Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

Like other synagogues, Congregation Etz Chaim is still deciding when and how to reopen its sanctuaries to the public for services, simchas and other social gatherings after shuttering for COVID-19. It has postponed many bnai mitzvah during the world health crisis.

Meanwhile, the Marietta synagogue opened its newly renovated sanctuary to its first wedding May 24. And it wasnt just the only such simcha in the new facility with a yet-to-be-opened social hall next door still under wraps, but the first wedding and simcha during the pandemic. And in traditional COVID-19 style, it was a simcha that adhered to strict social distancing, and instead of gown and tux, veil and bowtie, the bride and groom, along with a handful of family in attendance, dressed up and sported the latest in COVID designs masks.

Stephanie Lievense and Andrew Cohn had planned a May 24 wedding for 200 guests at The Biltmore Hotel in downtown Atlanta officiated by Rabbi Daniel Dorsch of Etz Chaim.

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The couple had sent out invitations, which resulted in a steady stream of positive responses until the health crisis began affecting daily life. Devastated, the couple realized they had to change course, and approached Rabbi Dorsch about the possibility of having their ceremony on the same date at the synagogue in which Cohn attended Hebrew School and became a bar mitzvah.

The couple, in masks, exchange rings.

We asked Rabbi Dorsch if it was just the two of us, Lievense recalled. The number grew to both sets of parents (Lievenses drove about 10 hours from Fort Myers, Fla.) and Andrews sister and boyfriend, an unrelated witness to sign the ketubah nine people, including the rabbi.

The plan was to have a traditional ceremony at a later date that included a larger crowd, Lievense said. However, with the unknown of when that would actually happen, we decided to have our parents come for the real marriage ceremony. Plans still call for a standard photo shoot and dress-up reception when its safe to do so, she said.

It was generous of Rabbi Dorsch, Cohn said of being able to use the sanctuary for the ceremony. We are so thankful he was able to do that for us. Learning that they were the first wedding in the renovated sanctuary and the only simcha during COVID-19, he added, We are definitely honored.

Rabbi Dorsch said the wedding worked because all in attendance had adhered to strict quarantining. I was not afraid because I knew they were taking necessary precautions as was I, he said. I was happy to do this [wedding] in such an unusual way that made sure everyone was safe and everyone was comfortable.

Rabbi Daniel Dorsch signs the ketubah in his office.

Most of the party, the Cohn family, sheltered at least two weeks in advance of the wedding in their Marietta home. The bride and groom, in masks, stood under the chuppah on the bimah holding their own wine glasses and the rabbi stood at least 6 feet from them. Lievenses parents sat on one side of the sanctuary and the Cohn family, the other.

One ritual that held special meaning at a wedding during a pandemic was the breaking of the glass, Rabbi Dorsch said. Its a metaphor for putting the broken pieces of the world back together again, he said. I challenged them to go out and do that. Its easy to see the world as a broken place right now.

He stressed that the wedding at Etz Chaim proves that Jewish life endures even in times of hardship. As I reminded them under the chuppah, love is stronger than a virus. I remain proud of the way they have continued to persevere.

Stephanie and Andrew under the chuppah with their ketubah on display in the background.

For the couple, it may not have been their dream wedding, but they try to keep an open mind and larger perspective on life, Cohn said. We still love each other. We see the bigger picture and thats what marriage is about.

That despite having to cancel both their bachelor and bachelorette parties, and a honeymoon in Aruba. The wedding photos, complete with wedding gown, hair and makeup, big reception, caterer, decorator, all postponed with credits for future use.

We still are excited to celebrate with family and friends at a safer date, Lievense said.

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Down the Aisle With Mask and Love - Atlanta Jewish Times

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

Share This Article:The wreckage of the pickup truck off Sunset Cliffs. Courtesy OnScene.TV

More than $11,000 has been raised for future unplanned doctors visits for twin 2-year-old girls who were rescued from the ocean off Sunset Cliffs after their father allegedly drove them off a sea bluff on purpose.

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About 4:30 a.m. Saturday, the toddlers mother made a 911 call to report that her husband, Robert Brians, 47, had taken their children without permission and had contacted her with numerous calls and texts clearly stating she may not see (them) again, according to the statement on a GoFundMe.com page created Sunday on behalf of the girls.

After authorities tracked the apparently suicidal mans pickup to the Sunset Cliffs area via cellphone signals, an officer located it on Hill Street, near Cornish Drive, according to San Diego police.

As the officer approached, the truck sped off and plunged over a 30-foot-high rocky sea bluff.

Moments later, a canine officer also responding to the emergency, 22-year police veteran Jonathan Wiese, arrived in the area.

Reaching the scene of the crash and seeing Brians pickup upside-down in the water, Wiese grabbed a long leash he uses for his service dog, wrapped it around his chest, gave the other end to fellow officers and rappelled down the precipice, police said.

Wiese then swam out to the foundering truck and rescued the children and Brians. Medics took all three to hospitals for treatment of injuries that were not considered life-threatening.

Brians was booked into county jail later that day on suspicion of two counts each of attempted murder, kidnapping and child cruelty.

The girls are hospitalized with stable vital signs, according to Colin Moore, a friend of the twins mother who created the GoFundMe.com page.

Wiese, who has been hailed as a hero over the last several days for his quick actions in the case, similarly sprang into action in the minutes that followed the deadly synagogue shooting in Poway 14 months ago, according to police.

Hearing a dispatch about shooting rampage at Chabad of Poway, which left a member of the congregation dead and three other people wounded, Wiese sped to the area, spotted the suspects car near the synagogue, pulled it over and took the alleged shooter into custody.

