Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

By Joanna OLeary, The Nosher

We could all use a little comfort food right now. And while my regular meal of choice when it comes to eating my feelings is a giant piece of layer cake (crowned with a softball scoop of ice cream for good measure), right now I am craving a big pot of cholent.

For cholent, necessity was the bubbe of invention, this unctuous stew coming into being as the ultimate edible workaround to Jewish laws prohibiting cooking on the Sabbath. Traditionally prepared on Friday afternoon and then left to simmer overnight on a hotplate or slow-cooker.

When it comes to whats in a name, theres some debate. For years, most have considered cholent to be a compound word coming from the French chaud (hot) and lent (slow) or of chaudes lentes (hot lentils). Competing with this definition is also the theory that cholent is Hebraic in origin, coming from she-lan (that rested [overnight]) and referring to the practice of Jews keeping familial pots of cholent in their towns bakers ovens to cook.

In recent years, however, scholars have offered more nuanced explanations, most notably Max Weinrich, who in his landmark History of the Yiddish Language argues that cholent is derived from the Latin present participle calentem (that which is hot) from the Old French chalant, present participle of chalt, from the verb to warm, chaloir.

Cholents disputed etymological history aptly reflects the multiplicity of its manifestations. If youve had one cholent, you definitely havent had them all. Cholent can be generally classified by whether it developed via Sephardi or Ashkenazi schools of cookery, though significant variations exist within those groupings.

Known as chamin or hamin among Sephardi Jews, this form of Shabbat stew is made with chicken and often chickpeas. Two distinctive components of Sephardi cholent are whole vegetables (eggplant, green peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini) stuffed with rice and whole eggs cooked in their shells. Chamin is also often spiced with cumin or hot peppers. Such innovations make for a thicker, toothsome dish with levels of earthy heat.

Other iterations of cholent linked to Sephardi culinary tradition include dafina or adafina (from Arabic tfina, buried), which today is most commonly found in North Africa. Dafina frequently contains potatoes and brisket as its respective featured starch and protein as well as saffron or turmeric, which gives it a dusky orange hue.

Ashkenazi cholent is made more regularly with beef and poultry, specifically helzel, chicken neck skin stuffed flour, chicken or goose fat, fried onions and spices or its cured cousin kishke, a sausage encased in bovine intestine (old-school) or edible synthetic tubing (modern). Barley or wheat grains provide carbohydrate richness.

While all cholents involve some combination of chicken, beef, eggs, grains/potatoes, or vegetables, some versions showcase less traditional ingredients like veal, turkey, or even hot dogs. There are also vegetarian versions of cholent chock full of veggies, beans and other plant-based protein. And chefs have even created more upscale interpretation of the beloved comfort food, like Chef Yehuda Sichels cholent pot pie.

Ready to dig into a hearty bowl? Heres a rundown of some recipes you can try:

An Ashkenazi creation

By Shannon Sarna

This recipe is not mine, but it is a close version of the beloved cholent recipe passed down from my husbands grandmother, Baba Billie Goldberg of blessed memory, to my husband. It is so delicious and I love it, but it wasnt until our wedding day that I was given the keys to the cholent car: My mother-in-law hand-wrote the recipe on a piece of paper and my husband gave it to me after the chuppah. My official welcome into the Goldberg clan was through a beloved family recipe.

Recipes arent always about the food they can also be about history, how our people adapted in the myriad locations they lived as well as the more personal stories of our loved ones. This cholent recipe is both delicious and rich with memory.

Enjoy these easy directions and let us know how your family likes to make cholent we know every family has their precious combination of ingredients and spices that make it just right.

Ingredients

1-1/2 lbs fatty stew meat or flanken

4 to 5 marrow bones

1 whole onion, outer layer peeled

2 large or 4 small Yukon gold or russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

3/4 lb. pearl barley (around 2 cups)

1 cup kidney beans

3 to 4 whole garlic cloves, peeled

1/3 cup ketchup

1 Tbsp. paprika

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 lb. packaged kishke

3 cups water plus additional water

Variation: Can substitute part of the water with vegetable stock, chicken stock or beer.

Directions

1. While prepping your ingredients, cover barley and kidney beans with 3 to 4 cups hot water. Set aside for 20 minutes.

2. Grease the inside of your slow cooker with cooking spray.

3. Add marrow bones, meat and potatoes to pot. Add onion and garlic cloves. Add barley, beans and the water they soaked in.

4. Mix ketchup, paprika and 2-1/2 cups water (can also use beer or stock) and add to pot. Season with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Mix well.

5. Add kishke on top.

6. Set slow cooker to low and cook overnight. Check in the morning and add additional water or stock if it seems dry.

Dafina, Slow-CookedMoroccan Stew

By Sabrina Ovadia

There is no right or wrong way to make this, and recipes vary from city to city and from family to family. Every Jewish house is distinguished by their dafina and what is included in it. There is even a legend that noble rabbis can sense the peace and holiness of the house from the smell of the dafina.

The most commonly found ingredients are potatoes, sweet potato, chicken, meat, rice, barley, chickpeas and of course, a famous golden brown egg. A lot of recipes call for each item to be placed in individual cooking bags. Everyone adds their personal touch and favorite spices to it; some of the most commonly used spices include paprika, cinnamon, cumin, honey, dates and garlic. I even have a family member who throws in a whole peach, pit and all.

Like the mothers and grandmothers who come before me, I have adapted the recipe handed down to me to my own familys taste and cook the rice separately. It may not look like much but there are few things that warm the soul quite like a hot dafina on a cold winter day, and I invite you to add your own familys take on this beloved dish.

Ingredients

2 lbs. flanken meat, on the bone (flanken is short ribs cut across the bones)

4 pieces of chicken, on the bone

12 large red potatoes, peeled

2 cans of chickpeas, rinsed

4 eggs (in the shell)

4 pitted dates

1 Tbsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. paprika

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. of honey

1 tsp. cinnamon

3 to 4 garlic cloves

2 Tbsp. of olive oil

Directions

1. Arrange the chickpeas on the bottom of the crockpot. Add the potatoes around the interior walls of the crockpot. Place the meat, chicken, eggs and pitted dates in the center.

2. Add all of the spices and mix very well but gently as to keep each ingredient in its place. Pour in enough water to cover everything. The top of the water should hit around 1/2 inches above the ingredients.

3. Set the crockpot at a medium temperature and set to cook for 24 hours. On Shabbat, do not add any water, even boiling, to the crockpot.

Latin-Inspired Vegetarian

By Sandy Leibowitz

Even before slow cookers were invented, Jews all around the world were making their slow-cooked meals out of necessity and in observance of Shabbat. And as it turns out, slow-cooked meals over a low flame are also incredibly delicious.

