Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 31, 2020

The Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue was graffitied during the Black Lives Matter Protest on Saturday. Photo by Alexandra Zernik

Eduardo Acevedo, News EditorHannah Eason, Managing Editor

Hundreds gathered in downtown Richmond on Saturday for a second night of protests, which sparked nationwide after the death of a black man in police custody. The demonstration brought vandalism to Confederate statues and local businesses.

Multiple businesses near VCU, including Whole Foods, CVS and Verizon on West Broad Street, were vandalized and graffitied during the protest.

On Monument Avenue, statues commemorating Robert E. Lee, Thomas Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis were tagged with Fuck Cops, RIP George Floyd and ACAB, an acronym for all cops are bastards. At one point a protester climbed the Jefferson Davis statue, hung a noose around its neck and rallied other protesters to pull the statue down, which was unsuccessful.

Police used rubber bullets, tear gas canisters and mace on protesters. Richmond SWAT teams appeared frequently and attempted to break up crowds. WRIC ABC8 News reported that two Capitol police officers are in the hospital with leg injuries after being struck with a baseball bat and beer bottle near Capitol Square.

As the crowd moved westward on Franklin Street around 11:30 p.m., one protester threw a brick into the glass door of Beth Ahabah, a Jewish synagogue. The protester who threw the brick was chastised by other members of the crowd for not keeping the protest peaceful.

Protesters emerged from Hanover Avenue onto Arthur Ashe Boulevard when the energy in the crowd shifted. People in the crowd looked at each other before one said not the VMFA.

That was when the protesters attention was aimed at the Daughters of the Confederacy building, which neighbors the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

The protesters quickly swarmed the steps of the building and began tagging the walls and breaking windows with rocks and skateboards. People in the crowd lit the curtains inside the buildings windows on fire before continuing down Arthur Ashe Boulevard.

Black Lives Matter protests have erupted across the country in response to the death of George Floyd, whose death was caught on video. In the video, a white officer can be seen holding his knee on Floyds neck while Floyd can be heard saying I cant breathe.

On Friday in Richmond, police used tear gas as hundreds of protesters moved from downtown to VCUs campus. A GRTC Pulse bus was damaged, graffitied and set on fire during the protest.

The protest on Friday brought damage to VCUs campus, including broken windows and doors, graffiti, damaged vehicles and debris fires, university spokesperson Mike Porter said in an email.

VCU President Michael Rao released a statement on Friday in response to Floyds death, saying he was appalled, horrified, distressed and sickened all at once.

So to be reminded time and time again that skin color still influences mobility and even vitality more than a college degree, more than class status and zip code, disturbs me deeply, Rao said in the release. We are reminded again what can be so easily undone by the exercise of someones privilege and prejudice.

On Twitter, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said the protests were a result of built up pain, but two wrongs dont make a right.

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Second night of Richmond protest over killing of George Floyd reaches Confederate monuments - The Commonwealth Times

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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

This is a parable worth a few lines here, although it derives from a rather peculiar personal experience of mine which has attracted unusual, if undeserved, media and public attention. Ordinarily, I don't use myself as an example, but because this one has been so misrepresented and also because it might illuminate the context of the Palestinian-Zionist struggle it took place in, I have permitted myself to use it.

In late June and early July 2000, I made a personal family visit to Lebanon, where I also gave two public lectures. Like most Arabs, my family and I were very interested to visit South Lebanon to see the recently evacuated "security zone" militarily occupied by Israel for 22 years, from which troops of the Jewish state were unceremoniously expelled by the Lebanese resistance.

Our visit took place on 3 July, during which day-long excursion we spent time in the notorious Khiam prison, built by the Israelis in 1987, in which 8,000 people were tortured and detained in dreadful, bestial conditions. Right after that we drove to the border post, also abandoned by Israeli troops, now a deserted area except for Lebanese visitors who come there in large numbers to throw stones of celebration across the still heavily fortified border. No Israelis, neither military nor civilians, were in sight.

During our 10-minute stop I was photographed there without my knowledge pitching a tiny pebble in competition with some of the younger men present, none of whom of course had any particular target in sight. The area was empty for miles and miles.

Two days later my picture appeared in newspapers in Israel and all over the West. I was described as a rock-throwing terrorist, a man of violence, and so on and on, in the familiar chorus of defamation and falsehood known to anyone who has incurred the hostility of Zionist propaganda.

Two ironies stand out. One was that although I have written at least eight books on Palestine and have always advocated resistance to Zionist occupation, I have never argued for anything but peaceful coexistence between us and the Jews of Israel once Israel's military repression and dispossession of Palestinians has stopped. My writings have circulated all over the world in at least 35 languages, so my positions are scarcely unknown, and my message is very clear. But, having found it useless to refute the facts and arguments I have presented and, more important, having been unable to prevent my work from reaching larger and larger audiences, the Zionist movement has resorted to shabbier and shabbier techniques to try to stop me.

Two years ago they hired an obscure Israeli-American lawyer to "research" the first ten years of my life and "prove" that even though I was born in Jerusalem I was never really there; this was supposed to show that I was a liar who had misrepresented my right to return, even though -- and this is the stupidity and triviality of the argument -- the invidious Israeli Law of Return allows any Jew anywhere the "right" to come to Israel and live, whether or not they had even set foot in Israel before.

Besides, so crude and inaccurate were this lawyer's methods of investigation that many people whom he interviewed wrote in and contradicted what he said; none of the journals, except one, that he approached for publication accepted his article because of its misrepresentations and distortions.

Not only was this campaign an effort to discredit me personally (the editor of the journal that published it said openly that he had printed the silly rubbish produced by this hired gun simply because he wanted to discredit me personally precisely because I have a lot of readers) but quite amazingly it was meant to show that all Palestinians are liars and cannot be believed in their assertions about a right to return.

Fast upon the heels of this orchestrated effort there came the business of the stone-throwing. And here is the second irony. Despite Israel's 22-year devastation of south Lebanon, its destruction of entire villages, the killing of hundreds of civilians, its use of mercenary soldiers to plunder and punish, its deplorable use of the most inhuman methods of torture and imprisonment in Khiam and elsewhere -- despite all that, Israeli propaganda, aided and abetted by a corrupt Western media, chose to focus on a harmless act of mine, blowing it up to monstrously absurd proportions that suggested that I was a violent fanatic interested in killing Jews. The context was left out, as were the circumstances, i.e. that I simply threw a pebble, that no Israeli was anywhere present, that no physical injury or harm was threatened to anyone. More bizarrely still, a whole, again orchestrated campaign was mounted to try to get me dismissed from the university where I have taught for 38 years. Articles in the press, commentary, letters of abuse and death threats were all used to intimidate or silence me, including those by colleagues of mine who suddenly discovered their allegiance to the state of Israel.

The comedy of it all, the total lack of logic that tried to connect a trivial incident in South Lebanon to my life and works, was to no avail, however. Colleagues rallied to my side, as did many members of the public. Most important, the university administration magnificently defended my right to my opinions and actions, and noted that the campaign against me wasn't at all about my having thrown a stone (an act rightly characterised as protected speech), but about my political positions and activity that resisted Israel's policy of occupation and repression.

The latest episode in all this Zionist pressure is in some ways the saddest and most shameful. In late July 2000, I was contacted by the director of the Freud Institute and Museum in Vienna to ask if I would accept an invitation to deliver the annual Freud lecture there in May 2001. I said yes, and on 21 August received an official letter from the Institute's director inviting me to do so in the name of the board. I promptly accepted, having written about Freud and for many years been a great admirer of his work and life. (Incidentally, it should be noted that Freud was an early anti-Zionist but later modified his view when Nazi persecutions of European Jews made a Jewish state seem like a possible solution to widespread and lethal anti-Semitism. But I believe that his position vis-a-vis Zionism was always an ambivalent one.)

The topic I proposed for my lecture was "Freud and the Non-European" in which I intended to argue that although Freud's work was for and about Europe, his interest in ancient civilisations like those of Egypt, Palestine, Greek and Africa was an indication of the universalism of his vision and the humane scope of his work. Moreover, I believed that his thought deserved to be appreciated for its anti-provincialism, quite unlike that of his contemporaries who denigrated other non-European cultures as lesser or inferior.

Then without warning on 8 February of this year, I was informed by the Institute's chairman, a Viennese sociologist by the name of Schalein, that the board had decided to cancel my lecture, because (he said) of the political situation in the Middle East "and the consequences of it." No other explanation was given. It was a most unprofessional and lamentable gesture very much in contradiction with the spirit and the letter of Freud's work. In over 30 years of lecturing all over the world this had never happened to me, and I immediately responded by asking Schalein in a one-sentence letter to explain to me how a lecture on Freud in Vienna had anything to do with "the political condition in the Middle East." I have of course received no answer.

To make matters worse, the "New York Times" published a story on 10 March about the episode, along with a grotesquely enlarged version of the famous photograph in South Lebanon last July, an event that had taken place well before the Freud people had invited me in late August.

When Schalein was interviewed by the "Times", he had the gall to bring up the photo and say what he never had the courage to say to me, that it (as well as my criticism of Israel's occupation) was the reason for the cancellation, given, he added, that it might offend Viennese Jewish sensitivities in the context of Jorg Haider's presence, the Holocaust, and the history of Austrian anti-Semitism. That a respectable academic should say such rubbish beggars the imagination, but that he should do so even as Israel is besieging and killing Palestinians mercilessly on a daily basis -- that is indecent.

