a modern Jewish community center in London also was inspired by New York institutions.

In a world with so many interest groups and clubs competing for people to engage with them, the Kultusgemeinde needs to become a community of values much like the American one, Vis said. I think thats where were headed, like it or not.

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In Western Europe, a Jewish 'Community' is an organization. They operate like expensive members-only clubs. - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

Across the room sat a man, a murderer, who had tried to kill me and 51 others praying in the Halle Synagogue last Yom Kippur. Responding to question after question from the judge, he espoused the most hateful ideology, showing no shame at his open contempt and cruel rhetoric toward Muslims and Jews, people of Arab and Turkish descent, Black people, women even other white people who didnt support his cause.

This man displayed in open court that he was exactly who we thought he was. Even in a court of law, he stood by his convictions and his quest to act on them. This person was rendered psychologically fit to stand trial by psychiatrists; his statements were not born of insanity or delusion. This man possesses a worldview that kills people. And he is not alone.

I decided to be a co-plaintiff in this trial in order to play a role in the fight against right-wing extremism, to bring to surface policy issues in need of systemic change and to seek a form of personal justice. I am the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors. For the two still living in my home state of New York, not to mention the rest of my immediate and extended family, my choice to live in Germany is complicated.

I am here to help strengthen the Jewish community in Germany, focusing primarily on students and young adults through my work with Hillel Germany, using my credentials as a rabbi and organizer. And I am also here in order to be closer to my personal history and to the emotional reality of miraculous existence. In Berlin, one cannot ignore history. Stepping into a synagogue is an act of counterculture; we are here, persevering, despite the odds. Unlike many of my Jewish peers growing up in New York, this mentality feels natural to me. Here it is a norm.

I had long thought that the concept of miraculous existence would be one I simply inherited from my grandparents. Epigenetically, the trauma would recur in unexpected ways throughout my adolescent and young adult years. Through personal practices like writing and therapy, I worked to put the trauma to bed, to convince my brain and body that it was past truly, the Holocaust is no longer here.

On Oct. 9, 2019, I became a direct victim of anti-Semitic, right-wing nationalist, white-supremacist violence. For the first time in my life, I experienced the feeling of nearly losing my life, my daughters life and the lives of community members I cherished. I experienced the feeling of life-or-death responsibility that comes with choosing to engage in the act of counterculture that is stepping into a synagogue.

But unlike my grandparents, I have the ability to resist. To name his crimes and have them heard in a German court of law. To connect them to the dark history of this country that allowed a spread of this ideology that killed my family. To stand up, as a Jew, as a third-generation-turned-first-generation survivor, and turn that moment of horror into an opportunity to correct countless moments of injustice.

Germany is a nation that has claimed to learn from its errors, and in many ways it has. I believe in the Jewish future in this country. Yet in order for there to be a robust, empowered Jewish future, Germany must express deeper, more concrete forms of solidarity and action. Follow the empowered voices, like that of Anna Staroselski, president of the Jewish Student Union Deutschland (one of our local partners), who said at a solidarity rally on July 21: I was born and grew up here, and yet you are always rubbed in the face with you are other!

Today, a significant part of our work at Hillel and beyond is leading the charge in modeling how as Jews, we can shape our own narrative and beyond that, how we ought to hold our governors accountable to that narrative. Growing up with the sense of needing to hide ones identity, to fear violence from schoolmates, to expect to be treated with prejudice and even violence over ones entire lifetime this is not a safe way to live. Politicians, law enforcement and ministers of justice ought to be asking themselves: How might we uproot this prejudice from the system? How might we show that we are committed to combating anti-Semitism not only in name and in retrospect, but also in the internalized prejudices that lie at its roots?

At the same time, the Jewish story is about more than anti-Semitism, and yes, it is also about more than miraculous existence. Here, and around the world, as a minority Jews are in a sort of maturation process, as we find ourselves with greater privileges than ever before. How might we draw upon our own history in order to build a more just world? How might we apply the clarity weve obtained from our past particularly around such fatal ideology and learn from it in the present, perhaps acting not only for our sake but for the sake of others who are threatened today?

One day in a German court reminded me of the opportunity we have, within the Jewish community and outside of it, to recommit to our moral responsibility in the world.

Let slanderers have no place in the land; let the evil of the lawless man drive him into corrals. I know that the LORD will champion the cause of the poor, the right of the needy. Psalm 140 The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

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I survived the Halle synagogue attack and now I face my attacker in court - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

A suspected neo-Nazi based in Sacramento who was the subject of a July 24 Huffington Post article linking him to the vandalism of a synagogue has been under investigation for about three weeks by the county sheriffs department, J. has learned.

Andrew Richard Casarez, 27, a pizza delivery driver who lives in the Sacramento suburb of Orangevale, is also the leader of an online group called the Bowl Patrol, a reference to the hairstyle of convicted white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof, whom they idolize.

The sheriffs department filed a gun-violence restraining order against Casarez on July 13 and seized a handgun from his home two days later, police told J. on Monday. Officers filed the GVRO after Casarez was publicly exposed a week prior in a blog post by the Anonymous Comrades Collective, a group of anti-fascist researchers.

Sheriffs detectives had concerns after [Casarez] was doxed and his identifying information was released publicly that he could feel forced to react and/or carry out acts of violence based on his ideology, Sgt. Teresa Deterding said.

The Huffington Post story suggests that Casarez was behind a 2017 incident in which antisemitic fliers were found posted outside Temple Or Rishon, a Reform synagogue in Orangevale. When reached for comment, Rabbi Alan Rabishaw of Or Rishon referred J. to the county sheriffs office.