Here, I decided to embrace my South American roots and make a Latin-inspired, vegetarian version of this traditional dish. Not only do these flavors come together beautifully, but you dont have to worry about breaking down any tough meat!

I used ripe (yellow-brown) plantains, batatas (sweet potatoes) and yuca along with a variety of beans which are all starches that come to mind with Latin American cooking. You can certainly use the green plantains; just keep in mind that they take longer to cook. Also, the ripe plantains add a hint of sweetness that works well with the other earthy flavors.

While portobello mushrooms may not be Latin American, I added them for nutrition and a meatier depth of flavor. The squeeze of fresh lime before serving really brightens this dish and brings it to the next level.

Note: The less you cook this dish, the more texture will remain. Cooking longer will decrease the texture but increase the depth of flavor. Substitute parsley for cilantro if youre not a fan of cilantro, but definitely dont leave out the fresh lime, it really ties this dish together and makes it taste authentic.

Ingredients

1 portobello mushroom, diced

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 onion, sliced

1/2 green pepper, sliced

1/2 red pepper, sliced

10.5 oz can of black beans, rinsed

10.5 oz can of garbanzo beans (chickpeas) rinsed

10.5 oz can of red kidney beans, rinsed

1/2 yuca, cut in 2-inch pieces (make sure to remove the fibrous stem that runs inside the center. It looks like a vine.)

1/2 batata, cut into medium dice

1 ripe plantain (choose one that is yellowish and has only a few black specks, or choose a green plantain)

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1/4 cup tomato paste

1 tsp. oregano

1/2 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. ground coriander

1/2 tsp. granulated garlic

1/2 tsp. onion powder

1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)

1 tsp. salt (adjust seasoning as needed)

3 cups of fresh, cold water (it should barely cover your ingredients)

Fresh lime for serving

Cilantro, chopped for garnish

Directions

1. Saute the portobello mushroom in a small saute pan until caramelized well. Add to the bottom of your slow cooker.

2. Layer all the ingredients on top of the mushrooms.

3. Mix the tomato paste, olive oil, spices and water in a bowl and stir well.

4. Pour water and spice mixture over everything inside the slow cooker and combine.

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To cholent (and why you should be eating it)! - The Jewish Star

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Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

Customary as it is to have lectures about Tisha Beav during the nine-day period leading up to the day of mourning that commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples, plus special events with moral messages on the actual day, Zoom has given rise to a boom in Tisha Beav lectures and conferences. Some organizations and institutions that never previously paid special attention to Tisha Beav, are getting on the Zoom bandwagon, and many people who were not particularly interested, but who have become Zoom addicted for want of other social outlets, are registering for Tisha Beav-oriented events.

Among the organizations which are dealing with Tisha Beav for the first time is the Herzliya Cultural Group, whose activities take place on Thursday mornings.

As it happened, Jerusalem-based, London-born Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair was available to speak. An internationally known speaker and writer, Sinclairs popularity derives in part from the fact that he wasnt raised religious, and can therefore speak knowledgeably about secular subjects, which he skillfully weaves into his religious lectures. Before settling in Jerusalem in 1987 and immersing himself in Torah studies, Sinclair was deeply entrenched in the entertainment industry and the founder of SARM Studios, the first 24 track recording studio in Europe, where some of the worlds top music makers produced some of their most iconic recordings. These days he is a lecturer in Talmudic logic and philosophy at Jerusalems Ohr Somayach/Tannenbaum College and a senior staff writer of the Torah Internet publications Ohrnet and Torah Weekly. He has also contributed to numerous Jewish print media publications.

Anyone interested in listening to his lecture should contact Werner Bachmann at 054-456-0303.

THE PLANS and activities of many organizations and institutions were indefinitely put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. Among them was IBCA, one of the first organizations established after the founding of the state, whose membership is made up of native Israelis, diplomats, politicians and immigrants. IBCA is an acronym for Israel, Britain and the Commonwealth. It has not been the easiest year for the affable, outgoing IBCA chairman Prof. Alex Deutsch, who has been at the helm of the organization since 2014 and will hand over the leadership to his successor at IBCAs annual general meeting on August 3, which for the first time ever will be held on Zoom. Deutsch decided to step down because he thought it was time for a change.

Actually, its more like a rotation, considering that he will be succeeded by Brenda Katten, who was IBCA chair well over a decade ago, and so far, is the only woman to serve in that position.

London-born Katten is familiar to readers of the weekend Jerusalem Post, for which she writes a column

Professionally, she is a relationship and educational counselor, but since girlhood has been engaged in volunteer Zionist organizations, - mostly in leadership positions

She started out as a member of Bnei Akiva and the Federation of Zionist Youth and later joined WIZO (Womens International Zionist Organization). She is a past chairperson of British WIZO and an honorary president of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland and of the Bnai Brith Hillel Foundation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Katten and her late husband John, an architect who died last year, relocated to Israel in 1998, and Katten, for whom community work is part of her DNA, immediately threw herself into volunteer organizations, serving inter alia as chairperson of ESRA, the English Speaking Residents Association, chair of Europeans for Israel, chairperson of World WIZOs Public Relations Department, and the executive of the International Council of Jewish Women.

An eloquent speaker, who speaks from both her heart and her mind often without notes, Katten is particularly interested in helping children of Ethiopian background to realize their full potential.

As for IBCA, it was established very soon after the British left Israel because there were people who realized the importance of maintaining and developing contacts and relations with Britain.

Such contacts have always been encouraged by the British Embassy.

Among the various IBCA activities are annual events at the residences of the British ambassador and the Australian ambassador.

Both had been planned for the first half of this year, but had to be canceled due to COVID-19.

However, Deutsch was pleased that an annual IBCA project to send Israeli colorectal surgeons to England for further training was able to proceed. The prestigious Basingstoke course was to have taken place over Purim. When Deutsch explained to the course organizers in England that this would affect Israeli participation, they agreed to bring the course forward by a week, which was fortunate. Had they not done so, the course would have had to be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

COOPERATION BETWEEN Israel and Liberia was enhanced by the February 2019 official visit to Israel by Liberian President George Weah, who was accompanied by a ministerial delegation that included his foreign minister. Diplomatic relations between Israel and Liberia which were severed during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, were renewed in 1983, but there is no resident Liberian ambassador in Israel, nor is there a resident Israeli ambassador to Liberia. Shani Cooper, who is Israels non-resident ambassador to Liberia, is also ambassador to Ghana, where she resides. Weah recently appointed Israeli lawyer Yoram Rabad as Honorary Consul of Liberia in Israel. The quasi-diplomatic position was approved by Israels Foreign Ministry, and a certificate to that effect, which was signed by President Reuven Rivlin and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, was presented to Rabad at a small ceremony at the Foreign Ministry attended by Chief of Protocol Meron Reuben and Anat Schleien, who heads the Africa desk at the Foreign Ministry.