What in their appalling pusillanimity the Freudian gang did not say publicly was that the real reason for the unseemly cancellation of my lecture was that it was the price they paid to their donors in Israel and the US. An exhibition of Freud's papers mounted by the Institute has already been in Vienna and New York; now the hope is that it will be put on in Israel. The potential funders seem to have demanded that they would pay for the exhibition in Tel Aviv if my lecture were cancelled. The spineless Vienna board caved in, and my lecture was cancelled accordingly, not because I advocate violence and hatred, but because I do not!

I said at the time that Freud was hounded out of Vienna by the Nazis and the majority of the Austrian people. Today those same paragons of courage and intellectual principle ban a Palestinian from lecturing. So low has this particularly unpleasant brand of Zionism sunk that it cannot justify itself by open debate and genuine dialogue. It uses the shadowy mafia tactics of threat and extortion to exact silence and compliance. So desperately does it seek acceptance that it reveals itself in Israel and through its supporters elsewhere, alas, to be in favour of effacing the Palestinian voice entirely, whether by choking Palestinian villages like Bir Zeit, or by shutting down discussion and criticism wherever it can find collaborators and cowards to carry out its reprehensible demands. No wonder that in such a climate Ariel Sharon is Israel's leader.

But in the end these thuggish tactics backfire, since not everyone is afraid, and not every voice can be silenced. After 50 years of Zionist censorship and misrepresentation, the Palestinians continue their struggle. And everywhere, despite poor media coverage, despite the venality of institutions like the Freud Society, despite the cowardice of intellectuals who put their consciences to sleep, people speak up for justice and peace. Immediately after Vienna cancelled my invitation, the London Freud Museum invited me to deliver the lecture I was to have given in Vienna. (After being driven from Vienna in 1938, Freud spent the last year of his life in London.) Two Austrian institutions, the Institute for the Human Sciences and the Austrian Society for Literature invited me to lecture in Vienna at a date of my choosing. A group of distinguished psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic critics (including Mustafa Safouan) wrote a letter to the Freud Institute protesting the cancellation. Many others have been shocked at such naked bullying and have said so in public. Meanwhile, Palestinian resistance continues everywhere.

I still believe it is our role as a people seeking peace with justice to provide an alternative vision to Zionism's, a vision based on equality and inclusion, rather than on apartheid and exclusion. Each episode such as the one I have described here augments my conviction that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have any alternative to sharing a land that both claim. I also believe that the Al-Aqsa Intifada must be directed towards that end, even though political and cultural resistance to Israel's reprehensible occupation policies of siege, humiliation, starvation and collective punishment must be vigourously resisted. The Israeli military causes immense damage to Palestinians day after day: more innocent people are killed, their land destroyed or confiscated, their houses bombed and demolished, their movements circumscribed or stopped entirely.

Thousands of civilians cannot find work, go to school, or receive medical treatment as a result of these Israeli actions. Such arrogance and suicidal rage against the Palestinians will bring no results except more suffering and more hatred, which is why in the end Sharon has always failed and resorted to useless murder and pillage. For our own sakes, we must rise above Zionism's bankruptcy and continue to articulate our own message of peace with justice.

If the way seems difficult, it cannot be abandoned. When any of us is stopped, ten others can take his or her place. That is the genuine hallmark of our struggle, and neither censorship nor base complicity with it can prevent its success.

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Freud, Zionism, and Vienna (March 21, 2001) - Anderson Valley

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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

The Likud election campaign for the 23rd Knesset claimed that the Blue and White party aims to form a government supported by the Joint List, and this led Benny Gantz to declare that he will set up a government with a Jewish majority that will not depend on Arab parties. Yair Lapid continued in a similar vein, arguing that we are just a few mandates away from forming a coalition of a Jewish majority. The term a Jewish majority is used by those centrist politicians to refer to a coalition consisting solely of Jewish parties. Later, after being criticized by the entire political spectrum, they both regretted the use of the term Jewish majority. Lapid refined the claim by stating We need a majority of Zionist parties that believe in a Jewish and democratic state, meaning that we are by no means racists, we are simply Zionists who believe the state must be Jewish (and of course democratic).

Why is the coupling of religion and nationality so important for Zionist Jews? Is Judaism a religion, or a race, or a people? Either way, once the state is by definition Jewish, any criticism of the Jewish state is viewed as criticism of Jews for being Jewish, and such critics are immediately called antisemitic. In this article, I characterize Judaism as it is perceived and shaped by the Zionist ideology, specify the differences between the concepts of Judaism and Zionism, and present the concepts of racism and antisemitism in light of these distinctions.

The Jewish communities in Israel and in the Diaspora are largely pro-Zionist. Almost all Israelis and the vast majority of world Jewry support the state of Israel and its definition as a Jewish state and a territorial-sovereign national home for Jews. Thanks to Israels intensive propaganda (hasbara), the identification of Jews with Zionism has led to the popular equation of the terms Judaism and Zionism. This is the basis for the claim that opposing Zionism stems from antisemitism. Furthermore, the Israeli hasbara attributes any criticism of Israel to antisemitism, with the aim of dismantling any such criticism. Because Zionism is seen as the new Judaism, opposition to it is labeled the new antisemitism and a new expression was born

The term new antisemitism, then, is a fiction that has nothing to do with antisemitism. Not only is criticism of Israel obviously not antisemitic, but also opposing Zionism and Israel in its definition as a Jewish state does not necessarily stem from antisemitism, and is in itself definitely not antisemitic. Moreover, it is the Zionist movement itself that stems from the same racist elements as does political antisemitism. (By political antisemitism, I refer to state laws and policies and political movements driven by antisemitism. There is also a take on defining that term here.) I now examine the racist foundations underlying Zionism, and the links between them and political antisemitism, links that had already existed in the early days of the Zionist movement, and are still apparent today.

with blood and sweat

will arise a race,

proud, generous and fierce.

Thats what the prominent revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky wrote in the anthem of the Betar youth movement in 1932. He did not mean race in the genetic sense as the Nazis laid down in their race laws three years later, but race in the sense of a people, a tribe. Over the years, Zionist ideologists have repeatedly hopped between the Jewish religion and Jewish nationality they constructed anew, and secular Judaism inherited from mother to son, linking things in a very complex way. It gets as absurd as claiming that service in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) is an expression of Judaism, as Benny Gantz argued in response to the claim that many immigrants from Russia are not Jews, linking army service to being Jewish, that is, belonging to the Jewish people.

Zionist ideology is racist because it defines Judaism as a race and maintains a regime that discriminates against non-Jews. According to the definition of Judaism by Zionists (the definition of the Jewish race, if you will), Jews are the ones who profess Judaism, as are their descendants. This means we have a mixture of religious-faith principles (and note you can also convert to Judaism) and genetic principles (as defined by the Nazis); thus the descendants of the Jews are hereditary Jews, regardless of their faith or the observance of any Jewish commandments or customs.

These elements existed in Judaism long before Zionism. The Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Europe, where the Zionist movement was born, were very separatist, and it was in Europe where political antisemitism was born too. The Zionists who were looking for a solution to the problem of rising antisemitism in Europe believed that antisemitism was an inherent and permanent social factor because Jews were racially different. If we are different from the peoples among whom we live argued the Zionists we shall create the Jewish people with its own sovereignty and territory by establishing a Jewish state.

Max Nordau, one of the founders of Zionism, who himself married a Protestant woman, was, by his own definition, an assimilated Jew who gave up following the Jewish commandments a man of European culture. Nordau was more attracted to German culture than to Judaism: By the age of fifteen, I had abandoned the Jewish way of life and the study of the Torah Judaism remained nothing more than a memory for me, and I have always felt German, only German. In the Second Zionist Congress in 1898, Nordau called for the return of the lost muscular Judaism. For him, the diasporic Jew should be revived as the physical Jew, thus dismantling the sense of humiliation of the Jews in Europe in response to European antisemitism. This idea was influenced by the racial theories that were popular in Europe at that time. In fact, Nordau embraced the antisemites hatred for the diasporic Jew and as a solution to antisemitism advocated the improvement of the Jewish race by changing the Jewish way of life.

The main Zionist movement abandoned orthodox Judaism and replaced it with national Judaism. Religious-faith was abandoned as an ancient and non-contemporary tradition (except for the justification of the right to conquer the land) and religious values were replaced by new values of farming and fighting. The racial foundation was strengthened, and separatism became an ideology favoring the expulsion of the native Palestinians, violent fighting against the British colonialists, and even Jews who opposed to Zionist national Judaism. One of the most extreme expressions of murderous racist isolationism was the persecution of Jewish women who married British soldiers by the underground militias, including murder. One may call it reverse antisemitism. Paradoxically, the secular Zionist Jews are much more like Biblical Jews than orthodox diasporic Jews: The Biblical figures of Joshua and King David were role models for Israels first prime minister David Ben-Gurion and general Moshe Dayan, for example.

European antisemites sympathized and even cooperated with the Zionist movement. Ideologies and interests joined together when Nazi Germany cooperated with the Zionist leadership in transferring Jews from Germany to Palestine in the 1930s. Similarly, in 1885 an antisemitic German writer conceived the Madagascar Plan, aimed to transfer European Jews to Madagascar; the difference between it and Palestine is merely geographic. This program was adopted in the 20th century by antisemites in Britain, Poland and France and during World War II also by Nazi Germany, which almost implemented it. (Ironically and horrifyingly, it was the thwarting of the plan by the British that eventually led to the implementation of the final solution.) The conceptual basis of all these antisemitic plans is the same as that of Zionism seeing the Jews as a distinct race, that should be kept separate as a people in its own territory. The fulfillment of the Zionist vision is largely the victory of the antisemites, as evidenced by what SS commander, Reinhard Heydrich, wrote in a statement in 1935:

National Socialism has no intention of attacking the Jewish people in any way. On the contrary, the recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood, and not as a religious one, leads the German government to guarantee the racial separateness of this community without any limitations. The government finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry throughout the world and the rejection of all assimilationist ideas. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.