The same story also notes that earlier this year Casarez celebrated vandalism of a nearby Sikh temple, which was spray-painted with a swastika and the words white power.

Casarez has expressed white supremacist and antisemitic views online and in a podcast. Using the pseudonym Vic Mackey, in a 2018 episode of the podcast Bowlcast he reportedly said the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue was a wonderful thing and called Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, a saint.

The investigation of Casarez is ongoing with federal and state partners, said Deterding, who declined to specify which agencies were involved.

According to the Huffington Post, some members of Casarezs Bowl Patrol have been arrested in connection with threats or plans of real-world violence in Roofs name. Roof killed nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

An additional hearing on the GVRO is scheduled for Aug. 13 in Sacramento County.

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Suspected neo-Nazi leader under investigation in Sacramento - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

LONDON (JTA) Jersey is one of Britains most unusual places an autonomous island closer to France than to mainland England, a tax haven for Londons superrich and the last remnant of the English crowns Norman domains.

But Jersey is also home to a rare non-urban British Jewish community with a unique history forged in the face of the Nazi occupation during World War II the only German occupation of any U.K. territory.

These days, though, the community, with a formal membership of only 49 and an average age of over 70, has had to negotiate the coronavirus crisis as its membership continues to shrink.

In May, Jerseys Jewish Congregation, which operates in a small converted Methodist schoolhouse on the southwest corner of the craggy island, for three weeks held the unlikely title of the only legally operating Shabbat service in Britain. Synagogues were shut down across Britain in mid-March, and the reopening process began only five months later. But Jersey contained the virus so well that it was allowed to open houses of worship with limits on how many could attend at a time earlier than the rest of the country.

The community held its first full service since March with a minyan of twelve men in mid May, as the congregations more vulnerable members emerged from self-isolation. Face masks and gloves were ordered beforehand, chairs were placed yards apart and prayer books, once touched, were quarantined for a week after use.

The Jersey synagogue socially distanced its chairs for its first Shabbat service since the start of the pandemic. (Courtesy of the Jersey Jewish Congregation)

No London-accented melodies filled the hall of the building, built in the 1970s singing was strictly prohibited.

If this is the new normal, then it didnt feel very normal, said one attendee of the Shabbat service who did not want to be named.

An honest community comes to terms with its decline

During the pandemic, the communitys isolation has been brought into focus. A few more observant members live on the roads surrounding the synagogue in the town of St. Brelade, but most live a drive away on the small island.

The Channel Islands have been inaccessible from the mainland since March, when the islands went into strict lockdown. Unable to travel, the islands kosher food stocks especially of meat and links to the wider British Jewish community were severed.

In normal times, many community members traveled back and forth regularly, either to visit family members or attend synagogue or to pick up holiday supplies. Only a few congregation members keep fully kosher at home, and most will eat non-kosher when out, but they still import kosher food and subscribe to some of the basics of Jewish observance.

Britains Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, center, visits the Jersey Jewish Congregation in 2017. (Courtesy of Jersey Jewish Congregation)

Malcolm Weisman, a non-ordained rabbi called a reverend by British Jews, leads High Holiday services and the occasional Shabbat service. Weisman has ventured to remote Jewish communities like the one in Jersey for decades. A Jewish Telegraphic Agency article from 1976 reported that he visited as many as 50 a year.

There is a saying in Yiddish it is hard to be a Jew but it isnt hard to be a Jew, said Stephen Regal, the congregations president. You just have to arrange your life to be one. That is how we operate here on Jersey, and thats how weve got on with it the past few weeks.

He added: If you have no alternative, you make do with what youve got.

Jerseys problems are not unique. Since the 1970s Jerseys heyday dozens of small, regional Jewish communities across the U.K. have vanished as Jews concentrated in London and Manchester.

Anita Regal, who moved to Jersey at age 16 in 1960 (and is Stephen Regals sister-in-law), has seen the Jersey communitys rise and gradual decline.

Lots and lots of people came to live here in the 1960s, she said over a crackly phone line.

Middle-class Jews came to the Channel Islands during the 1960s and 70s to service the booming trade as an offshore tax haven. They were a pragmatic, honest and street-smart bunch several were accountants and lawyers and other types of everyday professionals. Estimates place the peak Jewish population between 80 and 120. A little less than 100,000 people live on the island overall.

A view of the beach and seafront in St. Helier, the Jersey capital, in 2017. (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

People have died, and people have left. There isnt much replacement my own children have left, said Anita Regal, who was Jerseys first female lawyer. It is amazing that we are still going to be honest we stagger on as best we can.

Stephen Regal says its hard for him to envision the community surviving.

I am an optimist by nature, but I am also a pragmatist, Stephen said. And I see the community struggling going forward to maintain numbers and the skill sets that we need to remain viable as a community.

There are very few of us over here that can read Hebrew fluently for example, he added. When I go, and when some of the others do, who will replace us?

A much darker time

The Channel Islands are better known among British Jews for another painful period.

Germanys occupation of the islands from 1940 to May 1945 is often referred to as a footnote in the British history of World War II. But the tiny Jewish population that remained on the islands when the Germans arrived, estimated at around 30, were subjected to a string of anti-Semitic laws imposed by occupying forces and administered by British civil servants.

A German Luftwaffe officer, left, speaks with a British policeman in St. Helier, the capital of Jersey, during the German occupation of the Channel Islands. (PA Images via Getty Images)

In Alderney, a smaller, even more remote islet a few miles from Jersey, a stone bearing inscriptions in English, French, Hebrew and Russian hints at this history. Labor camps were set up there, and thousands of slave laborers, including hundreds of French Jews, were forced to work many to death building Hitlers Atlantic Wall, which was designed to make an invasion of Europe all but impossible. Steel skeletons and concrete remains of bunkers and gun emplacements dot the islands coasts.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, the island remembers the 22 non-Jewish resistance fighters who were deported from the island and murdered during the occupation. The group includes those arrested for covertly spreading news gathered from illegal BBC-tuned radios, and a clergyman deported after speaking out against the Germans from his pulpit.

