Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 22, 2020

Debra Tanner and Mark Shapiro arent part of the daily tally of Loudouns COVID-19 losses. But the pandemic dramatically changed the end-of-life for these two Loudouners and upended the way their families experienced loss.

From hospice care to the way we hold memorials, the public health crisis has affected every aspect of dyingand not just for COVID patientsin painful and poignant ways.

When Arnie Tanner left his wife Debra at the emergency room April 10, he didnt know it was the last time hed see her alive. For Arnie, Debras complex medical case and the pain of her loss were amplified by the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic.

Its a kind of secondary death to whats been going on. The people who are dying of COVID, its tragic. There are sad stories there, Arnie said. But there are those that are probably not being mentioned who are victims of the circumstances.

At the beginning of this year, Debra, 61, was undergoing treatment for colon cancer and doing well, Arnie said. But she began experiencing fatigue and respiratory symptoms in mid-February. The couple sought answers via telemedicine appointments, but Debras symptoms persisted, causing her to miss chemotherapy appointments and a scheduled follow-up scan.

Everything just hit at once at the wrong time, Arnie said. All this confusion and not being able to go in to see someone, maybe for them to say, You know what, theres something more going on here. It just confused the hell out of us.

After a course of antibiotics and weeks of hoping for signs of improvement, Arnie took Debra to the emergency room at Inova Loudoun Hospital.

She just couldnt take it anymore, he said.

Debra was admitted to the hospitals Acute Care Unit, and Arnie followed the hospitals tight rules barring visitors to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Inovas policy allows for one visitor for dying patients, but for Tanner, that call came too late.

Over the five days of Debras hospitalization, Arnie was able to talk with her briefly on the phone and via text. She seemed to be doing better, he said.

Part of the confusion was just thinking she was going to get better. Its a stupid blind optimism that makes things so hard, he said. Youre not thinking shes not coming back.

Debra had two negative COVID tests, including two days before her hospitalization and a second test while in the hospital. She took a sudden turn for the worse and died of pneumonia on April 15. Her husband arrived at the hospital 15 minutes after her death.

For Arnie, profound grief was made worse by the frustration of navigating the uncharted territory of illness and death during a pandemic, trying to follow the rules but missing important moments and information.

I would have pushed harder to try to find a way to go in, he said. I would have been more aggressive.

In the aftermath of Debras death, Arnie is now trying to honor her despite limited ability to connect with family and friends.

I miss her presence and her big heart, Arnie said. Theres been support, but its all long distance. Im here alone. Ive had to do everything myself and kind of stumble along in a daze part of the time. Im trying to honor Deb as much as I can.

Debra, a fine art photographer who also worked as a dental hygienist and a caregiver with Visiting Angels, was a mom to two standard poodles,Francie and Max. She and Arnie were nature lovers who met while hiking at Shenandoah National Park. They were married in the beloved azalea garden at Fairfax Countys Meadowlark Gardens, andDebras wish was to be cremated and eventually have her ashes buried with her husbands at the park in a biodegradable urn.

Arnie doesnt consider himself tech savvy and isnt planning a virtual service. Instead, he drafted a moving letter sent to family, friends and neighbors and will organize an in-person memorial when circumstances allow.

Down the road, something, he said.

COVID is changing how Loudouners honor lost family members, and thats changing how local funeral services do business, with traditional rituals getting shaken up or going by the wayside. This includes a rise in cremations as families look to buy time in hopes of an in-person memorial down the road.

Cremation has definitely increased. A lot of people that would normally do more traditional services are electing to go ahead with cremation and delay having a memorial service, said Kathryn McDonough Webb, managing director of Loudoun Funeral Chapel.

With an increase in cases overall and strict COVID protocols in place, Webb and her brothers who run the family business are working to deal with more deaths while keeping employees safe on staggered shifts. With 10-person limits on gatherings, holding in-person memorials is challenging, she said. The chapel is hosting staggered small-group gatherings along with livestreamed services and Zoom memorials.

Certainly, people are feeling a greater challenge, but for the most part people are very understanding, Webb said. Its not that we dont want to offer them the services their loved ones are entitled to. Were just trying to do the best we can to give them some closure.

For Casey Shapiro of Lovettsville, losing her handsome, dynamic husband to pancreatic cancer at 41 was a painful blow, and the stress and grief were compounded by the chaos of the COVID crisis.

I dont think a satisfying goodbye exists. But I think that knowing what his prognosis was and especially knowing the environment were in right now, I feel blessed almost to the point where I feel a little embarrassed about itbecause I know there are lots of families that didnt even get what I got, she said.

From the heartbreak of not having Marks parents physically present to say goodbye to their son to an unexpectedly uplifting Zoom shiva, the last month has been a roller coaster for Shapiro, who admits shes holding it together with a healthy dose of dark humor.

Mark and Casey met in Atlanta, drawn together byshared interests and creative hobbies including acting, stunt work and live-action role play.After moving to Loudoun, Mark launched his dream career as a project manager in the cybersecurity field. He also got involved in his community where he was a volunteer atLovettsville Fire and Rescue Company and a past master of Lovettsvilles Masonic lodge.

Mark was diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer in 2017 and went through successful treatment and remission. But the cancer returned in August of last year, and a new chemotherapy protocol failed early this year. Mark began a clinical trial at NIH in March, and the Shapiros were hopeful: he was young and had beat cancer before. But Mark began having alarming symptoms including fatigue and shortness of breath. On April 11, Casey took Mark to a local urgent care center. With COVID protocols in full swing, she wasnt initially allowed to go with her husband into the exam room. When medical staff called her back, a red flag immediately went up.

Every time they make an exception in this climate, something really big is going onand its probably ugly, Casey said with characteristic frankness.

After urgent care staff recommended heading to the emergency room in Lansdowne, Mark was admitted to Inova Loudoun Hospital, and Casey was separated from her husband for the first week of his care. On April 18, she got a call from Marks local oncologist suggesting she make arrangements to visit him. Results from a new scan were in, and they werent good.

The cancer had exploded everywhere, Casey said. Once Marks status had changed and things got super dire, that appeared to be the flipping point [on visitation].

During her early visits, Mark was lucid and able to interact, Casey said, and at one point asked for his laptop so he could continue working at the job he loved. For Casey, one of the most heartbreaking aspects of COVID restrictions was that Marks parents in St. Louis couldnt make the trip to Virginia.

They were scared, but it broke their heartsbecause they couldnt physically be there. They couldnt touch him or hold him. It changed everything. They lost the ability to tell him goodbye the way they would have.

When Mark died May 5, Casey was by his side. Then the overwhelming task of planning a series of remembrances began. Mark was Jewish and valued his religious heritage, Casey said, but wasnt especially religious. He had chosen cremation, which took the urgency of a traditional Jewish burial off the table, but there were still choices and arrangements to be made under challenging circumstances.

Casey, who was raised Methodist, worked to respect the elements of her husbands faith that were important to him, adapting Jewish traditions in line with Marks wishes and the current COVID-influenced reality. Her current plan is for a small religious ceremony and the placement of Marks ashes in a new glass-front columbarium under construction in Falls Church next spring. She is also planning a larger celebration of life for next year.

