Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 13, 2020

The systemic looting of Poland by the Nazis during World War II still resonates today in that country, where officials continue to seek the return of more than 63,000 works of art and cultural properties, many of which were stolen from Jews there.

But experts say Poland has done a poor job of providing the same justice to Dutch Jews and others whose art works were stolen during the war and ended up in German-occupied Poland and now are part of official museum collections.

Seven Dutch works that researchers have identified as missing are held by one museum in Gdansk. Scholars say they suspect dozens more are in art institutions in other Polish cities where the Nazis stored cultural artifacts they had looted, or bought under dubious circumstances, from the Netherlands.

The Polish government wants to have as much as possible back, said Kamil Zeidler, a law professor at the University of Gdansk who has studied the issue, but they dont want to give anything back to others.

For example, according to a report prepared in 2018 but never publicly released, 81 works seized in the Netherlands by the Nazis or their agents most likely ended up in occupied Poland. The report, by the Origins Unknown Agency, a Dutch organization that investigates cases of looted art, was commissioned by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. But the Polish museums and authorities have not done much to track the works, the researchers said.

There is no commitment at a museum level, or at a national level, or at a political level to return these works that are in the country, said Anne Webber, the founder and co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, a London-based nonprofit that helps to foster restitutions.

Recent work by Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, a senior research associate at Harvard Universitys Ukrainian Research Institute, has traced two works now housed at the National Museum in Gdansk back to Dutch owners who lost them in the war.

One is Jan van Goyens 1638 painting Huts on a Canal, which portrays a farmer and his pigs crossing a rickety bridge near thatch-roofed houses. It hung in the Amsterdam gallery of the Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker in May 1940, when he died trying to flee the Nazi invasion, she said. It has been in the Gdansk National Museum for decades.

Poland still lacks a viable procedure for processing restitution claims from Holocaust victims both within the country and from abroad, Ms. Grimsted wrote in an article to be published in the International Journal of Cultural Property.

In response to questions from The New York Times, curators at the Gdansk museum acknowledged that six other paintings in their collections are also identified on the Origins Unknown Agencys list of missing Dutch works thought to be in Poland.

In addition to the van Goyen, the art includes paintings attributed to Pieter de Hooch and Ferdinand Bol. One of the works, by Jacob van Ruysdael, was taken from a Jewish publisher in Berlin, German researchers found, and ended up in the hands of Dutch art dealers who appear to have sold it to the museum in Gdansk.

Willi Drost, the director of the Gdansk art museum during the war, was an avid buyer of Dutch old master paintings, according to the Origins Unknown Agency report.

Magda Mielnik, curator of the historical art department at the Gdansk museum, said she and her colleagues are working to document the history and provenance of the collection with a plan to publish a book about all the works next year. The paintings looted from the Netherlands are an important part of our research, she said.

Frank Lord, a New York-based lawyer for the Goudstikker heirs, said the family believes two works in the museum are from the Dutch art dealers collection. He declined to discuss any plans to seek their return.

The Polish Culture Ministry, which has actively sought the return of art the Nazis looted from Poland, suggested the criticism is unfair. So far, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has not received any restitution claims from the Dutch government regarding works of art plundered during World War II from the Netherlands and located in Polish museums, the ministry said in a statement.

The Polish government, the statement said, only responds to claims that are placed before it through an official government procedure on the basis of international law. Individual claimants, it noted, could also pursue restitution through the courts.

The Dutch Ministry of Culture said restitution claims should be filed by individuals, not the state. Should a Dutch citizen need help from the Dutch state, they will receive the required support said Martijn Kamans, a ministry spokesman, in an email.

Dutch museums have also confronted criticism that they have not done enough to return works of art to owners who lost them during World War II.

As frustrating as Polish efforts have been to outside researchers, inside the country there is a broad sense that people beyond Polands borders need to recognize the scale of the losses in that country, where millions died and some 500,000 cultural objects went missing during the war.

We have to stress and we need to mention that Poland as a country was a victim and probably was the biggest victim of the Second World War concerning the looting of cultural property, said Professor Zeidler.

At conferences on the restitution of art looted during the Holocaust, an adviser to the State Department, Stuart E. Eizenstat, has identified Poland as one of several countries that have failed to live up to the 1998 Washington Principles, which set requirements for international cooperation in returning plundered art.