Arthur James Balfour is well known and celebrated in Israel for his Balfour Declaration of 1917, which he sent as Foreign Minister to Walter Rothschild, a leading figure in the British Jewish community. According to the declaration, His Majestys government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. (Palestine was still under Ottoman rule at the time) Balfours support of the Zionist movement stemmed from antisemitism. As prime minister, he supported the Aliens Act 1905 aimed at preventing Jews from Eastern Europe entering Britain. In his speech he warned MPs of the undoubted evils that had fallen upon the country from an immigration which was largely Jewish. (At that time the World Zionist Congress accused him of open antisemitism.) Establishing a national home for Jews in Palestine was for Balfour a solution to the problem of Jewish refugees in his country.

The connection between Zionism and antisemitism did not end with the establishment of the State of Israel. Even today, we see antisemitic elements supporting Israel. In recent years, we have witnessed the strengthening of Israels ties with countries such as the United States, Poland, Hungary, India and Brazil whose leaders are openly antisemitic. The Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is known for his affection for Hitler, is also an avid friend and supporter of Israel. Beatrix von Storch, leader of the far-right party Alternative for Germany, considered by many of its supporters to be the successor of the Nazis, said in an interview for the Jerusalem Post that Israel could be a role model for Germany. She added that Israel makes efforts to preserve its unique culture and traditions. The same should be possible for Germany and any other nation. She thus expressed the common ideals and aspirations of antisemitism and Zionism that because Jews have their own culture and tradition, they should live in their own country, similar to what Germany should do. Israel officially disapproves of von Storchs antisemitic party, but beneath the surface there is sympathy for its white supremacist ideology and Islamophobia, and sometimes it comes out.

In addition to separatism and to the interest of sending Jews from their lands of birth to Israel, Western antisemites have another motive for their support of Israel, which is hatred of Muslims. Xenophobia, once directed at Jews, is now directed at Muslim immigrant and refugee communities. In this sense, Muslims are the new Jews of Europe. (see also here.) In this context, Israel is viewed as the forefront of the war of civilizations the Western war against extremist Islam. All this means that the same extremist right-wingers in Europe support Israel, fight the pro-Palestinian BDS, and attack local Jews.

India has been ruled by the BJP party led by Narendra Modi since 2014. Modi was one of the prominent leaders of the RSS movement with whom the ruling party is identified, a Hindu nationalist movement founded in 1925 and known for its admiration for the Nazi movement and Mussolinis fascism in Italy. The movement advocates treating the Muslim minority in India as the Nazis treated Jews in the 1930s, and Modi does implement a policy similar to the one implemented by the Nazis. In recent years, relations between India and Israel in general and between Modi and Netanyahu, in particular, have tightened. The worldview of the two leaders is remarkably similar, as is their attitude toward Muslims in their own countries. On his visit to India in 2018, Netanyahu said: India and Israel are living proof not only that democracy works but they demonstrate something deeper the intrinsic value of freedom which I believe is the intrinsic value of life. Citizens thrive ultimately it is the free citizens who thrive because they are free and when they are free. In the same speech he referenced a 2008 attack in Mumbai where 101 were killed, staging, Indians and Israelis know too well the pain of terrorist attacks. We remember the horrific savagery in Mumbai. We grit our teeth, we fight back, we never give in.

A study by Dr. Sachlav Stoler-Liss of Ben-Gurion University found that race theory was very strong and present in Jewish society in Palestine in the 1930s, and ideas very similar to Nazi methods of racial improvement were applied. It is interesting to note that in Germany and in Israel, too, a connection has been made between eugenics, health and nationalism, said Stoler-Liss. (It should be noted that Germany and Israel are not the only states where these racist theories took hold). Dr. Arthur Ruppin, head of the Israeli Ministry of the World Zionist Organization, wrote in his book The Sociology of the Jews, In order to preserve the purity of our race, such Jews [with signs of degeneracy S.T.] must refrain from having children.

After the Nazi Holocaust, the reputation of race theory declined and many writings about it were shelved, but the ideology did not disappear. Dr. Yosef Meir, one of the prominent eugenicists during the British Mandate, offered to castrate the mentally ill, and in the early 1950s he published severe criticism of the 100-pound natality prize, which Ben-Gurion promised to every woman giving birth to 10 children (a sick idea in itself): We have no interest in the 10th child or even in the seventh in poor families from the East In todays reality we should pray frequently for a second child in a family that is a part of the intelligentsia. The poor classes of the population must not be instructed to have many children, but should rather be restricted. Here, white European racism towards Mizrahi Jews is evident, combined with the idea of racial improvement in the spirit of Nazi Germanys Lebensborn.

Even today there are circles in Israeli society that adhere to the same ideology adopted by the Nazis in Germany. Rabbi Redler of the Bnei David pre-military preparatory school in Eli explained to his students that in his ideology he [Hitler] is 100% right, except that he is on the wrong side. This is not a one-off slip of the tongue, but is rather part of a series of recorded lectures by various teachers in the institute, expressed in the spirit of these ideas; these lectures were recorded and saved in the institutes lecture archive available to the students. Even after a public mini-storm following the publication in the mainstream media, the same rabbis did not apologize but rather justified themselves, and continued as teachers and educators. The website of the Bnei David pre-military preparatory school (founded in 1988) states that it currently enrolls over 700 students and has about 3,500 graduates. Over 40 percent of the graduates are IDF officers, and the vast majority have served and serve in combat units and elite units. The preparatory schools founder and head, Eli Sadan, won the Israel Prize in 2016 for his special contribution to state and society.

The Zionist ideology and Israels aggressive policy toward its opponents is strikingly similar to the extreme nationalist policies against Jewish people by generations of racist regimes. Its a racist ideology according to which the strong rule and the weak are subservient to them and live only according to their arbitrariness. The same ideology that has afflicted Jewish minorities in Europe for generations and allowed the pogroms and murders of Jews characterize Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu put it: In our region the weak do not survive, only the strong survive, and the strong is the one that thrives. With the strong one makes alliances, with the strong, and only with the strong, one makes peace. Even if it takes time, only with the strong, not the weak. He tweeted a similar message after his speech at Shimon Peres funeral in 2018. Many Jews have been the victims of such attitudes in the past. This is arguably an example of the battered child syndrome the one who suffers violence becomes violent and applies the violence he suffered to his own victims.

*****

Antisemitism is hatred of Jews and is an expression of racism. Ironically, it is precisely the Zionists who express racism typical of Jew-hating antisemites. The racism is the same racism and the hatred the same hatred whether it is directed towards Jews (in the case of antisemites) or towards Arabs (in the case of the Zionists).

I do not claim that all Zionists are Arab haters. Most Zionists are not. Their racism is disguised (even in themselves). They are educated in the spirit of human love and philanthropy arising out of a sense of supremacy and of being the chosen people. They do not want to hurt Arabs, and resist such acts or harm or at least disapprove of it.

Harming Arabs is the work of the establishment through legislation, diplomacy and military force; but there is also a violent minority sanctioned by an inciting government that enjoys the violent minoritys contribution to the struggle against the indigenous population. Such violent acts enjoy the passive support of racist cultured Jews, whose understanding of reality is based on state propaganda that begins with the education system, continues with military service and ends with the mobilized media which reports Zionist views only. (In Israeli mainstream media, Palestinian violence and terror toward Jews are covered extensively while military and civilian violence toward Palestinians is mostly being ignored.)

The following words were said by Albert Einstein in a 1938 speech in New York:

I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustainespecially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state.

To put it simply, Einstein said: Lets not be like them. No wonder that in 1952 he rejected David Ben-Gurions bid to make him president of the state whose narrow-minded nationalism he had warned against. In recent years, the State of Israel has been waging war against its opponents and critics under the guise of war on antisemitism and it exploits the Holocaust memory to justify it. However, this propaganda exercise is hugely ironic. The Nazi Holocaust was the result of an extreme combination of racism and nationalism, which we should recognize formed the basis of the Zionist movement and are prevalent in Israeli society to this day. In its ideology, policies, and actions toward the indigenous Palestinian population, the state of Israel generates antisemitism more than it routs it, and endangers the Jews around the world more than it protects them. The fight against antisemitism must begin by campaigning against racism and nationalism. Only a thorough overhaul of the regime can transform Israel from an entity that generates antisemitism to one that fights antisemitism.

Dr. Ronit Lentin, associate professor of sociology at Trinity College, Dublin, contributed to this article.

A version of this article was originally published in Hebrew by Haokets on March 10, 2020.

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On the racial basis of Zionism Mondoweiss - Mondoweiss

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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

Chicago police are investigating an officers alleged affiliation with the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has a small contingent in the Chicago area, and his participation in one of the groups chatrooms.

Chat logs leaked Tuesday appear to show Officer Robert Bakker communicating and organizing meetups last summer with members of the Proud Boys, which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Anti-Defamation League describes the organization as a misogynistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and anti-immigrant extremist group with some members that espouse white supremacist and anti-Semitic ideologies.

The Proud Boys reject being labeled a hate group and instead describe themselves as racially inclusive western chauvinists. The groups founder Gavin McInnes, sued the SPLC for defamation last year over its designation.