A debate over memory

During the war, three Jewish women arrived on the neighboring island of Guernsey as refugees from Austria and Germany, but were deported to France in April 1942. From there, they were sent to Auschwitz.

Jersey has been quicker at reckoning with its wartime past than Guernsey, which celebrated its first Holocaust Memorial Day in 2015. Its small plaque to the three Jewish women murdered in the Holocaust was erected in 2001 and has been repeatedly vandalized. A small lighthouse memorial stands on Jersey for the three Guernsey deportees.

After the war, rather than seeking to punish those who facilitated the German occupation, as postwar collaboration trials did across Europe, the British government quietly let the matter slip. Honors were bestowed on the islands rulers as a token of gratitude for their protection of the islands populations.

During the occupation, the bailiff of Guernsey was a man called Victor Carey, explained Gilly Carr, a historian at Cambridge University. And the Carey family are recognized as an important family that have often held positions of authority on the island.

The Carey family is still influential on the island. Victor Careys grandson, De Vic Carey, served as Guernseys bailiff or the chief justice of the local court and ceremonial head of the island between 1999 and 2005.

[Guernsians] have been much slower in coming to terms with their past, Anita Regal said.

Martha Bernstein, the secretary of Jerseys Jewish Congregation, who also runs Jewish education programs in Jerseys schools, says that while the historical debate has been had in Jersey, there is still a way to go.

The extent of collaboration on the Channel Islands, I feel, is still something that is not talked about, she said. When people try and push at the Pandoras box, and lift the lid a little, people become edgy.

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There are 49 Jews left on the British island of Jersey. The pandemic has pushed their one synagogue to the brink. - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic...

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

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PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV) The oldest member of Shaarie Torah, a Portland synagogue, turned 100 years old on Sunday.

Because of the pandemic, friends and neighbors got creative in celebrating Frida Gass Cohen and organized a surprise drive-by birthday parade for her.

Cohen told FOX 12 the synagogue had planned a party for her with about 300 guests, but because of COVID-19 they made adjustments and a line of cars drove by to wish her a happy birthday.

She says its not exactly how she imagined her birthday, but shes grateful to everyone who came out to celebrate her.

So we are celebrating together for a wonderful time, and I pray that God grant them the years and the good fortune that I have had in my 100 years, Cohen said.

She says she also had a family dinner celebration Saturday night and will have another one Sunday night.

When asked what her secret was to making it to the 100-year mark, she said it was working. Cohen says she worked until she was 98 years old.

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Portland woman's 100th birthday celebrated with surprise drive-by parade - ABC17News.com

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

Houses of worship are continuing to evolve in their offerings for worship services and programming since Phase 2 of Gov. Charlie Bakers reopening plan that allows them to open their doors.

State guidelines for in-person gatherings as well as congregants preferring to stick with online services have created a challenge and a balancing act for houses of worship trying to meet the needs of all their members.

Prior to reopening, only worship leaders and the technical crew were allowed inside the Faith Baptist Church of Stoughton, according to church clerk Elaine Weischedel. Now, with pews roped and taped off to meet social distance guidelines and attendees required to wear masks, congregants enter through one door and are shown to their seat for the worship service time.

We have not had to use a registration process yet, Weischedel stated. Our congregation is relatively small. Since we are not able to offer nursery care or junior church, families with young children are not coming to the building. Many of our older folk are staying home as well and watching the live-stream service.

The church youth group meets via Zoom, and the weekly prayer meeting is held on Zoom as well as a telephone conference call. Recently, families also were able to participate in a virtual Vacation Bible School program.

Supplies were delivered to the families involved (craft materials, Bible lesson papers, etc.) and there (was) a live-stream skit and Bible story each night, Weischedel said. Only the presenters (were) in the building for that.

Brookville Church in Holbrook now offers both in-person programming and online services, according to Rev. Shawn Keener.

A weekly Thursday night hour-long in-person program began again July 9, following all CDC guidelines - including 6-foot distancing, masks and sanitizer. Electrostatic fogging occurs between events for cleaning.

We only set up chairs for 55 people, and we have lanes of travel marked, Keener stated. We had 17 people; pre-covid it was about 100.

Keener said there currently are no childrens programs. Beginning in August or September, he hopes to open Sunday morning in-person services as well, depending on what Baker does.

Shaloh House Chabad in Stoughton started offering in-person, outdoor services about six weeks ago on Saturday mornings from 10:30-11:45 a.m. Masks, distance guidelines and limits on the number of attendees were implemented, with about 10-12 people. For the synagogue, the only option for a Sabbath service would be in-person as Jewish law does not allow for electricity to be used on Friday night or Saturday, so a Zoom service would not be allowed.

(July 18) we moved indoors with the same restrictions, Rabbi Mendel Gurkow stated. We also have a service on Zoom on Sunday mornings."

After the pandemic began, Shaloh House switched its weekly Thursday evening adult class from in-person to online.

It also started another daily program for both inspiration and to to keep the community intact.

For the purpose of keeping the community together (from) the very start, we started a daily `Huddle' online, a 15 minute meeting with words of inspiration, prayer and blessing for those sick, Gurkow said. And that is still ongoing on a daily basis.

The Shaloh House pre-school reopened on June 29 with limited hours, staff and an enrollment of 15 rather than the typical 40. Gurkow said things are working well after adjusting to the restrictions, and he expects the number of students returning to increase in September.