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$11,000 Raised for Twins Injured When Their Allegedly Suicidal Father Drove Off Cliff was last modified: June 17th, 2020 by Chris Jennewein

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$11,000 Raised for Twins Injured When Their Allegedly Suicidal Father Drove Off Cliff - Times of San Diego

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

The wigs in my wardrobe stand poised, like ballerinas backstage, curled on their mannequin heads.

Since New Yorks shutdown began in mid-March, I have not needed that armor, and the multiple roles they represent: the straight dark one is serious journalist; the wavy long one, Upper East Side rebbetzin. In normal times, these varied shades of human hair served as an announcement to the world: I am Orthodox, I am married, and I have stepped outside my house.

But in this pandemic, my wigs lay dormant. Instead, I have secretly enjoyed the cotton head scarves that let my mind breathe. I have also enjoyed the quiet of Shabbos at home an anomaly for our rabbinic family, where the Sabbath is the busiest day of the week. Ive grown to embrace the home, the private, over public spaces over my sheitel-wearing self.

The shift was much more painful for my rabbi-husband, and many other men in our lives, who are used to attending daily minyan. Their separation from shul was tearful, and it was indeed heart-breaking to see those darkened sanctuaries, those lonely Torah scrolls in the shuttered arks.

But for me, it was really quite simple to advocate for closing shul as part of flattening the coronavirus curve, because my spirituality long ago disconnected from those sanctuaries. I realize, now, that I had already gone through that painful separation from organized prayer, communal spirituality it happened when I became a mother.

The synagogue is no place for babies

In school, when they taught us girls about the different gender roles in what we called Torah Judaism, they would explain that men have more religious responsibilities because they need more of that structure, more of that spiritual work. That we women were naturally closer to God. Do you want to have to go to minyan three times a day? our rebbes would say with a laugh. Surely not! What a burden that would be! How lucky you are! Stay home.

I laughed along. Indeed, it was nice not to be beholden to the schedule of a synagogue, to determine my own prayer times wherever I was, I thought then.

But when I had my first child four years ago, my Yiddishkeit changed drastically. Actually, it seemed to drown somewhere in formula, piles of laundry, soggy Cheerios while my husband was religiously obligated to continue going to minyan three times a day.

How I wished to have an excuse to get out of the house, to escape the kitchen, to have the silence of the amidah, the soft swaying of others around me! How I yearned for social interaction with other adults, offline, outside mom-group chats and Shabbos menus. How I missed being that young woman at Kabbalas Shabbos whisper-praying in the mostly-empty womens section, the sky turning lavender behind the synagogue windows, the community members embracing one another, wishing each other a Gut Shabbes, exchanging jokes and news.

But my new reality had little room for synagogue. I did not want to leave my kids home with a babysitter on Shabbos, when I was already out of the house most of the week. If I did make it into the sanctuary, usually after a few kind preteens offered to watch my children while I sped through my prayers up on the high balcony, it was hard to focus.

Yes, I had prayed hard for children, and I am deeply grateful for these blessings, for their little hands and high-pitched voices and round cheeks. But no one prepared me for the reality that as they expanded my world, a part of me would also be lost.

How many times had I read in religious womens books rosy descriptions of frum motherhood, equating a womans domestic work (cooking, taking care of the house and children) as that of a priest in the Temple. You are all building your small temples! They cried. How fortunate you are! Before motherhood, I had found these notions romantic; afterwards, I chafed at them.

The home is the center of Judaism! Not the shul! I remind myself as I cook for Shabbos, every week, a mantra of sorts.

It took the coronavirus for me to realize the minuscule place that communal prayer takes up in my life now and how sad that is.

Post-pandemic, can shul be more welcoming?

Shortly before the pandemic, I found myself in the New Jersey town where I grew up for Shabbos. I needed a break from Manhattan, so I took the train with two little ones in tow and slept in my childhood bedroom and ate my mothers food. And thanks to my little sister, who took the kids I went back to my childhood shul.

I sat in the back, and could feel my youths prayers wash over me, as if I was sitting behind my younger self, head uncovered. I yearned for my girlish self, for whom synagogue played such a formative role.

What has been interesting about these months of quarantine is that they have thrown Orthodox men into traditionally Orthodox female experiences of Judaism, too. Of course many Orthodox mothers do go to shul, but it is generally not a priority. For many, its logistically difficult finding childcare, or a small or uncomfortable womens section, or nowhere to breastfeed a child. For some, its also ideologically uncomfortable, to feel that one is a spectator and not a participant. For many, they are just conditioned that way I have to get this Shabbos meal ready, set the table, theres just too much to do at home, shul isnt my thing.

But over these past few months, everything shifted. The public the minyan, the donning of the sheitel disappeared; it became all about the private, the prayer facing the living room wall, the soft headscarf. Suddenly, husbands and fathers were thrust into womens work including spiritual labor, that structureless service of God that is much harder than checking off your list that you attended minyan and night Torah classes, too.

As synagogues start to reopen my husband is leading services on weekday mornings, with strict distancing protocols and as we take our wigs out of our wardrobes, as we step back into life in a quasi-public sphere I pray that these months at home will have made more community members empathetic to the realities of many of the women in their lives, who often shoulder the bulk of domestic labor.

I hope they will now empathize with that vertigo that comes with being unmoored from regular Torah study, from the rhythm of communal prayer.

I hope that more religious men will now understand the angst of that mother sitting on the floor on Shabbos morning, building yet another MagnaTiles tower while pining for her once-beloved seat in shul and secretly resenting herself for not accepting this with a soft smile as her spiritual duty.