Last week, Casey remembered Mark with nearly 100 friends and family at a Zoom shiva, a COVID-inspired twist on the traditional Jewish mourning observance.

That is one of the Jewish traditions that I wanted to give Mark, she said. Organized with help from friends and a congregation in Reston, the shiva included both a more formal component with traditional prayers and a less formal chat where friends and family shared stories.

I wanted his family to be able to see all of the lives that he had touched. When they logged on and they saw this chatIm pretty sure we had close to 100 peoplethey got to hear from people from all walks of life, Casey said. There were Masons and coworkers and high school and college friends. There were stunt people, there were cybersecurity people, there were people who knew him online and had never met him. That was really nice to be able to give them.

The virtual shiva was a silver lining of sorts in a very painful time, and Casey thinks the online memorial may be one element that ends up sticking in a post-COVID world.

It really empowered people from all over the world to come weigh in. Some people that showed up would never have been able to make it.

For Casey, the loss of a young spouse has also encouraged her to emphasize the importance of end of life planning and advance directives for everyone, especially in the age of COVID.

The minute youre a legal adult, start thinking about these things and writing them down, she said. Do not put this conversation off.

For Loudouns hospice care providers, COVID is creating challenges in a profession that relies heavily on in-person contact.

LarissaBlechman, a grief and loss counselor and chaplain for Blue Ridge Hospice, says pandemic protocols are dramatically changing how she and her colleagues do their jobs.While the hospices physicians, nurses and certified nursing assistants still have in-person contact with patients,Blechman and other team members aremeeting clients virtually, and its just not the same.

Talking with people and keeping them company, often talking about the meaning in their life, the decisions they want to make at the end of their life, what they want their life legacy to bethats a lot harder over the phone for a variety of reasons, Blechman said. Were having to learn a whole different way to try to reach out to people. Its wonderful. We can do a lot of things [virtually], but its also limited. We feel the separation from the families and the patients that we often grow to love and care for very much.

COVID protocols are also creating extra stress and grief for families of loved ones with terminal illness, both in nursing home settings and in hospice care at home.

With no-visitation policies in nursing homes, Blechmans clients are visiting loved ones at the end of their lives through a pane of glass and communicating via white board.

Theyre describing their face pressed up against a window, she said.

For families caring for dying loved ones at home, theres a different set of concerns.

The families are very isolated and they cant have their family members come in. They dont get a break because nobody can come in and help with care. The stress level in the families is really rising, Blechman said.

As a grief counselor, Blechman is seeing the loss of rituals and mourning in community take a toll, but shes also witnessing moments of strength and grace.

Families want to be with each other and theyre not able to. It doesnt meet the needs the way it would to be together, she said People are frustrated. Despite all of the difficulties, the thing that we keep talking about is that people are resilient. Were all trying to reach out to each other and connect with each other, and were doing it the best ways that we know how. People are amazing. Life is so fragile but its also so strong.

Continued here:

Loss and Livestreams: End-of-Life in the Age of COVID - Loudoun Now

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Posted By admin on May 22, 2020

On Monday, May 23, 1960, Sgt. Hannah Yacobsohn concluded her workday in the forensic services department at National Police Headquarters, located in Tel Aviv at the time. On the way to the bus that would take her home to Holon she noticed a special edition of a newspaper on sale: Adolf Eichmann was in Israel.

The next day she was summoned to the office of Commander Ephraim Hofstetter, who informed her that the two of them were to go immediately to Haifa, to meet with the head of the Israel Polices northern district, Maj. Gen. Avraham Selinger. Arriving at his office, they saw Selingers desk piled high with books. We need to learn these books by heart, he told the two officers. Yakobson was stunned.

Ultimately, the books were but a small part of the masses of information the staff of Bureau 06 the special police unit established for the investigation and interrogation of Adolf Eichmann would collect and verify, translate and catalog in the following nine months. As such, they constituted the foundation for the conviction of a Nazi criminal in a trial that would become a formative event in Israels history.

The role of the Israel Police in this event began shortly after Eichmanns capture in Argentina by members of Israels security services, and the trial itself, which opened in Jerusalem on April 11, 1961. In contrast to the dramatic kidnapping and the riveting public hearings, led by the prosecution under Attorney General Gideon Hausner, the police operated far from the public eye, its protagonists operating behind the scenes of the tumultuous episode.

Until May 23, there had been nothing exceptional in police activity in 1960. Indeed, according to the annual report of the Israel Police, it had been a routine working year in terms of implementation of [our] principal missions: safeguarding life and property, and public and personal security; uncovering criminals and bringing them to justice.

It was two years into the tenure of the countrys second police commissioner, Yosef Nahmias, and the force sought to reduce its rapid personnel turnover and cultivate an image as a reliable organization.

At the time the Israel Police had five departments, but the daunting scale of the Eichmann investigation necessitated the creation of a separate unit. It was dubbed Bureau 06 of NPH (National Police Headquarters).

In addition to conducting the investigation, the new unit also operated the detention facility where Eichmann was held the Jalami (Kishon) Prison in northern of Israel, which was temporarily renamed Iyar Base (for the Hebrew month) and was afterward responsible for securing the building where the trial was held in Jerusalem.

Specifically, Bureau 06s mission was to investigate the crimes of Adolf Eichmann in the period of Nazi rule; to collect evidence and to prepare it in a file for the general prosecution for the purpose of trying Eichmann. The task focused on perusal of documents.

In this trial, as in the Nuremberg trial, documentation is of supreme importance, Justice Minister Pinchas Rosen stated, when informing Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion that the preparation of the case had been entrusted to Selinger and Hofstetter, two experienced and excellent people.

The German-born Avraham Selinger had served in the Israel Police since its founding in 1948 and knew the Jalami facility from his service in the British Mandate police force. In 1939, he had lost a leg when he stepped on a land mine. Ephraim Hofstetter (later Elrom), born in Poland, had also been a member of the Mandatory police and joined the Israel Police upon its establishment; he was now head of the investigations division of the Tel Aviv district.

The two veteran officers, who were dubbed Rami and Hof, respectively, complemented each other: The commander was a tough solo act, his deputy a sociable fellow who liked to share his experiences with his colleagues.

The composition of the bureau reflected the personnel of the police force at the time: Its senior figures were of European origin and were longtime residents of the country. The most senior woman on the team was the German-born Yacobsohn, who translated documents. Given the policy of the Israel Police in its early years regarding the service of women, the possibility of having a female serving as an investigator in Bureau 06 was not even considered.

Two investigators were Holocaust survivors: Superintendent Menachem Zafir and Chief Inspector Michael Goldman-Gilad, who also served as the assistant to Hausner. Goldman-Gilads personal story and his presence in the courtroom inspired the 1974 Holocaust documentary film The 81st Blow, by Haim Gouri, Jacques Ehrlich and David Bergman.

Bureau 06 had three sections and an administrative division. Section 1, under Superintendent Naftali Bar-Shalom, was in charge of collecting documents and evidence. Its staff amassed the materials, compiled summations and described the accused and the crimes attributed to Eichmann, the role of the Jewish Affairs department of the Gestapo that he headed, deportations, the murder of children, extermination by gas, etc.