Mr. Eizenstat said in an interview last month that he considered it urgent that the Polish and Dutch authorities form a joint working group to try to identify and return the dozens of artworks that have already been tracked to Poland. But more broadly, he said, it would help if Poland undertook a thoroughgoing provenance research project to determine whether or not they are holding other Nazi-looted art, not that they took, but that migrated to Poland in one way or another.

Just as important, he added, is that other countries access the Polish database of its war losses to ensure the return of any of those objects taken from within Polands World War II borders.

The database created by Dutch researchers lists some 15,000 works still missing from the Netherlands, though experts call that a partial count.

During the war, Dutch Jewish families were required to relinquish all property to a formerly Jewish bank, Lippmann, Rosenthal and Co., which the Germans Aryanized and looted. Artworks from Jewish-owned galleries were purchased at cut-rate prices by Nazi art agents, and often sold to top Nazi officials.

Some of this art was later sold through dealers or auction houses in Poland under the control of the German Reich. The Germans used the Polish museums as depositories for looted art, explained Ms. Webber.

Ms. Grimsted said a group of paintings from the Netherlands ended up in Gdansk through Albert Forster, the Nazi governor who targeted Jews and other Poles for death while promoting Nazi art preferences in the local museum, which became a gathering point for Nazi-looted works of art.

After the war, the territory was returned to Poland, though some of the Dutch art was probably carted off to the Soviet Union by the Red Army, as were many museum records.

Ms. Mielnick said in an interview that the museum is making an earnest effort to identify and return paintings but that the process is difficult. It is worth remembering, she said, that many documents are nonexistent or in many different institutions, sometimes like puzzles that you need to put together.

Piotr Michaowski, the curator of the gallery of European Art at the Polish National Museum in Poznan, said in an interview that in 1945, almost all the museums records were destroyed, either burned during fighting between German and Soviet forces or taken to Russia.

We have no inventory books and no other records connected with collections and everything that happened with the Second World War here, he said.

Mr. Michaowski said that the museum has not yet conducted provenance research of its collection, but is planning to do so in the next couple of years. He said he knew of eight paintings that had been purchased by the museum in 1942 at the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna, two of them by Dutch masters, and one with a label from the Goudstikker Gallery. He also found a painting the museum had purchased in 1942 from the Galerie Gurlitt in Berlin, owned at the time by Hildebrand Gurlitt, a dealer the Nazis had assigned to sell art seized from museums and Jews.

Although these works have a dubious provenance, more research is needed to determine whether they were looted from Jews in the Netherlands.

Gideon Taylor, chair of operations for the World Jewish Restitution Organization, an advocacy group based in New York, said Poland should take two steps to catch up with international restitution standards.

The first step is transparency: to make publicly available information about what artworks it holds so that families can know that these works still exist, said Mr. Taylor. The second is to set up a process to deal with claims to return those works to those families. So far, we havent seen any progress from Poland on either of those two steps.

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Poland Urged to Look for Nazi-Looted Art Still Held in Its Museums - The New York Times

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Posted By admin on January 13, 2020

In wide-ranging interview, Yaakov Sharett, the son of one of Israel's founding fathers, says he regrets settling the Negev in the 1940s - and the entire Zionist project

My name is Yaakov Sharett. I am 92 years old. I happen to be my fathers son for which I am not responsible. So this is how it is.

Yaakov chuckles and looks up from under a woolly hat towards a photograph of his father - proud in collar and tie - on his study wall in Tel Aviv. Moshe Sharett was a founding father of Israel, its first foreign minister and its second prime minister from 1954-55.

But I hadnt come to talk about Yaakovs father. I had come with photographs of a well which was once located in an Arab village called Abu Yahiya, situated in the Negev region in what is now southern Israel.

'I happen to be my fathers son for which I am not responsible. So this is how it is'

- Yaakov Sharett

Researching a book, I had recently found the well and learned something of the history of Abu Yahiya village. I had heard how the Palestinians who once lived there were expelled in the war of 1948, which led to the creation of Israel.

I had also heard that Zionist frontiersmen, who set up an outpost near the village before the 1948 war, used to draw water from the Arabs well. Among them was a young Jewish soldier called Yaakov Sharett. So I had come to see Yaakov in the hope he might share his memories of the well, the villagers and the events of 1948.