Bakker, a nearly three-year veteran of the CPD, appears to have used his real name and hinted at his status on the police force over the course of the communications leaked by local antifascist activists who infiltrated the Proud Boys F- - - Antifa Telegram chat channel.

CPD spokesman Luis Agostini confirmed that an investigation was launched Tuesday to determine if [Bakker] violated any Department, rules or regulations.

While Chicago Police Department members have a constitutional right to express their views under the First Amendment, they may be subject to discipline for violating the provisions of the Departments social media policy, Agostini said in a statement.

That policy prohibits members of the department from using social media to post content that is disparaging to a person or group based on race, color, sex, gender identity, age, religion, disability, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected class, Agostini said.

Reached on Wednesday, Bakker told the Sun-Times in a series of text messages that he was never a member of the Proud Boys. He didnt deny he took part in the group chat but claimed it was dedicated to a discussion about [antifascists] which later led to me being doxed, referring to the practice of revealing someones personal information online, which he called illegal.

I cut all my ties with them shortly after, added Bakker.

Though he admits that he invited other members of the group chat to hang out, Bakker said those interactions werent tied to any affiliation with the Proud Boys and were simply impromptu gatherings to have a few drinks and have discussions. He said that some of the meetings included African Americans, Latinos, Jews and even a Marxist and that their presence proves that the accusations against him are wrong.

The investigation carried out by [antifascists] is baseless, Bakker said. I do not support violence by any group.

However, the leaked chat logs, first reported by Vice, include messages from participants that include attacks against specific individuals with leftist political ideologies and calls for setting up fights with them.

Thomas Christensen, the president of the Proud Boys Chicago chapter at the time, was allegedly among the most active participants of the channel.

Christensen was sentenced to over three years in prison last November for stabbing another man at a Dropkick Murphys concert at Northerly Island in 2017. While he was awaiting trial in the case, Christensen and others tied to the white nationalist movement showed up at a rally downtown to protest Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx decision to drop charges against actor Jussie Smollett for allegedly faking a hate crime.

Last July 1, Christensen appears to have posted a photo to the group chat of a rainbow-colored CPD emblem that the department posted on social media to celebrate members of the LGBTQ community.

Wtf. Rob come get ya boyz, wrote Christensen, tying Bakker to the department.

Bakker later responded, Nooo s- - -!!! And im not wearing any rainbow bulls- - -, he said.

Later that month, local antifascists with Chicago Antifascist Action began revealing the identities of members of the Proud Boys and publicly identified Bakker as a police officer.

The disclosure led one chat participant to declare: Time to start kicking ass give me names and locations when u got the info.

The chat group changed its name to D-Fence Squad. Bakker ultimately weighed in: They know my name huh? Well i have gov connects that officially label them as terrorists and have been in communicqtion [sic] with police about there whereabouts, Bakker wrote.

Hmm, i hope they do try to f- - - me as that would explode in their faces as exposing themselves to the gov lmao, he added.

There is no evidence any participants in the chat engaged in any physical retribution against the activists who made Bakkers identity public.

Bakker has faced no formal complaints or allegations of abuse while on the job, according to records of police discipline maintained by the Invisible Institute. City records show he receives a yearly salary of $72,510.

As of Wednesday, Agostini said there has been no news if hes been stripped of his police powers.

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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

This week, the gang at How Did This Get Made? covered Megaforce (1982), an over-the-top action film directed by famed stuntman, Hal Needham.

The first person I got in contact with was Megaforces producer, Al Ruddy. But unfortunately, he replied, Im participating in a German-produced documentary on the film currently and with my other projects, I simply have no spare time.

I thanked him for the quick reply and then assumed wed never cross paths again. But less than 24 hours after he had declined, I received a new email from him that said: Just had a couple thoughtscall me.

What were those thoughts? And what had changed in the course of a day? In a nutshell, Ruddy had done a little research and really liked the idea of this seriesthe idea of going behind-the-scenes to answer how did various movies get made. But, he explained, for what you guys are doing, I think it shouldnt just be about the losers. The point he wanted to make (and which led him to agree to this interview) was that even the winners go through their fair share of chaos, struggle and backroom drama. And, well, if anyone would know that to be true, its Al Ruddy.

Because while it was Megaforce that led me to Ruddy, hes best known for producing a different class of films. Several of which we talked about during our interviewbeginning with a little film called The Godfather

[AUTHORS NOTE: the transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity + grouping Mr. Ruddys anecdotes for each film together (as we often jumped back and forth)]

AL RUDDY: Lets start with THE GODFATHER

But first, just a little bit of context:

AL RUDDY: Yeah, well. Look: The Godfather stayed at Paramount. The book wallowed at Paramount for 3 years. Everyone in town turned it down. Fred Zinnemann. Warren Beatty. Jack Nicholson. Everyone. [conveying their typical response] This is a gangster movie! Why the fuck are you giving me this gangster tome? It went to every director in town. NobodyI meant NO-BODYwanted to touch it. However, the book still was on the bestseller list. And Jack Warner at Warner Bros. wanted to buy it from Gulf and Western.

BJH: Gotcha.

AL RUDDY: There was pressure put on Charlie Bluhdorn, who owned Gulf and Western, to sell it to Jack Warner. Jack Warner would have given him $2-3-4 million for the book. Charlie was tempted; and [Paramounts president of film and television] Stan Jaffe said, This sounds good Charlie; it sounds good to the board. We havent made any money lately! Sell the goddamn book!

BJH: [laughs]

AL RUDDY: [Producer] Bob Evans was very vocal abouthe said, Charlie, if you sell this goddamn book, youre gonna sell the future of the company, Im telling you. Dont sell it! So now a fight started between every factor; every groupbetween Stanley and Bob and Charlie: should we make it? Not make it? Finally, Charlieexasperatedsaid, Evans, you love this project? You can make it. For $6 million and not a penny more. So you understand: $6 million at Paramount made us the cheapest movie of the year. They were doing Paint Your Wagon with Lee [Marvin] and Clint; and [Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies]all those bombs they were doingso Bob says, Okay, now; who can we get to make this goddamn movie for $6 million? And he said: well, lets go to Al Ruddy to produce.

At the time, Ruddy had just finished producing Little Fauss and Big Halsey, starring Robert Redford and Michael J. Pollard.

AL RUDDY: I brought that movie in under budget and ahead of schedule. And what Paramount needed on The Godfather more than anything (so that Charlie would approve it) was somebody that they thought would be running this movie and not let it go over $6 million. Because they were serious. They were gonna get rid of the book. So they didnt and they agreed to: okay, do it on the cheap.

BJH: Gotcha.

AL RUDDY: So I had a meeting with them. And they said, Would you be interested in doing this movie? I thought they were kidding. So they said: you have to go meet Charlie Bluhdorn. Did I tell you this? Charlie wants to approve the producer. So I fly to New York. On the airplane I read the book. I had never read the bookbecause I never thought Id get a shot at it!

BJH: Ha!

AL RUDDY: You know, it was a major work! So I read it on the plane. I get to Stanleys office around 3 oclock; were gonna get some food from the Russian Tea Room across the wayCharlie, me and Stanley. So Im in Stanleys officeand the door flies open. And in comes this crazy Austrian: Charlie Bluhdorn. [imitating him] Hello, Im Charlie Bluhdorn. Oh, hey, how are you? Im Al Ruddy. He said, Ruddy, what are you gonna do with this movie? I looked at this crazy fucking guy and I said to myself: if I start talking about the book, Ill be toast. This guy was focused on giving me one minute of time and he was gone, right? So I looked at him and I said to him, Charlie, I want to make an ice blue terrifying movie about people you love. Charlie bangs on the deskThats brilliant! And he runs out of the office. I went to Stan and said, What the fuck was that? He says, Hold on. So he goes out the door to track Charlie down. Comes back about 10 minutes later; he says, you got the job. I said: what? You got the job! I said I got The Godfather just on that line? Yeah, well he thinks youre a genius. Um, okay. Nice. Thank you!

BJH: Wow.

AL RUDDY: I became the producer of The GodfatherI got $150,000 and Francis got $150,000 and if we were going over $6 million, wed be taking it out of our own money.

BJH: [laughs]

AL RUDDY: The Godfatherwhich incidentally came in for about 5 cents under $6 million so we didnt lose our salary!they even realized at a certain pointBrando was on and Al Pacino and the gang warsremember, the gang wars broke out in New York when we were shooting. Crazy Joey Gallo was shooting up half the mob in New York while The Godfather was around the corner (shooting half the [cast] in New York in the end). The whole thingthe whole thing was so insane. That when we look back at it there is no question that it was just the perfect storm. I was soFrancis Coppola was at the peakthe peakof his talent. Mario Puzo wrote a great novel. A very commercial novel. And we only had the greatest American actor who ever lived, Marlon Brando, and guys running close second with Al Pacino and Bobby Duvall. And it wasgod meant it to be, I swear to god.

BJH: Let me ask you a question. You mentioned that Marios book was not only a great novel, but it was also commercially successful. So whywhy would the studios not say yes, lets make this! What was the hesitation?

AL RUDDY: Well, because: how does a movie become viable at a studio? Its never[re-phrasing] the starting point, you would think, is a great piece of material. Well, remember: that piece of material is in literary form. It doesnt mean anything to the studio. If you dont walk in with at leastat leastone bankable element (and hopefully it should be a major director who you know will get you a star). There was also a political situation going on. When we started on The Godfather I had to go meet Joe Columbo.