Section 2, which was responsible for interrogating Eichmann, was headed by German-born Chief Superintendent Avner Less, who came from the polices economic crimes division. Eichmann was questioned for a total of 275 hours, all of which was recorded and transcribed by Sonya Auster, a civilian who was recruited to Bureau 06. The transcripts were given to Eichmann, who made corrections by listening to the tape recordings and comparing them to the typed version. He signed every copy, thereby rendering it a formal statement. There were 3,564 pages, arranged in six volumes.

Section 3, under Zafir, was the bureaus archive.

Although Bureau 06 personnel were experienced officers, this was far from being a typical criminal investigation.

The crime arena was not under our control and we did not have access to all its areas, Selinger explained, in a summary of the investigation he would later write up. The evidence was blurred not only because of the time that had passed 15 years and more but because the Nazis, and in particular the annihilation machine, deliberately blurred everything before their final defeat. The summations of the interrogations and the statements were a sort of combination of historical research and an investigation of criminal actions, in a file submitted to the prosecution.

We deliberated over giving a clear answer to ourselves to the question: What is a historical trial? Selinger wrote. However, it was clear that, whatever the answer, the trial and of course the investigation preceding it, must be conducted solely within the framework of the law.

Burning cities

The first task was to study the relevant period: the Nazis ideology, their rise to power, the persecution of the Jews, Germanys military conquests, the history of the Holocaust, the methods of mass murder. Although the police had been dealing with complaints since the enactment in Israel of the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Punishment Law in 1950, they did not possess a significant body of knowledge on those subjects, and only a small team handled such matters. The body of sources that was eventually compiled by Bureau 06, which encompasses research, books, testimonies and memoirs, shows that the 1950s had been an extremely fruitful period in terms of documenting and researching the Holocaust in Israel. In addition, the work entailed locating and authenticating documents, translating them into Hebrew, establishing an archive and producing copies for use by various individuals involved in the trial.

In the absence of electronic or digital means, and in view of the need for secrecy, it was crucial to maintain good order and organization. Each document came with a classification of its relevance for the accuseds conviction and recommendation for its disposition. Even years later, Corp. Ruth Shai, who was in charge of filing the documents in the archive, remembered the intense concern indeed, the anxiety she and her colleagues felt regarding the safety of each document each time it was out of their hands and until it was returned to its place. They were the most important items in the facility housed in the Iyar Base, and on no account were they to be left unattended.

Smoking was prohibited in the rooms where the documents were stored, and in the event of fire the instruction was to save the archival material before all else. Half an hour before the end of the workday, the maintenance people removed the papers that had been thrown into the garbage during the day and burned them in the presence of a sergeant.

In practice, the archive was not just indexed in a card catalog but, as Selinger noted, in the accumulated knowledge in the brains of the classifiers. Each staffer in Section 1 examined more than 30,000 pages in preliminary classification, and all told some 400,000 documents were perused. About 40,000 pages were examined in depth, and approximately 1,200 documents, each five pages long on average, were analyzed and submitted to the deputy commander of Bureau 06.

Besides this, materials had to be prepared for Avner Less, who interrogated Eichmann, information had to be retrieved from outside institutions, ongoing work was done in the archives and testimony had to be taken from survivors. It appears that the effort the bureaus personnel carried out was perhaps superhuman, Bar-Shalom wrote.

The mountains of documents did not escape the notice of the poet and intellectual Haim Gouri, who covered the trial for the daily newspaper Lamerhav. The documents continued to pile up. There are nearly 600 so far.... The documents do not remain silent. If you listen, you can hear them shouting hoarsely, wrote Gouri, who later published the reportage in a book, Facing the Glass Booth: The Jerusalem Trial of Adolf Eichmann. This is a trial of documents. The documents have a strange, incomprehensible power. Every one of them speaks with 10,000 voices. Who can keep track of all these documents?

Unlike the victims of the Holocaust, whom Hausner in his opening speech said were unable to stand and point their finger of accusation, the documents seemed to rise up: Before your eyes, the papers became burning cities, people cast on heaps with limbs dangling, trains rushing eastward, children ascending to heaven, Gouri wrote.

In May 1961, about a month after the start of the trial, he predicted that about 3,000 documents would eventually pile up on the prosecutions table. In practice, there were many more.

What about the client?

The headquarters of Bureau 06 itself resembled a prison. Iyar Base was encircled by a barbed-wire fence and illuminated by searchlights at night. The rooms were small, cramped and dingy. Initially, two investigators had to share a table. There were few phone extensions and it was difficult to get a line out; there was no place to take a break. Equipment, including microfiche machines, was routinely lacking. The isolation allowed the team to concentrate on their jobs, and the fact that Eichmann was being interrogated nearby facilitated the work but the price was severance from home: Most of the staff lived in the countrys center but spent the work week in apartments or rented rooms in Haifa.

In August 1960, Attorney General Hausner urged that Bureau 06 be relocated to Jerusalem, but the police objected. I dont see how we can move to Jerusalem without our client as Eichmanns guards called him as this would greatly hamper the investigation, Hofstetter explained.

One problem that arose because of the distance was to find a judge who would go to the facility in the north in order to extend Eichmanns remand in person. Someone suggested asking Judge Miriam Verlinsky, from Haifa Magistrates Court, to carry out the task, but this was vetoed out of a concern of offending Eichmanns sensibilities, no less. Bringing a military man before a woman is liable to be taken as a deliberate humiliation, the units deputy commander noted.

Throughout, Bureau 06 suffered from understaffing. From time to time, suitable candidates for additional positions were found, but there was no one to replace them in their units in the police. A few of those who were coopted did not last. As the trial drew nearer, no new personnel were taken on, as there was no time to train them. At its peak, Bureau 06 had a staff of 56: officers, inspectors, sergeants and also a few civilians, who were hired mainly for translation work. The workday began at 7:30 A.M. and ended officially at 6 P.M., but in practice went on into the night. The staff would then meet to read the accuseds statement from that day an activity which they dubbed, undoubtedly with a smile, reading chapters from Psalms.

Severe stress and tension were the lot of everyone on the team. Selinger once shrugged off a journalists question about whether he suffered from nightmares, but in internal police publications he mentioned that there was intense mental pressure throughout the bureau. For her part, Ruth Shai stated, When I read the documents, the numbers in bold stood out, and I felt, gradually, that I was being drawn in more and more and I felt drained.

For Hannah Yacobsohn, the translation work brought to mind her grandmother, Susette Heymann, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. As with other members of the bureau, German was Yacobsohns mother tongue she had moved to Palestine from Berlin with her family as a child. However, she found no actual mention of her grandmother in the many documents she perused, some of them from the death camp itself.

In the absence of psychological support from the police, Bureau 06 personnel tried to cope with the stress on their own. On trips to Tel Aviv and back on Tuesdays for a brief break at home and at midday Fridays, on the way home for the weekend, they laughed and joked. Sometimes they stopped in a field along the way to pick flowers and breathe fresh air.

