Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 17, 2020

The latest chapter in the story of an extraordinary Passover book

WHY, JEWISH children asked at the Passover meal last week, is this night different from all others? The question is stipulated in the Haggadah, a ritual book that recounts the Israelites escape from bondage in Egypt. One example, known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, is itself different from all others. At least 650 years old, its calfskin pages are still vibrantly illuminated with gold, lapis lazuli and malachite. It has withstood war and persecution, bearing silent witness to tumultuous events; and, as in the biblical episode it relates, the Haggadah has always found new liferecently in literature, and soon in film.

Alongside vivid illustrations of Bible scenes, among them Moses parting the Red Sea, the text contains images of contemporaneous Jews, possibly including the Haggadahs original owners. Its past, like its pages, holds many mysteries. It was made in medieval Spain, probably in Barcelona, by unknown hands in around 1350. After Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, it found its way to Italy where it was spared by the Inquisition, before reaching multicultural Bosnia (with a stint in Vienna for restoration). Over the centuries it collected wine stains and errant doodles that whisper of the people who turned its parchments.

In 1894 the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina bought the Haggadah from a Sephardic family in Sarajevo. During the second world war, when most of the citys Jews perished, German troops searched for the legendary tome. The museums director, Jozo Petrovic, a Catholic Croat, and Dervis Korkut, a Muslim curator, bravely hid the Haggadah in a mountain village, reputedly inside a mosque.

Half a century later, when Sarajevo was besieged during the Balkan wars, Serbian-backed forces shelled the National Museum. This time a Muslim librarian, Enver Imamovic, and his colleagues saved the Haggadah and stashed it in a bank vault. Bosnian police told him he was crazy to risk his life for a dusty old book, Mr Imamovic recalled to Geraldine Brooks, a journalist who covered the conflict.

Ms Brooks first heard about the Sarajevo Haggadah when, as they hunkered in a hotel bar during a bombardment, fellow war correspondents speculated about its fate. Afterwards she wrote a bestselling, fictionalised account of the Haggadahs history, People of the Book. Its the same story repeating itself in different eras in different countries, she says of the saga. Something rises up and wants to wipe out everyone who doesnt belong. Yet as the Haggadahs existence attests, there are always a few people who stand up and say no.

The leather-bound artefact was long considered too delicate to be exhibited; over more than 100 years, it was on public view for just four hours in total. But since 2018, with the aid of French funding, it has been displayed for two hours a week in a climate-controlled, theft-proof room in the cavernous museum. Now Danis Tanovic, a Bosnian director who won an Oscar in 2001 for No Mans Land, is set to make a film adaptation of Ms Brookss novel. Mr Tanovic was in Sarajevo during the siege and joined the fire brigades effort to salvage cultural treasures.

For him, the book symbolises fighting, kindness from some, and persecution; but, like the flight from Egypt that it commemorates, it also tells a story of survival. Filming has been delayed by the pandemic; even so, it is clear that there are more chapters to be written in the Haggadahs chronicle of exile, heroism and endurance.

This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "Exodus and odyssey"

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Why is this Haggadah different from all others? - The Economist

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Posted By admin on April 17, 2020

Rabbi Sholom Eidelman, one of the longest-serving Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in the worlda devoted Chassid, teacher and congregational leader who along with his wife, Gittel, rarely left the North African nation of Morocco since being dispatched there in 1958passed away in a hospital in Casablanca on April 10, the second day of Passover, after contracting COVID-19. He was 84 years old.

For more than 60 years, Rabbi Eidelman oversaw a dozen Chabad of Morocco Jewish schools and is mourned by tens of thousands of students he taught throughout the decades. He opened and ran a kollel (advanced study group) where he trained most of the rabbis and shochtim (ritual kosher slaughters) in Morocco. Among his students were Jerusalems Chief Rabbi and former Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Moshe Amar, and Montreal Dayan Rabbi David Raphael Banon.

Born in Soviet Russia and raised in Brunoy, France, young Sholom Eidelman grew up in a home steeped in Chassidic thought and practice.

As a young rabbinical student, he hoped to travel to New York to learn in yeshivahs there and be close to the RebbeRabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memorybut the Rebbe wrote to him that many young Jews from North Africa were already beginning to emigrate to Brunoy, and he was needed there.

In 1958, he sought the Rebbes blessing to marry Gittel Gurkow, who later recalled in an interview with JEM how the Rebbes response to his request signaled the young couples next chapter. Following the engagement, the young rabbi traveled to New York, where in a private audience with the Rebbe, he and his bride were given their assignment in Casablanca.

The Rebbe had been deeply concerned with the plight of Jewish communities in Muslim countries and the fate of Sephardic Jewry in general in the post-war era. In 1950, the first emissaries sent by the Rebbe to open new Chabad centers around the world were in Morocco, when Rabbi Michoel and Taibel Lipskar were sent to Meknes and Rabbi Shlomo and Pesia Matusof were sent to Casablanca, joined by Rabbi Nisson and Rachel Pinson. In 1960, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Raskin and his wife, Raizel, arrived in Casablanca, and together the Rebbes emissaries established what today are among the longest-running Chabad institutions and centers in the world. Mrs. Raizel Raskin remains a mainstay of Chabad-Lubavitch in Morocco.

At its peak, more than 250,000 Jews lived in Morocco, and for decades following their arrival, many of the schools, synagogues and social-service organizations assembled by Chabad emissaries and staff were among the leading educational and religious institutions for Moroccan Jews.

Over the next 62 years, Rabbi Eidelman and his wife continued to serve the community up until his passing. Even as the numbers of Jews in Morocco would dwindle, 10 years ago they were joined by Rabbi Levi and Chana Banon, who have revived many educational programs and religious services for the youth and younger generations who continue to live in Morocco today.

Rabbi Yehuda Leib Raskin, center, at the bar mitzvah of his son, Yitzchak, joined by Rabbi Eidelman and Rabbi Shlomo Matusof.

Six months ago, the day after Yom Kippur, I stopped in Casablanca with my son, Menachem, after conducting a Yom Kippur Service in Malabo, Equatorial New Guinea. The Banons 11-year-old son Mendy took us around Casablanca.

Without any prior notice, we visited Rabbi Eidelmans synagogue, In the complex is the humble apartment where he and his wife have lived for decades.