He said the Chabad also mobilized a food distribution system for members and, before Jewish holidays, distributes hundreds of holiday packets to share the holiday spirit as people stayed at home.

For us, after excluding all those who are older, vulnerable or choose not to come, we are left with 10-12 who (do) come, Gurkow said. Even after we moved indoors we had the same number and that works well; the larger the crowd, the harder it is to have control.

At the Tabernacle of Praise in Randolph, Pastor Stella Bynoe said the group has decided not to reopen yet and is still uploading services to YouTube.

Were only doing the worship team and pastor in the building to do the recording, Bynoe said. We havent set a date to reopen.

While it could accommodate people with the social distancing protocols set by the state, Bynoe said it wanted to be able to include more people when it opens, so it continues to work on its space arrangements to make sure they can do that.

In the meantime, a worship video is aired on Sundays at 10 a.m. when members are invited to watch the service together.

We chat with each other during the airing, Bynoe said. After that we do a connection call where all members can get in and update us on whats going on and we can update them. We usually have about 50 people on that call (but) it varies.

The congregation was preparing for a recent second outdoor service in the church parking lot, with chairs and cars spread out to maintain social distance guidelines. The first one seemed to work out.

We had about 120 people (on July 5), Bynoe said. We had speakers so it was loud enough for everyone to hear. Were not doing it every Sunday.

Rabbi Leonard Gordon said Bnai Tikvah in Canton has been doing almost all programming on Zoom.

Nightly services, one or two services for Sabbaths and holidays, classes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday as well as a spotlight on the congregation to share talents and interests with each other on Thursday night has kept the group connected and busy.

On Sunday we have a special program for young families (where) I do some story readings, Gordon said. Were beginning to look for opportunities for people to see each other in person.

He said one of the biggest challenges is supporting young families.

Families are so stressed, Gordon said. We are thinking of starting, in September perhaps, some short programs after 8 p.m. so one of the two parents can join us. Its really hard to find that magic hour.

Gordon said there is no target date to reopen the building, partly because many in the congregation are over 65 and also because of renovations he said need to take place.

We have very detailed plans to clean the building thoroughly before we reopen and we are putting in a new ventilation system, Gordon said. We discovered a lot of our rooms including the sanctuary are poorly ventilated and we werent getting fresh air.

Gordon wonders what the new normal will look like and if synagogues like his will continue to offer online options. Pre-COVID, he said about 12 people would come to the synagogue, but now 35-45 are tuning in online.

It clearly makes it easier for a lot of people, Gordon said. The only thing we dont want is to reduce the number of people that come to the synagogue.

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Houses of worship take different paths toward reopening - Wicked Local Holbrook

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

Most events in the Jewish calendar revolve around celebration, but Tisha B'Av this Wednesday and Thursday (July 29 and 30) takes on a more mournful tone.

With Surrey's largest Jewish community, Weybridge is home to North West Surrey Synagogue where this event is being marked this year with a live stream alongside other synagogues instead of face to face services.

"It's not celebratory at all. It's an opportunity to confront the dark side of life and ask questions about why these terrible things happen, says Anthony Sheppard, a warden at the synagogue.

The synagogue is affiliated with the Movement for Reform Judaism, a form of Progressive Judaism, although Tisha BAv is commemorated across Progressive and Orthodox Jewish communities.

It is a day that commemorates tragedies linked to Jewish people over the years, dating back to the falling of two temples in Jerusalem in 568BCE and 70CE.

It is traditionally commemorated with fasting, although many do not fast, and services relating to the Book of Lamentations. As with many different religious services, it takes on a new meaning with each passing year services can involve reference to modern tragedies including World War II and the Holocaust.

That will certainly be the case this year, in the light of the coronavirus pandemic. North West Surrey Synagogue is taking part in a joint live stream with Sha'aeri Tsedek North London Reform Synagogue and Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue, in which they will be talking about the theme of Tisha B'av in the time of covid-19.

Mr Sheppard says that coronavirus may not be a military disaster like so many of the occasions that the date commemorates, but it helps the event take on a greater resonance. In a 'normal' time, an evening service would involve subdued lighting and people seated on the ground at the synagogue.

Unlike some places of worship, North West Surrey Synagogue has not re-opened its doors even partially as restrictions have been eased, not even for private prayer - the Rabbi Kath Vardi takes services from her own home.

Mr Sheppard explains that limiting numbers goes against the community ethos of the building. "The problem about going back in, if you have to have seats two metres apart - that is going to cut the people that can come in by a half. To have to decide some people can come in to the building, some can't, is really quite divisive [when there are just under 500 members]."

Liz Sawyer, chair of North West Surrey Synagogue, has previously told SurreyLive that live streaming has been an excellent way to reengage with former members of the community.

It is important to reflect on the darker sides of history and issues in the present. As well as coronavirus, the event this year falls in the same week that many people, including public figures such as Martin Lewis, are taking part in a temporary boycott of Twitter under the hashtag #NoSpaceForJewHate, in protest over the social media platform's handling of anti-Semitism.

Tisha B'Av however, is also about looking forward with positivity, and even the Book of Lamentations it is based around finishes on a note of hope.

Counsel member Valerie Levy says they are looking at reopening and finding creative ways to celebrate upcoming events of celebration, including Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah taking place in September.