In 1946, two years before the Arab-Israeli war, Yaakov and a group of comradesmoved to the area of Abu Yahiya to help spearhead one of the Zionists most breathtaking land grabs.

As a young soldier, Sharett was appointed mukhtar or chief - of one of 11 Jewish outposts established by stealth in the Negev. The purpose was to secure a Jewish foothold to ensure Israel could seize the strategic area when war came.

Draft partition plans had designated the Negev, where Arabs vastly outnumbered Jews, as part of an Arab state, but Jewish strategists were determined to take it as theirs.

The so-called 11 points operation was a huge success, and during the war the Arabs were virtually all driven out, and the Negev was declared part of Israel.

For the daring frontiersmen involved, it was a badge of honour to have taken part and Yaakov Sharett seemed excited by his memories at first.

We set off, with wire and posts and tracked through Wadi Beersheva, he says. I flick open a laptop showing photographs of the Arab well, now an Israeli tourist spot.

Yes, says Yaakov, amazed. I know it. I knew Abu Yahiya. A nice man. A tall, lean Bedouin with a sympathetic face. He sold me water. It was delicious.

What happened to the villagers, I wonder? He pauses. When war came, the Arabs fled - expelled. I somehow dont remember, he says, pausing again.

I returned afterwards and the area was quite empty. Empty! Except, and he peers at the photo of the well again.

You know, this nice man was somehow still there afterwards. He asked for my help. He was in a very bad way - very sick, and barely able to walk, all alone. Everyone else was gone.

But Yaakov offered no help. I said nothing. I feel very bad about it. Because he was my friend, he says.

Yaakov looks up clearly pained. I regret it all very much. What can I say?

And as what was to be our short interview ran on, it became clear that Yaakov Sharett regretted not only the Negev venture, but the entire Zionist project as well.

Panning out across the history, Yaakov seemed at times more like a man confessing than giving an interview.

After the 1948 war and the establishment of Israel, Yaakov studied Russian in the US and was then posted as a diplomat to the Israeli embassy in Moscow, only to be expelled from Russia accused of being a Zionist propagandistand a CIA spy.

On return to Israel, he worked as a journalist and on retirement devoted his later years to establishing the Moshe Sharett Heritage Society, dedicated to publishing Sharett's papers and diaries one section in English. The Sharett diaries have been highly acclaimed, described by one critic as among the best political diaries ever published.

Often referring in our interview to his fathers central role in establishing Israel, Yaakovs thoughts had evidently been brought into focus by the years hed spent editing Moshe Sharetts writings. Haaretz, the centre-left Israeli newspaper, commenting on the eight-volume Hebrew edition of the diaries, said it was difficult to overstate their importance to the study of Israeli history.

This week, publication of the abridged English edition, also translated by Yaakov My Struggle for Peace (1953-1956) - will be celebrated at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. It is the apex of my lifes work, says Yaakov.

Often referring in our interview to his fathers central role in establishing Israel, Yaakovs thoughts had evidently been brought into focus by the years hed spent editing Moshe Sharetts writings - or my lifes work, he says.

This work had also made the pain of his conclusions all the deeper as he now disavowed the validity of much of his fathers lifes work and, I learn, his grandfathers too.

His grandfather, Jacob Shertok - the original family name - was one of the first Zionists to set foot in Palestine, leaving his home in Kherson, Ukraine, in 1882 after Russian pogroms.

He had this dream of tilling the land. The big Zionist idea was going back to the land and leaving the superficial activities of Jews who had become remote from land, he says.

They thought that, little by little, more Jews would immigrate until they became a majority, and could demand a state, which they then called a homeland to avoid controversy.

I wonder what Yaakovs grandfather thought would happen to the Arabs, who then comprised about 97 percent of the population, with Jews around 2 to 3 percent.

I think he thought the more Jews that came, the more theyd bring prosperity and the Arabs would be happy. They didnt realise people dont live only on money. We would have to be the dominant power, but the Arabs would get used to it, he says.

Adding with a wistful smile: Well, either they believed it or they wanted to believe it. My grandfathers generation were dreamers. If they had been realists, they would not have come to Palestine in the first place. It was never possible for a minority to replace a majority that had lived on this land for hundreds of years. It could never work, he says.