Rabad was a prominent member of the inner circle known as the Ranch Forum, which met regularly at Ariel Sharons Sycamore Farm. In 2004, when Sharon was prime minister, he appointed Rabad to head his negotiating team in coalition talks. Other members of the team included Yaakov Neeman, Eyal Arad, Gideon Saar and Yisrael Maiman. Rabad later helped Tzipi Livni in her failed bid for the premiership.

MOST ENGLISH-language journalists living in Israel, and several living in the US and England have at some stage or another worked as reporters, feature writers, copy editors and section editors at The Jerusalem Post, which for many has been a stepping stone to a broader journalistic career.

Former staff members of the Post either worked, for or are currently working, for Israel Hayom, Haaretz, KAN, i24, Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, CNN, the London Jewish Chronicle, The Economist, the Independent, the Australian, the Bulletin, Associated Press, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Reuters and numerous other media outlets.

Among the many journalists who once worked in the old Romema offices of The Jerusalem Post is Tom Gross, a British-born journalist and international affairs commentator who is also a campaigner for human rights, specializing in the Middle East. Gross is now more in the nature of an opinion writer than a news reporter and writes for Israel, Arab, British and American publications, and is a frequent commentator on the BBC and various Middle East networks.

In addition, he monitors Middle East news and sends out a Middle East dispatch list to journalists, politicians and members of think tanks.

Unable to move around as much as he used to before COVID-19 put a blight on travel, Gross decided to do a series of YouTube informal conversations with people such as Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff; Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland; former aide to Margaret Thatcher John OSullivan, author, commentator and a senior editor of the National Review David Pryce-Jones; Iranian born screen writer and film director Hossein Amini and several other interesting citizens of the world. The conversations cover an extraordinary broad range of subjects. In Jewish religion it is believed that he who saves a single life saves a whole world. But all of us are part of many worlds, a factor which repeated itself in the various conversations and caused Gross to realize that he too was part of many worlds.

So he put himself into the series as well and in conversation with British classical pianist Paul Lewis, who asks Gross about his own life experiences and views Gross talks about: growing up surrounded by cultural and literary luminaries in London and New York who were the friends and acquaintances of his parents distinguished author and critic John Gross, and his mother Miriam, a literary editor, Sunday brunches with Elvis Presleys songwriter; crossing Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin with his grandmother during communism; helping the Roma when almost no one else would; his close relationship with his godmother Sonia Orwell (the model for the heroine Julia of her husband George Orwells masterpiece 1984); being in Manhattan on 9/11; the Mideast; the importance and legacy of the Holocaust; and other matters.

greerfc@gmail.com

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Grapevine July 26, 2020: Zooming in on Tisha Beav - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

Following its years-long effort to fight Holocaust denial on Facebook, the Anti-Defamation League has shifted gears from working with the tech giant in combating hate speech to helping lead a campaign to force change on the worlds largest social media platform.

The Stop Hate for Profit campaign was launched in mid-June by a number of U.S. civil rights groups. The effort, initiated following the killing of George Floyd, targets Facebooks $70 billion in annual ad revenues its main source of income to urge the company to commit to 10 recommended reforms for curbing hate speech.

And, while much of the campaign focuses on fighting the systemic issues highlighted by Floyds death, the ADLs long fight to get Holocaust denial off Facebook can be seen in the campaigns call to action.

The ADL, a Jewish organization founded in 1913 to combat antisemitism, partnered with Facebook (along with Google, Microsoft and Twitter) in 2017 to establish the Cyberhate Problem-Solving Lab to fight antisemitism and online hate.

But as the ADLs chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, told Haaretz, Facebook has consistently refused to categorize Holocaust denial as a violation of its terms of service, or Community Standards, which prohibit the use of its platform as a vehicle to demonize others or engage in hate speech.

The sentiment echos claims Greenblatt made in an open letter, where hewrote that while our partner organizations have been working with Facebook for years, the companys ongoing unwillingness to take action is inexcusable. The letter adds that in the ADLs experience with Mark Zuckerberg, weve learned that Facebook wont take this seriously unless forced hence the campaign.

'Factual error'

The ADLs literature on the subject points to Zuckerberg himself as to why Facebook has never explicitly categorized Holocaust denial as hate speech. The organization highlights a 2018 interview in which Zuckerberg said he finds Holocaust denial deeply offensive, but Facebook views it as a factual error not necessarily antisemitism or hate speech.

I dont believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong, Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, said at the time. I dont think that theyre intentionally getting it wrong.

But even though the new effort is gaining steam with over a thousand companies joining, Facebooks stock actually set records in July, and Zuckerberg has stuck to his position. Were not gonna change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue, he said, the tech news site The Information reported.

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Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.

As Aryeh Tuchman, associate director at the ADLs Center on Extremism, puts it, Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory which is founded on the belief that a global Jewish effort existed and continues to exist! to scam the whole world.

He adds: Seen in this light, it doesnt matter whether a person who promotes Holocaust denial is doing so out of malice or out of error; the bottom line is that they are promoting the greatest antisemitic conspiracy theory since 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'

As part of the pressure campaign on Facebook, the ADL has also documented how hate speech on the platform has appeared alongside major companies ads.

For example, the ADL noted an image of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar transcribed onto an Aunt Jemima maple syrup bottle, her photo placed over the fictitious label Aunt Jihadi. In another example, an ad from the auto insurance company Geico appeared alongside an antisemitic post from a George Soros-focused group of more than 3,000 users, accusing the billionaire philanthropist of funding Black civil rights efforts in order to break down the world order.

The ADL says companies thus might want to pull their ads until hate speech is curbed on the platform.

'Facebook's indifference'

The ADL has long chronicled Holocaust denial on Facebook and notes that a review clearly found explicit denial, as well as the hate-filled and conspiratorial antisemitism common to this philosophy.

A spokesperson for Stop Hate For Profit told Haaretz in a statement how the ADLs expertise in this area has added to the campaign, saying, the ADL has been a critical partner.

Theyve brought incredible resources and expertise to bear, particularly in regards to the antisemitism and Holocaust denial thats rampant on Facebook. What makes this coalition powerful is how it pulls from every corner of American civil society that has been impacted by Facebooks indifference to profiting from hate.