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The story of Tisha B'Av, the saddest event in the Jewish calendar - Surrey Live

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

Ten years ago, when my father-in-law, Marcel Adams, turned 90, my wife, Linda, and I decided to film this amazing storyteller in action.As so often happened in the life of this dynamo who turns 100 August 2, he charmed our film crew Guy Sadot and Yuval Nathan the videographers from our sons bar mitzvah. These young Israelis found their roots and understood their Zionism by chronicling Marcels story.Its a larger-than-life tale: born in Romanias Carpathian mountains, surviving forced labor during World War II, making it to Palestine as a pioneer, fighting in the 48 war, eventually landing in Quebec City, then becoming a different kind of pioneer among the first to develop shopping centers in Canada.But as delighted as they were by Marcels perfectly delivered punch lines, the filmmakers started getting frustrated. They couldnt get him to go deep, to admit what made him tick.Marcel, born Meir Abramovici, in 1920, told vivid stories about growing up in Piatra Niamt. He adored his father, Jacob, a tanner. Some families talked Shakespeare at dinner, Marcel explained, we talked business. Antisemitism lurked schoolmates and teachers harassed young Meir.Jew-hatred ended his studies at 16, leaving him with an intellectual hunger which he sated by reading constantly. As the historian son-in-law, my job was feeding him serious works of history, biography, current events. Whenever I threw in a novel, he scoffed: Meiselach! (trivialities).Marcel rejected the survivor label, reserving it out of respect for Polish Jews and others who really suffered. Although most people would call being in labor camps because youre a young Jew slavery, he called it forced labor. Characteristically, he later turned the disruptive war years into a series of adventures, with him living in a Zionist movement commune in Bucharest; smuggling food for his friends; juggling multiple IDs in different pockets to placate different authorities.Once, his close friend Itzu Hertzig was attending a Zionist meeting and missed roll call. Meir stepped up when Itzus name was called, to cover for him. The camps commander explained that the punishment for both could have been death, but the act of loyalty moved him. Looking at the camera with that twinkle in his eye, Marcel admitted, I was young and stupid. Who knew that, thanks to that impulse, millions of us have enjoyed the entrancing songs of Itzus son Shlomo Artzi.Eventually, Meir made it to Palestine in 1944 joining one sister; two others came decades later. Reliving his arrival, he grabbed his jackets lapels, and shouted at the camera, I escaped. Look at me! I escaped! Its me! The trauma wasnt obvious, but omnipresent he knew the Nazis and neighboring antisemites had missed.Channeling his fathers entrepreneurial streak, Meir started raising cows and butchering them in Pardess Hanna. He joined the IDF in May 1948. But he tired of war, instability and Labor Party socialism especially after the IDF seized his cows, without even giving a receipt. He immigrated to Canada in 1951.In Quebec City, Meir worked as a tanner. His boss forced him to change his name to Marcel Adams so the secretary wouldnt waste precious long-distance pennies spelling out his long name in one version of his name-change tale. Marcel prospered although the chemical stench enveloping him embarrassed him and the limited prospects when you work for someone elses family dismayed him.He stumbled into real estate financing walk-ups that a friend soon warned him would be disastrous. He flipped them with a quick profit. From there, often aided by Quebecs small Jewish community he built and built, working indefatigably, sweating every penny. His big leap was shifting from residential to commercial, from apartments where you have hundreds of bosses to government offices and shopping strips, where you can make one deal and not have headaches for decades.In 1953, he met another Romanian refugee who had recently arrived in Canada from Israel, Annie Cohen. He was mesmerized. They married within months. They would have four children, eleven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren so far. They moved to a larger Jewish community, Montreal, in 1966. Annie died of MS in 1997 the great loss of Marcels life.With his thick peasant hands, warm manner and thicker accent, Marcel loved being underestimated by elegant Canadians. They overlooked his mathematical mind, the tanners ability to maximize space, and an immigrants round-the-clock work ethic. When negotiating, he was always relentless, never ruthless. He advised: Always leave something at the table, so everyone feels like they won. Otherwise, they wont like you and he really likes to be liked.Its easy to like him: he beamed, bounded and bopped around. My parents nicknamed him the most happy fella. (I call him The Count because hes Romanian and loves numbers.) Hes heimish no airs. Hes aggressively unhip. He called his never-ending list of things to do which he wrote over in a stubby pencil every night my laptop.He was also proudly, flamboyantly thrifty. As I joined the family, he tested me. Name all 50 states. When I hit 49, he said, the last starts with V. I had Vermont and Virginia.Looking at me triumphantly, he burst out: Vyomink! But we really bonded when I found him a $7.50 parking lot at the airport saving him $22.50 and a $10 barber.AS HE prospered, he applied the same laser focus to philanthropy. His friend Itzu (Hertzig) Artzi who became Tel Avivs deputy mayor steered Marcel and Annie toward Tel Aviv University. They launched, among other projects, the Adams Super Center for Brain Research an interdisciplinary research platform. As in business, he preferred flying solo. But unlike his real estate business, Marcel insisted, No bricks and mortar only people and ideas.When his friend Dan David created a prize to honor super-high achievers, Marcel counter-programmed. He wanted to intervene in young Israeli scientists careers when they were cash-strapped, despairing or contemplating other paths. He launched the Adams Fellowship at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities to repay my debt to the Jewish Agency and the Jewish people for welcoming me in 1944.Since May 2005, 142 superstars have enjoyed fully funded graduate careers some graduates are already rocking Israeli academia.Marcel loved surprising Israelis with his fluent Hebrew and Zionist passion. The Diaspora is a motel, he explained; Israel is our home.In 2009, he visited Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. The president, Rivka Carmi, welcoming this 89-year-old Montrealer, asked: Have you ever been to our lovely city?Marcel quipped, Not since I conquered it.Still, our filmmakers kept digging. In their final moments of filming in Israel, Marcel started riffing about being an optimist. He said whenever hes stuck in traffic, he tries figuring out the square root of the license plate in front of him. He admitted, When I win-win-win, Im happy with myself.The filmmakers jaws dropped. They had their key. A constant competitor, with a fierce hunger to advance one of his favorite words matched by an ability to zero in on small, specific tasks that get you progressing step-by-step. Enough small wins and youve got your good day.On Sunday, we in the family will toast our patriarch, our role model, our inspiration. I will add three more toasts thanking him and his late wife for raising an amazing daughter, my wife; thanking them for welcoming me into their family; and thanking him for one of the great fulfilling friendships of my life. Happy hundredth, Marcel/Meir.The writer is the author of The Zionist Ideas, an update and expansion of Arthur Hertzbergs classic anthology, The Zionist Idea. A distinguished scholar of North American history at McGill University and the author of 10 books on American history, his next book, Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People, coauthored with Natan Sharansky, will be published in September.