In the evenings it was natural for us to strive to change the atmosphere of Nazis and Holocaust that we absorbed during the whole day, Menachem Zafir wrote. The only opportunity, then, was to visit a restaurant, have a hot meal or indulge in a sociable conversation over a cup of coffee. Of course, this involved expenses, but although a large budget had been allocated for this project, a small budget could not be found for our outlays.

Bureau 06 was disbanded about three weeks before the start of the trial. In practice, some of the staff were then assigned to additional tasks on behalf of the prosecution, headquartered in Beit Haam, the Jerusalem auditorium that was converted into a courtroom for the Eichmann trial.

On Sunday, March 19, 1961, 63 boxes containing the results of the efforts of Bureau 06 were loaded onto three trucks, bound for Jerusalem. When Zafir, who was responsible for the archive, arrived at Beit Haam, he discovered that only half the space he had been allotted was available. The documents were left outside, though it was raining. Inside, shelves collapsed under the weight of the files. Workers were everywhere, erecting platforms for television cameras and crews, and installing air conditioning. Zafir asked the workers to leave, and his people shored up the shelves by themselves. But work did not proceed as planned: There were not enough people, there was no mimeograph machine. I dont have a translator, I dont have a stenographer, and worst of all, I have no one to talk to. Im like a stepson here, the superintendent wrote. Despite all that, he carried out his mission.

Remembering and forgetting

Selinger retired in 1963, after serving for two more years as commander of the polices northern district; he died in 1972. Hofstetter became commander of the forces senior officers school and then head of economic investigations, before being loaned to the Foreign Ministry and serving as consul general in Turkey. On May 17, 1971, in Istanbul, he was abducted by Turkish terrorists, who murdered him five days later. Zafir served as head of the registration and automation unit of the police, which later became the computer unit. Goldman-Gilad served in the criminal section of the Police Investigations Department and went on to hold various positions at the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization. Yakobson returned to national headquarters as assistant to the Interpol liaison officer and afterward served as the liaison officer. She retired in 1973.

Avner Less left the police force in 1968 and also left Israel. He became a German citizen in 1983. That year he wrote an introduction to a book of transcripts from Eichmanns interrogation, originally published in Germany (English version: Eichmann Interrogated), in which he provided an unusually candid account of his relations with the accused. I forgive, I do not forget, he said. Less died in 1987.

After the death of the former chief superintendent, writer Yoram Kaniuk noted in an article in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, What happened to Less in the nine months he spent with Eichmann was that he himself turned into a bureaucrat. Kaniuk assailed Less for having become the great forgiver who had met the demon and annihilated him in order to give Germans dark conscience a seal of legitimacy [kashrut].

Other harsh words were written by Yosef Ben-Porat the then-assistant to the police commissioner who later became director general of the Police Ministry in his book on the force, where he described Less as a mirror image of Selinger and Hofstetter, who had been forgotten. There is someone who made a good living and found popularity from his role in Bureau 06 in the cities of Germany, he wrote, adding that Less left Israel and in his homeland gained fame from his books about his part in bringing to justice the human monster Adolf Eichmann.

Selinger made an effort to document the work of Bureau 06 in real time. Along with a summation for an internal police bulletin and an annual report, a souvenir album was produced by the police. On the morning of June 1, 1962, the day on which the sentence in the trial execution by hanging was carried out, Inspector Yehuda Reshef, head of a branch in Section 1 of the bureau, asked his colleagues to write accounts of their experiences in the bureau. Their submissions trickled in. One writer apologized for his late response, explaining, I tried to forget as much as possible what was involved in the Holocaust. Reshef empathized, but asked him to add more for example, regarding the arguments among the investigators concerning Hungary, and the Rudolf Kasztner episode. Arguments are important in order to understand the frames of mind and the outlooks of the investigators, he noted, and concluded, Sorry for continuing to pester you, but you will certainly understand.

Another investigator rejected the idea of the documentation initiative, commenting in a letter to Selinger that the whole endeavor wasnt appropriate for the police. Are we, too, getting caught up in publicity? he asked, urging him to abandon the project. Please, drop it. It is of no value, neither historical nor practical.

From the perspective of time, there is no doubt concerning the historical value of the personal accounts, though they were never published and certainly the value of all the documents accumulated by Bureau 06, in the Israel Police archives. But during the Eichmann trial and in the years that followed, the police rarely played up its role in its books about the forces heritage and history. The units commanders died, and unlike in the security services and the prosecution, there was no one to write a book along the lines of The House on Garibaldi Street, by Isser Harel, who headed both the Shin Bet and the Mossad and was the architect of Eichmanns abduction or Justice in Jerusalem, by prosecutor Hausner.

Indeed, some historical Israel Police books omitted the Eichmann trial altogether. The absence of documentation was grating. Yosef Ben-Porat devoted a chapter in his book A Barrier to Chaos: Decisive Years in the History of the Israel Police (Hebrew), to the investigation of the infamous Nazi war criminal, although he himself had not been involved in it.

Id had no intention at all of writing about the Eichmann investigation, he wrote in the book. I maintained that the subject had already been written about and rehashed in Israel and elsewhere, and there was nothing to add. I yielded only when I was told: Two friends and police officers, Rami Selinger and Ephraim Hofstetter, who headed the great investigative effort and the preparation of material for the prosecution, are no longer among the living. Dont they deserve to have their work written about?

Ben-Porat mentioned that Bureau 06 had been ignored in various published materials relating to Israels security, in which you will find nothing about the tremendous operation of the Israel Police in preparing the trial one of the best known ever in the world. Not one word about the Bureau 06 investigators. I was flooded by feelings of humiliation and fury.

The work of the bureau laid the legal foundation for Eichmanns conviction, but it was the live testimonies in the courtroom that constituted the most powerful aspect of the trial, and were seared into the publics consciousness. In order to shock people, it seemed, documents were not enough; flesh and blood were needed.

In an article published at the conclusion of the trial, Haim Gouri wrote, But we knew all this, didnt we? Yes, we did. We knew it before the Eichmann trial. Scholars and historians and archivists had labored endlessly, in Israel and elsewhere, to provide us with the documentation, which many shied away from reading But when this material reached the prosecution and was entered into the indictment, when these documents broke the silence of the archives, they seemed to be speaking for the first time, and the knowledge they imparted was a different knowledge.

It was Bureau 06, of course, that provided the documents cited in the courtroom. Its investigators carried them, literally, to the prosecution table. But they were like silent partners whose essential work was nondescript and dry. In contrast to the prosecutors, the police did not aspire to jolt the public their aim was to prove the accuseds guilt in a court of law; that was the essence of their professional work. And in contrast to the prosecution, the police did not blaze a trail of glory and did not take an active part in the production of the trial as an event with theatrical potential, as Hannah Arendt discerned. That was yet one more reason that the police remained in the shadows during this formative historical event.

Dr. Sharon Gevas study of Bureau 06 is to be published in Law, Society & Culture, the journal of Tel Aviv Universitys Faculty of Law. Her book Women in the State of Israel: The Early Years (Hebrew), was published by the Magnes Press.