The opening line of Joe Columbos obituary in The New York Times describes him as a reputed Mafia leader who was gunned down and left almost totally paralyzed in 1971; however, in that same opening sentence, it also describes Columbo as a founder of the Italian?American Civil Rights League, which is why Ruddy had gone to meet him prior to production on The Godfather.

AL RUDDY: There was a lot of people in the Italian community that were violently against the movie. Because they figured: heres Hollywood, again, doing a movie that portrays Italian Americans as dah-dah-dah. [Meanwhile, at that time] Joe Columbo was thinking: the Jews have a thing, the Anti-Defamation League [which was then called The Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith], the Irish have a thing; [everyone has a similar thing] except the Italians. So [Columbo thought]: Im gonna do the Italian thing [which, of course, became the aforementioned Italian-American Civil Rights League].

In early 1971mere months before The Godfather was set to begin filmingRuddy met with Columbos son, Anthony, and reachedwhat The Atlanta Constitution describedas a tentative accord centered on the following three conditions:

Shortly thereafteron February 25, 1971Ruddy went to the Park Sheraton Hotel to speak with Columbo (Sr.) and 1,500 other members of the Italian?American Civil Rights League. Despite the aforementioned accord, he faced strong opposition. I couldnt care less if they gave us $2 million, Columbo Sr. allegedly said. No one can buy the right to defame Italian-Americans.

Ruddy tried to assuage this resistance by explaining that the film would depict individuals and would not defame or stereotype a group. It was really a movie about a corrupt society. A movie about America today. A movie about what happens to poor immigrants faced with prejudice and discrimination.

Ruddys approach turned out to be persuasive. And in March 1971, principal photography on The Godfather began in New York City.

AL RUDDY: Its very simple: movies get made for illogical reasons of either a moment in time; and remember, every studio has 3-4 branches that are equally important; remember distribution is where the money is made most of the time because they steerthey screw every producer and actor in the business. Well, if a studio doesnt have their summer movieand I mean: they dont have itand theyre just runningthey have to have it. Because you have to fill that supply. Theyre looking all over the town for anything that looks like a summer movie. So if they just happen to have one thats halfway decent, then: hey! Come on in here!

BJH: [laughing]

AL RUDDY: [getting back to the Mario Puzo book] I insist on meeting Mario Puzo, right? Im the first guy in the movie. Nobody wants to hire Mario Puzo because, Hes a novelist! He wrote a 600 page book! Hes going to write a 600 page screenplay!

BJH: Right.

AL RUDDY: We dont want the fucking novelist. I said, Well I want to meet him anyhow. I go to New York; I call Mario and I meet him at the Walldorf. I said, Mario, look; I got a problem with the guys on the west Coast. [laughing] They dont want to hire the guy who wrote the novel! Hes got a copy of the book under his arm. He takes the book and he throws it on the floor. Slams it! He says, I promise: if you hire me, Ill never look at the book again. I was dumbfounded. I said, You know what? You just talked yourself into the job. I shook his hand and then I brought him out to California. Thats how he got on the project.

BJH: [laughs]

AL RUDDY: They didnt want Mario Puzo. But I just wasI was so taken with this guy and his passion. You meet a guy like that and you know: this guy is not going to let you down. Hes really collaborative, hes not an egomaniac. The guy is so fucking happy with what happened to him; and happy to be making a movie, to be on the lot. He was a fucking joy! I loved the guy.

Butthere was one hitch.

AL RUDDY: I had to promise his wife that if she let him come to California, I would watch his diet. Because Mario had diabetes. I said, Im gonna eat with him every night, Mrs. Puzo. I promise you. Every day. So for the first month and a half, Im picking up Mario in the morning; were both having a poached egg and a buttered muffin. And Im losing weight and Mario isnt. So I go into this pizza joint one nightFrankiesand Frankies telling me what a nice guy Mario Puzo is. I said, how do you know Mario? He said, I bring him a pizza every night!

BJH: [cracking up]

AL RUDDY: [Frankie says] I bring him a big pizza to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Hes getting fucking heavy and my pants are falling down! So I said, Mario, this cant go on. So he went to Duke University, the Fat Farm and then he came back and started to work again. But it all goes to show you [that with every movie] everythings hanging on fucking threads. Its gotta be your absolute devotion and as Churchill said, You have to know how to fail with happiness on your face. Just keep going. And never, never stop. Keep going. So the lesson becomes: how did you get that made? Because you have fucking gall, you have balls, you have luck, timing; everything; all the other elements can be on your side for once.

BJH: Amazing.

AL RUDDY: Ill tell you one last story about The Godfather. On the second night, we were shooting up in Bellevue [the historic hospital in Manhattan]. And in New York, in those days, if you started a crew after 4 or 5 oclock it was time and a half. If you went into what they called golden time it was triple time. In other words, if you had a guy who was making $2,000 a week on your crew, so youre paying $3,000 a week to start because its a night shoot; then you start getting into overtime (time-and-a-half) and now hes up to $4,500 an hour; and if its over 8 hours, you give triple; [laughing] so the guys walking out with $6,000 an hour. Youre broke!

BJH: Sure.

AL RUDDY: So were shooting at Bellevue and its rainingand the crazies are throwing pillows out the fucking window. And the head of the hospital tells me, Youll have to come back tomorrow. I said, Are you insane?

BJH: [laughs]

AL RUDDY: You know how long it took me to lay cable? And youre gonna tell me I have to come back tomorrow? He said, Well, you have to go. I said, Im gonna sit in this fucking office and if you reach for that fucking phone, Im gonna stop you. He says, Youre kidding me. I said, Just try. Im serious. Dont force me to beat the shit out of you. He said, Im gonna have you arrested. I said, You can do anything you want after were through shooting!

BJH: [cracking up]

AL RUDDY: He thought I was crazy. I was soI could see my career ending right there. And the guy sat there for an hour and 20 minutes; until Fred [associate producer Gray Fredrickson] told me: okay, we just wrapped up. I said, Thank you for everything. He said, Dont think Im through with you yet, you fuck. [laughs]

BJH: Thats awesome.

AL RUDDY: But you know what? The mayor wanted us to shoot. New York wanted the movie. We couldnt afford it, but we were thinking of shooting in St. Louis. But its all so crazy, Blake, what happened. [You can] take ANY. FUCKING. MOVIE. AL. RUDDY. EVER. DID. And the crisis is there. The crisis is there.

AL RUDDY: [Originally] you asked me about the movie I did, Megaforce.

BJH: Yeah.

AL RUDDY: I bumped into these guys that had a company that was developing something called Introvision, which was a very early high-tech system for movies.

Introvision was a front-projection process thaton set and in real-timegave filmmakers a way to view a finished composite of live action and plate photography through the cameras viewfinder.

AL RUDDY: Megaforce was really the first, reasonably-budgeted movie that used Introvision. [For example] we had a whole underground sequence, but [in reality] there was nothing there! It was all desert. But we did it all with effects. And then we opened up the movie with the huge attack scene that Needham did. With the red, white and blueAnd I must say: I honestly believe that Barry Bostwick was so campy that we knew it would be kind of a campy movie. And Ill tell you something, all kidding aside: when we ran that the first time and you see Barry on that fucking motorcycleand the wings come on the motorcyclethe audience went ballistic! They were screaming and clapping and every other thing. They went fucking crazy!

BJH: [laughs]

AL RUDDY: [Years later, circa 2002] I was at a party and this guy comes up to me, shakes my hand. He says, I want you to know, you made on of the most important movies [laughing] of the 20th century. I said, Really? He says, Yeah: Megaforce. I looked at this guy and said: this motherfuckers on drugs or hes drinking, then I heard he was Trey Parker and he said, We want to do it. We want to do an animated version of your movie. Well, the license hadnt expired yet (with the distribution company) so I couldnt make a deal with the guy, and so they went ahead and they did their own version of Megaforce

BJH: Waityou mean, Team America: World Police?

AL RUDDY: Exactly. Yeah, thats it exactly.

AL RUDDY: [In the early 90s] I watched my daughter play soccer. My daughter was 7. I said: what a great background for a movielittle girls with big boots on! So I develop this script called Ladybugs. But Im having trouble getting it made. So I give it to Rodney Dangerfields manager. And Rodney had just done Back to School and was very successful. And they offered Rodney $7 million to do the sequel, but Rodney did not like the director.

BJH: Okay.

AL RUDDY: So the agent said, Why dont you meet with Rodney? Will you pay Rodney $7 million? I said, Sure, if he wants to do it. So I meet with Rodney, we shake hands, $7 million, blah, blah, blah. Then I get back to my office, we run the numbers, Im $2 million short.

BJH: Ha!

AL RUDDY: I called Rodney up and said, Rodney, I have to come see you. He said, Al, Im not getting in a private room with you by myself. Ill get my lawyer here. I said, You dont understand, Rodney, Im in the elevator of your hotel right now. So I go in [to his hotel room] and hes running around in his fucking bathrobe.

BJH: Nice.

AL RUDDY: I said, Rodney, let me get to the end of the conversation at the beginning because theres no way to say what Im gonna sayI dont have $7 million to pay you. If you want to do the movie, I only have $5 million. He said, Youre gonna take away two-large just like that? I said, Im not taking away, Rodney; thats what I got. If you wanna do the movie for five [million], I got five. Not seven. Rodney said, Okay, man. Fuck it. You fucked me out of $2 million, but I want to do the movie.