We entered and went back in time to witness a sight from another time and another world. The Eidelmans lovingly greeted us as if they had been waiting for us for days and welcomed us into their home. Rabbi Eidelman was sitting in front of an open sefer (holy book) surrounded by thousands of well-thumbed sefarim.

It was sweltering outside, and he was sitting with a fan blowing above, wearing woolen tzitzit and black suspenders. He peppered Menachem with questions about what he was learning in yeshivah and his knowledge of the laws of the upcoming holiday of Sukkot.

The Eidelmans regaled us with stories of 60 years of dedicated service to the Jewish people of Morocco, as the rabbi kept telling us that in this Chabad House, you are not far from 770 or the Rebbe.

It is specifically in these remote outposts where every person matterswhere the captain never leaves the ship, as long as other passengers are on board, and they can teach Torah to another person who would not be able to if they had abandoned ship, he said.

Rabbi Eidelman, second from left, at a student's bar mitzvah.

Rabbi Eidelman told my son how he looked up to his great-grandfather, Reb Zavel Edelkopf, when he was a young yeshivah student and lived in Brunoy outside of Paris, and Reb Zavel Edelkopf taught him Tanya.

Even though his children live all over the world, they would visit them from time to time, and during the year, many grandchildren would visit them. Rabbi Eidelman was still teaching for a few hours every day at the kolel in his building with about 20 seniors and middle-aged students regularly attending.

This year for Sukkot, he didnt have any grandchildren visiting, and so they were even more overjoyed with our drop-in visit. Before we left, he showed us a folder of tens of letters and telegrams from the Rebbe that gave them strength, direction and perseverance during the many decades they served.

It was sweltering outside, and Rabbi Eidelman, always the teacher of Torah, was sitting with a fan blowing above, wearing woolen tzitzit and black suspenders. He peppered Menachem Berkowitz, a young visitor from the United States, with questions about what he was learning in yeshivah and his knowledge of the laws of the upcoming holiday of Sukkot.

In one letter, the Rebbe wrote to them in an addendum to the full letter (Free translation):

Praiseworthy is your lot that Divine Providence gave you a beautiful portion. Educating and drawing near the hearts of the Jewish people to their Father in heaven, the reward knows no limits.

In addition to the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah, the above are among the deeds that a person eats the fruits of in this physical world and eternally in the world to come. They include teaching Torah and acts of lovingkindness.

This is the main Divine service in our generation before the advent of the coming of Moshiach, this is the way to attach yourself to Gd truthfully thereby transforming darkness into the ultimate light.

The Rebbe concluded by writing a line from Tanya written by the Alter Rebbe in Igeres Hakodesh (End of Chapter 9, quoting from Yeshayahu 52. May we merit to see each other eye to eye, with the return of Gd to Zion. With major blessing and success in all the above.

Rabbi Sholom and Gittel Eidelman were honored by Morrocan Jewry on the 60th anniversary of their arrival in Casablanca.

Rabbi Eidelmans great influence, and his loss, is felt throughout Morocco, as well as across Israel and around the world, wherever his thousands of alumni now reside.

How ironic that a rabbi who never left his flockno matter how difficult and single-handed such leadership could bepassed away alone in a Casablanca hospital due to the coronavirus pandemic. He was buried quickly on the holiday of Pesach without a proper funeral, though with the oversight of a rabbi, and without any of his seven children or dozens of grandchildren, great-grandchildren or members of his beloved community present.

I will honor his memory by supporting Chabad of Casablanca.

Rabbi Sholom Eidelman is survived by his wife and by their children, Rabbi Shneur Zalman Eidelman (Vienna, Austria), Rabbi Yoel Eidelman (Brunoy, France), Rabbi Menachem Mendel Eidelman (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Rabbi Eliezer Eidelman (Manchester, England), Rabbi Shmuel Eidelman (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Toiba Rivka Belinow (Paris), Chana Gurevitch (Chicago); and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many of whom are emissaries around the world.

He is also survived by his sister, Assya Pevsner, of France. (The family requested not to notify her about the passing.)

He was predeceased by his son, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Eidelman, of Israel. He was also predeceased by his brother, R Yoel Edelman, of Paris.

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Rabbi Sholom Eidelman, 84, Served Moroccan Jewry for More Than 60 Years - Devoted educator was among the longest-serving Chabad emissaries in the...

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Posted By admin on April 17, 2020

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Ive been thinking in percentages for months now, so Ive had a head start. Congenital heart defect, 1 percent. Spina bifida, 0.07 percent. Down syndrome, for a baby born to a mother in her early thirties, between 0.1 and 0.2 percent.

We found out my wife was pregnant in September, right after we got back from our honeymoon, right after we started trying: Too good to be true. Too nervous to look at the stick, my wife asked me to read the results. There were no symbols to decode, just a word: PREGNANT. Hopping around the bathroom we felt giddy and sick, two people who by their natures expect the worst celebrating something suspiciously great.

Marfan syndrome, 0.02 percent. Microcephaly, 0.12 percent. Tay-Sachs disease...

Tay-Sachs is a fatal genetic disease that disproportionately afflicts Ashkenazi Jews like me. In November, we found out that my ethnically Armenian wife is a carrier, a 0.3 percent chance. Of course: Just our luck. I knew my odds of being a carrier were about 1 in 25. I went to get my blood drawn. Dazed, sitting in that weird Falun Gong coffee shop on Eighth Avenue, we told half-hearted jokes about my wife being an honorary Jew. Then we did the morbid math.

If we were both carriers, there was a 1 in 4 chance the baby would have two copies of the bad gene, a death sentence. 0.04 x 0.25 = 0.01. For the next 10 days we took turns freaking out about the one percent. Its one percent, one of us would offer, briefly composed. Its. One. Percent, the other would respond, slunk into the couch, staring straight ahead.

Eventually, we heard from our genetic counselor not a person who tells you what career youre cut out for based on your DNA, it turns out and the news was good. I pictured my college statistics professor and felt a little rush of gratitude toward him, as if he embodied the unsentimental odds of the universe. We told our families and went out to an expensive meal, at which I yet again broke my promise to stay sober in pregnancy solidarity. My wife was too relieved to care.