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The Israeli police unit that built the case against Adolf Eichmann, and was forgotten - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on May 22, 2020

At the time this article was written, it wasnt yet clear whether the new government would be sworn in, or whether the crisis within Netanyahus right-religious bloc would finally lead to the Knesset dissolving on Thursday, leading to a fourth election. Nobody really knows whether Netanyahus preference at this juncture is to resolve the crisis and get Israels 35th government sworn in, or new elections, which opinion polls predict would probably end with a clear victory for the right-religious bloc, not least of all because the center-left bloc has broken up into pieces. One thing is clear: Forming a solid unity government, which will seriously contend with Israels many current economic, social and political problems, while temporarily setting aside all issues on which there are serious ideological differences, is not on the list of Netanyahus priorities. His choices all appear to be a function of his attempt to wriggle out of his legal predicament, and his reported preoccupation with leaving a significant heritage behind after he finally steps down due to circumstances or his own choice.What I find most bewildering is the conduct of the Likuds more senior MKs and ministers; those who emerged in high places in the most recent Likud primaries (February 6, 2019), and those promoted by Netanyahu himself to serve as loyal henchmen in the three successive transition governments since April 2019. If the Likud were in a position to form a government without any partners, there would certainly be a sufficient number of jobs to go around for all of this crowd, most of whom are unimpressive and even mediocre, with only a few of its members showing any real charisma or leadership qualities.Even though Netanyahu himself keeps insisting that a majority supports him, both he and his colleagues understand that it is a Jewish majority that he commands, and that such a majority does not suffice to form a government in Israel. In the current situation in which only half of the original Blue and White Party opted for an emergency unity government, and this half, together with two of the three surviving Labor MKs and the two MKs who formed the Derech Eretz parliamentary group insisted on parity in the new coalition despite the numerical disparity between the two sides it was clear that in order to keep his own right-religious bloc more or less intact, Netanyahu would have only crumbs to offer most of the seniors in his own party. Add to this Netanyahus method of cutting the political wings of any potential contenders to the Likud leadership, and you emerge with a situation in which many of the Likud MKs with any visible talent and leadership potential are either shipped off to embassies abroad, or left in the Knesset to rot as backbenchers, unless, of course, they are willing to act as loyal servants to Netanyahu.An outsider looking at this concoction would start looking for signs of revolt: the sort of revolt that the center-left has been expecting to break out since the beginning of 2019, and even more so after the three indictments against Netanyahu were served at the end of January 2020. But besides some murmurs of dissatisfaction there are no indications of a burgeoning revolt. Not yet.NO LESS bewildering is what is happening within the National-Religious camp. Before the September 2019 and March 2020 elections, Netanyahu was willing to pay an exorbitant price to get the National-Religious camp to run in the elections united, including the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit led by Itamar Ben Gvir. Netanyahu finally failed to create the union, and in the last round Yamina actually lost one seat (going down from seven to six Knesset seats).Nevertheless, in the transition government formed after the March elections, Yamina was given three important ministries: defense, education and agriculture, so that all three leaders of the three parties that made up Yamina Naftali Bennett, Rafi Peretz and Bezalel Smotrich commanded significant ministerial posts. That apparently caused them to lose all sense of proportion, and when Netanyahu offered them only two ministerial posts in his new government, one major and one minor, they rejected the offer out of hand. Finally Peretz, the head of Bayit Yehudi and its only MK in the 23rd Knesset, who had reneged on Itamar Ben Gvir, reneged on Yamina, and agreed to join the new government as minister of Jerusalem, Heritage and National Projects, one of around a dozen ministries that in normal times would constitute at most departments in real ministries. The remaining members of Yamina have decided, with a huff and a puff, to stay in the opposition in the company of Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beytenu, the United Arab List and what remains of Labor and Meretz. Yamina refuses to accept the fact that Netanyahu was unable to form a government without Blue and White, and that the principle of parity was a condition Blue and White was not willing to give up. The fact that Netanyahu is fed up with Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, whom he never really favored after they left his service back in March 2008 (before Netanyahus return to the premiership), allegedly because of a row with Netanyahus wife, Sara, hasnt enhanced their negotiating status.There are those who predict that Yamina will join the government later on, if the government will survive. The question is whether Yamina, as the successor of the National-Religious Party, has any chance of recovery in a situation of more chiefs than Indians, and total lack of ideological flexibility in choosing what sort of government to join. There are those who believe that Yamina should have opted to go with Blue and White and Avigdor Liberman. But they were apparently unwilling to seriously consider such an option.These days, the only members in the right-religious bloc who appear to be content with their lot are the ultra-Orthodox religious parties, which have not increased the number of their ministerial posts. However, Shas gained the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee (which in the past was usually given to one of the opposition parties), thus giving the haredim control of the two economic committees in the Knesset.Meanwhile, Yaacov Litzman from United Torah Judaism is to switch, at his own request, from the Health Ministry to the Housing Ministry. This is despite his far-from-satisfactory performance as health minister during the peak of the coronavirus crisis, and the prospect of two indictments on serious charges being submitted against him. Political commentators disagree as to whether the right-religious bloc is currently in the process of disintegration, with 12 MKs from the secular and religious Right (Yisrael Beytenu and Yamina) actually sitting in the opposition, or whether the crisis is only temporary. The center-left bloc is certainly in far worse straits at the moment.But at least we have a new government (or were supposed to have one). We are also in the midst of a heat wave, and in the midst of an uncontrolled return to normalcy from a two-month shutdown. What we really need at the moment are lower climatic and political temperatures, and greater stability.

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Is the right-religious bloc starting to disintegrate? - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on May 21, 2020

Chris McKenna, Times Herald-Record Published 2:39 p.m. ET May 19, 2020

CHESTER - Town attorneys filed court papers on Monday indicating they will ask a federal judge to recuse himself from a discrimination case brought against Chester and Orange County by the developers of the 431-home Greens at Chester development.

The attorneys told District Court Judge Philip Halpern in a letter that they recently learned that he served as a court-appointed mediator in a separate lawsuit against the town that makes similar claims of trying to block new housing for Hasidic families. They asked for a court conference before filing a motion for Halpern to recuse himself or be disqualified.

We believe we have both a professional and ethical duty to raise this issue, wrote Mary Marzolla of Feerick Nugent MacCartney, the South Nyack firm representing Chester, the Town Board and three current and former town officials.

Marzolla said that Halpern was given confidential information in his role as mediator, and that her firm had gotten a written opinion that day from an ethics expert that supported a case for recusal.

Greens at Chester, phase one, taken Aug. 15, 2019.(Photo: Times Herald-Record file photo)

The 2019 Greens at Chester lawsuit accuses town and Orange County officials of trying to impede construction of an approved housing project because of local opposition to an expected influx of Hasidic families. The developers, who have built infrastructure for the project but were twice denied permits to start building houses, are seeking $100 million in damages and permission to proceed with the work.

State Attorney General Letitia James office filed a court complaint in support of the developers last week, concurring with their civil rights claims and seeking a broader court order to prevent further discrimination. James asked that the town be forbidden to enforce any new laws meant to discriminate based on religion and familial status, and that it be monitored by the court and others to ensure compliance.

Halpern had issued an order on May 8 that allowed James to intervene in the case, as she had asked to do in December. He also rejected a motion to dismiss the lawsuit and delayed ruling on whether the defendants could be sued in their individual capacities. The towns attorneys have appealed that second decision.