BJH: [laughing]

AL RUDDY: So all the way through the movie, he keeps reminding me how I fucked him out of this $2 million, right? Then at the end of the movie, Im waiting [to meet him]. Because hes a champ with the zingers. So Im walking him to his limousine (and hes the cheapest guy who ever lived; he goes to the managers office; hes got all his per diem envelopes, he hasnt spent a penny). So now Im walking to his limo and he opens the door to his limo, leans over and says to me, I want you to know something: I woulda done it for three-large! HA HA HA.

It should be noted that Ruddy does a pretty wonderful imitation of Rodney Dangerfield laughing in his face.

AL RUDDY: So Id paid him $2 million more than hed have done it for. He closes [the door] on me and laughs all the way down the road. He was just waiting to tell me! You think you fucked me? I liked it so much I would have done it for $2 million less anyhow!

***

STAY TUNED for Part 2 next week

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How Did This Get Made: A Conversation With Al Ruddy, Producer of 'The Godfather,' 'Megaforce,' and 'Ladybugs' - /FILM

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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

SUFFERN, N.Y. (JTA) My two children, aged 13 and 15, attend daily Zoom classes from designated corners of our suburban home. Slovenly habits aside, their workspaces are virtual classrooms in which they analyze George Orwells work and ponder Talmudic passages in equal measure.

Online classes the ones they do not skip for a stealthy game of Minecraft or an episode of Friends have provided a semblance of structure to their quarantined lives. When COVID-19 was still a distant threat, their private Jewish schools began oiling the wheels of transition to online learning.

But not all schools have made the switch, including in many public schools where low-income families might not have easy access to devices for multiple children.

In the Jewish world, this pandemic highlights broader societal and narrower cultural disparities. In many cloistered Hasidic communities, it exposes gashes that have been bandaged and prayed away for decades separatism, educational neglect and technological sequestration which are all unsustainable in the 21st century.

As someone who grew up in the Satmar community of Kiryas Joel but left that world on good terms, I am leery of rigid dichotomies between a progressive secular world and a regressive Hasidic one. The spectrum of Hasidic life is broad; many parents find ways to supplement secular education and ensure that their children participate in or are aware of the non-Hasidic world.

Due to the past couple of months of news coverage in which Hasidim have made headlines for breaking social distancing guidelines and for a fictional Netflix series in which a woman discovers the panacea for her misery in Berlin (Unorthodox), it bears repeating that Hasidim are not a monolith. So many of my brilliant and erudite Hasidic friends alternately impress me with their breadth of knowledge and intimidate me with their autodidactic ways. But they are the exception, not the norm.

Not everyone in Hasidic communities flouts social distancing rules (my mother and most siblings were locked in for months). But many leaders pushed back, costing us precious time that could have saved lives.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, as we added social distancing to our lexicons, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, leader of my hometown of Kiryas Joel and the Aaroni faction of Satmar, enumerated the challenges of school closures in his community.

In non-Jewish families, they have two to three children, and a home with rooms for television, movies, entertainment they dont understand what a Jewish family is about tight spaces, no goyish (secular) entertainment, he said.

While I commiserate with the mothers and fathers who are tasked with entertaining eight, 12 or more children with no technological nannies, I cannot sympathize with a leadership that has systematically impeded progress by banning the internet and fighting the implementation of secular education in its yeshivas and cheders for years.

If only leadership had encouraged the safe use of the internet, the challenges of quarantine for burgeoning families might have been mitigated by online classes and other learning tools, and perhaps some kosher entertainment. If only the leadership appreciated and encouraged exposure to science, perhaps more would heed the calls from medical professionals instead of falling prey to scientific skepticism.

There is a rich paradox at play: Many Hasidim have strong faith in the medical establishment and trust doctors almost explicitly (few believe in holistic cures). But there is a dearth of knowledge about broader scientific methods and findings and the workings of science in general, which often translates to not taking warnings seriously, as evidenced in this pandemic.

Exceptions to the norm aside, quarantine has exposed the myriad ways in which a system becomes unsustainable if it continues to shun education and the internet, necessities in todays world. Even the most cloistered Hasidic communities are really part of the whole society: What others do affects them, and what they do affects others.

A well-educated, linguistic and scientifically literate individual is needed for a society to function for information and dialogue to flow between government and citizen, and for a society to cohesively fend off a health crisis and keep families safe and alive. Separatism, as it relates to being members of society, is a fictitious construct.

I have noted an increased porousness in the Hasidic world over the past decade that gives me hope: Individuals and families who leave and are not alienated from their loved ones allow for a more open society and understanding of what it means to be different and not to conform.

Though I am a radical realist (my dreamer friends can attest to this) and know that the old guard will maintain its ways, nevertheless I am hopeful that this pandemic will shift the tectonic plates for the younger generation and usher in a new era of change or, at the very least, a move toward progress.

It is time for Hasidic leaders to allow broad access to the internet and stop resisting changes to their institutions. A strong system rooted in positive preservations rather than fear wont be threatened by the modern world.

This piece is a part of our series ofVisions for the Post-Pandemic Jewish Futureclick hereto read the other stories in this series. Use#JewishFutureto share your own ideas on social media. If youd like to submit an essay for consideration, emailopinion@jta.orgwith Visions Project Submission in the subject line.

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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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

In normal times, thousands of mourners likely would have lined the streets of the New York hamlet of Spring Valley for the burial of Josef Neumann, one of five men brutally attacked in December by a machete-wielding man while observing Hanukkah at the home of a local rabbi.

But Neumann, 72, died in March, during the coronavirus pandemic.

So instead, a few dozen of the mans family members gathered at his burial site on March 30 to pay their respects.

Jewish community leaders say the gathering was small, given the circumstances. Yet the funeral became subject to voyeurs who snapped photos of the mans grieving children to share on social media in an apparent attempt to blame early coronavirus outbreaks in Rockland County on its large population of Orthodox and Haredi Hasidic Jews.

In the weeks that followed, members of the regions Orthodox community faced vicious backlash online, and in person, as people attempted to play gotcha by identifying families that they believed were in violation of social distancing guidelines, local rabbi Yisroel Kahan told Business Insider.

You have one funeral where some people were grieving for a grandfather who was murdered; he was butchered because he was a Jew celebrating Hanukkah, Kahan said. This person would have had tens of thousands of people at the funeral expressing grief and sorrow There were maybe 25, 30 people there.

Yes, it could have applied better diligence when it came to social distancing, he continued. Yes, they should have worn more protection. But is this the time when someone is burying their loved one who was butchered to instigate?

About an hours drive north from New York City, Rockland County exceptionally diverse, both ethnically and religiously. It is a melting pot of immigrants, commuters, and the New York City diaspora.

While 62.6% of the countys nearly 326,000 residents are white, 18% are Latino, and 11% are African American, according to the most recent census.

In the highest per-capita rate of any US county, more than 34% of the countys residents identify as Jewish.

Among them are a large population of observant Orthodox Jews, who live primarily in the adjacent communities of Spring Valley and Monsey in the town of Ramapo.

When times are good, residents of these communities, who worship at more than 200 synagogues in the county, live alongside their secular neighbors with few issues.

During times of crisis or political strife, though, some Orthodox community leaders feel like they are used as scapegoats for larger regional issues.

In early March, weeks before the state of California issued the countrys first stay-at-home order, the Jewish children of Rockland County were anxiously awaiting annual Purim festivities.

The holiday which this year began on the evening of March 9 and ended on March 10 is a time of togetherness, when friends and families gather to exchange gifts and food, with many dressing up in costumes.

At the time, coronavirus testing was still in its early stages in the US. A national emergency wouldnt be declared for another three days, and messaging around protection was still unclear. But Kahan who is a medical liaison for the local health system knew a crisis was brewing and canceled his familys holiday plans out of an abundance of caution.

I know that it was a real killer with the kids because all year they think about how theyre going to dress up and who is going to visit, Kahan told Business Insider. We were going to have a meal hosting friends and dignitaries, but I said, Were canceling it because I do not want to look back and say that it was on Purim we helped spread this.

Kahan, though, believes he was one of the few who took such action so early on in the crisis.

The first case of New York case of coronavirus had only been diagnosed on March 1 and, by Purim, life in Rockland county was, for the most part, still business as usual, Kahan said.

Thats probably when it spread, and when it spread very strongly, in the Jewish community, Kahan said.

In the weeks that followed, testing became more readily available and cases started cropping up around the state. By early April, Monsey and Spring Valley each had more than 1,000 confirmed cases more than a third of the countys entire caseload at the time.

The outbreak, which at the time looked to be centered around the Jewish hubs of the county, prompted the countys executive Ed Day, and others, to call on the governor to issue a containment zone around the two villages.

In Facebook groups and other social media platforms, some residents attributed the high number of coronavirus cases to a failure of social distancing among the religious community.

Kahan and other Jewish leaders, though, said that social distancing measures were ordered only after outbreaks in their communities had already begun. Following Purim, they said, concerned residents were ahead of the curve to seek out testing.

Passover begins shortly after Purim, and people wanted to know if they needed to stay away from their families. With more people being tested, its no surprise that there would be more positives, Kahan said.

In communities where people have larger families, and with Passover coming, people wanted to get tested to know whether they had it and whether they were safe to be at grandmas and watch over them, Kahan said.

Once those numbers were out there and it looked like Monsey was on the high end of the county, where Monsey is now on the lower end, you had the haters coming out of the woodwork, he continued.

As the pandemic continued to hit other parts of the country, New York Orthodox Jews who recovered from COVID-19 have also been showing up in the thousands to donate plasma which is used to treat coronavirus victims.