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Marcel Adams: A hundred years of loving Israel and life - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on July 29, 2020

Near Tulkarem, 1948. (Bettmann / Getty)

Heres the script: Criminalize the boycotts, deport the human rights advocates, rebrand anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, smear the leftist Jews, infiltrate the leftist organizations, defund the aid programs, torpedo the political campaigns, fire the high school teachers and speech pathologists and network commentators, and pinkwash the occupation. The tactics vary today, but the intent remains the same. For as long as I have been alive, the barriers in the West to advocating for Palestinian rights have deterred all but the most committed people.Ad Policy Books in Review

Often, as a result, the responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, a professor at Columbia and a codirector of its Center for Palestine Studies, is one of the best known to have taken up this responsibility. An acclaimed historian and former adviser to the Palestine delegation during the Madrid talks in 1991, he has written about the origins of Arab nationalism, American Cold War policy in the Middle East, the construction of Palestinian identity, and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He has also played an important role in representing Palestinians in Western media and in mentoring a growing generation of Palestinian writers and academics, including Noura Erakat and Lana Tatour.

While Khalidis research interests are wide-ranging, he has often examined the history of Palestine in the context of the larger Western imperial project, which has spanned many Middle Eastern nations and whose tool kit of military occupation has laid waste to millions of Arab lives. The cyclical nature of this history is important. For example, on the topic of a single democratic state for all Palestinians and Israelisan idea that has increasing purchase among young Palestinians and anti-Zionist Jewshe observes that it is not a radical departure but instead a return to a popular idea that has gestated since at least 1968 yet was marginalized by a now geriatric PLO leadership.

In Khalidis latest book, The Hundred Years War on Palestine, history proves once again to be the key to understanding the present. He builds on his previous work, interspersing personal and family stories with political ones and tracing the lineage of violence that has engulfed a land that has been known by many different names. In doing so, Khalidi identifies many of the actors who have been instrumental to the Palestinian cause, the revolutionaries, women, and young people who helped build the fabric of Palestinian life within the shadow of endless war, displacement, and occupation.

The war in Khalidis title is conceived as both singular and plural. It includes but also transcends the military conflicts most commonly used to narrate Palestinian history. He chooses to tell this story through six distinct periods, beginning with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and moving on to the UN General Assemblys 1947 resolution on the partition of Palestine and the ensuing ArabIsraeli War and the Nakba. Charting Palestinian life after the Six-Day War in 1967, he considers Israels de facto control over all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and then turns to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the first intifada of 1987, and finally the ceaseless bombings of Gaza and the expanding occupation of the West Bank today.

All of this can read like a chronicle of never-ending struggle. The question of Palestine has always been one of conditioning, of what we are willing to accept and willing to forgetand knowing this, the enemies of a Palestinian nation have pursued a relentless program of erasure. But Khalidis book is also an act of historical recovery, an effort to pen, as he puts it, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. As with the pioneering work of the Israeli historians Ilan Papp and Avi Shlaim, The Hundred Years War does not offer a unified theory of history but rather an account of the colonial structures on which the Israeli project depends and of the bridges that still connect the archipelago of Palestinian life.

Khalidi resists the urge to start his book with the founding of Israel in 1948. Instead he starts three decades earlier, in 1917, the year of the Balfour Declaration. That statement, issued at the height of World War I by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, was delivered in a letter to Lord Rothschild, a prominent leader of the Jewish community in Britain, and outlined the governments support for a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. While some historians have argued that this decision was motivated by Western anti-Semitism, it was also no doubt a strategic choice, aimed at securing the support of American and European Jews for the war effort and potentially for British control of the Suez Canal, which would strengthen Britains imperial route to India.Current Issue

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After the war, the British followed through on the declaration, facilitating Zionist claims to territory in Palestine through the League of Nations, which set up mandates for colonial governance in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan in the wake of the Ottoman Empires collapse. The Palestinian mandate was unique, of course, in that a core tenet of British governance there included a vision for the settlement of the area by European Jews. Soon various Jewish organizations, including most prominently the Jewish Agency, offered housing, education, and other social services exclusively to the Jewish residents of Palestine and to Jews who moved there.

For Khalidi, the British mandate established two parallel realities in Palestine: an embryonic nation-building project for the Jewish minority and the continuation of colonial policy for the Arab majority, whose question of self-determination was left unaddressed. In describing this history, Khalidi lays out what would become the essential orientation of the Western powers toward the Middle East in the coming century, including an approach to Palestines Arabs defined by that peculiar combination of colonial paternalism and purposeful neglect.

This pattern continued into the next chapter of the Palestinian story: the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Nakba, which saw the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Khalidi speeds through the head-spinning violence of those months (the history of the Irgun and the Haganah and of Plan Dalet, the massacre at Deir Yassin, the bombardment of Jaffa and Haifa, the depopulation of West Jerusalem) to arrive at the outcome. As he explains, 1948 transformed Palestine from what it had been for well over a millenniuma majority Arab countryinto a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority.