Halpern had taken over the case from another judge on March 17, his second day on the bench. Halpern, a former managing partner of a White Plains law firm, was appointed to the district court by President Donald Trump in 2018 and confirmed by the Senate in February of this year.

Halpern was appointed mediator in 2018 for a case brought by the late Steve Sherman, who tried in vain for years to get approval for the 397-home Chester Golf Club project and said the town repeatedly blocked him. That long-running lawsuit, taken over by Shermans widow after his death in 2013, claims the town resisted the project out of fears it would become a Hasidic community.

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Chester seeks recusal of judge in discrimination case against Hasidic housing - Lohud

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Posted By admin on May 21, 2020

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Dr. Vladimir Zelenko

Dr. Vladimir Zev Zelenko, the Hasidic doctor who came to national prominence for treating presumptive Covid-19 patients with an unproven drug regimen, announced that he is leaving the area where he treated mostly Hasidic clients, in a clinic in Monroe, N.Y., near the Hasidic enclave of Kiryas Joel.

Its with a broken heart that I have to say this, but I have decided to leave Monroe after almost two decades of working as a doctor, taking care of the community, most recently with this terrible magefah, he said, using the Hebrew word for plague, in a video addressed to his patients and Kiryas Joel residents, shared in Orthodox circles on WhatsApp.

Things have happened, and after speaking to my family and my mashpiim religious advisers and thinking about what I want for the future, Ive decided that its time for me to move on, Zelenko continued.

The announcement comes several days after President Donald Trump announced Monday that he was taking hydroxychloroquine, the drug that Zelenko gained fame for prescribing to his coronavirus patients in the hopes that it would prevent them from going to the hospital. In his comments, Trump connected his decision to start taking the drug to a New York doctor a designation Zelenko claimed for himself in a text message to this reporter sent Monday evening.

It also comes after Zelenko released a video over the weekend, addressed to the Kiryas Joel residents, in which he accused town leaders of orchestrating multiple investigations against him. Zelenko accused three men Gedalye Szegedin, the town administrator; Mayer Hirsch, a developer and Joel Mittelman, the chief executive of the main health care provider in Kiryas Joel, where Zelenko used to work of being responsible for the deaths of 14 Jews who died of Covid-19. The three did not act quickly enough in closing the towns synagogues and schools at the beginning of the pandemic, he said.

In an interview with the Forward Tuesday, Szegedin denied all the accusations, and said that he, Mittelman and Hirsch were considering legal proceedings for libel against Zelenko.

Zekenko declined to comment further on his video.

In the Wednesday video, Zelenko said that he wanted to dispel rumors that his decision to leave had anything to do with a disagreement with his current employer, CareStier Health, where he is the medical director.

In signing off, Zelenko wished Kiryas Joel residents long life, good health, financial success, and that they should all live to see the return of the Messiah a customary message among some members of the Chabad Hasidic community, of which Zelenko is a part.

Good luck, he said in Yiddish.

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at feldman@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

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Doctor who urged Trump to take untested drug leaving his Orthodox patients amid feud - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on May 21, 2020

President Donald Trump said Monday that he is taking hydroxychloroquine, the controversial antimalarial drug whose use to combat COVID-19 has been touted heavily by a Hasidic doctor in upstate New York.

The doctor, Vladimir Zelenko, who has expressed support for Trump on social media, sent a letter to the White House in March about his initial results in using the drug to treat presumptive Covid cases on an outpatient basis. Speaking to reporters after a meeting with restaurant executives at the White House Monday, the president said that he had begun taking the drug after receiving a letter from a New York doctor who was treating his patients with it, though he did not name the doctor.

He didnt want anything, Trump said of the doctor. He just said, Sir, I got hundreds of patients and I give them hydroxychloroquine, I give them the Z-pak, which is azithromycin, and I give them zinc. And out of the hundreds of patients, many hundreds of patients, I havent lost one. He said, Please keep pressing that, sir.

Trump said he is taking hydroxychloroquine and a zinc supplement, though not the antibiotic azithromycin.

In a phone conversation immediately following Trumps nationally televised comments, Zelenko declined to say whether he had previously known that Trump was taking the drug. He said he had never spoken directly with the president, nor been consulted by anyone in the White House in determining Trumps treatment.

In March, Zelenko sent a letter with self-reported results from his primary care practice outside the Hasidic enclave of Kiryas Joel, N.Y. which showed no deaths and only a few hospitalizations out of hundreds of people treated with the hydroxychloroquine regimen. Mark Meadows, Trumps chief of staff, then communicated with Zelenko about the results, which had not been peer-reviewed.

Zelenko said in the interview on Monday that over the past month he has sent text messages to Meadows about emerging research on hydroxychloroquine, and discussed hydroxychloroquine with Rudy Giuliani, Trumps personal lawyer, and Sen. Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin. Asked whether he knew whether any of these people had suggested Trump take the drug, Zelenko declined to comment.

Researchers say hydroxychloroquine is, overall, a safe drug. It has been in use for decades as an antimalarial and as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, and side affects are rare. Doctors have been prescribing the drug in critical-care patients with COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, and some health-care workers and their families have also been taking it prophylactically to stave off the virus.

Top public-health officials, however, have sounded caution about using the drug at scale to treat COVID-19, since there remains no evidence from clinically-controlled studies attesting to its efficacy or safety for that use. In April the Food and Drug Administration cautioned against the use of the drug for treating COVID-19 outside of a hospital setting or clinically controlled study, because the drug can cause abnormal heart rhythms, and noted that those risks are heightened when prescribed with azithromycin, which can have a similar side affect. There have also been concerns that over-prescription for untested treatment of COVID-19 could cause shortages of the drug for rheumatoid arthritis patients who rely on it.

In a tweet earlier this month, Dr. David Boulware, who is leading a clinically controlled trial of hydroxychloroquine at the University of Minnesota, said that his team is currently preparing its first round of results and that the drug has been safe overall for outpatient and prophylactic use.

Zelenko is currently preparing to release what he said will be a peer-reviewed analysis of more than 1,000 of his patients to whom he prescribed his hydroxychloroquine regiment.

Trump said on Monday that he suggested to his doctor at the White House that he be given the drug, and was then prescribed it. He said he began taking the drug about one and a half weeks ago. In a statement released Monday evening, the White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, said that after discussion with Trump the two concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.

All I can tell you is so far I seem to be O.K., Trump said.

Trump said he was not taking the drug because he had been exposed to someone with Covid-19, but, like some health-care workers, doing so prophylactically.

I want the people of this nation to feel good, Trump said. I dont want them to be sick. And theres a very good chance that this has an impact.

Zelenko said that he himself takes the drug, and that if Trump were his patient, he would have prescribed it to him, because of risk factors including the presidents age 73 and the high number of people he has to interact with.

Trump is a human being like everyone else, and I treat everyone equally, Zelenko said. I would have definitely recommended that someone like President Trump take it prophylactically.

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at feldman@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman

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Posted By admin on May 21, 2020

CHESTER - Town attorneys filed court papers on Monday indicating they will ask a federal judge to recuse himself from a discrimination case brought against Chester and Orange County by the developers of the 431-home Greens at Chester development.