I hope Orthodox communities will be able to make space for the mothers in their midst, to prioritize womens participation and voices in the public squares of Judaism, too by offering childcare during popular prayer times, by securing an eruv that allows families to walk to shul with diaper bags and strollers, by ensuring that the womens section is reliable, accessible and comfortable.

If we dont we risk keeping our women in a perpetual, domestic quarantine.

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt is the life editor at the Forward. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

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As shul reopens, can we make it more welcoming to Orthodox women? - Forward

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

After being closed for 100 days, offering online services only,places of worship will be allowed to reopen Mondaywith physical-distancing measures in place.

Churches, synagogues, mosques and templeswill need to respect the same guidelines as all other public indoor spaces, the government announced Wednesday. That means only 50 worshippers can gather at any one time, and everyone must stay two metres away from one another.

Rabbi Lisa Grushcow of the Temple Emanu-El-Beth-Sholom said she and other religious leaders in Montreal's Jewish community don't feel it's the right time to be opening their synagogues.

"We've each got our own small medical advisory committees, and they've been suggesting that we stay closed for now or that we open very, very gradually," Grushcow told CBC Montreal's Daybreak Thursday morning.

"If we were to open physically right now, we would be leaving out thetremendous number of people that are currently joining in from home because of age or medical conditions," she said.

"We just don't want to leave them behind."

Instead, Temple Emanu-El-Beth-Sholom will continue to stream its services online.

"We've really transitioned quite successfully online for this time period, so we're not limited in terms of our use of the technology and we're thriving right now," said Grushcow.

Aside from concern for vulnerable attendees, otherobstacles alsomake it difficult to follow the government's health guidelines, were the synagogue to reopen.

For example, as withmany other denominations,singing isa large part of the service, but as Dr. Richard Mass, a senior public health adviser to the government,explained earlier this week, singing releases a lotof water dropletsand is therefore a risky activity in a pandemic.

For that reason, all places of worshipwill have to limit singing at their services.

While Grushcow admitted singing in unison is almost impossible on a video-conferenced service, she said attendees are able to mute their own microphones and can therefore sing alongat their own pace.

"They can follow along with the service. We don't have to limit our numbers, so it's what we're sticking with for now," she said.

Grushcow said she will continue to monitor the situation closely, but she has no idea when she and many other religious leaderswill feel safe reopening their places of worship again.

Adil Ahmad, an imam in Pierrefonds and co-founder of the Canadian Muslim Alliance, said he is doing everything in his power to reopen safely in time for next week.

All attendees will be asked to bring their own prayer mats, and the province's mosques are brainstorming to find ways in which they can ensure people stay two metres away from one another.

"In our form of worship, we actually have to be in a place physically, and so that really forces us to gather," said Ahmad.

Being compelled to remain physically distancedmight mean coming up with separate shifts for Friday prayers, he said, so that fewerpeople are in the mosque at a time.

"Muslims have to do their absolutions:they have to wash themselves before they pray, so we are going to have to really enforce that the people do their preparations at home," he said.

For many Christians, like those of the RomanCatholic faith, rituals such as communionrequire physicalcontact, and how that will happen still needs to be thought out.

In some U.S. states where churches have already reopened, for example, the communion host is placed in the palms of parishioners by priests or deacons wearing face masks and goggles.

In an interview with Radio-Canada, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Quebec,Cardinal Grald Cyprien Lacroix, said the government has not given religious leaders enough notice to put safety protocols in placefor the reopening of churches in a week's time.

"It's a lot of work to prepare. It requires investment in a lot ofequipment," Lacroix said.

Lacroixaccused the government of putting all of its focus on the economy and neglecting religious institutions in the process.

"The crisis has highlighted a deep ignorance of religions and the benefits they bring to hundreds of thousands of people in Quebec," he said.

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Quebec places of worship allowed to reopen next week, but many bow out for now - CBC.ca

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

Once named one of the Most Inspiring Rabbis In America by Forward Magazine,Rabbi Jeremy Fineleads the Temple Of Aaron Synagogue in Saint Paul, Minnesota. While studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Rabbi Fine received the William H. Lebeau Book Award and the Rabbi Morris Silverman Award in Liturgy. The Illinois native has also studied at Israels Conservative Yeshiva and the Machon Schechter Institute, beyond studies and certificates completed elsewhere.

But Jeremy Fine is far more than just a rabbi at a highly-regarded synagogue. Family duties aside, he is the founder of The Great Rabbino, a blog which turned into a company. Fines blog, which has spotlighted Jewish sporting news and stories, has been recognized by big national outlets including the Chicago Sun Times and the San Francisco Sentinel. The Great Rabbino as a company serves as a way for the Jewish community to better engage with sports and Jewish athletes. In turn, The Great Rabbino has helped bring athletes to speak at Jewish day schools, run clinics at summer camps, and worked closely with Israel organizations.

Later this month on June 21, Jeremy Fine will be co-hosting a benefit event for Team Israel Baseball to be broadcast live via Facebook. Many Jewish baseball players from the past, present and future will be there to draft and celebrate. This includes MLB great Ian Kinsler, former New York Met Ty Kelly, former Minnesota Twin Danny Valencia, and the MLBs first female coach Justine Siegel.

I had the pleasure of doing Q&A with Jeremy Fine, who also connected me with other participants in the draft event, professional wrestler Jaxon Stone and Team Israel Baseballs Peter Kurz. Highlights from the interviews are below for your reading pleasure.

Darren Paltrowitz: Your congregation, Temple Of Aaron, has a lot more fun programming than the synagogue I grew up attending. Is that also the case for you?

Rabbi Jeremy Fine: Both my vision for synagogue programming and my own side projects which this is are to ensure Judaism is celebrated. I always wanted to be therabbithat normalized synagogue life; taking the fear out of shul and adding fun.