Tuchman also notes the difficulties in researching and quantifying Holocaust denial on the platform, pointing out that unlike Twitter, Facebook is a closed system that doesnt allow for data trends to be easily collected and analyzed.

Tuchman says his team searched for Facebook Groups with titles which suggested that Holocaust denial might be present, and then delved into their contents.

On its website, the ADL lists several Facebook groups dedicated to Holocaust denial and names individuals linked to white supremacy and neo-Nazism who moderate or periodically post in those groups.

This research covers pages that are visible to the public, private groups where you must be approved as a member, and individual Facebook accounts. Tuchman notes that his team has found a thriving ecosystem of Holocaust denial in those groups. Looking at the personal pages of some of the participants we saw that they were also posting Holocaust denial content outside the groups.

Greenblatt adds that as a result of Facebooks refusal to categorize Holocaust denial as a form of antisemitic hate speech, this rhetoric appears across the platform, including in both public and private groups specifically devoted to the topic.

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How the ADL is working to end Facebooks thriving ecosystem of Holocaust denial - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as Black nationalist and a hate group, praises Adolf Hitler and compares Jews to termites. He has won accolades on social media from several high-profile celebrities for his rhetoric even though the Anti-Defamation League says that he is an antisemite.Described as the worlds oldest disease, antisemitism is increasing along with COVID-19. We are at a critical moment in our history rightfully fighting for racial justice so it is extremely unfortunate, especially as antisemitism is rising in America, that celebrities are elevating the voices of those who, while fighting anti-Black racism, are also promoting antisemitism, Holly Huffnagle, newly appointed US director for Combating antisemitism at the American Jewish Committee (AJC), told The Media Line.Huffnagle stressed that all forms of antisemitism are dangerous and that hostility toward Jews can be found across the ideological spectrum, from the radical left to the far right.Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust historian at Atlantas Emory University, agreed.Were seeing a perfect storm of antisemitism right now, Lipstadt told The Media Line. Were seeing it on the right and were seeing it on the left.We are seeing it because there is a certain nationalism that has arisen. Were seeing it also because of views on the left, often disguised as views on Israel, that are antisemitic in their essence, she said.Types of antisemitic Incidents VarySocial media is the latest battleground for antisemitism. The most recent examples include Madonna sharing a video of Farrakhan to her more than 15 million Instagram followers and Twitter locking the accounts of users displaying the Star of David, a symbol of Judaism, in their profile pictures.There are also more traditional forms of antisemitism. Last Saturday, about 30 neo-Nazis held a protest at a park in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, while wearing armbands and carrying flags emblazed with the swastika. Police quickly broke up their demonstration, saying they didnt have a permit.During the protests against the killing in May of George Floyd, a synagogue in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles was vandalized with graffiti reading F**k Israel and Free Palestine.What is the Definition of antisemitism?The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism is the most widely recognized definition of antisemitism and has been adopted by more than 30 countries so far.The definitions main clause defines antisemitism as a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. According to the IHRA definition, contemporary examples of antisemitism include Holocaust denial and the delegitimization of Israel. The definition also allows for criticism of Israel in the way that any other country might be criticized. Fiamma Nirenstein, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told The Media Line that the IHRA definition is important because it incorporates the 3 ds of Soviet refusenik and Israeli politician Natan Sharansky delegitimization of Israel, demonization of Israel and subjecting Israel to double standards.There is a difference between legitimate criticism and antisemitism. Legitimate criticism is not only admissible but necessary in a democracy, Nirenstein said. Antisemitism Is on The Rise in the US, Europe and GloballyThe number of antisemitic incidents last year was the highest in the United States since tracking began in 1979, according to the Anti-Defamation Leagues annual audit. More than 2,100 incidents were reported a 12% increase over 2018. The number of assaults jumped 56% during the same period.The polling aligns with the data. A landmark survey of US Jews in 2019 by the global Jewish advocacy group AJC found that 88% said that antisemitism is a problem in the US and 84% said that antisemitism has increased in the US.antisemitism is also increasing worldwide. There was an 18% increase in violent antisemitic incidents globally in 2019 over the previous year, the highest rise since 2014, according to the annual report on hate crimes from Tel Aviv Universitys Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Moshe Kantor Database for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism. In a recent webinar, the Kantor Centers Dina Porat said that antisemitism was increasing before the coronavirus crisis but that the pandemic has acted as an accelerant.Research by the Vienna-based European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights shows an increase in antisemitism in the EU bloc. According to data compiled last year for 2008 to 2018, certain member states have experienced a rise in antisemitic incidents. For example, France saw antisemitic acts increase 74% in 2018 compared with 2017. An AJC Paris survey conducted in 2019 found that 73% of the French public and 72% of French Jews consider antisemitism a problem in their country. The survey found that 70% of French Jews reported experiencing at least one antisemitic incident. Stefanie Schler-Springorum, a German historian and head of the Berlin-based Center for antisemitism Research, told The Media Line that the rise in ethno-nationalism in Europe over the past 30 years has opened the door to increased antisemitism. She said that the data shows an increase in antisemitic attacks but surveys do not show a rise in antisemitic sentiment. But this has been misinterpreted, at least in Germany, she said, because surveys have shown that a small group of hardcore antisemites and another small group of latent antisemites are becoming more vocal. Even though there is no big change in the numbers [of those with] antisemitic attitudes, there is greater visibility and people will say things in public. If you go to one of the anti-corona demonstrations it is really amazing, Schler-Springorum said.Eric Fusfield, director of legislative affairs and deputy director of the Bnai Brith International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy, told The Media Line that American Jews are experiencing violent antisemitic attacks that were previously a European phenomenon.American Jews are coming to expect more and more the physical threat to their security and the need for a police presence in synagogue. This is something that was commonplace in Europe but its becoming more and more normal in the United States now, Fusfield said.COVID-19 Is Driving antisemitismA report last month from the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University found that Jews and Israel are being blamed for the coronavirus outbreak and that centuries-old antisemitic themes are resurfacing.People are believing in all kinds of conspiracy theories as to how [the pandemic] happened and who is behind it, Dr. Robert Rozett, senior historian at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, told The Media Line. Rozett said that one of the major conspiracy theories circulating today is a return to a libel dating back to the Black Death of the 14th century when European Jewish communities were massacred after being accused of causing the outbreak by deliberately poisoning wells. A Data-Driven Approach to Combating antisemitismCalifornia-based AMCHA Initiative has been using a data-driven approach to fighting antisemitism on US college and university campuses since launching its online antisemitism tracker in 2018 that compiles antisemitic incidents from 2015 to the present.The nonprofit organization monitors approximately 450 higher education institutions for antisemitic activity, logging more than 3,500 antisemitic incidents on its database since 2015. The organizations annual report, released this month, found a more than 300% increase in campus activity challenging the IHRAs working definition identifying anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, AMCHAs director, co-founded the organization in 2011 with fellow academic Leila Beckwith. Rossman-Benjamin was at UC Santa Cruz and Beckwith was at UCLA in the early 2000s when they became concerned about an increase in antisemitism on their campuses. We realized that we needed to start to keep track of what was happening. Not just what we heard but to do active research about it. To try to compile [incidents] to see sort of the nature and scope of the problem of campus antisemitism in the US, Rossman-Benjamin told The Media Line.Other Potential Solutions to antisemitismThe world marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp this past January where the Nazis murdered more than a million Jews and others. And yet, today, the world is experiencing a resurgence of antisemitism not seen since the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party.Is there a vaccine for the virus of antisemitism?For Nirenstein, the answer is in politics. The problem, in her view, is the language criminalizing the state of Israel, what she describes as Israelophobia, a combination of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.Institutions [such as the UN and EU] are very responsible for the growth of antisemitism because they build a backing to it, Nirenstein said.Lipstadt said that antisemitism should not be used as a political weapon to shield against legitimate criticism of certain Israeli policies. Be careful. Be strategic. Be tactical. This is a major moral problem, and we must fight it with all our strength. But we also must fight it smart. We have to fight it tactically with a scalpel, not with a bludgeon, Lipstadt said.Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of Global Social Action Agenda for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, told The Media Line that reaching out to other communities is important for countering antisemitism.We need to be able to find and work with allies who are going to help to defeat antisemitism, Cooper said. Jews cant defeat antisemitism on their own. We need allies. And in the ever-changing world we live in, it is a huge challenge. But that is the challenge that stands before us.Cooper recalled Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal saying that when there is a strong democracy, it is good for the Jews, and when there is not, it is bad for the Jews.Huffnagle said that AJC is working to strengthen democratic institutions in the effort to counter the rise in antisemitism.We are also focusing on ways to rebuild our democracy and democratic institutions, Huffnagle said. American Jews are safer and more secure in a stable America, and we must continue promoting democratic values for all Americans if we want to lower levels of antisemitism.For more stories, go to themedialine.org.