Four years later, Jacobwished he hadnt come, returning to Russia, not because of Palestinian hostility - Jewish numbers were still tiny - but because he couldnt make a living here.

Many of the very early settlers in Palestine found working on the land far harder than they had ever imagined, often returning to Russia in despair. But in 1902, after more pogroms, Jacob Sharett returned, this time with a family including Moshe, aged eight.

Palestinians were still - for the most part - welcoming to Jews as the threat of Zionism remained unclear. A member of the prosperous Husseini family, who was headed abroad, even offered Yaakovs grandfather his house to rent in the village of Ein Siniya, now in the occupied West Bank.

For two years, grandfather Shertok lived there like an Arab grandee while his children attended a Palestinian kindergarten. My father herded sheep, learned Arabic and generally lived like an Arab, says Yaakov.

But the Zionist plan was to live like Jews so before long, the family had moved to the fast-growing Jewish hub of Tel Aviv and Moshe was soon honing every skill - including studying Ottoman law in Istanbul - in order to further the Zionist project.

Thanks to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine and ushered in British colonial rule, plans for a full-blown Jewish state now seemed possible, and over the next two decades, Moshe Sharett helped design it, becoming a key figure in the Jewish Agency, the states government-in-waiting.

Central to the project was the creation of a Jewish majority and ownership of as much of the land as possible, to which end Sharett worked closely with his ally David Ben-Gurion. Immigration rose fast, and land was bought, usually from absentee Arab landlords.

'My father and the rest still thought that most Arabs would sell their national honour for the food we would give them'

- Yaakov Sharett

The pace of change provoked the Palestinian revolt of 1936, brutally crushed by the British. In the light of that revolt, did the future prime minister ever question whether the Jewish state could work?

No, says Yaakov. The leadership were still full of justifying their ideas of Zionism. You must remember that they all thought in terms of being Jewish and how they had been subjugated by majorities in the countries in which they had lived.

My father said this: Wherever there is a minority, every member has a stick and rucksack in his cupboard'. Psychologically, he realises a bad day will come and he will have to leave. So the priority was always to create a majority and shake off the psychology of the minority for ever.

My father and the rest still thought that most Arabs would sell their national honour for the food we would give them. It was a nice dream, but at the cost of others. And anyone who did not agree was a traitor.

As a young teenager, in the early 1940s, Yaakov didnt question his fathers outlook. Quite the contrary.

I must say, he continues, when I was in the Zionist Youth Movement, we went around the Arab villages on foot and you saw an Arab village and learned its Hebrew name as in the Bible and you felt the time has not divided between you and it. I have never been religious, but this is what you felt.

By 1939, World War Two had broken out and many young Israelis had joined the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, serving in Europe. The Jewish Brigade was an idea of Yaakovs father, and as soon as he was old enough, Yaakov volunteered, joining up in 1944, aged 17. But a few months later in April 1945 the war was over and Yaakov was too late to see any service.

Back in Palestine, those young Jewish soldierswho had served in Europewere amongst those now being recruited to fight in what many knew was coming next: a new war in Palestine to establish a state of Israel.Yaakov - who had clearly not yet started to see that Zionism was at the cost of others - readily agreed to play his part.

Now aged 19, Yaakov was picked to play the role of a Jewish mukhtar, or village head, at a quasi-military outpost in the Negev, a barren terrain barely settled by Jews.

I didnt think a lot about politics back then. To build this settlement was literally our dream, he says.

His wife, Rena, has joined us, perching on a stool, and nods in agreement. Rena Sharett was another eager Zionist who claimed the Negev in 1946.

Before 1948, the Negev constituted the British administrative district of Beersheva and the district of Gaza, which together made up half the land of Palestine. Touching the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, the terrain had vital access to water.

So not surprisingly, the Zionists, who had to date succeeded in purchasing just 6 percent of Palestinian land, were determined to seize it.

However, given that about 250,000 Arabs lived in the Negev, in 247 villages, compared to about 500 Jews in three small outposts, a recent Anglo-American partition plan had divided mandate Palestine between Jews and Arabs, apportioning the Negev region as part of a future Palestinian state.