The attorneys told District Court Judge Philip Halpern in a letter that they recently learned that he served as a court-appointed mediator in a separate lawsuit against the town that makes similar claims of trying to block new housing for Hasidic families. They asked for a court conference before filing a motion for Halpern to recuse himself or be disqualified.

We believe we have both a professional and ethical duty to raise this issue, wrote Mary Marzolla of Feerick Nugent MacCartney, the South Nyack firm representing Chester, the Town Board and three current and former town officials.

Marzolla said that Halpern was given confidential information in his role as mediator, and that her firm had gotten a written opinion that day from an ethics expert that supported a case for recusal.

The 2019 Greens at Chester lawsuit accuses town and Orange County officials of trying to impede construction of an approved housing project because of local opposition to an expected influx of Hasidic families. The developers, who have built infrastructure for the project but were twice denied permits to start building houses, are seeking $100 million in damages and permission to proceed with the work.

State Attorney General Letitia James office filed a court complaint in support of the developers last week, concurring with their civil rights claims and seeking a broader court order to prevent further discrimination. James asked that the town be forbidden to enforce any new laws meant to discriminate based on religion and familial status, and that it be monitored by the court and others to ensure compliance.

Halpern had issued an order on May 8 that allowed James to intervene in the case, as she had asked to do in December. He also rejected a motion to dismiss the lawsuit and delayed ruling on whether the defendants could be sued in their individual capacities. The towns attorneys have appealed that second decision.

Halpern had taken over the case from another judge on March 17, his second day on the bench. Halpern, a former managing partner of a White Plains law firm, was appointed to the district court by President Donald Trump in 2018 and confirmed by the Senate in February of this year.

Halpern was appointed mediator in 2018 for a case brought by the late Steve Sherman, who tried in vain for years to get approval for the 397-home Chester Golf Club project and said the town repeatedly blocked him. That long-running lawsuit, taken over by Shermans widow after his death in 2013, claims the town resisted the project out of fears it would become a Hasidic community.

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Chester seeks recusal of judge in discrimination case - Times Herald-Record

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Posted By admin on May 21, 2020

Documentary filmmakers face many obstacles, from scrounging up funding to finding venues where their work can be seen. Resourceful and resolute, they persevere. But the COVID-19 crisis has presented them with previously unknown challenges and frustrations. As festivals shut down and theaters close, where can they show films that often have in some cases taken years to complete?

Cambridge filmmakers Gerald Peary, former critic for The Boston Phoenix and curator of the Cinematheque at Boston Universitys College of Communication, and his wife, Amy Geller, former artistic director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, are co-directors of The Rabbi Goes West. They found themselves in just such a quandary. They had spent 2 years in Montana filming the story of Chaim Bruk, a Hasidic Chabad rabbi from Brooklyn who has pledged to put a mezuzah on the door of every Jewish household in his adopted state. The finished film is droll, layered, and thought-provoking; and the rabbi himself is a natural for the camera funny, candid, and charismatic. Peary and Geller had started showing the film at festivals when disaster struck.

We were doing excellently, recalls Peary. We had three screenings in Israel and in the US and Canada with positive audience reactions. We had our New England premiere [last fall] as the closing night film of the Boston Jewish Film Festival with a packed house at the Somerville Theatre. We were going full steam, with nine screenings set for March, five more for April and May. But the coronavirus ended it all.

With public screenings closed, one option that had been taken by the Brattle and Coolidge Corner theaters and other venues was to present films in an online virtual cinema. Peary and Geller approached the Independent Film Festival Boston and suggested they collaborate in presenting The Rabbi Goes West this way, along with a live Q&A.

Amy and Gerry Peary are both alumni of IFFBoston, says Nancy Campbell, the IFFBs programming director. We screened The Guys Next Door, which was co-directed by Amy and Allie Humenuk, in 2016 and For the Love of Movies, which was directed by Gerry, in 2009. Gerry also appeared as an actor in Andrew Bujalskis Computer Chess, which we screened in 2013. They are both longstanding and important figures in the local film community and are supporters of IFFBoston. It is natural that we would want to return their support and amplify their work.

Though the shutdown has had a devastating impact on the documentary film community, it has also confirmed its solidarity and mutual support. There are so many documentaries stopped in their tracks, says Peary. Everyone is scrambling, trying to figure out what to do. But I believe that documentarians as a group are a kind, socially concerned group of people. Everyone we know in the field is being generous with information and ideas about how we can all get back on our feet.

Geller hopes that the adjustments imposed by the ongoing emergency might encourage documentary filmmakers to find new outlets for their films online and ultimately the crisis might result in more opportunities for distribution and exhibition. Theres nothing like seeing a film on a big screen among movie-loving strangers, she says. Its a spiritual experience for Gerry and me. We miss that terribly. But sharing the film online could potentially reach an even wider audience. The challenge is getting through to folks who are being bombarded with online content. We dont have the marketing budget of a Netflix, HBO, or Amazon. For us, word of mouth is absolutely key.

In the midst of the chaos and uncertainty of the present time, Geller and Peary and IFFBoston are still planning for the future.

Our plan B is to postpone to a safer time when we can best celebrate and share stories and storytellers with the community and put on the festival at the Brattle, Somerville, and Coolidge Corner theaters our partner venues who have supported us for so many years, says Campbell.

Peary and Geller already have another subject lined up. Were exploring an incredible little-known story of how 16 rabbis answered an appeal in 1964 from Martin Luther King to help in desegregating St. Augustine, Fla., says Peary. The rabbis were all arrested and jailed for their peaceful, non-violent actions. We are looking for donors who would like to support this activist film project.

As for the redoubtable subject of their new film, Rabbi Chaim Bruk, the pandemic has not diminished his zeal and resourcefulness. Rabbi Chaims Chabad home community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has been hit very hard, and, in fact, Chaim has lost an uncle and friends to COVID-19, says Peary. His shul is shut down in Montana, and he abides by regulations. But nothing can ever stop Chaim from getting the word out about Judaism. He had already been livestreaming on Facebook regularly long before the pandemic. Hes a master of social media.

The Rabbi Goes West will be streaming on Vimeo on Demand, May 24-June 4. Also, IFFBoston will host a live Q&A on YouTube with the filmmakers and subjects on May 31 at 8 p.m. bit.ly/montanarabbi

Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@gmail.com.

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In Focus: The Rabbi Goes West goes online - The Boston Globe

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Posted By admin on May 21, 2020

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The world is hit hard by the corona pandemic and no industry has been left spared. It has caused great overall distress on the economy as a whole. Most of the affluent nations of theworld are suffering the pandemic too including the US, UK, Italy, Spain among the others. The nations are locked down and most of the economic activities have ceased. Although, as thePandemic is slowing down, most of the nations are eyeing reopening their country on a strategic basis.

Now an incident in Brooklyn has raised public eyebrows. A bus with dozens of children arrived at the Hasidic school in Brooklyn on early Monday. The citizens of the area were surprised bythe incident. Some children were wearing masks too. All flew in the building and crowded the classrooms. Some children were spotted playing on the rooftop during the recess. Event hasoccurred when Brooklyn is under lockdown since mid-March.Soon the police came and ended the school day abruptly. The police came on the call of a neighbor who spotted children playing on the rooftop.