Compared to the agony of many expectant parents, our first trip into the Probability Zone was benign. But this way of thinking, this sense that our health and happiness were down to a dice roll, stuck. Over the winter, as the coronavirus set its own unsentimental course, I was tuned into a new frequency of fear, a low buzz of risk and consequence out of a Don DeLillo novel. I came down with a bad respiratory illness at the end of January and spent feverish hours googling flu death statistics. Was this any sillier than worrying about Zika virus or spina bifida? Jaywalking, wearing noise-canceling headphones on my commute, rushing down the subway steps these all suddenly seemed less like New York City table stakes and more like deliberate and fraught bets. I wasnt afraid for my life, exactly. I was afraid for our joy.

Now it is April, and as the virus occupies my city, we are all spending more and more time in the Probability Zone. We are all now making morbid calculations and a thousand decisions, small ones and big ones, based on them. True, New Yorkers love there but for the grace of God chitchat about one-in-a-million subway nightmares and street grate disasters. But my wife and the people we know live in a predictable version of the city, a safe version of the city, in which it is impossible to get a substandard cup of coffee and in which the chances of a catastrophe have never been lower. Had never been lower. Real material fear has come for those of us who usually just tweet about such things, even as we know we have less to fear than so many others. For these New Yorkers, who cant work from home and cant get good health care, the Probability Zone is far crueler.

COVID-19 death rate, 6 percent. COVID-19 death rate among Americans under 18, 0.11 percent. In-utero transmission rate from COVID-19 positive mothers to infants, unknown.

Now everything outside our home feels uncertain. Every time either one of us leaves and comes back, we bring the outside in a bad feeling that could harden into a reflex with lasting consequences for the city. Every time we come back, we have rolled the dice again. Only, we don't know the rules of the game. The studies have small sample sizes. The results have been contradictory. Everyone walks around nursing a theory about why some people get sick and others dont, some idiosyncratic solution of recency bias, media diet, and half-forgotten high school biology. Everyones Probability Zone looks different, changes constantly. We are told not to wear a mask, and I resent the mask wearers. We are told to wear a mask, and I resent the maskless. We are told that some of the masks are fake, that wearing masks wrong can trap the virus against your mucus membranes, that you can stick a mask in the oven to purify it. Outside, when theres no one around, my wife sometimes removes her mask to steal a full breath. Shes 8 months pregnant and she gets winded. This annoys me doesnt she know that shes adding to the number? Then Im annoyed that Im annoyed. Im not the pregnant one. I have no idea how she feels. Am I trying to protect her or am I trying to control her body? I have stopped policing her sips of wine. How the fuck would I make it through this without wine?

Yet somehow my wife exudes calm, in the kind of Que Sera, Sera way I associate with Buddhists and stoners not exactly with the woman I married. Her therapist says this is because of pregnancy hormones. Her hair is thicker and her skin is brighter. She has heartburn. She grabs my hand to her belly in delight when the baby kicks, but sometimes its too late and hes stopped. Her experience is physical. Mine is abstract. She seems to have left the Probability Zone. I spend all my time there, reworking my algorithm based on studies about pregnant women in Wuhan, feeling grateful for the dependability of Amazon deliveries and the Capital One mobile banking app.

We retreat into telemedicine, teletherapy, telepregnancy. We attend a virtual birthing class. Im distracted by the bookmarks for Gothamist and Smitten Kitchen on the doulas shared desktop screen. I wonder if shes baked the i want chocolate cake chocolate cake recently. A couple in Alabama keeps cutting in and out. Three hours pass. When it comes to medical interventions, the doula concludes, Always remember BRAIN. It stands for BENEFITS, RISKS, ALTERNATIVES, INTUITION, NO, NEVER, NOT NOW.

We want to know which way the baby is facing, so we video-chat a friend, a midwife in California. She tells me to press around my wifes stomach to try to find something round and protuberant it's likely to be the head or the butt, and we can triangulate from there. So I go about trying to seize my unborn sons butt, with all the grace of a bowling alley arcade claw. Incompetence leads to ticklishness, leads to laughter, leads to failure, leads to Netflix.

One day, we learn that our hospital has banned partners from the delivery room. We are COVID-19 risks.

I had been doing so well until this, my wife says. But I dont know how I can make it through labor alone. We discuss fleeing to where we grew up, but worry about infecting our parents. We hatch harebrained schemes to get me into the hospital. One of them involves bribing the medical staff with baked goods. Or maybe I could contract and recover from COVID-19 in time for the delivery?

I tell her Ill be there the whole way on FaceTime. Dont worry about it.

A small part of me is glad for the ban. Doctors are masters of the Probability Zone. They deliver lots of babies we only have one. If the doctors at this hospital have consulted the Zone and concluded that I am not safe, then I will swallow my pain and update accordingly. Maybe all the other hospitals have it wrong. I read about critically sick women in labor, intubated, unconscious, cut, sewn. If it is unsafe for these women to experience childbirth, they will have to update accordingly. They will have photographs. If our son spends the first months of his life in a NICU, we will have to update accordingly. We will get Seamless delivery and see him as often as possible. If he doesnt meet his grandparents until he is 2 years old, if he never meets his grandparents, we will have to update accordingly. We will Zoom or we wont.

When the governor announces an executive order requiring that the hospital let partners in, I cry, mostly but not entirely out of relief. I had adjusted my fear hypothesis and now I have to adjust it back.

For now, thats where we are. We have enwombed ourselves, and we will stay here until my son has to leave. Recently, when Im lying in bed and I cant sleep for running the odds, I picture him. I dont see him in my arms or my wifes arms. But I see him, new and good, with a chance whatever that number is and I stop imagining what could go wrong.

The other day, I came across a neighbor on all fours at her front door, disinfecting plastic containers of Thai food with Clorox wipes. Shes such a nice person, with two kids under 2.

I know I look crazy, she said with a laugh. I wanted to give her a big hug. Instead I hoped she could see from my eyes that I was smiling underneath my surgical mask. Then I rushed inside.

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What To Expect When You're Expecting A Baby At The Epicenter Of A Plague - BuzzFeed News

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Posted By admin on April 17, 2020

NEW YORK (JTA) Every Passover, we strive to experience Egypt in our own lives.