A British ban on new settlement had also hindered Zionist attempts to alter the status quo. Arabs had always opposed any plan that envisaged the Palestinians as an indigenous majority living on their ancestral soil, being converted overnight into a minority under alien rule, as the Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi, summarised it.

In late 1946, however, with a new United Nations partition plan in the making, the Zionist leaders saw it was now or never for the Negev.

So the 11 points plan was launched. Not only would the new settlements boost the Jewish presence there, they would serve as military bases when war broke out, as it inevitably would.

Everything had to be done in secret due to the British ban and it was decided to erect the outposts on the night of 5 October, just after Yom Kippur. The British would never expect the Jews to do such a thing the night after Yom Kippur, says Yaakov.

I remember when we found our piece of land on the top of a barren hill. It was still dark, but we managed to bang in the posts and soon, we were inside our fence. At first light, trucks came with pre-fabricated barracks. It was quite a feat. We worked like devils. Ha! I will never forget it.

'I remember when we found our piece of land on the top of a barren hill. It was still dark, but we managed to bang in the posts and soon, we were inside our fence'

- Yaakov Sharett

Looking out from inside their fence, the settlers at first didnt see any Arabs, but then made out the tents of Abu Yahiyas village, and a few dirty huts, as Yaakov described them.

Soon, they were asking the Arabs for water. I collected our water for our settlement from that well every day in my truck, thats how I became friends with Abu Yahiya, he says.

With his smattering of Arabic, he chatted to others too: They loved to talk. On it went when I had work to do, he laughs. I dont think they were happy with us there exactly, but they were at peace with us. There was no enmity.

Another local Arab chief watched out for their security in return for a small payment. It was a kind of agreement we had with him. Hed act as guard and every month, hed come up to our fence and sit there quite still he looked like just a small bundle of clothes, Yaakov says, smiling broadly.

He was waiting for payment and I shook his hand and got him to sign some sort of receipt with his thumb which I gave to the authorities in Tel Aviv and they gave me money for the next time. That was my only real responsibility as mukhtar, says Yaakov, adding that everyone knew he only got this role as chief because he was his fathers son.

Moshe Sharett, by now a leading political figure, was known as a moderate, and as such was viewed with suspicion by some military hardliners.

The new Negev desert outposts were planned in large part as centres for gathering intelligence about the Arabs, and Yaakov believes it was probably because of his father he too was distrusted and excluded by those sent to the outpost to lay military plans

Instead I was really used just as a jack of all trades - driving, collecting water, buying fuel in Gaza or Beersheba. He sounds nostalgic for the freedom of that arid landscape, though the settlers were always back inside their fence at night.

He came to know other Arab villages, too, like Burayr which was always hostile, I dont know why, but most were friendly, particularly a village called Huj. I used to drive through Huj often and knew it well.

During the 1948 war, the residents of Huj reached an agreement in writing with Jewish authorities that they be allowed to stay, but they were driven out like all the other 247 villages of this area, mostly to Gaza. The Palestinians called the expulsions their Nakba or catastrophe.

I asked Yaacov what he recalled of the Arab exodus in May 1948, but he was absent at the time as Renas brother was killed in fighting further east so the couple had left to join her family.

I told Yaacov Id met survivors of the Abu Yahiya clan, who recounted being driven by Jewish soldiers into Wadi Beersheba where the men were separated from the women and some were shot, then the rest were expelled.

Somehow I dont remember that, says Yaakov. But plumbing his memory, he suddenly recalls other atrocities including events at Burayr, the hostile village, where in May 1948 there was a massacre, with between 70 to100 villagers killed, according to survivors and Palestinian historians.

One of our boys helped take Burayr. I remember he said when he got there the Arabs had already mostly fled and he opened the door of a house and saw an old man there so he shot him.He enjoyed shooting him, he says.

By the time Beersheba was taken in October 1948, Yaakov had returned to his nearby outpost, now given the Hebrew name, Hatzerim.

I learned our boys had led the army to the town, he says. We knew the area very well and could guide them through the wadis [riverbeds].

After Beersheba fell, Yaakov drove his comrades down in a truck to take a look: It was empty, totally empty. The entire population of about 5,000 had been expelled and driven in trucks to Gaza.

I had heard there was a lot of looting. Yes, he says. We took things from several empty houses. We took what we could - furniture, radios, utensils. Not for ourselves, but to help the kibbutz. After all, Beersheva was empty and belonged to nobody now.