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Police sent all the children their homes. This event was the latest episode of tension between Hasidic Jews and authorities. Tension has been igniting between them since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The latest data also reveals that the death rate among Hasidic Jews has been more than many other communities.

Although this is not without reason. Hasidic Jews have been found violating the government norms quite often. They have gathered in activities such as funerals, weddings, or religiouseducation. Friction between them also broke out last month when more than 2,500 people crowded the streets of Williamsburg. It even drew sharp criticism from Mayor Bill de Blasio.

One parent in the Brooklyns Borough Park neighborhood said that Parents who try to keep their children home are faced by the dilemma of letting their child be the only one whos notjoining the class, which is obviously extremely hard and can have a serious social effect for years to come,

This school episode will add fuel to the fire. This may even result in more such events turning out. Ultimately, these events will pose a danger to public health. The government needs to takemeasures so that such events dont happen again. Till then, stay tuned with us for more such latest news.

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Hasidic School which reopened violating government norms closed down in Brooklyn - Andover Leader

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Posted By admin on May 21, 2020

An anti-Semite believes all Jews are the same and they allow no distinction between a single Jew. It does not matter how many movements there are among the Jewish people any more than it matters regarding what the individuals of Judaism have accomplished. To see the Jews as one is the only thing hatred is capable of.

One of the more recent examples in the history of anti-Semitism is the belief all the Jews are of European origin and not one Jew has ever lived in what is today Israel prior to their invasion and forcing out of the Muslims who lived there. It does not matter that Jews have lived there for thousands of years, since truth does not matter to those who hate.

By believing and propagating the myth that all Jews are Ashkenazi, it gives cover to accuse all the Jews of being no different than the Nazis. As long as they tie in European to the root, it gives them cover to demonize the whole of the Jewish population. It is the cover of a leaking roof, since they make it clear they do not see Jews as just one more group of Europeans, but something far worse.

The majority of the worlds Jewish population is Ashkenazi, but the majority of the Jewish population in Israel is Sephardic. According to My Jewish Learning, While Sephardim literally means Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, it has expanded to describe Jews from Africa or Asia, or to describe those who follow Sephardic, as opposed to Ashkenazic, religious practice.

Mizrahi Jews in Israel

Among those classified as Sephardic are the Jews whose ancestry dates back over 2700 years in what is today Iraq. Until the 1940s, the Jewish population had lived in relative peace with their neighbors, but Nazi propaganda that continued long after the death of Hitler resulted in almost every Jew being forced out and far too many lost their lives in the process.

Most of the Sephardic Jews have no European ancestry. To the anti-Semites, the Sephardic Jews do not exist, since that would require that acceptance of not all Jews being the same. Hatred is blind to the truth and facts have no relevance. All that matters is spreading the lies to any who will listen.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs reports that 52% of Israeli Jews are Sephardic and another 1% are Ethiopian Jews. This means 53% of Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazi. To claim all Jews are Ashkenazi is to be an anti-Semite who will not take a little time to research their own beliefs.

https://cija.ca/resource/israel-the-basics/demographics-of-israel/#

There are a lot of flaws in the beliefs of anti-Semites and the idea that the Jews are European conquerors is no different. If the Jews have become the Nazis and want to commit similar atrocities, why is the Arab population of Israel over 20%? The answer is Israel never forced the Arab Muslims and Christians out.

Israelis who are Arab are not barred from holding positions from teachers to judges. The Jerusalem Post reported in June of 2017, For the first time at a swearing-in ceremony at the Presidents Residence of Supreme Court justices, Arabs were in the majorityThe two Arabs were born in Israel Salim Joubran in Acre and George Kar(r)a in Jaffa How many Jewish judges did the Nazis have?

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/arab-justices-make-history-496784

Some may recognize the name of George Karra from a previous trial. He was the one who sentenced former Israeli President Moshe Katsaz of rape in December of 2010. An Arab judge in Israel sentenced a Jew who had been one of the most powerful people in Israel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu did not say anything disparaging about an Arab sentencing a Jew. As the BBC reported in March of 2011, the Prime Minister appreciated the justice system in Israel. He was quoted as saying, This is a day of sadness and shame, but it is also a day of deep appreciation and pride for the Israeli justice system.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12815941

If the Jews are racist and Israel has become the new home of Nazi ideology, then why was great expense taken to carry out Operation Solomon by Israel? Where was the belief that Ethiopians were lesser humans than the Jews in Israel? Nation socialism was based on racial superiority and not a single Nazi would have done anything to limit the suffering of Ethiopians by Ethiopians.

According to the Jewish Museum of London, On the 24th of May 1991, a Guinness world record was broken for the most passengers on an aircraft ever. The record was broken during a daring Israeli operation, the evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This operation called Operation Solomon continued non-stop for 36 hours and included 34 jumbo jets of the Israeli air force, hundreds of soldiers and the evacuation of 14,200 Jews to their promised land.

Operation Solomon: from Ethiopian Jews to Ethiopian Israelis

Over the course of 36 hours, at the risk of all involved, 14,200 Jews whose families had lived in Ethiopia for over 2000 years were brought home. The Israeli government did not see them as lesser due to the difference in color, but saw them as Jews who happened to live in Ethiopia. Nazis believed everything was based on the idea of racial supremacy, which was not the case with Israel and the Jews who lived in Ethiopia.

Operation Solomon was not the first such action. In February of 2019, the Jerusalem Post released an article based on an interview with a former Mossad agent about an operation that took place in the 1970s. Mossad agents risked their lives to operate out of Sudan in order to free as many as they could. According to the article, The number of Ethiopian Jews brought to Israel as a result of the operation stands around 7,000, Shimron estimated, while there were between four to fifteen Mossad agents operating in the country.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/how-did-mossad-manage-to-act-within-sudan-to-bring-ethiopian-jews-home-580329

Why would Israel risk lives of Jews on multiple occasions to save Ethiopians? Ovadia Yosef was the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel at the time and he had ruled the Ethiopian Jews to be Jewish. He was an Iraqi born Jew who was highly respected by the Ashkenazi community. The Jews of Israel did not see them as anything other than Jews after his ruling.

The Chief Rabbinical Council, which assists the two Chief Rabbis, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, recently ruled that Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yosefs decision still stands to this day. Ethiopian Jews are Jewish according to Jewish law. There are about 140,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel today who are every bit as Jewish as the Ashkenazi and Sphardi according to Jewish law.

Many modern anti-Semites see only the Ashkenazi, which is no different than the anti-Semites of the past. They may use different words to support their hatred, but it is the same hatred. Anyone who believes all Jews are the same is an anti-Semite and should be called out for their vile hatred.

Bob Ryan is a science-fiction author and believes the key to understanding the future is to understand the past. As any writer can attest, he spends a great deal of time researching numerous subjects. He is someone who seeks to strip away emotion in search of reason, since emotion clouds judgement.Bob is an American with an MBA in Business Administration. He is a gentile who supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

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Those Who Believe All Jews are Ashkenazi are Anti-Semites - The Times of Israel

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