Darren Paltrowitz: What should be expected from the upcoming draft?

Rabbi Jeremy Fine: Great debates, interviews, and lots of fun. Ultimately, it is to raise awareness and funds for Team Israel Baseball. Olympics are not free and these players are representing Israel and we need to help support their efforts.

Peter Kurz: I am very excited about this event. I think well see a lot of people signing on via facebook, just curious as to what its about, and staying around for most of the draft rounds. I think its a great opportunity to highlight our great Jewish baseball athletes and what they have accomplished, and you will find that in the end, most of the teams, will be extremely competitive and would have been exciting to watch if they had been able to play together. I think with the MLB Fantasy Baseball tournaments, and lack of professional baseball today, people will be very interested in seeing the draft results.

Jaxon Stone: Im excited for the draft. I think its going to be really exciting. Im very competitive, so Im drafting to win.

Darren Paltrowitz: What excites you about the All-Time Jewish Fantasy Baseball Draft?

Peter Kurz: Just being able to assemble a team together with players like Sandy Koufax, Hank Greenberg, Alex Bregman, Shawn Green, who all played in different eras, allows ones imagination to run rampant on what they could have all done if they had been on the same team together.

As the GM who put together Team Israel for the WBC tournaments in 2012 and 2016/17, as well as our current Olympic team, this is an opportunity for others to really put their Jewish Kopfs together and come out with the ultimate All-Jewish baseball team!

Jaxon Stone: Seeing how many great Jewish baseball players there were. And people coming together for a great cause and lots of fun to go with it.

Darren Paltrowitz: Why is the draft important to baseball fans and Team Israel?

Peter Kurz: The draft itself is symbolic of what we have accomplished over the last 8 years the coming together of Jewish American ballplayers to help their Israeli brethren and Team Israel field a top team of ballplayers who have sacrificed their own personal careers and statistics, for the greater good of getting Team Israel on the international map of baseball competitions.Achieving 6thplace in the WBC and being the first of six teams to qualify for the Olympic Baseball tournament is proof that this is becoming quite a reality.

Darren Paltrowitz: Who do you think is going to win the next World Series?

Rabbi Jeremy Fine: The White Sox. That is always my answer until they are mathematically out of contention.

Jaxon Stone: St. Louis Cardinals, my favorite team since I was 8.

Darren Paltrowitz: Draft aside, what is coming up for you?

Rabbi Jeremy Fine: Getting the synagogue back on track in the midst of a pandemic. And praying for a better and safer world for everyone.

Peter Kurz: The Olympic postponement due to the Coronavirus, and the subsequent postponements of other tournaments, has given us more time to prepare, and raise the required funding.The Olympic players are all practicing and staying in shape, anticipating the reopening of the professional leagues the Israeli Premier League began play last night and will come together next for intensive training in July 2021 for a 3-week-long mini-camp and barnstorming tour in the northeast USA. The U18 Israel National Team will be attending the European Championship A Pool probably in the summer of 2021, as will the adult team.

New fields in Bet Shemesh and Raanana are being developed now, and we hope to have them ready by the end of 2020.All over Israel, youth and adults are returning to the baseball fields and practicing and getting ready.

Jaxon Stone: Well, pro wrestling is starting to come back, so Im excited to have my full-time wrestling schedule back again. In the process of starting a mental health non-profit callled YouAreLoved. Got a lot of cool stuff Im working on. Very grateful and excited.

More on Rabbi Jeremy Fine can be found here, while the draft can be viewed here.

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Rabbi Jeremy Fine on his Upcoming Event with Team Israel Baseball - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

As the Trump administration spotlights the anti-fascist group Antifa as the source of chaos and anarchy engulfing the countrywide protests for equal rights and justice, little, if any, has been said about White nationalists who have infiltrated the protests with the objective of creating a popular pandemonium. Surely, Antifas looters and anarchists, among others, should face justice; nevertheless, underestimating or turning a blind eye to the premeditated actions of White nationalists is a recipe to promote violence on a national and global scale. In fact, White nationalism as a movement has become a transnational crusade as ideologically and operationally dangerous as the Salafi-Jihadi Islamic State.

Recently the social media giant Facebook removed multiple account networks connected with white nationalist Proud Boys and America Guard, designated as extremist hate groups bythe Southern Poverty Law Centerandthe Anti-Defamation League (ADL). These groups encouraged their members to bring guns to the Black Life Matters-led protests suffusing the United States. Among the many charges facing those arrested by federal authorities, the most serious charge involved three men in Nevada linked to a far-right extremist group Boogaloo advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. These individuals and groups, though loosely affiliated, are an integral part of the white nationalist ideology that has transcended national borders and is expressed in civilizational terms.

According to the ADL, white nationalism is a term that originated among white supremacists as a euphemism for white supremacy. Eventually, some white supremacists tried to distinguish it further by using it to refer to a form of white supremacy that emphasizes defining a country or region by white racial identity and that seeks to promote the interests of whites exclusively, typically at the expense of people of other backgrounds.

The ADL adds that over time, white supremacists of whatever sort adhere to at least one of the following beliefs:1) whites should be dominant over people of other backgrounds; 2) whites should live by themselves in a whites-only society; 3) white people have their own culture that is superior to other cultures; and 4) white people are genetically superior to other people.

Anti-Semitism is also paramount for white nationalists, most of whom believe that Jews constitute a distinctive race infused with parasitic and evil roots, bent on destroying Western civilization. These defining traits of white nationalists, who apprehensively operated on the margins of European and American societies, gradually developed into a transnational ideology congealing around their sacrosanct right of survival.

