Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 4, 2020

Cuba confounded us.

Knowing we were in a Communist nation where authorities kept constant watch, we engaged local Cuban Jews in direct, honest conversations.

Cuba is a country suffering extraordinary poverty in a state-owned economy made worse by crippling U.S.-imposed sanctions, yet we never saw homelessness, hunger or even beggars asking tourists for money.

On an island barely large enough to sustain a minyan, we met with upbeat Jewish leaders, we engaged and educated Jewish youth, and we discovered a sense of Zionism that begins with participation in the Maccabiah games, continues with Birthright trips and ends (for many) with aliyah.

Welcome to the Osher Marin JCC tour of Cuba.

In January, a group of 24 not-so-fellow travelers journeyed to the Caribbean island on a special religious activities visa that is one of the few ways for U.S. citizens to get to Cuba, a nation anathema to most U.S. policymakers since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro.

With a 500-year history on the island, contemporary Cuban Jews number just about 1,200, with most in Havana. Our guide, Miriam, a Chicago-based, Cuban-Jewish expat with more than 200 trips back to the land of her birth, narrated the experience for us, mingling her own personal narrative with the larger history of Cuban Jewry.

On the surface, travel offers us opportunities to learn about others. Actually, those interactions do a much better job of teaching us about ourselves. Only when we encounter differences can we get a clearer sense of who we are and where we stand. As participant David Rudnick reflected, Cuban Jews have persisted despite the lack of stimuli that tends to propel American Jewish communities: anti-Semitism, fear of assimilation, fear of intermarriage and multi-generational Holocaust trauma. Reflecting on her own American Jewish experience, tour leader Joanne Greene didnt pick up on any Jewish complacency, apathy or Jewish baggage in her conversations with Cuban Jews.

Cubas first Jewish arrivals had Sephardic backgrounds, Turkish heritage and (with more than a century in the Caribbean) an Afro-Latinx identity, as well.

With this, Cubas Jews encourage us to think about our own Bay Area and American Jewish communitys engagement with Jews of color. Unlike the sharp divide separating diverse Jews in the U.S. from our communal organizations, Cuban Jews reflected a much fuller embrace and integration of their Jewish residents.

As traveler Cindy Ostroff noted, Cuban Jews came together to make a Jewish population that is as diverse as our own.

The islands white Ashkenazi population grew most in the years after the U.S. Congress all but eliminated Jewish immigration in the 1920s. Were it not for timing, perhaps a whole lot of Bay Area Jewish families would have been Cuban.

Watching Cubas own Jews of the global majority, in partnership with their Ashkenazi brethren, offers us a vision of what our own diverse community could realize.

At a time of rising anti-Semitism on our shores, each and every Cuban Jew we met testified to the absence of Jew hatred in their lives. No security guard protects Havanas main synagogue. Inside their house of worship, we heard how Fidel Castro himself attended a Hanukkah celebrationbut only after it was described to him as the Jews revolution against oppression.

Though they are part of a subsistence economy that grants the average Cuban just $1,000 to $2,000 USD a year in salary, Jews have a way out: aliyah to Israel. In fact, our government guide used the Hebrew word taglit to tell us about how Cuban Jewish youth travel to Israel on Birthright.

An elderly leader of a community of just 20 Jews shared with us that his son and grandchildren live in Israel. When we asked why he stays, he told us about his love for Cuba and the life hes built there. How surprising to learn that he picked a tiny Cuban Jewish community over life in Israel with his kids and grandkids.

Cubas Jews are long past the stigma of intermarriage. Nearly all their youth marry partners who were not raised Jewish. Yet the nations Jewish leaders embrace all who come to engage Jewish life, regardless of their different religious (or secular) pasts.

Without offense to any of our U.S. rabbis, traveler Marci Dollinger, my wife, reflected on Cuba Jewrys ability to sustain its religious practice with a three-times-a-year rabbi (who lives in Chile).

For Julie Fingersh, that meant an emphasis on educating their youth. While here in America we struggle to get our teens to be engaged, there they are leading services because there are no rabbis, she said.

Loren Kertz experienced nothing less than the pure desire for the Cuban Jews to just be Jewish.

Others marveled at the apparent contradictions between the Cuba we witnessed and the assumptions we brought with us.

Ricki Henschel left impressed with Cuban Jews openness to talk about their past, present, and fears and hopes for the future. Raoul Stepakoff saw a country hampered by its own political rigidity, neglecting the natural talent and resourcefulness of its people. Jodie Silberman cheered the moral responsibility that Cubans feel for the elders in both their family and community.

Simply put, one participant concluded, Cubans seem happier than many of my friends in the Bay Area.

Navigating whats Jewish, whats Cuban, whats communist and whats been imported from the perspectives of American Jewish tour groups proves vexing. This might be the trips greatest teaching. Cuban Jews hold it all, presenting us with a community that confounds our long-held assumptions about their country and their religious practice.

Perhaps those of us in the Bay Area and beyond can hold together our own Jewish complexities. And by taking a trip somewhere else, perhaps we can pause, reflect and hold all our identities together, as well.

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We found strength, camaraderie and happiness among Cuba's Jews - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on February 4, 2020

The plenum hall of the Israeli parliament on the opening of the 22nd Knesset in Jerusalem, Oct. 3, 2019. Photo: Hadas Parush/Flash90.