Locating the suffering of our Egypt wasnt hard this year: It seems like most days my husband and I share the names of new people we personally know who have passed away from COVID-19 and families devastated by the challenging conditions in which their loved ones passed away. We have been mourning the absence of community, the simplest and deepest of joys.

The Alter Rebbe of Gur, known as the Sfat Emet (1847-1905), offers a beautiful teaching, writing that we are meant to believe that there is a Yetziat Mitzrayim, an exodus from Egypt, in every moment. Michael Walzer, in Exodus and Revolution, expresses the similar idea that wherever [we] live, it is probably Egypt and that the political fight forward requires walking hand in hand toward a better promised land.

Despite the bitterness of our experiences, however, I cannot help but feel that it would be wrong for me to think of myself as being personally in Egypt this year when so many of my fellow citizens are experiencing an Egypt that I am not. This year, although we are isolated as never before, our Yetziat Mitzrayim must take into account the bitterness of the most vulnerable.

I began to consider this shortly before my sons preschool closed down in early March. When my husband reached out to his principal to ask about the schools online education offerings, she could not give us ready answers; she was too concerned about the many families in the preschool who had no laptops at home or access to the internet. How could she offer a virtual education that wouldnt just aggravate the social inequality among her students?

Hearing this from my toddlers principal felt a bit surreal. I knew intellectually that there are families in this city who live below the poverty line and cannot afford access to a computer. But this immediate reminder in my sons school brought this reality close to home.

I kept thinking about the social divisions that characterized our country before COVID-19 but were invisible in my own life. I do not know any of my friends, and was not aware of my acquaintances, who could not afford to have a working computer or access to the internet.

As days have gone by I feel this split reality ever more powerfully. I am part of an amazing, tight-knit Jewish community. I know that if my family were ever in need I would have family, friends and community organizations who would help us. Like me, most of my friends are concerned about holding down our jobs at home while taking care of our children. And while this is presenting unprecedented challenges, I know that I am not a health crisis away from being homeless.

One particular image from the pandemic haunts me. Early in April, The New York Times profiled Ezzie Dominguez, who had lost her job as a domestic worker. She now feeds her family of four by working at night cleaning buildings, including hospital buildings, which she cleans without any protective gear.

Dominguez is in remission from cancer, making her especially vulnerable. Knowing that a deadly virus has spanned our city, she cleans hospitals without protection, feeding her children but risking their infection every night. She cannot afford the luxury of social distance that I, like many, take for granted. The maror is bitter indeed.

Dominguezs case is not an exception; it is representative. The data show that there is a clear relationship between socioeconomic standing, which often correlates with racial identity,and COVID-19 infection. Data scientist Michael Donnelly has pointed out that wealthier Zip codes average many fewer incidents of coronavirus than poorer ones, and by a margin that continues to widen.

It is not difficult to understand why this is occurring. Because living quarters are tighter, especially where multiple generations in one family often live together in close quarters, and less privileged workers are often unable to work from home or even to take paid sick leave, these populations are especially vulnerable to infection.

I couldnt help but think of this predicament as I was preparing for Passover and reading new studies suggesting that coronavirus is passed through small droplets in the air. If before I was avoiding the grocery store to protect others, now I began to feel afraid for myself and my family at the prospect of entering one. On the one hand, it now felt necessary to order deliveries to my home. But on the other hand, it felt morally compromising.

Granted, deliveries are needed to continue operating our economy and to prevent overcrowding inside indoor public spaces. But what does it say about our society that my ability to protect myself is based on a system in which workers have no paid leave, no proper protective gear and who must to feed their families go to work even if they have underlying conditions or live with elder and vulnerable family members? This is the bitterness of Egypt.

As a religious person and a Jewish leader, I take seriously the call from Jewish tradition to apply memory to our contemporary reality and to identify with my slave ancestors who suffered bondage. It is precisely their memory that commands me to resist finding the anguish of Egypt in my own experiences, and instead locate it in the lives of the most vulnerable, whose lives are most at risk from this global pandemic. We know that the road to the promised land is long, filled with tribulations and murmurings. But our journey forward cannot start before we identify the Egypt we are exiting.

Which brings me back to our collective experiences and responsibilities during Passover. Sephardic versions of the Haggadah say that one must show himself or herself as though they left Egypt, while the Ashkenazi verbiage demands that we actually see ourselves as though we left Egypt.

But this command from our collective Jewish memory is different from what the Torah demands from us as the moral consequence of leaving Egypt. The Torah says that we shall not oppress the stranger because we were once strangers in Egypt. Our suffering the backbreaking forced labor, seeing our babies murderously thrown into the Nile, living in a state of generational hopelessness means that we know the heart of the stranger (Exodus 23:9) and must act accordingly.

There is a fine but important distinction here. One voice from our tradition asks us to find in our lives the bitterness of Egypt, while the other demands that we expand our gaze to feel the suffering of our forebears through the anguish that the most vulnerable in our society are experiencing.

Those of us who have lost loved ones or who are now experiencing economic crisis might find spiritual sustenance by identifying with the bitterness of Egypt. But to the extent that I have been spared from the full ravages of coronavirus, I feel I must heed the other call and seek to focus my gaze on the lives of others.

This does not mean that we should not mourn what we have lost and the challenges we are experiencing. But we must shift our gaze to the profound, existential suffering of others, those in dire straits, the metaphorical Egypt that requires urgent deliverance.

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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Passover demands we remember the Exodus. That means taking care of our most vulnerable. - JTA News

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Posted By admin on April 15, 2020

While their parents may have relied on tape recorders and CDs for their own bnei mitzvah preparations, students today learning to chant Torah can turn to YouTube.

There are lots of cantors who have produced high-quality recordings on YouTube, said Ben Rotenberg, education director at Germantown Jewish Centre in Pennsylvania. Its easy to find a voice that you can match and feel comfortable with.

The video sharing website is just one of many technologies being incorporated into bnei mitzvah preparations.

For Gen Z kids in the tween and teenage brackets, technology plays a key role in entertainment, education and socializing. They communicate on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat and have never known a world without internet access. Naturally, they also rely on apps and websites as they prepare for their coming-of-age ceremonies.