The central theme of their ideology can be traced to Renaud Camuss Le Grand Remplacement [The Great Replacement] in which he argues that the flood of black and brown immigrants into the European continent will eventually amount to an extinction-level event of White native Europeans. Witnessing the impact of rising immigration to France, the emergence of subcultures, and failure of multiculturalism as an integrationist policy, Camus believes that Western societies are variably subject to ethnic and civilizational substitution. The act of replacement, for him, is civilizational.

Although he denied any genetic conception of races, his literature has been picked up by far-right and white nationalist groups throughout Europe and the English-speaking world. However, these groups added to Camuss central theme of Great Replacement a variation of concepts meant not only to widen the popular base of white nationalism but also to infuse it with an actionable immediacy. For example, Richard Spencer, a public face of white nationalism, embraced Camuss arguments, though identifying himself as an Identitarian. Although the term has also French roots in the work of Alain de Benoist, Spencers ilks used the term in a utilitarian fashion to deflect racial superiority and underscore the differential right in diversity. In other words, Identitarians claim the exclusive right to their own culture and territories in the face of what they perceive the gradual act of civilizational replacement.

The intellectual defense against this existential identity threat had been expounded by French journalist Guillaume Fayes Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age (2010 in English); The Colonisation of Europe (2016); and Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance (2019). Faye lambasts Western liberalism and unrestrained immigration, which has taken a form of massive colonization settlement of the West by peoples from the Global South. He harshly criticizes European leaders for helping bring the demise of Europe and asserts that Islam is carrying out a hostile takeover both of France and Europe.

Fayes arguments, complementing those of Camus and Benoist, have become an infallible script of white nationalism. Spencer, along with Greg Johnson, has been promoting Fayes arguments and open about the influence of Faye on his thinking as an identitarian. References to Faye and Benoists appeared regularly in the alt-right andpro-Donald Trump forums on Redditand4chan. Steve Bannons alt-right Breitbart has promoted their work, too. According to Southern Poverty Law Center, there has been an observable shift at Breitbart.com to an outright embrace ofwhite-nationalist Identitarian movementsacross the continent. And that, in turn, has meant that propaganda from these movements has been transmitted whole to its readers across all its platforms, including the U.S. and elsewhere.

Thanks to this cross-pollination of ideas going back to the history of slavery white nationalism has transformed into a malleable global ideological crucible in which radical movements and slogans are churned out to stop this Great Replacement. Today the most referred slogan for white nationalists is the 14 Words. The slogan states: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. The other widespread slogan that has become a rallying cry and a catchphrase on fliers is: You Will Not Replace Us.

During the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, organized by Richard Spencer, Mike Enoch, Jason Kessler, Augustus Invictus, Baked Alaska and others, demonstrators chanted Jews will not replace us. The event was ostensibly asserting the legitimacy of white culture and supremacy.

One of the earliest violent manifestations of white nationalism was carried out by the Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik who perpetrated Norways biggest massacre since World War II. Hours before the deadly attack in January 2017, Breivik e-mailed a 1,500-page manifesto to 5,700 people, titled2083A European Declaration of Independence. In the document, Breivik, proclaiming himself a savior of Christianity, attacks multiculturalism and the threat of Muslim immigration to Norway. In October 2018, Robert Bowers opened fire during Shabbat services, at Pittsburghs Tree of Life synagogue, killing eleven and wounding seven. This was the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in American history on a Synagogue known for helping immigrants.

Similarly, the March 2019 Islamophobic attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, amounted to the deadliest mass shooting in the countrys history. The perpetrator Brenton Tarrant was reportedly radicalized when he traveled to Europe. He felt taken aback by the omnipresence of immigrants, their crimes and the paralysis gripping the dispirited native populations, who, he considered, are dying out. He also issued a manifesto entitled The Great Replacement.

Steeped in anti-Islam, the manifesto refers to nonwhites as invaders who threaten to replace white people. Tarrant confessed to using guns so as to frighten people and create conflict, especially in the United States over gun laws, as well as balkanizing the United States into warring racial factions. Significantly, he argued in the manifesto that:

The radicalization of young Western men is not just unavoidable, but inevitable. It should come as no shock that European men, in every nation, and on every continent are turning to radical notions and methods to combat social and moral decay of their nations and the continued ethnic replacement of their people. Radical, explosive action is the only desired, and required, response to an attempted genocide.

Tarrants manifesto is unequivocally a testament to the transnational spread of white nationalisms ideology and the urgency to stop the act of civilizational replacement. This act of terror was followed by another attack on an American synagogue in Poway, California. On April 27, 2019, John Timothy Earnest entered theChabad of Powaysynagogueon the last day of the Jewish holiday ofPassover. Approximately one hundred people were inside the synagogue. Earnest shot and killed one person and wounded the Rabbi of the congregation before his rifle jammed. A massacre was avoided. Earnest issued a manifesto that blended historical anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and racism. Wrapping himself in the mantle of Christianity, Earnest faulted the Jews for their endless crimes against God and humanity and for committing a genocide against the European race. He wrote: It is unlawful and cowardly to stand on the sidelines as the European people are genocided around you. I did not want to have to kill Jews. But they have given us no other option.

No sooner, in August 2019, Patrick Crusius, twenty-one years old, entered the Cielo Vista Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and opened fire on shoppers at a packed Walmart store, killing and wounding scores of people. The El Paso shooting was one of the most brutal assaults on Hispanics in U.S. history. Crusius also issued a manifesto The Inconvenient Truth explaining his act of terror. Confessing his support of the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto, Crusius asserted that this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas . . . They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. . . . Actually the Hispanic community was not my target before I read the Great Replacement.