The next two decades of Palestinian history were marked by a continuous struggle against this new reality, with the hostilities boiling over in 1967 and culminating in the Six-Day War between the Arab states and Israel. Despite Israels insistence that it was the underdog in this war, the Arab states, Khalidi argues, didnt stand a chance: Israel enjoyed military supremacy from the outset and, as American intelligence noted internally, was a nuclear-armed Goliath.

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The Israeli occupation that followed would change Palestine forever. After the war, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242, on the territories occupied by Israel, in which the word Palestinian didnt appear once. (The people were referred to simply as the refugee problem.) In Khalidis view, the resolution entrenched Israeli dominance in two ways. First, by conditioning Israels withdrawal from the lands it had seized from Jordan on the establishment of secure frontiers, it provided Israel with an opportunity to run roughshod over the resolutions intent, enlarging its borders in perpetuity by claiming security as an excuse. Second, by outlining a negotiated settlement to come between Israel and Arab parties, the resolution allowed Israel to exploit its language and ignore the existence of the Palestinians, excluding them from the peace process even as its colonial project continued unabated, with only a wincing response from the international community.

The war had other reverberations as well, cultural and political. The idea of Palestine surged anew after 1967, led in part by artists and writers like Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish, Emile Habibi, Fadwa Touqan, and Tawfiq Zayyad and by the emergence of competing resistance groups: the Movement of Arab Nationalists, led by George Habash and Wadi Haddad, which was a precursor of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Fatah movement, led by Yasir Arafat. Together these standard-bearers marked a new era of Palestinian resistance and a strengthened Palestinian resolve. A central paradox of 1967, Rashid Khalidi notes, citing Ahmad Samih Khalidi, is that by defeating the Arabs, Israel resurrected the Palestinians.

Of course, some of these names now read like a list of present absences. This is partly because of Israels aggressive program of assassinationor liquidation, to use Ariel Sharons termoften employing the familiar pretext of preempting terrorism, an excuse that Khalidi finds hollow, especially given the large number of writers, poets, and intellectuals whom Israel targeted. As Khalidi shows, this use of violence has deep roots: Zeev Jabotinsky, one of the founding fathers of Israel, described Zionism as a colonizing venture, [which] stands or falls on the question of armed forces. The strategic use of violence caused many Palestinians to flee, and Khalidis remaining chapters map the expanding geography of violence as Israel pursued them to Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, and back to the modern-day West Bank and Gaza.

At the center of Khalidis book is a question: How have the Palestinians lost so much and so often? To provide an answer, he explores the various strategies the Palestinians used to fight back as well as their strengths and limitations. On the reciprocal use of force, for example, he recalls the advice given by the Pakistani intellectual Eqbal Ahmad, a friend who had worked with the National Liberation Front in Algeria and believed that Palestinian armed struggle would necessarily falter in the face of an Israeli state that emphasized, above all else, the security of the Jewish people.

While this might lead, Khalidi writes, to a strategy of nonviolent resistancehe favorably compares the demonstrations of the first intifada with the armed insurrection of the secondhe also grimly delineates its susceptibility to co-optation (with Palestinian leaders laying claim to the first intifada from their exile in Tunis) and subversion (with Israel initially supporting the rise of Hamas in order to weaken the PLO).

Nor is he sanguine about the history of support from the Arab states. Quoting Egyptian officer Ahmed Aziz, Nasser wrote in his 1954 memoir, The Philosophy of the Revolution, We were fighting in Palestine but our dreams were in Egypt, and there is much to be said about the largely aesthetic commitment to Palestinian liberation from the rest of the Arab world. Nor were Palestinian leaders blameless in this, having squandered many opportunities to build enduring alliances with neighboring Arab countries. But Western powers have also played a role in dividing Arabs, including the strategy of pushing Israel to negotiate treaties with individual states as a way of sidelining the Palestinian cause, first with Egypt in 1979, then with Jordan in 1994. Israels flourishing contemporary relationship with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can be seen in this context as a continuation of a longstanding practice, not a departure from it.

This leads Khalidi to note the farce of diplomacy over the past three decades. Having attended the Madrid conference in 1991 and the subsequent talks in Washington, initially led by Secretary of State James Baker, Khalidi sees the efforts by the United States and other Western powers to force a settlement on the Palestinians as emblematic of their one-sided position. Throughout these talks, Yitzhak Shamirs government was able to dictate not only which Palestinians were permitted to negotiate (members of the diaspora and residents of Jerusalem were excluded) but also what topics were forbidden from the outset, including Palestinian self-determination, sovereignty, the return of refugees, an end to occupation and colonization, the disposition of Jerusalem, the future of the Jewish settlements, and control of land and water rights. The Americans went so far in those years as to refer to their role as Israels lawyer.

As Khalidi shows, the negotiations were often a series of carefully laid traps. As a condition of the supposedly good-faith discussions to come, Palestinian negotiators were asked to acquiesce to various terms designed to preemptively nullify their claims, with the later breakdown of talks inevitably blamed on their intransigent leadership. Khalidis pessimism extends to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, which he argues ought to have been rejected: Occupation would have continued, as it has anyway, but without the veil of Palestinian self-government.

For Khalidi, these failures of diplomacy have occurred in a context of Israeli legal overreach, with Israeli governments always preferring to reverse a decision unilaterally instead of asking for permission. For evangelists of the diplomatic approach, the artifice of success requires that negotiations not appear to be relitigating the same injustices over and overand so the needle shifts ever so slightly, with the proposed solution always an attempt to suture a secondary, larger tear.