Parents, educators and event planners are also using these resources to make preparations go smoothly. Rotenberg has incorporated technology into his own tutoring work.

Ive done some bnei mitzvah tutoring long distance for students using Skype and FaceTime, and I would send them feedback through Google Docs, he said.

His students have also used TropeTrainer, software that offers full Torah portion readings users can access on their phones and other devices. It offers the full text of the Torah, along with Haftorah and audio recordings for blessings.

While comprehensive, TropeTrainer doesnt come cheap the mobile app alone costs $24.99, and the entire software package can cost more than $100. For students and parents seeking a less expensive option, Rotenberg recommends Sefaria, a free open-source online library of Jewish texts.

We want to help younger people overcome the sense of distance they may feel toward the text, said Sara Wolkenfeld, director of education at Sefaria. For the teen and tween age, when theres a lot of pressure about the bnei mitzvah, it makes it less intimidating to know this information is just a click away.

According to Wolkenfeld, the first results for internet searches for English translations of the Talmud used to be anti-Semitic websites. Sefarias co-founders, Google alum Brett Lockspeiser and bestselling author Joshua Foer, set out to change that. Now, anyone with an internet connection can access their library of texts and commentary.

This includes students preparing for their bnei mitzvah. Sefaria users can use the site or app to find their assigned Torah portions in Hebrew and in English, choose their favorite layouts, add and remove vowels, create lists of helpful sources, consult a visual map of connections between texts and research commentary for inspiration for their dvar Torah speeches.

Text provides a starting point for a lot of people. They want to know, Does Judaism have anything to teach me about gun violence? Food justice? Homelessness? They can use Sefaria to search for these themes and be connected with relevant texts and commentaries, Wolkenfeld said. People should be connected to the richness of literary tradition, and Sefaria is designed to show users that all of these texts are in conversation with each other.

Wolkenfelds son, Noam, is a proficient Sefaria user who recently celebrated his own bar mitzvah.

He has very strong interests, so Sefaria was useful for clicking through text and searching across themes, Wolkenfeld explained. We also had a student whose whole family used Sefaria so everyone could speak on texts

during the Bat Mitzvah ceremony.

Of course, the party following the ceremony also takes a lot of preparation. Stephanie Fitzpatrick, talent director and emcee at the event planning company EBE Talent, uses Google Drive and Skype to communicate with clients.

A lot of families are opting for meeting via FaceTime and Skype people have busy schedules, and thats been very popular, she said. And Google Drive has been a great way to update people in real time and keep them in the loop.

Fitzpatrick has worked at EBE Talent for 10 years and observed the rise of technology in the party planning process. In addition to organizational tools like FaceTime and Google Drive, the company uses various apps and software for guests entertainment.

According to Fitzpatrick, gone are the days of being confined to a photo booth for party snapshots. PartyPrint is a software and app that allows people to take pictures with their phones and send it to a printer so they can pick them up and take them home easily.

EBE Talent uses another popular photo-sharing feature, Instapic, to create unique slideshows.

If a guest uploads a picture on Instagram or Twitter with an event hashtag, we can pull them directly from the web and create a real-time slide show of the event, Fitzpatrick explained. This is controlled by a real person, which is useful for filtering out any inappropriate photos from kids.

Changes in technology have also had a profound impact on party music selection. People use Spotify and Apple Music to create playlists for their events, and while you might still hear some classics like Y.M.C.A, Fitzpatrick has noticed an increased demand for songs from TikTok stars. These internet artists are popular among kids who use the video-based social media platform regularly, but less well-known to the general public.

DJs have to do a lot of research because these songs are not trending on charts, but all the kids know them and its part of their social life, she said.

And dont forget about the party favors.

A quick scan of Its My Mitzvah, an online personal shopping service for bnei mitzvah party planners, reveals the popularity of customized headphones, ear pods, selfie sticks and phone cases alongside the more traditional T-shirts, sweatpants and water bottle favors.

Some people think this technology is great, others can be overwhelmed, Fitzpatrick said. Everyones different. But overall, we do see more and more families embracing it. JN

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Posted By admin on April 15, 2020

One of the front-line defenses individuals have against the spread of the coronavirus can feel decidedly low-tech: hand-washing.

In fact, it was 19th-century Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis who, after observational studies, first advanced the idea of hand hygiene in medical settings.

The simple act of hand-washing is a critical way to prevent the spread of germs. Heres how Semmelweis, working in an obstetrics ward in Vienna in the 19th century, made the connection between dirty hands and deadly infection.

The history of hand-washing extends back to ancient times, when it was largely a faith-based practice. The Old Testament, the Talmud and the Quran all mention hand-washing in the context of ritual cleanliness.

Ritual hand-washing appears to have come with public health implications. During the Black Death of the 14th century, for instance, the Jews of Europe had a distinctly lower rate of death than others. Researchers believe that hand-washing prescribed by their religion probably served as protection during the epidemic.

Hand-washing as a health care prerogative did not really surface until the mid-1800s, when a young Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis did an important observational study at Vienna General Hospital.

After becoming disillusioned with the study of law, Semmelweis moved to the study of medicine, graduating with a medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1844. Having graduated from this prestigious institution, he believed he would be able to pursue a choice practice. He applied for positions in pathology and then medicine, but received rejections in both.

Semmelweis then turned to obstetrics, a relatively new area for physicians, previously dominated by midwifery, which was less prestigious and where it was easier to obtain a position. He began working in the obstetrics division of the Vienna Hospital on July 1, 1846.

The leading cause of maternal mortality in Europe at that time was puerperal fever an infection, now known to be caused by the streptococcus bacterium, that killed postpartum women.

Prior to 1823, about 1 in 100 women died in childbirth at the Vienna Hospital. But after a policy change mandated that medical students and obstetricians perform autopsies in addition to their other duties, the mortality rate for new mothers suddenly jumped to 7.5%. What was going on?

Eventually, the Vienna Hospital opened a second obstetrics division, to be staffed entirely by midwives. The older, First Division, to which Semmelweis was assigned, was staffed only by physicians and medical students. Rather quickly it became apparent that the mortality rate in the first division was much higher than the second.

Semmelweis set out to investigate. He examined all the similarities and differences of the two divisions. The only significant difference was that male doctors and medical students delivered in the first division and female midwives in the second.