JNS.org As Israel heads into its third round of elections in a 12-month period, one number continues to hold the political process hostage. Both leading parties Likud and Blue and White will likely be able to create sizable coalitions following the March 2 election. But without the support of Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman and his voters, we are not likely to see a different outcome than we did on April 9 or September 17. Neither coalition will be able to garner the necessary 61 mandates to form a new government.

To make matters even more challenging, Yisrael Beiteinus support has increased significantly today compared to two years ago. The main reason for this is that Lieberman has latched onto the issue of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) involvement in Israeli society, and first and foremost, in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The one number causing Israels political logjam is the number of permitted haredi draft deferments. Arguably, it is disagreement regarding this one number that is ultimately sending Israel back to the polls.

Two years ago when he decided to abandon the coalition over Israels policy in regard to the Gaza Strip, Lieberman had six mandates. Today, he is consistently polling and receiving eight or more, and those additional mandates may be enough to swing the election. Many on the right are clearly frustrated with the Yisrael Beiteinu leader, and believe his actions to have less than pure motivations.

They say that, before, he was most concerned about the need for a stronger Israeli military response, but now hes concerned about the impact of the haredim on Israeli society. He said hed be part of the coalition, then he abandoned it. They say he picked a new issue just to gain traction.

However, the question of whether or not his concern is genuine is irrelevant. Those in leadership positions would be wise to examine why he is attracting a larger following and try to resolve the concerns he raises. Otherwise they will have little hope of drawing from his voter base or attracting him to rejoin their coalitions, in which case the March 2 elections may well produce the same result as the last two elections.

Of all the issues non-haredi Israelis have with haredim, army service tops the list. The argument is, why should my son or daughter serve for three years or more of his or her life and potentially lose their life when the haredim dont have to serve? The counter arguments are also strong: According to the Knesset Research and Information Center (RIC), between 10-15% of haredim do serve in the Israel Defense Forces, while many others do formal or informal national service with organizations like Hatzalah and others.

Further, while there are IDF soldiers who resent haredi lack of service, there are soldiers who say that they are honored to serve in place of haredim who are studying and teaching Torah. What bothers them is that some haredim who are not joining the army may not be seriously studying or teaching Torah either. Supporters of the haredim also point to the large percentage of secular youth avoiding the draft, not to mention the Israeli Arab population.

Some haredi schools do provide meaningful education focused on the sacrifice Israeli soldiers make and the ultimate price some families pay so that haredim can study Torah. It is also important to understand that haredim are far from monolithic in their thinking with regard to IDF service. Many members of Chabad in Israel, for example, send their sons to serve in the military. Sephardic haredi rabbis have traditionally been more moderate in their approach to IDF service, while at the same time, other haredi branches have been more strident in their opposition to military service.

Another key to understanding the situation is that haredim take the Mishna (Pirkei Avot) seriously where it tells Jews to make for themselves a rabbi. Most haredim seek out and follow a rabbis advice on all major life decisions, such as participation in the IDF. Hence, like it or not, the rabbinical leaders of the haredi world are necessarily key players in finding workable solutions.

Liebermans campaign has met with mixed reviews. While some of his campaign ads have been called distasteful, inaccurate, and unnecessarily derogatory, others have been clever. Indeed, Lieberman has struck a chord such that in addition to possibly picking up some former Kulanu Party members, he is also picking up votes from the more liberal religious sector. The larger concern though is that the overall impact of amplifying the divides in Israeli society could have impacts beyond this election cycle. If the campaign contributes to dehumanizing haredim and their families, this could have potential long-term implications for the unity of the Jewish people.

Can the IDF do more to accommodate and tailor programs for the haredim? Probably. But the key is trying to find a way to honor Torah scholarship and provide a number of exemptions for the IDF and/or national service where there is agreement or at least grudging consent. Then the next step is to adopt an incentive and/or penalty system that is effective.

Looking in from the outside, it may be difficult to understand this situation. Yet, in a backhanded way, it should make every Jew smile inside: The real reason we cant form a government is because we cant agree on how many Torah students the government should exempt from army service to learn our holy texts. Should our precious Jewish nation exempt 500 or 5,000 Torah scholars?

Elections are anything but a unifying force in Israel. They are time when politicians unfortunately feel free to openly criticize each other in harsh ways. They bring out a crassness that Jews know deep down is not in keeping with the expectations of our tradition. If party leaders want to break the logjam and avoid a fourth election, they would be wise to find a resolution to this issue and openly share it with the public, with or without Yisrael Beiteinus involvement. God willing, Israels leadership will rise to the occasion.

Gary Schiff is an Israel-based consultant and contributor to JNS.

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Is Haredi Refusal to Serve in the IDF Crippling Israeli Politics? - Algemeiner

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2020

Western and Israeli propaganda never tire of telling the world of the age-old Israeli quest for peace, and how much Israel longs to be accepted by Palestinians and the rest of the Arab peoples as a Jewish state - an oasis of European civilisation lodged smack in the middle of the Arab world.

Indeed, the racist wisdom of former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban (born in South Africa as Aubrey Solomon Meir) that Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace was recently reiterated by US President Donald Trumps son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.