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Domestic Threats in the Era of Nationalism - The National Interest

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

Facebook wants to play a big role in the 2020 election. But it seems of two minds on how to get there.

On Wednesday, Facebook announced a Voting Information Center, which will tell users how to register to vote, how to vote by mail, and come election day, where to vote. The feature will allow users to turn on alerts reminding them of their polling places, and will highlight communications from verified local election authorities. In an op-ed in USA Today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook hopes to register 4 million voters nationwidetwice as many as in 2016, with a similar push.

Facebook last week also tiptoed closer to regulating advertisements from politicians, which until now it has refused to do. A new policy will allow users to opt out of all political or social cause adsanything that carries a paid for by disclaimer. Then, Thursday, the social media giant removed ads placed by President Trumps campaign that included a Nazi symbol used in concentration camps; the company said the ads violated its policy against hate speech.

The moves clash in some ways with Zuckerbergs stated policy of letting all voices be heard. [A]ccountability only works if we can see what those seeking our votes are saying, even if we viscerally dislike what they say, the CEO wrote in his op-ed. After the 2016 election, Zuckerberg famously called the notion that social media misinformation had influenced the outcome a pretty crazy idea.

In testimony to the House of Representatives Thursday, Facebook security policy head Nathaniel Gleicher again tried to thread the needle. He said Facebook would allow users to post a symbol to condemn it or to discuss it, but in a situation where we dont see either of those, we dont allow it on the platform and well remove it.

For Facebook, the solution to democracy continues to be more people looking at and using Facebook.

At a time when were all stuck in front of our screens at home, you have to think the effect of Facebook would be more than it was four years ago, says Nathaniel Persily, a law professor who studies American elections at Stanford Law School. He called the voting information center a welcome and critical development.

But Facebooks shifting decisions on misinformation have placed it in a tight spot. The company won praise for its quick work to dispel Covid-19 misinformation. But Zuckerberg angered both outside critics and his own employees by refusing to fact check Trumps posts, even after Twitter made it more difficult for users to view one tweet and attached a warning to others.

At a time when were all stuck in front of our screens at home, you have to think the effect of Facebook would be more than it was four years ago.

Nathaniel Persily, Stanford Law School

Civil rights activists reportedly told Zuckerberg on a phone call that the decision not to fact check Trumps violent language betrayed a lack of understanding about racism, violence, and voter suppression. Last week, groups including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League said they would encourage big companies not to buy Facebook ads in the month of July. A handful of Facebook employees took the rare step of publicly criticizing the companys stance. (Even more rare: A few publicly quit over it.)

Meanwhile, the Trump administration responded by proposing changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Actthe federal law that shields internet companies from lawsuits stemming from user posts.

Allowing users to opt out of political ads could prove popular. In a recent Gallup Poll, 72 percent of respondents wanted to block internet companies from allowing campaigns to target them with specific ads.

But the effect may be limited, because users will have to navigate several steps to adjust their ad preferences. Its going to be people with more technical skills and are more discerning who are going to opt out, and those are not the people we worry would be manipulated by misinformation, says Shannon McGregor, who studies the role of social media in political processes at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

On the other hand, McGregor says, the move could penalize political challengers, who need to pay for exposure to new audiences and constituents. This is taking away from the voice of newcomers, she says. Political strategists have complained about the late coming policy, implemented just 140 days before the November election.

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The Two Faces of Facebook's Election Plans - WIRED

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

EVAN VUCCI, ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Donald Trump arrives on stage to speak at a campaignrally Saturday at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla.

TULSA, Okla. President Donald Trump used his comeback rally Saturday to try to define the upcoming election as a choice between national heritage and left-wing radicalism, but his intended show of political force during the pandemic was thousands short of a full house and partly overshadowed by new coronavirus cases among his campaign staff.

Trump ignored health warnings and held his first rally in 110 days in what was one of the largest indoor gatherings in the world during an outbreak that has killed about 120,000 Americans and put 40 million out of work. The rally Saturday in Tulsa was meant to restart his reelection effort less than five months before the November election.

Inside the 19,000-seat BOK Center, Trump thundered that the silent majority is stronger than ever before." Tulsa Fire Department spokesperson Andy Little said the city fire marshals office reported a crowd of just less than 6,200 in the arena.

Trump tried to explain away the crowd size by blaming the media for scaring people and by insisting there were protesters outside who were doing bad things." Hundreds of demonstrators flooded the citys downtown streets and blocked traffic at times, but police reported just a handful of arrests.

Before the rally, Trump's campaign disclosed that six staff members who were helping set up for the event had tested positive for the coronavirus. Campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said neither the affected staffers nor anyone who was in immediate contact with them would attend the event.

The president raged to aides about the positive cases being made public, according to two White House and campaign officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they werent authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

After a three-month break from campaign rallies, Trump returned to regular themes, including boasts about the pre-pandemic economy and complaints about the media. He made no mention of some of the flashpoints roiling the nation, including the abrupt firing of a U.S. attorney in Manhattan, the damaging new book from his former national security adviser or the killing of George Floyd.

Trump aired pent-up grievances about the coronavirus, which he mocked as the Kung flu, a racist term for COVID-19, which originated in China. He tried to defend his handling of the pandemic, even as cases continue to surge in many states, including Oklahoma.

He complained that robust testing was making his record look bad and suggested the testing effort should slow down. Heres the bad part. When you do testing to that extent, youre going to find more cases, Trump said. So I said to my people, Slow the testing down. They test and they test.

In response, Trumps Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, tweeted, Speed up the testing."

A White House adviser, Peter Navarro, told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that Trump's remark was tongue in cheek.