Remember that at this time, the general belief was that bad odors miasma transmitted disease. It would be two more decades at least before germ theory the idea that microbes cause disease gained traction.

Semmelweis cracked the puerperal fever mystery after the death of his friend and colleague, pathologist Jakob Kolletschka. Kolletschka died after receiving a scalpel wound while performing an autopsy on a woman whod died of puerperal fever. His autopsy revealed massive infection from puerperal fever.

Contagiousness now established, Semmelweis concluded that if his friends

general sepsis arose from the inoculation of cadaver particles, then puerperal fever must originate from the same source. The fact of the matter is that the transmitting source of those cadaver particles was to be found in the hands of students and attending physicians.

No midwives ever participated in autopsies or dissections. Students and physicians regularly went between autopsies and deliveries, rarely washing their hands in between. Gloves were not commonly used in hospitals or surgeries until late in the 19th century.

Realizing that chloride solution rid objects of their odors, Semmelweis mandated hand-washing across his department. Starting in May 1847, anyone entering the First Division had to wash their hands in a bowl of chloride solution. The incidence of puerperal fever and death subsequently dropped precipitously by the end of the year.

Unfortunately, as in the case of his contemporary John Snow, who discovered that cholera was transmitted by water and not miasma, Semmelweis work was not readily accepted by all. The obstetrical chief, perhaps feeling upstaged by the discovery, refused to reappoint Semmelweis to the obstetrics clinic.

Semmelweis refusal to publish his work may have also contributed to his downfall. With little recognition during his lifetime, he eventually died from injuries sustained in a Viennese insane asylum.

Although Semmelweis began the charge for hand hygiene in the 19th century, it has not always fallen on receptive ears.

The medical field now recognizes that soap and running water are the best way to prevent, control and reduce infection. But regular folks and health care workers still dont always follow best practice guidelines.

Hand-washing appears to get a bump in compliance in the wake of disease outbreaks. Take the example of the first major outbreak of SARS, which occurred in the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong in March 2003. Health authorities advised the public that hand-washing would help prevent spread of the disease, caused by a coronavirus. After the SARS outbreak, medical students at the hospital were much more likely to follow hand-washing guidelines, according to one study.

I suspect the current pandemic of COVID-19 will change the way the public thinks about hand hygiene going forward. In fact, White House coronavirus advisor and NIAID Director Anthony Fauci has said absolute compulsive hand-washing for everyone must be part of any eventual return to pre-pandemic life.

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Ignaz Semmelweis, the doctor who discovered the disease-fighting power of hand-washing in 1847 - The Conversation US

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Posted By admin on April 15, 2020

The popular website Nextdoor purports to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on, according to its mission statement.

Thats not what San Francisco real estate developer Craig Lipton experienced when he received an email from his Nob Hill Nextdoor account on April 10, alerting him to a new posting, allegedly from one of his neighbors.

The email included the subject: Opinion: Globalist Jews are destroying this country like they destroyed Weimar Germany.

By the time Lipton clicked on the link, Nextdoor administrators had removed the post. However, his email showed some of the text (which he shared with J.), including: Who else here thinks the current events mirror those of pre-World War I, when Globalist Jews turned the world against Germany? Except this time the USA is Weimar Republic. The globalist Jew virus is backfiring

I was deeply disturbed by the posting, Lipton, 53, told J. Not so much that this sentiment exists, as I live in the real world, but was upset that Nextdoor selected [that] posting to send by emails to its community.

It didnt end there. Lipton reported the offending email and post to Nextdoor, per its online submission form.

He also reached out to the alleged poster, Jerry Ho, to ask what possessed him to make such a posting and to verify that Hos account had not been hacked.

His response was as offensive as the post itself, Lipton said.

Ho wrote back: Are you that blind to not see the Jew banksters are getting trillions in future tax dollars because their bets with our currency failed? They dry-ran the plandemic We lost a lot of civil liberties after 9/11 and now we are gunna lose more after this Jew virus.

Are you that blind to not see the Jew banksters are getting trillions in future tax dollars because their bets with our currency failed?

Nextdoor, a global company based in San Francisco, has a guideline that allows it to remove a user if they make posts or comments that discriminate against, threaten or insult groups based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, political affiliation, age, veteran status or disability.

Lipton also reported the incident to the Anti-Defamation League and the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, and he filed a complaint with the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center. Lipton told J. that Nextdoor did take the step of disabling Hos account.

The ADL acknowledges an uptick in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as anti-Chinese hate speech due to the viruss origins.

In a March 20 USA Today op-ed written by ADL Executive Direction Jonathan Greenblatt and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, the authors noted that blaming Jews for the spread of diseases and other societal ills has remained a key feature of anti-Semitism for centuries now we have Covid-19, where both Jewish Americans and Americans of Chinese descent are being blamed for spreading the virus, even when scientists are telling us emphatically that this disease is not being transmitted by any one religious or ethnic group.

Lipton is a member of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco whose children attended preschool there and then went to elementary school at Brandeis Hillel Day School. Currently sheltering in place in Sonoma County, he believes Nextdoor needs to improve their methodology of selecting which posts get sent as emails to neighbors.

They should also send an apology to everyone who received the posting and confirm they are working to prevent it from happening again, he said.

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Posted By admin on April 15, 2020

Mindy* listened to the rabbi preside over her uncles funeral on Zoom. The virtual event has become commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it still felt surreal to her. Her father and uncle Ralph had been unusually close their dad died when they were young, and Ralph helped raise his little brother. The rabbi was talking about the siblings relationship when the screen went white, and black letters started to appear. The scribbles looked like the handwriting of a child. Thats weird, Mindy thought. Someones kid must have taken over the screen. The letters began forming words: Die Jew.

Mindy was stunned. She realized she and her family were being Zoombombed something shed only read about in the news. A white supremacist had snuck into the call to spread hatred and anti-Semitism. It was like a punch to the gut, Mindy says. She jumped up, trying to cover the screen with her body so her daughters, ages 12, 13, and 16, wouldnt see. But it was already too late. Large swastikas began to appear, followed by porn and more profanity. The 13-year-old burst into tears.