Kushner, speaking of Trumps deal of the century,declared on CNN that if Palestinians reject the plan, theyre going to screw up another opportunity, like theyve screwed up every other opportunity that theyve ever had in their existence. Kushner, a primary author of the plan, must be forgiven for his lack of originality, as Zionists, who exhausted the colonial lexicon, have run out of racist cliches and are doomed to repeat them ad nauseum.

What Eban and Kushner meant when they spoke of opportunities was the opportunity for Palestinians to surrender all their rights to the Zionist Jewish colonisation of their homeland, end their resistance once and for all, and grant legitimacy to the Zionist theft of their country. The recently released Trump plan does not mince words at all on this: Palestinian leaders must embrace peace by recognizing Israel as the Jewish state, rejecting terrorism in all its forms.

This readiness to instigate, propose, accept and create opportunities to steal more land ... and expel more Palestinians continued unabated after 1948

In contrast, we are told that the peace-loving Zionists have not missed a single opportunity for peace, by which it is meant that theyhave accepted every opportunity and proposal that granted legitimacy to their ongoing theft of Palestinian lands.

As a matter of fact, not only have the Zionists not missed these opportunities, they have instigated them, proposed them, planned them and executed them.

The Zionist colonisation of Palestine has taken every opportunity since its inception to tell the Palestinian people that Jews are superior to them, that Jewish colonial rights to Palestinian lands are superior to any rights that the indigenous Palestinians think they have, and that the only option available to Palestinians that Zionists would accept is full surrender to Jewish colonisation.

Anything short of this will be condemned by Israel and its European and North American allies, alongside a global campaign to delegitimise any rejection of Israels colonial theft of Palestinian land as outright "antisemitism".

Zionists helped write, and then accepted, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British foreign secretary dismissed the indigenous people of Palestine as irrelevant to the plan to establish a Jewish "national home"in their country. Zionists also supported the British colonial mandate over Palestine, which sponsored the establishment of the Jewish settler-colony on Palestinian lands.

Indeed, the Zionist leadership accepted every act committed by the British that denationalised tens of thousands of Palestinians (through the Palestine citizenship law of 1925) and transferred state lands to Jewish colonists.

When the British Peel Commission proposed taking more than one third of Palestine and giving it to Zionists, calling for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the invented "Jewish"part of Palestine, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion celebrated.

When the United Nations, under US pressure and manipulation, issued its Partition Plan in 1947, granting 55 percent of the land of the Palestinians to Jewish colonists, the Zionists immediately accepted it and proceeded to expel the Palestinian inhabitants.

This readiness to instigate, propose, accept and create opportunities to steal more land, legitimise that theft, and expel more Palestinians continued unabated after 1948. After the final conquest of the remaining parts of Palestine in 1967 and the expulsion of more Palestinians, Israel sought more opportunities to keep its stolen land - and to keep Palestinians away from it.

Indeed, when former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat ceded Palestinian rights to independence and statehood at Camp David, the Israelis who imposed these conditions readily accepted the deal.When a defeated Palestine Liberation Organisation offered its surrender at Oslo in 1993, relinquishing the rights of Palestinians to their lands and country, the Israelis who drafted the agreement also readily accepted it.

As for the Trump deal - which the Israelis coauthored, and which hopes to seal all previous deals, calling further for the denationalisation of Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in what is known as the Triangle area inside Israel - the Israelis immediately jumped at this opportunity to rid themselves of more Palestinians.

From Balfour to Trump: Denying Palestine, one dirty deal at a time

What the Israelis never accepted, and cannot accept, is the right of Palestinians to their lands, to statehood and to independence - let alone the rights of those whom Israel expelled to return and reclaim the land and property that Israel confiscated, or the Palestinian right to equality, currently denied by a battery of Israeli laws that grant colonial and racial privileges to Jews.

That Israel has never missed any opportunity to deny the Palestinian people their rights, and accepted every opportunity to steal their land, is a fact the Israelis never deny.That Israel demands that the Palestinians recognise its right to oppress them by granting Israel legitimacy is also a fact that the Palestinians understand well, but have always rejected.

Whereas Palestinians have missed every opportunity to recognise the right of their oppressors to oppress them, Israel has never missed a single opportunity to demand that they do so. Trumps Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People is simply the latest version of this colonial and racist demand.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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Palestinians have indeed 'missed an opportunity' - to surrender to Zionism - Middle East Eye

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2020

In March, Peter Beinart wrote an article in The Guardian titled Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is antisemitic. Now, he wants a seat in the World Zionist Congress.

Every five years, the WZO holds elections to determine the fate of almost $1 billion dollars to be spent on projects in Israel and the Diaspora. In practice, each body of elected representatives, therefore, allocates around $5 billion over the course of its term. For decades, this went smoothly. Various Jewish groups assembled slates and elected representatives to reflect their visions for Israel, focusing on matters important to them like Jewish education or religious pluralism. While they disagreed on nuances, members from Yitzhak Navon to Nathan Sharansky broadly agreed on fundamental Zionist principles such as Jewish determinism and a unified Jerusalem.

The WZOs platform is expressed in the Jerusalem Program, a charter of sorts for the organization that outlines the concepts it holds dear. Its main value is the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation. It also advocates for strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state and ensuring the future and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education. Finally, it calls for settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism.