In the hours before the rally, crowds were significantly lighter than expected, and campaign officials scrapped plans for Trump to speak at an overflow space outdoors.

During the rally, Trump leaned in hard on cultural issues, including the push to tear down statues and and rename military bases honoring Confederate figures in the wake of nationwide protests about racial injustice.

The unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments, our beautiful monuments," Trump said. They want to demolish our heritage so they can impose their new repressive regime in its place."

Large gatherings in the United States were shut down in March because of the coronavirus. The Tulsa event was scheduled over the protests of local health officials as COVID-19 cases spiked in many states. The choice of host city and date originally Friday, Juneteenth, in a city where a 1921 racist attack killed as many as 300 people prompted anger and protests against racial injustice.

Trump and his advisers forged ahead, believing that a return to the rally stage would reenergize the president, who is furious that he has fallen behind Biden in polls, and reassure increasingly anxious Republicans.

But Trump struggled to land effective attacks against Biden, and his broadsides against the former vice president did not draw nearly the applause as did his digs at his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.

City officials had expected a crowd of 100,000 people or more in downtown Tulsa. Trump's campaign declared that it had received over 1 million ticket requests. The crowd that gathered was far less than that, though the rally, being broadcast on cable, also targeted voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida.

There were social media claims that people had registered for the rally with no intention of attending. Murtaugh, dismissing the potential impact, said "leftists always fool themselves into thinking theyre being clever,'' and he noted that rallies are general admission, with first come, first served.

The campaign handed out masks and hand sanitizer, but there was no requirement that participants use them and few did. Participants also underwent a temperature check.

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

Among of the millions of voices silenced during World War II were those of countless musicians. While imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, they lifted spirits by playing music on beautifully decorated violins.

Many of those instruments were also silenced during the Holocaust. But violinist Niv Ashkenazi has now given a priceless violin its voice back, playing the restored instrument in a new recording featuring works by Jewish composers.

It has a very deep and resonant voice. It is very emotional and warm, said Ashkenazi of the historic violin he plays onViolins of Hope(Albany Records). The recording features works by composers affected by the Holocaust, performed on a violin that survived the Holocaust.

Its a beautiful, beautiful instrument.

Classical 101's Jennifer Hambrick interviews violinist Niv Ashkenazi about the very special violin he plays on his recording 'Violins of Hope.'

Thanks to a long-term instrument loan, Ashkenazi is the only violinist in the world who regularly plays one of the instruments from the Violins of Hope Collection. Comprising more than 60 historic instruments, the Violins of Hope were collected by the Israeli violin maker Amnon Weinstein, who today works with his son, violin maker Avshalom Weinstein.

In 1996, Amnon Weinstein began seeking out violins that had survived the Holocaust. People unearthed instruments long silent and gave them to Weinstein, who restored them to playing condition. Those violins also came with stories.

The idea is to give them new life and new voice, Ashkenazi said. These were voices that were silenced, and now well be able to hear them again.

The stories of some of those instruments and of Weinsteins project are told in James A. Grymes bookViolins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankinds Darkest Hour. Grymes book won the 2014 National Jewish Book Award.

Not much is known about the history of the violin Ashkenazi plays. It was probably made in the early 1900s in the former Yugoslavia, Ashkenazi says. The instrument eventually made its way to America, though no one knows when or how because it was already in the U.S. when it was donated to the Violins of Hope project.

Its a very, very fine instrument, one of the fine instruments of that time, so it would have gone to a wealthy family or to a professional violinist, Ashkenazi said.

The back of the violin is decorated with a Star of David inlaid in abalone shell. According to Ashkenazi, this was a fairly typical ornamentation on violins that belonged to Jewish musicians in the early 20thcentury.

Another interesting clue the wood is lighter on the violins back than on its front.

In Orthodox Jewish tradition, youre not allowed to have representative artwork on the wall. So instead they would hang the violins up as decoration, with the Star of David facing out on the back. And so the light would come through the windows and hit the back of the violin, and it would slowly bleach it, Ashkenazi said.

OnViolins of HopeAshkenazi and pianist Matthew Graybil give voice to musical works by Jewish composers, many of whom were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. Some died there.

The recording's first track is the lyrical and spritelySerenadeby Robert Dauber, an Austrian composer imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camp near Prague.

TheSerenadeis Daubers only surviving work. He was killed at age 23 in the Nazi camp at Dachau.

The recording also features the charmingTrois Pices de Concertby Szymon Laks, the Polish violinist and composer who was concertmaster of the mens orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Laks was transferred to Dachau concentration camp and was eventually freed when the camp was liberated in April 1945.

John Williams theme from the filmSchindlers Listand Ernest BlochsNigun are also on the recording. Ashkenazi says these are iconic works that help define the Jewish sound.

Bloch was one of the key people who helped create what we think of now as the modern Jewish sound, said Ashkenazi.

And on commission for the recording, Israeli American composer Sharon Farber created an arrangement for violin, piano four hands and narrator of the final movement from her concerto for cello, orchestra and narrator. Farber joins Graybil at the keyboard in this performance, which also features actor Tony Campisi.

The starting point for Farbers work are the dramatic and inspiring words of Holocaust survivor Curt Lowens who, in the Dutch resistance, saved the lives of more than 100 Jewish children. Lowens was also commended by U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower for aiding two downed Army Airmen.

Farbers score cloaks the text in a musical setting both melodically resplendent and brimming with hope, like the violin it was transcribed for.

Niv Ashkenazys recording Violins of Hopewas released in March 2020. The violins were also the subject of a 2016 documentary film by Lance Shulz, Violins of Hope: Strings of the Holocaust featuring Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody as narrator.