The incident Mindy and her family experienced is part of a wave of Zoom attacks targeting the Jewish community. As Americans stay quarantined due to the pandemic, events that used to take place in person town halls, weddings, and funerals are now streaming on the videoconferencing platform. The trend has brought with it a new form of digital harassment: Zoombombing, where trolls enter meetings uninvited and stream disruptive or offensive content.

Online bigotry didnt start with the quarantine. Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism, says, weve been dealing with issues with hate online well before coronavirus. Anti-Semitism in particular has long been a part of internet culture. Its just recently migrated to Zoom.

The videoconferencing platform has moved to quickly fix the glaring security issues that made such attacks possible. On April 5th, Zoom rolled out meeting passwords and waiting rooms as the new default setting for all users. CEO Eric Yuan also announced the company would temporarily stop developing new features and shift its engineering resources to focus on privacy and security.

But the Anti-Defamation League says this short-term emphasis on safety might not be enough. Extremists wont stop. They never do, says Segal. Zoom cant stop looking at new ways theyll be exploited.

Zoom was not designed to be social. Its a corporate business tool that suddenly became the pandemics go-to communications platform. Yuan probably didnt anticipate his software turning into a concert hall, much less a school or a therapy office. Then the novel coronavirus started to spread, shutting down much of the worlds economy. From December 2019 to April 2020, Zoom went from 10 million users a day to more than 200 million. A product that used to be utilized by business professionals became a lifeline for students, families, and religious communities.

Yuan was as surprised as anyone. I never thought that overnight the whole world would be using Zoom, he said in an interview with Bloomberg. Unfortunately, we did not prepare well, mentally and strategy-wise. The lack of preparation was underlined by the fact that most Zoom attacks werent the result of sophisticated hacking. People posted meeting links publicly. White supremacists found them. Chaos ensued.

Some of the attackers are well known members of the alt-right. On March 24th, Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, known by his pseudonym weev, interrupted a class at a Jewish community center to go on an anti-Semitic rant. But others were just trying to cause mayhem. To the victims, the distinction didnt matter. They were shocked and traumatized either way.

A wave of bad press hit in March. TechCrunch broke the story about Zoombombing. Vice discovered Zoom was leaking peoples email addresses to strangers. The Intercept realized the company had been claiming its meetings were end-to-end encrypted (they were not). An engineer found that Zoom was evading macOS administrator controls and installing its app without final consent.

Yuan argued this was all a function of an enterprise product becoming a consumer tool overnight. We did not design the product with the foresight that, in a matter of weeks, every person in the world would suddenly be working, studying, and socializing from home, he wrote in a blog.

This was only partially true. As Casey Newton wrote in The Verge, the company purposefully designed its product to be as consumer-friendly as possible. Asking users to enter a password or download an app before joining a meeting creates friction. Zoom wanted to be frictionless. Consumer-grade ease of use is essential for a tool like Zoom, wrote Newton, but so is enterprise-grade security.

This is especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic, when fear and anxiety are running high and people are isolated from one another. Theres this desperation for community and safe spaces at a time when safety seems hard to attain, says Segal. When somebody comes into that space and abuses that, it shatters the normalcy and connection. Hate is bad always, but when you add that to the current environment and the fear and anxiety, its an extra notch problematic.

Segal added that the issues Zoom is experiencing should serve as a warning for the rest of the tech community. As people continue to spend more time online, extremists are sure to find new ways to spread hate and fear. I hope that we learn our lessons from Zoom so the problems arent repeated on other platforms, he says.

For Mindy and her family, the Zoombombing incident shattered their ability to find closure at her uncles funeral. Even worse, it traumatized her children. That was so ugly, her daughter said in the wake of the attack. Why do they hate us? Do they know where we live? Mindy didnt know what to say. For my kids, it was a shock, she says. Theyve never been subjected to that before. Im not quite sure they have ever felt what its like to be the subject of such hatred.

In a statement emailed to The Verge, a company spokesperson for Zoom said: We have been deeply upset by increasing reports of harassment on our platform and strongly condemn such behavior. We are listening to our community of users to help us evolve our approach and help our users guard against these attacks.

The ADL now has a running list of anti-Semetic Zoombombing incidents to track the ongoing attacks. On March 27th, a synagogue in Maryland reported that virtual shabbat services were interrupted by someone yelling Heil Hitler and Jewish scum. One of the Zoombombers had a swastika tattoo and exposed his genitals to the group. On March 30th, a Jewish nonprofit was hosting a call with over 100 people when a Zoombomber started yelling death to the Jews and Heil Hitler. Then on April 1st, a weekly Talmud class led by a rabbi near Detroit was interrupted by someone who pointed a rifle at the camera.

Extremists never miss an opportunity to leverage a crisis for their hatred, says Segal. Theyre now trying to bring it into our homes.

*The Verge agreed to only use Mindys first name to protect the identity of her family.

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Posted By admin on April 15, 2020

He called himself Commander online. He was a leader of an international neo-Nazi group linked to plots to attack a Las Vegas synagogue and detonate a car bomb at a major U.S. news network.

He was 13 years old.

The boy who led Feuerkrieg Division lived in Estonia and apparently cut ties with the group after authorities in that tiny Baltic state confronted him earlier this year, according to police and an Estonian newspaper report.

Harrys Puusepp, spokesman for the Estonian Internal Security Service, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the police agency intervened in early January because of a suspicion of danger and suspended this persons activities in Feuerkrieg Division.

As the case dealt with a child under the age of 14, this person cannot be prosecuted under the criminal law and instead other legal methods must be used to eliminate the risk. Cooperation between several authorities, and especially parents, is important to steer a child away from violent extremism, said Puusepp, who didnt specify the childs age or elaborate on the case.

The police spokesman didnt identify the child as a group leader, but leaked archives of Feuerkrieg Division members online chats show Commander referred to himself as the founder of the group and alluded to being from Saaremaa, Estonias largest island.

A report published Wednesday by the weekly Estonian newspaper Eesti Ekspress said Estonian security officials had investigated a case involving a 13-year-old boy who allegedly was running Feuerkrieg Division operations out of a small town in the country. The newspaper said the group has a decentralized structure, and the Estonian teen cannot be considered the organizations actual leader but was certainly one of its key figures.