Dr. Michael Joyner, who is leading a study at the Mayo Clinic in the use of plasma to treat patients with severe Covid-19, told The New York Times that the Orthodox community has led the charge in terms of blood donation.

By far the largest group is our Orthodox friends in New York City, Dr. Joyner told The Times. I would be shocked if they were less than half the total.

Rockland County resident Yossi Gestetner, like Kahan, is adamant that the reason Monsey and Spring Valley saw high numbers early in the pandemic is because many residents rushed to be tested at the first sign of symptoms maybe even more so than the general public. Gestetner co-founded the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, which works to end incorrect assumptions about the Orthodox community, and acts as an unofficial liaison between the Monsey and Spring Valley community and county officials.

The proof in his theory, Gestetner says, is that now that more testing is available, other villages have surpassed them in the rate of infections per capita. (Monsey and Spring Valley still have the highest number of total cases in the county.)

People in the rest of the country are blaming New York for the nationwide problem, so then people in New York are trying to blame someone else, Gestetner said.

But those who dont understand that, he said, went out of their way to stalk, harass and discriminate against members of the community.

Early research from the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University has already indicated that the coronavirus has inspired a spike in hate incidents against Jewish people around the world. Researchers seeing a rise in age-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that blame Jewish people for economic unrest and global disasters, the report says.

In recent months, there has been a flurry of reports around New York involving visibly Jewish individuals who say theyve been the victims of discrimination.

Some people have reported being denied service at businesses before the shutdown, Gestetner said.

In nearby Orange County, New York, a police officer has left his job after making a Facebook post about dropping a bomb on Kiryas Joel, a village that has a similar Hasidic and Orthodox population.

For the most part, the harassment has come in the form of vicious rhetoric online.

Some residents have used Holocaust imagery on Facebook to refer to Jewish community members. Many have described the Orthodox community as a cult or sheep, and have accused them of spreading the virus and consistently disobeying laws.

To Rockland countys Jewish communities which experienced two stabbings in 2019 thats enough to be living in fear.

This is how dangerous this is, Kahan said. There could be one mad man that will take a machete and do something terrible. Of course, normal people dont do it, but if normal people fan the flames, it could happen again, he said.

Gestetner and Kahan are among many Jewish community leaders who have been spreading the message of social distancing through social media, they said.

For example, Agudath Israel of America, a group that represents numerous Orthodox sects, has been calling for people to adhere to health measures from the beginning of the pandemic.

And for the most part, they said, families and synagogues have been adamant about following guidelines.

But of course, like in any community, there has been non-compliance, Kahan noted.

Over Passover, for example, eight Rockland County residents were arrested for violating social distancing guidelines after police found 30-50 men praying together, CBS News reported at the time.

There have also been illegal weddings, funerals, and several schools operating against shutdown orders, according to The Journal News and other outlets.

In the month of April, the Rockland County Department of Health fielded hundreds of reports for a lack of social distancing in the town of Ramapo, which includes Monsey, Spring Valley and the Hasidic village of New Square, but more along the lines of dozens for other towns in the county, according to John Lyon, spokesman for Rockland County Executive Ed Day.

The difficult part is that there are certain parts of our population, the Orthodox and Hassidic community in particular, who because of the way they dress they tend to stand out more than the average person, Lyon said. And thats not fair that they are noticed more, but its a fact that they are noticed more. And thats reflected in the reports that our Department of Health gets.

We are seeing great examples within the Orthodox and Hassidic communities, of rabbis and public advocates, who are going above and beyond and encouraging people to stay home, he added. The hard part is, when you stand out in a crowd, youre going to get noticed.

Kahan said its not just that the community stands out more, but that people are actively looking for people not following the rules.

Ive driven by golf courses a few weeks ago with parks are full of people. You have churches all over the country that are packed and in defiance, Kahan said in late April. You find one synagogue thats not in compliance and it got blasted all over.

Kahan said that in his neighborhood residents observed Passover by praying with one another from their front yards. While they did so, cars of people circled the neighborhood looking for people in violation, he said.

I was on one porch and my neighbor on another, there was 75 feet between us. You couldnt throw a ball to the neighbor, he said. There were individuals going around with cameras on the holidays.

Online, residents who blamed the high number of coronavirus cases to a failure of social distancing among the religious community posted hateful messages on Days Facebook page. According to the Forward, some even called for patches with the letter C be sewn onto those infected with the virus.

Eventually, the comments on got so bad that Day himself called it out and urged people who spotted the hateful rhetoric to contact the countys Human Rights Commission, he told The Forward.

Alexander Rosemberg, the Deputy Regional Director of the Anti Discrimination League of NY and NJ, said that blaming Jews in times of crisis is nothing new.

In Rockland County, there is a tendency to lump the entire Orthodox and Haredi Hassidic Jewish community together as one. But in reality, he said, it is a diverse group of varying beliefs and cultures.

To say the Orthodox are X or the Orthodox are Y is absolutely not correct, Rosemberg told Business Insider.

When there are people in violation of laws, they should be called out as individuals, he said, and not grouped together.

There are bad actors that should be called out, and every leader political and religious should be calling on the entire county to impose social distancing norms, Rosemberg said. That same leadership should call out people who are lumping the entire community together.

Gestetner said that there is a small percentage of bigots in the world, but most people have moved away from discriminating against or stereotyping groups of people based on their race, ethnicity, and religious beliefs.

He feels that the Hasidim, though, dont always escape that kind of treatment.

When there disproportionate numbers of African-American deaths because of corona, there isnt one reporter in any outlet that suggests that anything is wrong with African-Americans as a community because of their behavior, he said. Its about disparities, institutional racism, and poverty; which is fine because the idea to take people who are victimized of a problem and make it about them is unheard of bigotry.

We are looking at a global pandemic that affects all countries, all walks of life, he continued. Countries that dont have 10 Orthodox Jews have problems. There are problems in all communities.

Dating back to the 1950s, groups of ultra-Orthodox Jews seeking affordable real estate for their growing communities have flocked to Rockland for more space, according to Haaretz.

By 1961, the all-Hassidic village of New Square was founded, allowing the groups more freedom in practicing Jewish law.

As generations went on, and more families left Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn for Rockland County, the communities grew beyond New Square.

As they did, more requests for new yeshivas Jewish private schools synagogues, and housing projects bubbled up in local government.

It is usually during these local debates over development, school budgets, and zoning that there is an uptick in harassment and discrimination against visibly Jewish Rockland residents, according to Rosemberg and Haaretz.

There is a population in Rockland county that is unhappy about Orthodox and Hassidic Jewish organizations developing schools and other buildings, Rosemberg said.

County Executive Ed Day, a Republican, has been vocally opposed to such developments in the county. But approval of these projects generally falls to the local Town of Ramapo government, his spokesman, John Lyon, told Business Insider.

In 2019, when the Rockland County Republican Party produced a campaign advertisement widely criticized as anti-Semitic, Day called for its withdrawal, criticizing its tone but saying that its contents were well-grounded.

During the ad, large text appears warning residents that a storm is brewing and if they win, we lose.

It was paired with images of visibly Orthodox residents.

Lyon said that that video is one of the things that has recently inflamed tensions in the county. While overdevelopment is a problem, Lyon said, its not something that should be blamed on a community of people, but rather the town government that allows it.

I think in a lot of peoples minds its misplaced, Lyon said. Theyre focusing on the people who moved here for the same reason that they did, or that their families did, from the city, the Bronx or out of Brooklyn 30, 40, 50 years ago.

Everyone who moves to Rockland does so because they want a different kind of life. They want access to state parks. They want access to open space. They want to have better schools and a better community, Lyon added. You cant fault the person who is moving here because they want their own apartment, or condo or house, they moved here for the same reason you did.

Despite differing opinions on issues of development, though, Lyon said Day and the county office maintain a uniquely collaborative relationship with the Orthodox communities, usually by communicating through liaisons like Gestetner and Kahan.

Last year, for example, when a measles outbreak sickened more than 300 Rockland residents many of them in Spring Valley and Monsey the county and community worked together to get messaging out.

We had amazing support within the Orthodox and Hassidic communities to get that vaccination message out to everyone, and we saw nearly 30,000 people vaccinated in less than a year, Lyon said. Incredible work was done with all of us working together.

Gestetner agreed that the measles outbreak response was a success, but said he wished he saw that level of collaboration for the coronavirus response.

While Gestetner acknowledged that Day tried to stop the hateful language on Facebook, he said that calling for a containment zone early on is what sparked the wave of discrimination.

Throughout the measles program, Ed Day personally, his communications staff, the health department, they worked on the information front and the guidance front in a collaborative manner, and thats greatly appreciated, Gestetner said. But for some reason, either because of ill will or because Ed misunderstood the fact of early testing showing early cases, maybe thats why he started on the wrong path.

As for whether the uptick in hateful comments is pushing members of the community further into social isolation, he said they cant let that happen.

I myself sometimes feel uncomfortable, but do I dont hold back from doing what I need to do, I dont think I do, because the minute I do that, the bigots win, he said. And the bigots are at the edge of society. The issue becomes that those bigots are very loud and then they have an influence on a large population that, at a minimum, have a misunderstanding about Orthodox Jews.

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Orthodox and Haredi Hasidic Jews in a New York suburb say theyre scapegoats in the coronavirus crisis. The othering goes back decades. - Business...