Its easy to take for granted that anyone running for a seat in the premier worldwide Zionist organization would support these principles. However, in this election cycle, several candidates who oppose them have thrown their hats into the ring. Hatikvah, a longtime marginal left-wing slate in the Congress with only a handful of seats, announced a swath of new candidates in an effort to broaden its appeal for 2020. Among them are Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Middle East advocacy group J Street, and members of PeaceNow, a group that calls for the elimination of Jewish residence in Judea and Samaria.

The Hatikvah candidate with the strongest name recognition, though, is undeniably Peter Beinart. A frequent contributor to publications like The Forward and media outlets like CNN, he is well-known across the Jewish world and is sure to be the slates biggest draw. Unfortunately, he also has a history of defamation of the State of Israel and apologetics for anti-Semites. Before the most recent British election, he wrote regarding Jeremy Corbyns anti-Semitism that If Corbyn werent passionate about Palestinian rights, he wouldnt be under this much attack. He is, of course, free to express his opinions, but they should not find a home in the WZC.

For the first time, the World Zionist Organization is under threat of takeover by people who want to cut Jerusalem in half and bankrupt families in Gush Etzion. Fortunately, you can do something about it. From January 21 through March 11, the WZO will hold its 38th elections. Americans can vote through the American Zionist Movements website (zionistelection.org) and need only be 18 years old and Jewish residents of the United States. The cost to vote is $7.50, but only $5 for those 25 and under.

For the hundreds of Yeshiva University students who live in the tri-state area, and for others who live in solidly red or blue states, this is a far more consequential vote than your ballot for president in November. Here, your vote can make a real difference, and since its online, its the easiest one youll ever cast. In the last AZM elections, only 56,000 American Jews voted. If the YU student body does their part, they can be a significant voice for real Zionist values.

Now you know who not to vote for, but which group should you support? Because Jews can never agree on anything, there are a total of 13 slates running in the elections. The Orthodox Israel Coalition - Mizrachi and the Zionist Organization of America Coalition are great options that share YUs vision of a strong, democratic and proudly Jewish Israel. YU is affiliated with the former. Ultimately, though, the choice is yours! Do your research and choose the slate that best reflects your Zionism and the Israel of tomorrow youre most excited to see.

Photo Caption: The World Zionist Organization headquarters in JerusalemPhoto Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Rescuing the World Zionist Organization - The Commentator

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2020

In 1917, Lord Arthur Balfour, Britains foreign secretary made the memorable statement that many hold responsible for the century-old conflicts between Palestinians and Zionists. The statement, which came to be known as the Balfour Declaration, was in the form of a letter from Lord Balfour addressed to Walter Rothschild, the head of the British Jewish community. In the statement, Britain publicly pledged to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

The ambiguous term national home, without precedent in international law, was deliberately used because the British cabinet was divided between those who supported the Zionist objective of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine and those who opposed it. It appears that the former group assumed that in time the national home would metamorphose into a state.

Britain thus pledged to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine in disregard of the wishes of the indigenous population of Palestine. Lord Balfour made this clear in a subsequent memo he wrote in 1919 in which he clearly stated that London did not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. He justified this by adding that the great powers were committed to Zionism because be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far more profoundimportance than the desires and prejudices of the seven hundred thousand Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

The process of turning Palestine into a Jewish national home and eventually a Jewish state was facilitated by the fact that Palestine came under British rule at the end of World War I in the guise of a League of Nations Mandate. The British began to implement the Balfour Declaration to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine. Consequently, between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population in Palestine rose from nine percent to about 27 percent of the total population.

The demographic transformation of Palestine, despite some dithering by the British government in the face of Arab opposition, continued and was helped by the Nazi atrocities against German and other European Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. These atrocities led to the mass migration of Jews into Palestine, boosting the Jewish share of the population to 32 percent in 1948 when the British decided to terminate their mandate and leave Palestine unceremoniously without designation successor authority or authorities. In November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution recommending the division of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state awarding the Zionists 55 percent of the mandated territory despite the fact that they were still a minority in Palestine.

The Arabs refused to accept the division of Palestine and the first Arab-Israeli War ensued which at the time of the armistice left 77 percent of the territory under Israeli control. The primary reason for this outcome was that the Jews already had an army that was formed out of the armed paramilitary groups trained and created to fight side by side with the British in World War II. Moreover, the Arab governments that intervenedprincipally Transjordan and Egyptwere more interested in checkmating each other than fighting Israel.

This status quo lasted until 1967 when in the Six-Day War Israel extended its control over the remaining portion of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza. Since then, repeated attempts have been made by the international community including the United States and the United Nations to achieve a two-state settlement of the conflict with the states of Israel and Palestine existing side by side. These attempts failed in part due to the discrepancy in power between Israel and the Palestinians and in part due to discords among the Palestinians that eventually led to the separation of Gaza ruled by Hamas from the West Bank ruled by PLO.

However, throughout the past fifty years American administrations, despite their pro-Israeli tilt, which has protected Israel from international criticism because of its continued occupation of Palestinian lands, have at least in theory been premised on finding a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This has meant reigning in, to some extent, Israeli proclivities regarding building Jewish settlements in the West Bank and moving toward annexation of parts of the Palestinian territories.