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Vaccinating against the virus of antisemitism - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

If RSAs attendees were even able to score an Airbnb, it was second to the tech companies whod, for years, packed employees into expensive rentals that once were on the normal-person market. Companies whose fat salaries also pushed rents out of reach for locals. Both had ensured a steady flow of evictions among artists, writers, musicians, teachers, sex workers, people of color, the elderly, and restaurant workers. Or they became part of San Franciscos thousands upon thousands of homeless (like the grocery cashiers and pizza servers I knew living in cars).

This was February, yet I was already too aware of COVID-19s contagion to brave going to the RSA conference. My best friend, a hacker visiting for conference-related meetings, felt the same way. Instead, we went to Haight-Ashbury, essentially where I grew up, loving the gritty contrast of Haight street punks posing for Japanese tourists under the Ben and Jerrys sign on that iconic corner of colorful Victorians.

At Japantowns mall, she cautioned me to keep my phone clean with sterile wipes; while there we saw a man in a mask have a coughing fit that drove people away from him like dish soap dripped into a pan of oily water. She avoided RSA too, but caught covid when she got home. And in the following five months the world would come to a screeching halt and over half a million would be dead with no end in sight.

RSA Conference 2020 added 40,000 faces to our downtown of glittering towers and their corporate tenants technological promises of a better future, but that was a nominal blur for San Francisco tourism. We barely felt it. Yet the conference is a crystalline moment for me. I can pinpoint the day I began self-quarantining by the publication of my February 28 Bad Password column, Coronavirus bursts Big Techs bubble.

That column, like many of the Bad Passwords weve done here over the past five years, reads now like something that was published from the future, recognizing we were at the tipping point of the pandemic and cautioning the violent contractions to come.

Steve Nesius / Reuters

Like the rest of the world right now, Bad Password is going on a pandemic-induced hiatus. Shining a light on techs monsters and hypocrites has been our jam for five years, and theres been plenty of greed, data dealing, security chicanery, discrimination, misinformation, and recklessness to go around. When Bad Password started, infosec slang was finally becoming everyday terminology. No one understood yet what a skid was (most still dont) but I no longer had to explain what a dox was.

Right out of the starting gate we surfaced a National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) report that showed Facebook is the epicenter of abuse for over 23 million women -- with the sites real names policy at the heart of it. At the time, Facebook was targeting LGBTQ users and outing their names. After that column, I was real named by Facebook, who stalled their response to my attorneys, after which my account remained in Facebook jail for one reason or another. I dont miss it.

Bad Passwords next big fun-time was when Hacking Team, arguably a spyware-for-dictators company, got royally, publicly pwned. In How spyware peddler Hacking Team was publicly dismantled we examined what the hack revealed: a country-by-country rundown of who Hacking Team had done deadly deeds for. I cross-referenced Hacking Teams client work with human rights reports on digital abuses by date and place, then worked with a team to make an interactive map it was later used as a case study.

When Oculus Rift founder (and alt-right shitpost financier extraordinaire), Palmer Luckey, pivoted into pitching LIDAR tech to hunt immigrants, we took it apart brick by brick. Luckeys response made my colleagues envious by decrying it as fake news. Then there was the time we documented Elon Musks PR lackeys calling Pulitzer-prize winning investigative outlet Reveal an extremist organization for reporting on Tesla factory safety issues. And when that Bad Password was directly cited to Musk on Twitter, he famously responded with a call for a journalist rating system. Elon really wanted to leave me a bad Yelp review.

When FOSTA passed, we explained why this was a horrible defining moment for every internet user, and not just for sex workers. When revisiting it, we found it left a very real body count behind and that particular Bad Password is cited in academic articles on the topic. This heralded the great internet war on sex were suffering through, and with a sobering post-FOSTA terror we explained exactly how sex censorship killed the internet we love.

We did what Bad Password loves to do, which is show you the hypocrisy of a techie thing, shine a humorous spotlight on the greedy opportunists, and find the human thread to engender empathy (while seeking a strong positive to pull us forward when we can). I entered an alternative 1995 universe to take Rudy Giuliani, cybersecurity expert, down several notches. While others took the WikiLeaks bait hook, line, and sinker, we diagrammed exactly how Julian Assange was actually pushing propaganda. We hated Ajit Pai before it was cool. We also got to do one of the most thorough and painfully humorous takedowns of Ubers toxic techbro culture you may ever read.