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The most surprising chapter of The Hundred Years War does not take place in Palestine, Madrid, or Washington. Khalidi was in Beirut during Israels 1982 invasion of Lebanon, a campaign led by Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Menachem Begin, ostensibly to fight the PLOs presence in the country. The war was green-lit by Ronald Reagans secretary of state, Alexander Haig, with the administration giving assurances that the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon would remain protected should the PLO withdraw. Of course, those promises were hollow, and Khalidi supplements his analysis with an unsettling first-person perspective, having watched with horror as the Israeli bombs rained down on Beirut:

Later I saw that the entire building was flattened, pancaked into a single mound of smoking rubble. The structure, which had been full of Palestinian refugees from Sabra and Shatila, had reportedly just been visited by Arafat. At least one hundred people, probably more, were killedmost of them women and children. Days later, my friend told me that immediately after the air attack, just as he got into his car, shaken but unhurt, a car bomb exploded nearby, presumably having been set to kill the rescuers who were helping families trying to find their loved ones in the rubble. Such car bombsa weapon of choice for the Israeli forces besieging Beirut, and one of their most terrifying instruments of death and destructionwere described by one Mossad officer as killing for killings sake.

The Lebanon experience showed that Palestinian social and political death is borderless: Whether in the refugee camps of Beirut, the streets of Gaza, or the American diaspora, Israel will pursue Palestinians wherever they exist. US complicity in this effort is also worth noting, with American munitions and American-made aircraft used in the shelling of Beirut, buttressed by the crucial support of Reagans special envoy, Philip Habib. It is stunning to read Khalidis postmortem on the war that destroyed what was known as the Paris of the Middle East and especially what became of its architects: Shamir and Sharon, as well as [Benjamin] Netanyahu, went on to serve as Prime Ministers of Israel, and Reagan, Haig, and Habib, all now dead, have so far escaped judgment.

It is not just the well-known ghosts that haunt The Hundred Years War. Like my own family, some members of Khalidis are from Jaffa, one of the most visible sites of ethnic cleansing in Israel. A photo of his grandfathers house in Tal al-Rish adorns the books cover; the edifice has remained abandoned since 1948.

With more than 400 citations, The Hundred Years War is one of the best-researched general surveys of 20th and early 21st century Palestinian life, but its also a deeply personal work. To an outsider, Khalidis many references to his familys experience may feel excessive, especially given that it was among the most prominent families in Palestine. But for a people whose history is all but criminalized, this act of retelling is itself a form of resistance, and to his credit, Khalidi takes pains to decry a patriarchal and centralized Palestinian leadership that persists to this day.

While capturing the social history, Khalidi is careful not to lose sight of the realpolitik of movement building, showing how the most successful moments of Palestinian resistance occurred at those junctures where Israels interests came into tension with core Western ones. The examples he cites include the dial-back in British support for Israel, prompted by fears that Palestines elevation to a pan-Islamic issue could pose serious trouble for Britains presence in India, and Israels increasingly strained relations with the United States as the war in Lebanon dragged on, with the US realizingaccording to a passage in Reagans diaries describing a conversation with Beginthat the picture of a 7 month old baby with its arms blown off in Beirut had the potential to affect Americas standing on the world stage.

Some critics have taken issue with the range of Khalidis discussion here. Scott Anderson, in his frankly embarrassing review for The New York Times, opines that the weakness of this book, to my mind, can be distilled to a simple question: Where does it get you? Even if one fully accepts Khalidis colonialist thesis, does that move us any closer to some kind of resolution? It should not be surprising that Anderson, the author of the unironically Orientalist Lawrence in Arabia, is unable to read between Khalidis lines. In describing the arguments made by Palestinians in favor of breaking with the empty rhetoric of the British and Americans; in outlining the foundational importance of the 193639 revolt, which was led by young, urban middle-class Palestinians; and in highlighting the indispensable work of Hanan Ashrawi and others to advance the Palestinian cause on the world stage, Khalidi illustrates, among other things, the failures of diplomacy, the power of youthful activists, and the importance of women in Palestinian liberation. That he chooses to do all this implicitly while guiding the reader into an understanding of the depth of Palestinian frustration, rather than offer easily digestible bromides about peace in response to more than 50 years of occupation and over a century of dispossession, makes for goodwhats the word?history.

Even if The Hundred Years War is primarily focused on the past, one can leave Khalidis book with some sense of what comes next. After reviewing the various manifestations of Palestinian resistance over time, from the use of force to the use of diplomacy, from a reliance on various Arab states to going it alone, he concludes that boycottswhether the general strike in 1936 or the modern boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movementhave advanced the Palestinian cause more than anything done by Fatah or Hamas.

The Palestinians have long understood this, but so has the Israeli government. Its Ministry of Strategic Affairs, helmed by Gilad Erdan, now identifies two primary existential threats to Israel: Iran and the BDS movement. And there are other signs of possible change on the horizon. In February the UN human rights office released its list of 112 companiesamong them Airbnb and Motorolathat are engaged in illegal Israeli settlements. Nearly 130 members of Parliament have called on the United Kingdom to impose economic sanctions on Israel in response to its program of de jure annexation. And South Africa has permanently recalled its ambassador to Israel, describing the treatment of the Palestinians as apartheid.

Even so, one should not make the mistake of overestimating these developments. Ultimately, The Hundred Years War on Palestine is a pessimistic book, a catalog of a century of sad stories. While this outcome is partly a result of the failures of the Western media and its abetting of Palestinian erasure, it is also the logical result of an ossified power imbalance that will finally crack only under the pressure exerted by a popular campaign of moral condemnation and economic nonparticipation. Theres your script.

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A Century of Struggle in Palestine - The Nation

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