The Trump administration has broken radically from this tradition and catered to the wishes of the most hardline and right-wing elements in Israel. On December 6, 2017, President Donald Trump announced the United States recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordered that the American embassy be moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. In March 2019, the Trump administration recognized the annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights by Israel.

For the past two years, the Trump administration had been busy publicizing that it was preparing a final deal that would solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for good. Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and senior advisor, masterminded the effort. Finally, the Trump-Kushner Peace Plan was announced on January 18. The best way to describe it is that it has fulfilled Lord Balfours dream by allotting much of the West Bank to Israel and ensured that it would be in a position of overlordship as regards to the meager portion of the West Bank left under nominal Palestinian control.

While Netanyahu has enthusiastically embraced the plan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as all Palestinian parties including Hamas, PLO, and Islamic Jihad, anticipating what the plan would look like, rejected it even before it was formally announced. The plan made clear that Palestinian fears were correct. It allows Israel to retain full sovereignty over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, carves the future Palestinian state into several noncontiguous territories, and awards the Jordan Valley to Israel.

In addition, it locates the capital of the future State of Palestine in Abu Dis, a town adjacent to Jerusalem but not within the city limits thus denying the Palestinian demand that East Jerusalem, with its Muslim and Christian holy sites, should be recognized as the capital of their state. Furthermore, it declares that Hamas must be disarmed and Gaza and the entire future Palestinian State must be demilitarized. While the plan states that there should be unfettered access to the Al-Aqsa mosque for Muslims it includes the caveat that they must come in peace, a provision that would obviously be interpreted at their discretion by Israeli authorities who control access to the Noble Sanctuary. Israel may continue to deny Muslims of a certain age access to Al-Aqsa on the pretext that they are unlikely to come in peace.

Furthermore, the plan requires that both sides recognize the State of Palestine as the nation-state of the Palestinian people and the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish (not Israeli) people. The Palestinians and even a substantial section of Israelis reject the latter claim. The only restriction it puts on Israel is that it should not build any new settlements for four years on areas that are not envisioned to be part of Israel.

It is no wonder the plan is music to Netanyahus and Likuds ears. Among other things, it seems to be an effort on the part of Trump to ensure that Netanyahu wins the Israeli elections scheduled for March by consolidating the right-wing vote behind him. The plan allows Israel to immediately annex all the settlements spread throughout the West Bank, in addition to the vast area of the Jordan Valley. Netanyahu declared on Tuesday that the interim government he heads would vote on this step early next weekend although this has been denied by other sources. Israel is awash with speculation that Netanyahu may annex the settlements and the Jordan Valley before the elections in March to increase his prospects for re-election.

As for the Palestinians, the Trump plan will not only validate Israels acquisition of a large part of the West Bank but also legitimize their long-term subjugation by the Jewish state. If ever a demilitarized and cantonized Palestinian mini-state came into existence it will exist at the mercy of Israel, which will control all access to such a state, and dominate it both economically and militarily. This is the reason why all Palestinian factions have rejected the plan out of hand.

Efforts to implement the plan by Israel by annexing Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley could have several major repercussions. First, they are likely to lead to the complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was created as part of the Oslo Accord that the Trump plan will now supersede. With the fiction of the PA removed, the Palestinian territories will return to the pre-Oslo status of occupied lands for which Israel will have to bear total responsibility under international law.

Second, it is likely to lead to violent reactions by Palestinians in the West Bank as well as rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel by both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The latter could lead to Israeli incursions into Gaza on a scale not witnessed since the Israeli Operation Pillar of Defence, which devastated Gaza in November 2012. Gaza, already traumatized by Israels economic blockade, is likely to descend into near-anarchy posing an even greater security threat to Israel.

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President Trump Has Fulfilled Lord Balfour's Dream - The National Interest Online

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2020

Unlike some previous proposals for the creation of a Palestinian state, the recent U.S. peace plan leaves the easternmost area of the West Bank under Israeli control. This arrangement also strengthens the security of the Kingdom of Jordan, writes Efraim Inbar, which has itself long seen the Palestinian national movement as a threat:

Israel and Jordan share various interests, including support for the American presence in the region, opposing pan-Arab and pan-Islamic movements and, of course, fighting the rise of radical Islam, Sunni or Shiite. Amman also sees eye to eye with Jerusalem on the issue of the Iranian threat. Israel assists Jordan by deterring extremists from threatening it, while Israel, for its part, sees Jordan as a buffer state between it and the extremist entities east of the kingdom.

Jordan is certainly not interested in a neighboring political entity that could develop another Hamas-controlled Gaza. Israeli military control of the Jordan Valley is convenient for Jordan, as it protects Amman from the west.

Since the [two countries] signed a peace agreement in 1994, Jordans dependence on Israel has increased. Israel supplies it with increasing quantities of water, far beyond its obligation under the deal, and it also supplies it with natural gas. . . . Moreover, it is hard to imagine that Saudi Arabia, other Persian Gulf countries, or Egypt will go to great lengths to prevent an Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Israeli Security, Jordan, Jordan Valley, Trump Peace Plan

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Israeli Control of the Jordan Valley Is Good for Jordan - Mosaic

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2020

JANUARY 29, 2020

MOTIVATED BY the desire to think locally and write globally, Sarah Abrevaya Steins award-winning, lyrical scholarship has explored modern Jewish history in unexpected places and forms, from the turn-of-the-20th-century, boom-and-bust, global ostrich-feather market to the intimate, everyday fashion through which Mediterranean Jews contributed to the shaping of the modern world. Her commitment to research is matched by her love of teaching. She is a professor of history at UCLA, where she holds the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies and directs the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. She is the author or editor of nine books and has received many awards, including the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Jewish Book Awards, and the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award.