Bad Password also reveled in exposing the lies, dirty dealings, and anti-sex crusades of all those alleged anti trafficking orgs that love policing sex on the internet (and off). We also did one of the most referenced investigations on PayPal, Square and big bankings war on the sex industry.

Where the past meets the present, before the disastrous 2016 election, we said yes, you should absolutely be worried about election hacking. And Bad Password did something many had hoped someone, somewhere would do: We drew a direct line between IBM working with Nazi Germany and tech companies working directly with ICE.

And yeah. Its still all Facebooks fault. I mean, theyve raised what, at least an entire generation on firmly defended Holocaust denial. So here we are.

Locked indoors during a global pandemic, re-reading the Bad Password about Apps and gadgets for the Blade Runner future we didnt ask for. Watching Georgias election-hacking Brian Kemp rescind all local mask mandates while masks have become mandatory in France (and other countries). Wondering if we can somehow hack our way out of all this.

Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

It has been five months since RSA Conference 2020. I feel like I emerged from my apartment to a San Francisco brutally ransacked by tech charlatans and venture capital Bioshock villains.

The tech buses are gone. The unbelievable traffic of Ubers, Lyfts, and Teslas has vanished. The Facebook, Google, Salesforce, and massive tech properties are vacant. The Twitter building is empty and could remain that way permanently. Tech employees have moved out in droves: one in ten city renters have broken their leases and moved out; others, like a house of Google employees who live near me, plan to be gone by the end of the year.

Vultures linger to see if we have anything left to bleed. Like Grubhub ignoring delivery fee caps and hiking fees on coronavirus-crippled restaurants yet again and Airbnb asking guests to donate money to their hosts.

Airbnbs across the city have no bookings. Zero. The (reviled) one on my block has nothing booked through at least 2021. It sits dark with the power shut off. I can see its back garden has turned brown, dry and dead. At least a third of the apartments and houses around me are vacant; Ive watched them move out.

Airbnbs linger on Craiglist as fully furnished apartments where they sit and gradually become discounted, then include all utilities and wifi, then offer the first month free. SF Craigslist, where rents are absolutely schizophrenic, veering drunkenly from 1990 levels ($1400/month) to tech boom heights ($5K and up). The Craigslist free section overflows with designer furniture and high-end household items. More often, these spoils of the pandemic get dumped on the sidewalk in haste.

I can tell you for a fact that we wont miss those people with more money than sense, whose businesses were so plainly naive and fraudulent, whose lack of empathy was a trait cherished as aspirational, and whose solidarity was predicated on the exclusion, use, and degradation of others. San Francisco had become a performative playground for sheltered college grads who wrote racist algorithms, who enforced "real names" policies on our LGBTQ communities, and whose companies leeched hate and deadly misinformation into our collective bloodstreams until eventually the world as we know it stopped.

Yet techs impact on my hometown, its invasive services no one wanted and human-unfriendly gig economy (as well as its economic crushing of the poor and disenfranchised), now combined with COVID-19 has delivered a one-two punch bringing us to our knees.

Where once we had localized areas of homeless encampments, they now sprawl block after block. Think Skid Row, but evenly distributed. Upper Haight, the neighborhood of my youth, looks like a post-nuclear blast zone town in Fallout 4, or Fallout 76. Five businesses on Haight closed permanently in the last week alone. Some blocks have two or three businesses remaining. Everything is boarded up. So many people have gone missing recently that my Haight Street friends and I wonder if its coronavirus, or a serial killer.

The smell of Ben and Jerrys ice cream is gone. For now.

bluejayphoto via Getty Images

While Big Tech had been unconcerned with the outcomes of their privacy abuses, held a blatant disregard for user security, and were unwilling to believe their tools would be used to livestream massacres, Bad Password tirelessly documented, raised the alarm, and worked its hardest to shine a light into the dark. Our attitude here has never been You should have known better. Instead, it has been the powerful people making decisions for the rest of us knew better, but did nothing.

Our plan is for Bad Password to return. Our hope is that when we do, the tech forces that got us into much of this mess (and certainly made it worse) will decide that enough people have died to justify excising anti-science propaganda, banning hate groups and Holocaust denial, and will own up to their catastrophic failures at being responsible, ethical, just, and compassionate participants in the world around them.

The days ahead feel dark now, but whatever comes next is in our hands. Let the unhappy techies keep their internet of shit garbage while we repurpose their devices and designs to reveal monsters, to document abuses that should never be repeated, and to take care of one another.

Where we go from here, is forward.

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How it feels to survive Silicon Valley and a pandemic - Engadget

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Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

Leah: Ugh. Did you hear about the DeSean Jackson and Nick Cannon controversy? Because -- yikes.

Brandon: Oof, yes. Give me your take.

Anyway, both men eventually apologized, but it wasn't pretty.

In other words, our own experiences with racism don't prevent us from propping up other kinds of bigotry, whether we see it or not.

L: Yeah, for sure. I think that this whole thing reveals how even marginalized groups can support other types of oppression.

B: Without conflating the particulars of different prejudices, I've stopped a few times this past week to think about how broadly entrenched bigotry is in American society.

Part of its power is that it doesn't always need to register as egregious to be harmful. For many, antisemitic remarks may not have the same sting as other, state-sanctioned manifestations of prejudice, like the police killing of George Floyd in May.

L: YES, you're totally right. If an anti-Semitic comment isn't along the lines of Holocaust denial, people often look past it, I think, or excuse it as "not that bad."

The historical context

The Mississippi Burning case

The resulting conversations have been fruitful: They've made crystal clear the importance of detecting and grappling with cultural blind spots, specifically within Black communities.

But less talked about is the fact that addressing anti-Semitism is crucial not just because it's the right thing to do, but also because it's vital for understanding the wider workings of oppression. anti-Semitism -- anti-Jewish hostility -- is an ideological pillar of White supremacy, the very same bigotry that's long threatened Black Americans.

This sobering history offers a lesson for the America of 2020, as it interrogates deep-seated racial inequality: that we can't hope to fully reckon with the legacy of White supremacy if we also, intentionally or not, endorse its central tenet of anti-Semitism.

Recommended for your eyes and ears

Netflix's latest reality dating show is "Indian Matchmaking." It's a breezy watch, however it is not without its controversy.

In following a high-profile matchmaker's clients, the show highlights -- but doesn't really challenge -- the roles that colorism (the quest for a "fair" partner) and sexism play in dating and arranged marriages.

Since its debut, the show has ranked among the 10 most-watched items on Netflix. It'll surely suck you in, too, and give you lots to think about.