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TheAnti-Defamation Leaguehas described Feuerkrieg Division as a group that advocates for a race war and promotes some of the most extreme views of the white supremacist movement. Formed in 2018, it had roughly 30 members who conducted most of their activities over the internet, the ADL said.

Oren Segal, vice president of the ADLs Center on Extremism, said children arent just a target audience for online forums that glorify white supremacy and violence. They also maintain such sites, captivated by their ability to join or influence an international movement from a home computer, he said.

That young kids are getting that sense of belonging from a hate movement is more common than most people realize and very disturbing. But accessing a world of hate online today is as easy as it was tuning into Saturday morning cartoons on television, Segal said in a text message.

Feuerkrieg Division members communicated over the Wire online platform. The FBI used confidential sources to infiltrate the groups encrypted chats, according to federal court records.

An FBI joint terrorism task force in Las Vegas began investigating 24-year-old Conor Climo in April 2019 after learning he was communicating over Wire with Feuerkrieg Division members, a court filing says. Climo told an FBI source about plans to firebomb a synagogue or attack a local ADL office, authorities said. Climo awaits his sentencing afterpleading guilty in Februaryto felony possession of an unregistered firearm.

Another man linked to Feuerkrieg Division, U.S. Army soldierJarrett William Smith,pleaded guilty in February to separate charges that he provided information about explosives to an FBI undercover agent while stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, last year. An FBI affidavit said Smith, 24, talked about targeting an unidentified news organization with a car bomb. CNN reported that it was the target.

The ADL said Smith was associated with Feuerkrieg Division at the time of his arrest. The group expressed its consternation about Smiths arrest in an expletive-laden post on its public Telegram channel, the ADL reported.

In March, a left-leaning website calledUnicorn Riot published eight months of leaked chatsby Feuerkrieg Division members. After Commander disappeared from the groups chat room in January, other members discussed whether he had been detained or arrested and speculated that his electronic devices had been compromised, the website said.

The messages dont indicate that other Feuerkrieg Division members knew the group leader was 13, according to Segal, who said the ADL also independently obtained the groups chat archives.

Based on a comment the boy posted on Wire, ADL linked Commander to the gaming platform Steam. The Steam account lists his location as a village in Estonia and his URL as HeilHitler8814, Segal said.

Feuerkrieg Division has been part of a growing wing of the white supremacist movement that embraces accelerationism, a fringe philosophy that promotes mass violence to fuel societys collapse. The man who recentlypleaded guiltyto attacking two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and killing 51 people last year devoted a section of his manifesto to the concept of accelerationism.

The Estonian security polices bureau chief, Alar Ridamae, said parents, friends and teachers can help authorities protect children from internet-fueled extremism.

Unfortunately, in practice there are cases where parents themselves have bought extremist literature for their children, which contributes to radicalization, Ridamae said in a statement provided to AP and Estonian media on Thursday.

Estonia, a former Soviet republic that regained its independence in 1991, is among Europes most technologically advanced nations. Estonia has paid relatively little attention to homegrown extremism. But the case of the right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in a 2011 massacre in Norway, served as a major wake-up call for security officials in the Baltic nation of 1.3 million.

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Posted By admin on April 15, 2020

WASHINGTON (CNS) As the coronavirus pandemic continues to cause a severe economic slowdown and, among some people, distrust of the media and government, white supremacists across the nation are attempting to capitalize on the crisis to take advantage of the scared and confused in hopes of recruiting new followers.

One white nationalist in particular, Tom Kawczynski, 39, currently hosts a podcast called "Coronavirus Central" on multiple sites, including Apple Podcasts, that is among the most popular podcasts under the health and fitness category.

Kawczynski ranks just below NPR and BBCs podcasts on the virus and is currently more popular than PBS NewsHour - Novel Coronavirus.

He is among many extremists who see a major public health crisis as fertile ground for fomenting political unrest and spreading conspiracies, according to human rights advocates and academic experts.

It does seem like an attempt to take advantage, Cassie Miller, Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst, told Capital News Service in an interview. When everyone is concerned by coronavirus, it gives them the opportunity to put out their own white nationalist perspective.

Before Kawczynskis rebranding as a COVID-19 expert, the podcast host used to be the town manager of Jackman, Maine. The town forced him to resign in 2018 after learning that he advocates for segregation through a fictional white ethno-nation called New Albion.

Kawczynskis resignation drew attention to many racist remarks that he posted using his now private account on Gab Social, a social media platform similar to Twitter.

For example, Kawczynski wrote in 2017, you don't have to hate to see cold hard statistics and realize in a significant way that the average black in America has less intellectual aptitude, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

About a month before his first podcast, which went live on Feb. 10, Kawczynski posted a video on Facebook welcoming viewers to New Albion. In this video, Kawczynski states that America is going through a time of financial and political insecurity and that New Albion will be rooted in the people rather than in the systems.

During multiple podcast episodes, Kawczynski has continued to preach about the American governments incompetence to his listeners and has also suggested that there is truth to some conspiracy theories related to the virus.

The podcast host claimed that there is a high probability that this was a manmade disease, a conspiracy theory that many other social media platforms also have advocated, but scientists have debunked.

In a recent SPLC article, Miller explains how white supremacists are hoping that chaos from the virus will drive people toward more extreme political positions.

These far-right extremists are arguing that the pandemic, which has thrown into question the federal governments ability to steer the nation through a crisis, supports their argument that modern society is headed toward collapse, Miller wrote.

Kawczynski, who declined to be interviewed but responded to an email from CNS, said what I am doing is not about me, but rather about helping to keep people safe.

He claimed that he is literally helping people figure out how to survive this horror.

A 2015 study found that major financial crises lead to a rise in support for far-right groups.

Right-leaning parties tend to benefit more after financial downfalls because people blame elites for failing to prevent them, which opens the door to political entrepreneurs who try to set the people against the ruling class, the researchers wrote in an article about the study. The authors were Manuel Funke and Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German non-profit think tank, and Moritz Schularick of the University of Bonn.

Miller told CNS that people need to be more concerned about what right-wing extremist efforts could mean down the line. She said she worries about young white men, the extremists target group, being stuck inside looking online for answers about the virus and finding advice from white supremacists.

They are going to try to recruit as many as possible, Miller said.

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