Steins latest book, Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey through the Twentieth Century (2019), shares the true story of a frayed and diasporic Sephardic Jewish family, which was preserved in thousands of letters. For centuries, the bustling port city of Salonica was home to the sprawling Levy family; as leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. The wars of the 20th century, however, redrew the borders around them, in the process transforming the Levys from Ottomans into Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree.

InFamily Papers, Stein uses the familys correspondence to tell the story of their journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe. The Levys wrote to share grief and to reveal secrets, to propose marriage and to plan for divorce, to maintain connection. They wrote because they were family. And years after they frayed, Stein discovers, what remains solid is the fragile tissue that once held them together: neither blood nor belief, but papers. Family Papers has been named a Best Book of 2019 by The Economist and Mosaic magazine and an Editors Choice Book by The New York Times, which writes that Stein, a UCLA historian, has ferocious research talents [] and a writing voice that is admirably light and human [] All of this has produced a superb and touching book about the frailty of ties that hold together places and people.

In this conversation, Stein discusses her new book with Josh Kun, author and editor of several books on music, cultural history, and Los Angeles, and a celebrated museum curator who has worked with SFMOMA, the Grammy Museum, the California African American Museum, and others. Professor of Communication and Journalism and chair in Cross-Cultural Communication at the University of Southern California, Josh is a 2016 MacArthur fellow and the winner of a 2018 Berlin Prize and a 2006 American Book Award. His latest book is The Autograph Book of L.A.: Improvements on the Page of the City (2019); a companion exhibit was mounted at the Los Angeles Public Library.

JOSH KUN: I have begun reading your book Family Papers, and Im hooked, sneaking pages between meetings and course prep. My questions for you, and our conversations about the material you touch on, could be endless, and I hope they will be at least ongoing. I relish this chance to finally be in dialogue after admiring your scholarship for so long.

So, to begin, I thought I would start with the first line I underlined, a line that begins the book: This is the story of a single Sephardic family whose roots connect them to a place and community that no longer exist.

Just yesterday I was playing my students Groung, a song recorded by the Armenian refugee Zabelle Panosian in 1917 in New York. It is a song about genocide, but its really about the emotional and psychological afterlives of genocide. As the collector and historian Ian Nagoski has said, Groung resonates with the trauma of realizing that all of the people you once knew are now dead, that the home you once knew as home can never be returned to.

Obviously, the Panosian story, like the story you tell in your book, is not limited to a single period. Those feelings and those traumas, and those attempts to respond to them and even suture them, are ongoing, and currently very much alive as we type. Though your book begins with a looking back, how much of it for you is also a means of reflecting on all the millions of people all over the world right now who are connected to places and communities that either no longer exist or exist in a way that makes them impossible to reconnect with?

SARAH ABREVAYA STEIN: Thanks for this evocative question to start us off!

I entirely agree with the thrust of your question.The modern world (and the women, children, men, and families who experience it) has undoubtedly been defined by displacement and migration (sometimes forced, sometimes voluntary), as well as loss and reinvention.In this sense,Family Papersis exploring not just a Jewish story but a fundamentally modern, human one.

The comparison you make with Groung is a fascinating one; its especially intriguing because it reinforces how differently Ottoman Jews and their Armenian neighbors experienced the late years of the Ottoman Empire and, in turn, came to harbor such different memories of the places whence they came. While Armenians remember with anguish the genocide and displacement of upward of a million and a half women, men, and children at the hands of the Ottoman regime, the same time and place was hospitable to Jews and subsequently evoked incredible nostalgia in Sephardic migrs (though there were also Jews who were horrified witnesses of the violence directed against their Armenian neighbors).

Moving beyond the Sephardic/Armenian contrast, your question reminds me that the Sephardic saga at the heart ofFamily Papersreverberates with contemporary novels that are similarly concerned with families experience of displacement, loss, and inherited trauma. I think of Laila Lalamis brilliant The Other Americans (2019)andthe stunning work byyour colleague Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (2015). These writers are grappling, as am I, with the attempt to breathe life into family and diasporic history, to explore the loss that is inextricable from it, and to celebrate the resilience that allows people to reinvent themselves (even if the shadow of the past looms large).

For me, family letters have been the crucial point of access to intimate histories of the 20th century. And this brings me, in turn, to ask a question of you that I think ties our work together. Your latest project, The Autograph Book of L.A.,ponders why it is so important for people to be remembered and why other people cling so earnestly to the written traces others leave behind.I see the same dynamics in the letters exchanged by the family at the heart ofFamily Papers.Over time, letters became, for them, the thing that made them a family: after their family tree had branched so far, and in so many geographical and cultural directions, little else could be said to bind them.

My question for you, then, is: Why is nostalgia so compelling? Why are people driven by the zeal to collect and save these written, yet ephemeral traces of the past?