The release of Netflix's "The Baby-Sitter's Club," a remake of the classic children's book series, was followed by a short, 17-minute documentary called "The Claudia Kishi Club."

The documentary delves into the character Claudia Kishi, a stereotype-busting Japanese-American girl. Kishi has long been an inspiration to viewers and the documentary investigates why she -- as well as representation generally -- is so important.

"It was genuinely chilling, and this time, the anti-Semitism was coming from people who looked like me," writes Soraya Nadia McDonald, who's Black and Jewish.

Something else to think about

Around the office

He writes: "It's true that Lewis belongs to the era of Freedom Rides and epic marches, but he also showed you don't need to be a traditional civil rights hero to get things done. We do him a disservice if we freeze him in the black and white footage of the 1960s. He doesn't just belong on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He's in the streets of places like Portland, where protestors keep marching through tear gas and rubber bullets."

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Why it's crucial to grapple with our cultural blind spots - CNN

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LONDON 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 UK 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.

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

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.

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 UK 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.

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.

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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Coronavirus pushed British island of Jersey's only synagogue to the brink - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

BERLIN (JTA) 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.

During the first day of the trial for the Halle attacker, an exchange between the judge and the assailant took well over three hours. As a victim of attempted murder by this person, I had been petrified of this moment. It drained me. Yet rather than feel angry, sad or afraid at his awful statements, I sat there feeling relieved and even empowered.

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.

What I experienced in Halle changed that indelibly.

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 shooting. One year later I faced my attacker in open court. - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

"The air over Jerusalem is saturated with prayers and dreams like the air over industrial cities," wrote Yehuda Amichai, one of the city's beloved poets, in 1980. "It's hard to breathe."

Now it's hard to pray.

In the historic walled Old City, the beating heart of a place sacred to millions around the world, a second wave of the coronavirus has challenged devout communities to rethink how to pray safely. This spring, Jerusalem's revered religious sites closed partially or fully as prayer gatherings were blamed for some infections. Now Israel permits houses of prayer to operate under restrictions.

New customs accompany old worship rituals: a grid of prayer quadrants at the Western Wall. Only clergy permitted at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. "Place your carpet here" stickers on the floor of the Al-Aqsa Mosque grounds to keep worshipers distanced.

Here are some of the newest rituals surrounding Muslim, Christian and Jewish prayer in Jerusalem's Old City.

Bring your own carpet

The Al-Aqsa Mosque, where tradition says the Prophet Muhammad journeyed to heaven, reopened in late May after Muslim authorities closed it to the public for more than two months its first lengthy closure since the Crusaders captured it in 1099.

Worshipers are now asked to perform the wudu, the ritual washing of parts of the body, at home. Volunteers at the mosque provide hand sanitizer and masks. Participants are also asked to bring prayer carpets from home, to avoid touching the carpeted floor inside the mosque building.

"I have never used as many small carpets as nowadays," said Mustafa Abu Sway, a member of the mosque advisory council, sitting next to his yellow carpet outside the mosque. "It just goes to the washing machine, because you don't know what it has been contaminated with."

Israel restricts prayer gatherings in Jerusalem initially capped at 50 worshipers, then 19, and now 10 but Al-Aqsa is hosting several thousand every Friday for the main prayers.

That's partly to maintain a Palestinian presence at a compound also revered by Jews as the site where the Biblical temple once stood. Orthodox and right-wing Israeli Jewish activists are increasingly paying politically sensitive visits to the mosque grounds and lobbying to allow Jewish prayer there, which Palestinians see as hostile efforts to seize control at the site.

Muslim officials also believe they can hold prayers safely by spilling over into the mosque's vast outdoor complex. Stickers on the floor show worshipers how to keep spaced at a healthy distance, with partial success.

"It would be a pity if everything is shut down. I mean, you need a place, a source of hope, a source of light, to invigorate people and give them a break," said Abu Sway.

A recent sermon implored worshipers not to spread false rumors about the pandemic and to take it seriously. After prayers on a scorching Friday, thousands poured out of the Old City holding prayer carpets on their heads and refreshing frozen pops in their hands.

Celebrating Mass on Facebook Live

Nearby, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus' crucifixion, is closed due to the pandemic except to the clergy who continue their daily rituals inside, behind its wooden doors.

A short walk away, St. Saviour's Monastery hosts Jerusalem's main Roman Catholic Mass, with a small women's choir and no congregation onsite.

For months, Father Amjad Sabbara held a series of mini-Masses, with 19 participants each, so everyone in his Palestinian parish could attend a socially distanced Mass at least once a month. Now, with a second wave of infections afflicting Jerusalem's Palestinian neighborhoods, congregants watch from home on Facebook Live.

"It's better, you know, for the protection of the people and the families," Sabbara says. "It's better to stay in their homes. And in this way, we can pray together."

It's in their homes where his congregants need him most. Sabbara has set up a special counseling hotline and says he's getting a lot of calls about family tensions from being cooped up at home during the pandemic.

On a recent Sunday, he offered his homily in Arabic and raised a golden goblet and round communion wafer, all in front of a web camera.

Somehow, two devoted churchgoers managed to slip into the closed, cavernous church. They were allowed to stay.

No kissing the Torah scroll

Jewish prayers continue at the Western Wall, a remnant of the ancient Biblical temple compound. But the outdoor prayer plaza is now divided into quadrants designed to keep worship groups small.

Nearby, at the Ramban Synagogue in the Old City's Jewish quarter, longtime elementary school teacher Yehezkel Cahn, 71, oversees the morning prayers for several dozen worshipers sitting six feet apart in designated seats as if the synagogue were his classroom. He's drawn cartoons with handwritten instructions: No wearing masks on your chin. No turning on the ceiling fan.

"Because the corona goes from his nose to my mouth," Cahn says.

Another sign reads: "Don't try to be a wise guy! You have no permission to use the prayer books of the synagogue."

Cahn wears blue surgical gloves as he cradles the Torah scroll, turning his back as he passes a veteran white-haired worshiper. He says the man often forgets the synagogue's new health rule against kissing the scroll, a traditional sign of respect performed by touching the scroll and then kissing one's own hand as it is paraded around the congregation.

"I don't want him to kiss," Cahn says.

Cahn repeatedly looks at his watch, to usher in three shifts of morning worshipers in 45-minute slots. He's keeping the prayer groups small. Inside the synagogue, he allows no more than 10 men. That's the minimum quorum required by Orthodox Judaism for Torah readings and certain prayers and the government's latest restriction on indoor gatherings is 10 people. Whoever doesn't get a seat indoors prays in the courtyard.