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Violinist Revives The Voice Of A Violin Silenced In The Holocaust - WOSU

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Posted By admin on June 22, 2020

I want to speak to my fellow white-skinned Jews. You may be among the majority of us who are generally liberal and definitely do not think of yourself as racist. You may be more politically conservative and feel ambivalent about where racial equity fits in your political identity. Or you may be a single-issue voter around Zionist causes and feel this is not your fight.

Please understand, though: White Jews cannot sit this one out.

This moment of racial reckoning has directly to do with us with both our Jewishness and also with our whiteness.

In the past, Ive had a hard time checking white on forms requesting my race because I am Jewish, and in our history, white were the people who oppressed mine. But I also know that I get to pass as white on streets, in schools, and in business. We must reckon with that privilege and how it affects our lives and the lives of others.

Our history of suffering cannot be an excuse now. And its not just our Jewish empathy with oppression that should move us to action; its also our whiteness.

Here are some steps that have helped me try to take account of my white privilege and its interplay with anti-Semitism and Jewish identity. I humbly offer them to you and hope they may be helpful.

Put aside notions that you have to become an expert on policy and historical facts or march in the right protest. Some of us are able to do this and more but for many, this is not feasible, or leaves us feeling paralyzed by what we must eventually admit we do not know.

Start by confronting whiteness and how it operates in your congregation or community. Do the stock photos in your publicity feature exclusively white faces? Do your adult-education classes focus solely on a Euro-centric, Ashkenazi culture? Does your Hebrew school curriculum feature a significant exploration of Sephardi, Mizrahi and other Jewish histories and religious experiences?

Does your library feature authors and faces of color? Does your nursery school have dolls and toys of a variety of complexions?

If one of your responses, even inside your own head, is Well, we are trying to pick things that look Jewish, interrogate your assumption that Jews are white. Jews look like everyone.

Whether we are Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi; European, North African, Southeast Asian, Ethiopian, Chinese, Yemenite, Caribbean, Persian, mixed-race; Jew-by-choice or Jew-by-birth; we are a multiracial people.

If you are upset by stereotypical portrayals of Jews in culture and media, let that extend to critiquing the portrayal of Jews as exclusively white whether by non-Jews or within our own communities. When you ask that Jewish diversity be respected, include skin color and ethnic heritage. Its inconsistent at best to say Jews arent white! when accused of white privilege and simultaneously deny the centrality of Jews of Color in the Jewish story.

If you are a white-skinned Jew, you know the ways your community, and likely your own family, assimilated after arriving in North America: name changes, hair straightening, nose jobs, dieting away those peasant hips, elocution lessons.

But it was not just assimilating to fit into America or Canada. Every act of assimilation white Jews have done has been to become more white because white meant belonging, protection, access, success, and acceptability.

And it still does. That is white supremacy at work; weve internalized that white equals desirable and have mostly succeeded over the generations to become white. Our non-white or less-white or less-passing fellow Jews cant. Sit with this.

White Jews are not ignorant of oppression. Our people have been refused work and entrance to restaurants, universities, hospitals, clubs and whole towns for being Jewish. We have been beaten and shot and burned and made into soap for being Jewish. And we have been slaughtered while praying in our synagogues.

But right now, in this moment, white Jews arent followed in stores, systematically purged from voting rolls, assumed to be janitors, murdered by the police while sleeping in our beds or by vigilantes while jogging in our neighborhoods. Thats what we mean by white privilege: the way were visually categorized in a split second by the power structures of our society.

You can be Jewish and the child of Holocaust survivors and still benefit from white privilege a privilege that accrues to you whether youve chosen it or not. White-skinned Jews are now visually classed as white almost all the time. Somewhere in us a voice protests, How can you say that I and the people who murdered my people are the same!? But in a society that values white skin above all other skin, this is indeed the case.

White supremacy is founded on anti-Semitism. Recall that in Charlottesville, they chanted, Jews will not replace us.

In white-supremacist and white-nationalist ideology, the success of non-white-led movements for equality is attributed to Jews. They believe we are the chaos-agents who have spawned all efforts to tear down the white way of life. Jews are seen as sneaky interlocutors seeding the race war and inciting black, Indigenous, and other people of color to rebel against white control. (Consider as a mild example the recurring conspiracy theory that George Soros, a white Jew and Holocaust survivor, is paying protestors by busloads.)

Black and Jew are uttered in one breath by white supremacists. This is essential to understanding our linked history and our place in it right now.

A common Jewish response to emergencies is to try to direct the action for the outcome we want. This has historically served us well, as we couldnt really rely on anyone else to ensure an outcome that protected us. This is why when we arrived in a country or city, historically, we erected entire parallel civil society institutions; we take care of our own because we dont trust anyone else to do it for us.

In this case, though, white-skinned Jews are absolutely not the center of this fight. We need to step back, to listen more than we direct, to amplify the voices of black, Indigenous, and other people of color, and especially in our own communities the voices of Jews of Color. We need to educate ourselves about how white privilege operates, and not impose on people of color to explain it to us.

But just because we are not the center doesnt mean its not our fight. We must, however imperfectly, find our way by understanding how we both benefit from and are damaged by white supremacy and anti-black racism, by taking a hard look at ourselves and our history, and by finding our own individual role to take one more step towards justice.

Rabbi Julia Appel lives in Toronto and is the founder of Bina Community Circles. She leads progressive training workshops about anti-Semitism for universities and Jewish community organizations, and is grateful to her many teachers about equity and anti-Semitism, including Yavilah McCoy, Cherie Brown, Eric Ward, and the Facing History and Ourselves team.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

My fellow white Jews: We cant sit this one out.

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My fellow white Jews: We cant sit this one out. - Forward

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