I was so taken with your early admission in your book that you identify as a document hunter. In these days when documents are mostly synonymous with political battles, seizures, and displacements documents as the policed and criminalized tools of belonging its good to remember that there are other histories and other uses of documents that operate outside of governmental power. So, much of my work is inspired by cultural ephemera as a kind of alternative or counter-history, personal collections that offer intimate, even secret, engagements with survival and pleasure and memory in the face of loss.

Ive done projects now with formal collections held at the Los Angeles Public Library sheet music, restaurant menus, and, most recently as you say, autographs but it really began with my own personal collecting, as a teenager, of cassettes and LPs. Back then, I didnt see them as historical windows per se, but as ways (to nod to something Walter Benjamin once said) of collecting myself. These musical documents became a register of my own identity, one that I could actively shape through a mix of reality and imagination, documentary and fantasy.

Working with collections like turn-of-the-20th-century autographs connects back to this question you raise about nostalgia, a word that I find too often gets a bad rap, or is at least badly rapped. As your book explores, nostalgia has been thought of as a longing for home that no longer exists, but as Svetlana Boym so powerfully wrote, that doesnt mean its purely retrospective. Nostalgia can be a tool for making a future out of the ruins of the past. Instead of what she calls restorative nostalgia that attempts to recreate a lost world as an absolute truth, there is also reflective nostalgia nostalgia as a tool of critical inquiry, a way of reflecting on who we are. Was there ever really a home to begin with? What would even be the value of trying to restore it? How much of the past is required to live in the present? Who are we without a home? These are questions I love to think about (music is a great platform for them), and I feel them resonating all over your book.

I wanted also to return to the specific Sephardic dimension of your work as it relates to these issues. Over a decade ago, I co-wrote a book about the history of Jews in America as reflected in 500 album covers (And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved, 2008). It became immediately apparent that the easiest, most documented, Jewish-American history to tell is Ashkenazic, and most of the documents I was working with 12-inch LPs had little to say about the Sephardic experience in America. Have you found that to be true in your own research? If so, why do you think the Sephardic story has so often played second fiddle? Did that marginalization play a role in your own search for these papers?

Im also so gripped by the complex intermixing of the past and the present.My work on the Levy family has led me to the homes of descendants the world over, some as young as teenagers, some in their 90s. Its quite fascinating to consider the ways their familys past does and does not matter to them:and the ways it influences the present without their even being aware. I actually closeFamily Paperswith a meditation on just this complex point why history matters to a family, and what we lose as we cease to honor letters as a tie that binds.

As for your last point, I am certainly motivated by the extent to which Sephardic history has been ignored in scholarly and popular writing.To tell Mediterranean Jewish stories, I think, allows us to diversify Jewish history.But equally importantly, it forces us to rethink the very texture of Jewish culture: its languages, food, and rituals (most obviously) as well as the (less obvious) ways parents relate to children, how intimacies take shape, or how historic lands and landscapes are remembered.

We began by discussing how the history of the family at the heart of Family Papers was paradigmatically modern, yet they also carried an Ottoman and Mediterranean watermark that I still see, however faintly, in descendants of the present day.This, I think, is what gripped me about their story over so many years.Their odyssey is a human one, a Jewish one, a modern one, yet also inescapably and uniquely Sephardic.

Josh Kum is professor of Communication and Journalism and chair in Cross-Cultural Communication at the University of Southern California. His latest book is The Autograph Book of L.A.: Improvements on the Page of the City (2019).

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A Nod to Nostalgia: A Conversation Between Josh Kun and Sarah Abrevaya Stein - lareviewofbooks

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2020

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Should we try to preserve Yiddish as a living language in America or Israel?

A historic language used as a means of Jewish communication for hundreds of years and saturated with divrei Torah and yiras shamayim should be preserved. In addition, much Torah was written in Yiddish and will be lost if access to the language is lost.

However, I heard from HaGaon Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky, ztl, that Torah should be learned in the language one was brought up to speak. Since in America, for the most part, that language is English and in Israel that language is Hebrew, one should learn Torah in those languages because clarity is only achieved in a language one relates to directly, not in a language one needs to translate into another language to understand.

Hence, since it is unlikely that all frum Jews in America or Eretz Yisrael will suddenly begin to speak Yiddish exclusively, the language of instruction should be English. However, Yiddish should be taught as a second language; its at least as important as teaching French or Spanish.

Rabbi Zev Leff, rav of MoshavMatisyahu, popular lecturer and educator

* * * * *

Yiddish has become synonymous with Orthodox Judaism and has lost its meaning within the secular parts of the faith.

When I grew up in Toronto, most of limudei kodesh in elementary school was translated into Yiddish. Today, thats rare. I strove to maintain the language with my own children, but its extremely difficult to do when Yiddish is no longer commonly spoken.

Chazal tell us that one of the saving graces of Bnei Yisrael in Mitzrayim was the fact that they did not change their language; this reflects a certain reality that preserving a language goes hand in hand with preserving a culture and identity. Its therefore not surprising that secular Judaism has contributed to the demise of Yiddish and a simultaneous loss of traditional Jewish identity.

According to the Pew report, many Jewish American Baby Boomers grew up speaking Yiddish at home, but dropped it along with an Orthodox lifestyle when they reached adulthood.

While Yiddish is experiencing something of a renaissance in theater and the like, it is more a nostalgic throwback to the shtetl with appeal to cultural Jews who like to reminisce.