As with efforts by Jerusalem's other major faiths, it's an attempt to protect worshipers' safety during the pandemic while permitting the uninterrupted rhythm of religious life.

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In Jerusalem's Old City, The Devout Adjust To Worship In The Coronavirus Era - KPCW

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Posted By admin on July 25, 2020

(JTA) For the rabbis and cantor of Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, Illinois, the to-do list to prepare for the unprecedented online-only High Holidays season was long.

In addition to transforming their usual services for over 3,000 people into an experience that congregants will find meaningful online, they needed to figure out how to create a service for families that would be engaging for young children through a screen.

So when Cantor Steven Stoehr heard about Shirat Haruach, a program of video services for families recorded by some of the most popular Jewish childrens song leaders, he jumped at the opportunity.

We could have gotten it done, Stoehr said. We just didnt think we could do it any better.

The hazzans calculus reflects a new dynamic this year as most non-Orthodox congregations choose to forgo risky in-person gatherings in favor of virtual services. No longer constrained to the people in the room or whichever visiting cantor they can fly in, communities are turning to outside talent over livestreams or video to improve their High Holidays offerings.

For some synagogues, the shift to virtual services has opened up new opportunities for how they run their services that could outlast this High Holidays season.

Its a new model for most congregations generally they rely on their own rabbis or cantors to plan and lead services but could be a glimpse into a future in which services traditionally offered by synagogues are transformed by technology or take place elsewhere. As the realization that the pandemic isnt ending anytime soon sets in, these services may be on the forefront of an upheaval in how synagogues operate and whether American Jews will look to synagogues as the primary purveyors of Shabbat and Jewish holiday programming.

The very idea has some worried.

If our goals as congregations were to have the best production value and to provide the highest-quality content, I think that has the potential to destroy what the individual community has to offer, said Hazzan Jeremy Lipton, director of placement and human resources at the Cantors Assembly. Otherwise, he said, referring to some of the countrys largest and most popular synagogues, everyone would be tuning into Park Avenue Synagogue, or Hadar, or Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.

Stoehr acknowledged as much and said he would have to think hard about whether to continue to offer something like the Shirat Haruach program beyond the High Holidays this year or after the pandemic ends.

Its dangerous in a way, he said.

To the creators of Shirat Haruach, the program isnt intended to pose a threat to synagogues. If anything, its meant to support synagogues in pivoting to virtual services, according to Rick Recht, a popular performer of Jewish music in the Reform and Conservative movements and one of three performers behind Shirat Haruach.

With two other song leaders, Shira Kline and Rabbi Josh Warshawsky, Recht is developing a customizable package of services featuring different options for families and intergenerational audiences, along with the opportunity for synagogue clergy to add their own videos. The services, which east cost $1,175 to $1,375, are being offered exclusively to synagogues, not directly to families.

Recht sees the program opening up high-quality song leaders and technical production to communities that otherwise would not be able to afford to bring them in.

Thats not competition, thats good hiring, Recht said.

He sees the Shirat Haruach service as something that could outlast this years High Holidays. In fact, Recht, Kline and Warshawsky have already begun creating a package of services aimed at synagogue religious schools for this year to incorporate prerecorded prayer services and concerts into virtual religious school curricula.

I think its important for us to realize that whats happening because of the pandemic is an extension of what was happening over the last couple of decades, Recht said. I feel that were heading toward a new paradigm of a hybrid, virtual and physical.

Not everyone offering online holiday and education experiences is working through existing institutions. Eliana Light, a popular childrens song leader and performer, is offering streamed family services to both synagogues and individual families for a fee.

Light has seen an interest in virtual services from people who are not members of synagogues at World Synagogue Sing, a Sunday morning program she and several other Jewish musicians have run via livestream since the start of the pandemic.

Theres plenty of people who come who arent affiliated with synagogues, she said.

Others see an opportunity to more comprehensively reimagine what synagogue services could look like if technology is incorporated in creative ways.

I love the idea of yeah, lets find really talented people and lets have them create something online for our members to experience and for others to experience, said Lex Rofeberg, a digital educator who has advocated for the use of digital media in building Jewish community.

Rofeberg himself is leading High Holidays services via Zoom from his home in Providence, Rhode Island, for a synagogue in Arkansas. He would have been there in person if not for the pandemic, as he has been for the past five years, but he wonders whether the virtual services being offered now could continue even after congregations can return to gathering in a sanctuary.

For smaller congregations, streaming services could be a more affordable option than hiring a rabbi, he said, or simply a better option than rotating among a small group of members who know how to read from the Torah. Steaming services in a sanctuary when congregants can gather again could combine the best of both worlds high-quality content streamed from outside the synagogue with the community feeling that comes from gathering together.

Theres no reason we couldnt come together in an on-the-ground space and stream in somebody our congregation has decided they love, Rofeberg said.

Online services do not represent the first challenge to the primacy of synagogues at the High Holidays. In recent years, independent rabbis and prayer leaders have offered pop-up services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at little or no cost in places like bars or hotel ballrooms. The services often attract young people and those who do not affiliate with a synagogue.

Virtual services offered in nontraditional ways during the pandemic build on the trend, said Jack Wertheimer, professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He said he doesnt anticipate the new breed of services sticking around after the pandemic to the point that synagogues would fall out of fashion.

Im skeptical that when it is possible for people to come back into synagogues that they will prefer to watch services online, Wertheimer said. If anything, this COVID period of time may at least in the short run direct people to return to synagogues more frequently because they miss that social contact.

But the longer synagogues are closed, and the more robust the alternatives become, the more people may become comfortable with experiencing Jewish community online. For young people who are used to connecting through digital platforms, the lower barrier to entry may be appealing.

In-person gathering isnt going away, said Rachel Gross, a professor of Jewish studies at San Francisco State University, but certainly younger people understand real community is happening online.

Gross sees virtual services building on initiatives like PJ Library, a program that distributes Jewish childrens books, or organizations that bring people together for Shabbat meals to encourage Jewish engagement outside of Jewish institutions.

I dont think that the synagogue membership model is going to disappear, she said. But I think the pandemic is probably exacerbating trends that allow people to have more obvious choices about the organizations theyre picking and choosing from.

For now, she said, theres little noticeable difference between online services offered by an individual cantor or song leader and those offered by a synagogue, meaning that the ramifications of this moment may not become clear until in-person services take place again.

A lot of our distinctions of categories get blurred on the internet, Gross said. If youre sitting at home on Zoom, are you going to care if its from a synagogue or a cantor?

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Some synagogues are opting for high-quality over homegrown when it comes to online services. Is that a good thing? - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic...

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