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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

Imagine you are a Hasidic teenage boy, a yeshiva student. You usually have school all year round, six days a week; your purpose in life is to study Torah, especially before your arranged marriage at the age of 18 or 19 while you are not yet distracted by family and work. From the time you are young, you are taught that all time not spent studying is bittul zman, a waste of time. Men in your life study on the train, on the bus, in the waiting room, before work, after work, on Shabbos after a nap. It is unimaginable to you to spend weeks and months outside the study hall.

Suddenly, cities begin calling for the closure of study halls because a contagious virus is spreading. Your Yiddish newspapers and local Hatzalah exhort you to comply with health officials. All institutions close as the death toll starts to mount.

For the first time since you can remember, you are at home during the day, a surreal experience. Weeks and weeks go by, the number of cases goes down, and nerves begin to settle. But the governmental decree to stay home continues. Rebbes with whom you had phone study sessions organize to meet in small groups. On the down-low in basements, private dining rooms, synagogues which are locked but you get in from the side door. More parents send their sons back, and bigger institutions quietly open.

You attend yeshiva again, but everyone is now looking over their shoulders, worried about getting caught. Getting caught gets you into the news, it makes you look bad, and this is a great fear.

Then one day there is a rumble and a crew of intimidating police officers barges into the study hall. You scramble to put on a mask, more to dissipate judgment from gentiles than infection from the virus, and you can see that your peers are pale and shaken.

You all follow orders and disperse. Outside, some goyish reporters are flashing pictures of you. Its terrifying.

To the secular world reading about it in the news, this is a story about a community that considers itself above the law. But to the Hasidic community experiencing it, its a story in which they are being forcefully prevented from practicing their religion. And though the circumstance of a global pandemic is a rare one, Hasidim are experiencing it in the context of a familiar story: the eternal persecution of the Jewish people.

Many who have observed the persecution complex prevalent among Hasidim think its about the Holocaust. Sticking it to Hitler, overcoming trauma, and trying to repopulate the souls lost are frequently given as motivations. But the Hasidic persecution complex is much larger than the Holocaust. Its rooted in the belief that Jews have a long history of being persecuted, physically and spiritually. Hannah Arendt described it in The Origins of Totalitarianism as the doctrine of eternal anti-Semitism wherein Jews or non-Jews believe that Jew-hatred is a normal and natural reaction to which history gives only more or less opportunity. In other words, its the eternal fate of the Jew to be persecuted.

I grew up in the Satmar Hasidic community, and the many stories of my childhood focused on the persecution of Jews: Egyptian slavery, the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews from nations, pogroms and anti-Jewish decrees, the blood libels and the kidnapping of Jewish children by Christian neighbors to forcefully convert them, Czarist Russias many edicts, and of course, the Holocaust. The most popular childrens books were the series Der Tzeylung fin Tzadikim, Stories of the Sages, which recounted life in the shtetl and its travails. There were a hundred or so of these thin books with short, illustrated stories on the theme, always with the sage or the poor Jewish innkeeper achieving a happy ending through religious triumph.

On Passover nights, my Holocaust-survivor grandfather used to gather the little ones among the white pillows of his big Passover chair and describe how the Egyptians buried babies in bricks in lieu of cement, among other Egyptian atrocities. And the following day, during the long, sticky hours when we ate lemons dunked in heaps of sugar, he sat on the porch shmoozed with the adults about what we called the milchoma, the war. Stories of hunger, fear, lost loved ones, miracles, times that he and a friend had come within a hairs width from death.

I was a child and didnt pay much attention to adult affairs, but I have snippets of memories that are imprinted in my mind as if I had seen these scenes: Here Zeidy is running, here he has frost-bite, here he is carrying a friend, here a Nazi is shooting, here the neighbor fell and is gone, here Zeidy is alive, thank God.

Hasidim love to tell stories, and the drama inherent in the Holocaust made for many great ones. The stories werent even necessarily depressing because, like all good Hasidic tales, they had a happy ending where Jewish religious life prevailed, despite despite! risk to life and limb. The Jews in the ghetto clung to their Torah scrolls, their menorahs, their kosher, their Yom Kippur. And like all good stories, they were tales of overcoming the most extreme adversity in this case, the persecution of Jews because they were Jews.

The sense of persecution is what drives the Hasidic stubbornness to hold on to its identity. Hasidim define the survival of the Jewish people as one and the same as the survival of its religious identity. This is what drives the communitys extraordinary efforts to resist assimilation in the 21st-century New York City.

It also created a great conflict when after the war, Hasidim migrated to America. The Yankee-land which was once known as the place where you lost the beard, kerchief and Yiddish, was by the 1940s and 1950s, hospitable to multiculturalism and sympathetic to Holocaust survivors. To Hasidim, it felt like a miracle. America was dubbed the malchus-shel-chesed a kingdom of kindness.

But even as Hasidim celebrate America, their historical perspective nurses the fear that the good times could end on a whim. Its this that drives their political savvy in politics, the close ties with officials like New York Citys Mayor Bill de Blasio. These relationships are the result of tireless efforts meant to protect the community. And indeed, there has been persecution in America still, like the uptick of assaults against Jews, most from Hasidim; like the tragic shooting and knife attack just months ago.

But then there is the other kind of persecution America excels at, the spiritual kind like the government trying to prohibit the circumcision ritual that can spread herpes, or activists trying to enforce education standards for boys. During one round of education fights, Williamsburg zealots hung posters on lampposts with images of smoking vats and intimidating locks on schools; the message is clear: Its persecution deja vu.

And the coronavirus pandemic is bound to become another episode to cement this complex.

When lockdowns began in March, the Hasidic community for the most part took the orders seriously. The Yiddish newspapers declared that saving lives was most crucial. The oldest, Der Yid, urged the community to abide by the guidelines, to save lives, to not bring undue embarrassment to the community. While people didnt comply on every level, the disruption to this extremely communal community was enormous.

But then weeks went by. Scores of men attended a funeral, and it brought on the ire of neighbors, the mayor and the media. More and more Hasidim got tired of the disruption, and they tried to mingle while keeping it on the down-low. Statistics released by New York City last week showed that the Orthodox communities do not have among the highest death rate per capita; things have been improving for a while. 2,000 people attended a funeral weeks ago, but the predicted surge just never came.

And neither did a recalibration of the lockdown. The government continued to decree no school, no Shavuous, and the closure of many businesses.

Among my Hasidic friends and family, attitudes shifted. What began as My uncle died, its terrifying became Shhh, if they find us, the goyim will turn their hate on us.

Every Hasidic child learns the doctrine of eternal anti-Semitism no matter how uneventful their life is. They believe the narrative because its the mythology. But it would be just a story.

When police come and break down doors, traumatizing children for studying Torah, when these children end up involuntarily on the front page of major news outlets for the sin of studying Torah, the persecution narrative might seem like more than a narrative. Indeed, perhaps, this time, it would be true.

Frieda Vizel grew up in the Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel and left the sect with her son. She is now a tour guide of Hasidic Williamsburg walking tours. Her website is friedavizel.com

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

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The government is feeding a Hasidic persecution complex - Forward

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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

(JTA) A school in the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel in New York was ordered to close after it was found operating with hundreds of students in its building.

Orange County said in a statement that officials visiting the school last week found what appeared to be hundreds of students inside, not wearing personal protective equipment, not social distancing, and plainly in violation of the Governors Executive Orders, the Times Herald-Record reported. The county health department issued a case-and-desist order to the school the following day.

In March, the state of New York issued an order mandating the closure of all schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19, an order that remains in effect.

Ron Coleman, an attorney for the United Talmudical Academy system, told the Times Herald-Record that the school was not operating as a school, but administrators had allowed the boys to study independently in the building, which school officials believed was permitted under the state executive order.

Chris Ericson, a deputy county health commissioner who visited the school, told the newspaper that the classrooms were full, teachers were in the rooms, and few wore masks.

The United Talmudical Academy is a Hasidic school system for about 14,500 children in and around Kiryas Joel.

The post Hasidic school in upstate New York found operating with hundreds of students inside appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Hasidic school in upstate N.Y. operating with hundreds of students inside - Forward

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Posted By admin on May 30, 2020

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN Cops in Crown Heights acted on 311 social distancing complaints more often than any other neighborhood in the city, a new study found.

And those actions writing tickets or conducting arrests are at the center of an ongoing controversy over uneven enforcement of social enforcement citywide.

The fire received more fuel last week when Legal Aid Society released a study showing black and Latino neighborhoods received the most arrests and tickets, despite generally dialing 311 over social distancing far fewer times than largely-white neighborhoods like Park Slope.

"Over the time period reviewed, NYPD responses to 311 complaints for social distancing violations were considerably more likely to result in a summons or arrest in majority Black or Latino precincts," a release states.

To keep up to date with coronavirus developments in Crown Heights, sign up for Patch's news alerts and newsletter.

South Crown Heights, listed in the study as a largely black or Latino neighborhood, had both a high number of 311 calls 641 and the highest percentage of calls leading to summons or arrest 3.3 percent from its police precinct.

That's only 13 summonses and arrests overall, but a nearby precinct covering both Park Slope and Prospect Park received a similar number of social distancing calls 425 but didn't hand out a single ticket or conduct any arrests.

Crown Heights also has a sizable Hasidic Jewish population a community in which some members have flouted social distancing guidelines during large funerals and other gatherings.

Williamsburg, another neighborhood with a large Hasidic population, was an exception to the study's overall finding that black and Latino communities faced more arrests and summonses. It had 42 combined tickets and arrests from 311 calls.

The study can be read here.

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Crown Heights Leads Social Distancing Tickets, Arrests From 311 - Prospect Heights, NY Patch

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