On balance, I maintain there is definite value to preserving Yiddish, if only because it goes some way to upholding Jewish identity and tradition.

Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, popular Lubavitchlecturer, rabbi of Londons Mill Hill Synagogue

* * * * *

When I was learning in yeshiva, our rabbeim taught in Yiddish, which was their native language. We learned enough Yiddish to understand the shiur. Two generations later both the roshei yeshiva and the students are English speakers. Except for the chassidim who came to America later and want to remain different from American society learning Yiddish is an act of nostalgia.

In America, few people know Hebrew well and its much more important to teach Hebrew. It is both the language of our religious texts and the language spoken in Israel. Not knowing Hebrew is a barrier between American and Israeli Jewry.

Furthermore, the majority of Israeli Jews come from Sephardic backgrounds where Yiddish was irrelevant. Promoting Yiddish therefore might become divisive.

It would be nice if Yiddish were preserved, but it is clearly not the priority. Teaching Hebrew should be.

Rabbi Yosef Blau, mashgiach ruchani at YUs Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary

* * * * *

Over the centuries, Jews developed languages such as Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Arabic, etc. These languages reflected Jewish societies that were largely cut off from the larger societies around them. Jews spoke their own languages, ran their own schools, published their own books and newspapers.

For most Jews today, the sociological reasons for maintaining a distinctive Jewish language no longer apply. Jews speak the language of the land as their mother tongue. Sociological realities relentlessly undermine the need for a distinctive Jewish language.

I grew up among Sephardim of Judeo-Spanish background. My grandparents generation spoke Judeo-Spanish as their mother tongue. My parents spoke the language fluently to their parents and elders but spoke to us in English. We understood our elders when they spoke Judeo-Spanish but our mother tongue is English. My generation is the last to hear Judeo-Spanish as a vibrant, living language.

There are efforts to maintain vestiges of the language and tradition prayers, folksongs, proverbs etc. But it is highly unlikely that it will ever again be spoken as a mother tongue. Instead of lamenting this fact, we should be striving to derive lasting lessons from Judeo-Spanish civilization. The same is true for Yiddish outside chassidic circles. Instead of lamenting the decline, let us draw on the treasures of Yiddish culture to enhance and enrich the Jewishness of our generation and future generations.

Rabbi Marc D. Angel, director ofthe Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals

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Is It Proper? Should we try to preserve Yiddish as a living language in America or Israel? - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2020

More than 15% of respondents to a poll in Italy said the Holocaust never happened.

The results are part of the annual Italy Report of the Eurispes published Thursday. The poll by the nongovernmental organisation probes Italians views on a number of subjects, including the credibility of the government, the media and history, this year including the Holocaust.

The prevalence of Holocaust denial among the 1,120 Italian adults surveyed is more than five times higher than in the 2004 edition, when 2.7% of respondents said the Holocaust never happened.

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Nearly 24% of the respondents said Jews control the economy and media, and 26% said they control U.S. policy.

Nearly two-thirds indicated that recent cases of antisemitism are isolated and have no bearing on the real scope of antisemitism in Italy.

About 20% agreed with that statement that many think that Benito Mussolini, Hitlers ally and mentor and the father of 20th-century fascism, was a great leader who only made a few mistakes.

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Fifteen percent of Italians say Holocaust never happened, poll finds - The Australian Jewish News

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In Arab and Muslim lands, anti-Semitism is often expressed as both hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel, and is very frequently bolstered by Holocaust denial. Delegitimizing the Jewish state can serve as a means to reverse the humiliation, degradation, and oppression of Muslims.

In Eastern Europe, right-wing, nationalist parties have taken control, often rewriting Holocaust history, and often with the support of groups that are strongly anti-Semitic and have adopted Nazi slogans and agendas. In Western Europe, anti-Semitism is found among right-wing forces; within political parties on the left, especially in Britain; and among elements of the Muslim community.

But for now, the democracies of Western Europe are strong enough to withstand the pressure. And in America, the episodes of anti-Semitic speech and violence, though theyve greatly proliferated in the past few years, have begun to mobilize communities and governmental agencies to protect Jews from violence. This wont stop anti-Semitisms continuing growth, but it will control it. Despite a long history of bias at many levels, from academia to boardrooms, Jews in America have established themselves during the past century in every sphere of American life, and the American tradition of tolerance will remain far more powerful than its manifestations of prejudice.

So although Jews face ongoing violence, it is not of a level that will, in the foreseeable future, result in massive death. In Europe and the United States, there might be limited outbursts. Should Iran develop nuclear weapons, it could, in a moment of irrationality, launch them to try to obliterate the Jewish state, which its leaders repeatedly have vowed to destroy and which is home to nearly half of the worlds Jews; but Irans fear that it could be devastated in return by a nuclear-armed Israel would almost surely keep such a cataclysmic possibility in check. In short, despite the rise in worldwide anti-Semitism, a repeat of the Holocaustmajor mass murderis, though possible, unlikely in the foreseeable future.

As we mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I wish I could be more upbeat than that. But Im not. Im a physician. I know that one can manage a chronic disease, one can treat it, one can often prevent its complications, but one can rarely cure itand one cant ever be sure that it wont become, at some point, catastrophic.

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Seventy-Five Years After Auschwitz, Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise - The Atlantic

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