What did he think of that? Again, I must confess I didnt think much at all at the time. We were proud of occupying Beersheva. Although I must say, wed had so many friends there before.

Yaakov says he couldnt remember if he had looted himself: I probably did. I was one of them. We were very happy. If you dont take it, someone else will. You dont feel you have to give it back. They were not coming back.

What did you think about that? He pauses. We didnt think about it then. My father, in fact, said they will not come back. My father was a moral man. I dont think he was a party to the orders to expel the Arabs. Ben-Gurion was. Sharett no. But he accepted it as a fact. I think he knew something was going wrong, but he didnt fight it, he says.

After the war my father gave a lecture and said I dont know why a man should live two years secluded in a village [a reference to his time growing up in Ein Siniya] to realise that Arabs are human beings. This kind of saying you wont get from any other Jewish leaderthis was my father.

Then, as if confessing on behalf of his father too, Yaakov adds: But I have to be frank, my father had some cruel things to say about the refugees. He was against their return; he agreed with Ben-Gurion on that.

Far more cruel than Sharett was Moshe Dayan. Appointed after the war as chief of staff by David Ben-Gurion, Israels first prime minister, Dayan had the task of keeping back the Negev refugees and many others fenced in behind the Gaza armistice lines.

In 1956, a Gaza refugee killed an Israeli settler, Roi Rotberg, and at his funeral, Dayan gave a famous eulogy urging Israelis to accept, once and for all, that the Arabs would never live in peace beside them, and he spelled out why: the Arabs had been expelled from their homes which were now lived in by Jews.

But Dayan urged the Jews to respond not by seeking compromise but by looking squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of Arabs who live around us and be forever ready and armed, tough and hard.

This speech made a profound impression on Yaakov Sharrett. I said this was a fascist speech. He was telling people to live by the sword, he says. Moshe Sharett, who was foreign minister at the time, had been urging compromise through diplomacy for which he was called weak.

But it wasnt until 1967, when he started working as a journalist for the centrist Israeli paper, Maariv, that Yaakov lost his faith in Zionism.

In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel seized more land, this time in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, where military occupation was imposed on the Palestinians who hadnt fled this time.

Touring the West Bank, Sharett stared at the stunned but defiant Arab faces and felt uneasy once again, particularly when he visited his old family village of Ein Siniya, which his father, now dead, had spoken of so affectionately. It was here that as a child, Moshe had herded sheep and learned that Arabs were humans, as Moshe Sharett would say in a later speech.

The villagers were under the first shock of occupation. They knew the Jews were now the dominating power, but they showed no feelings of hatred. They were simple people. And I remember that several residents came and surrounded us and smiled and told me they remembered my family and the house in which our family lived. So we smiled at each other and I left. I didnt go back. I didnt like this occupation and I didnt want to go there as a master, he says.

Have you heard of shooting and weeping? he asks, with another wistful smile, explaining this was an expression to describe Israelis who, after fighting in the West Bank in 1967 showed shame, but accepted the results.

'We smiled at each other and I left. I didnt go back. I didnt like this occupation and I didnt want to go there as a master'

- Yaakov Sharett

But I wanted nothing more to do with this occupation. It was my way of non-identification with it. I was depressed by it, and ashamed.

The faces of the Ein Sinya villagers revealed something else: I saw in this defiance that they still had the psychology of the majority. My father used to say war always makes waves of refugees. But he didnt see that usually those who flee are the minority. In 1948, they were the majority so they will never give up.This is our problem.

The rest is here:

'We are living by the sword': The regrets of an Israel founder's son - Middle East Eye

Category: Jewish Heritage Month | Comments Off on ‘We are living by the sword’: The regrets of an Israel founder’s son – Middle East Eye
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Posted By admin on January 11, 2020

NEW YORK (JTA) A local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People official in New Jersey has been suspended from his position for six months after giving a speech castigating Orthodox Jews in Jersey City and the largely Jewish city of Lakewood.

James Harris, the chair of the education committee for the Montclair, New Jersey branch of the civil rights organization, has apologized for his remarks.

Harris gave a speech at a December 30 community meeting on gentrification in which he called Hasidic Jews unfriendly and blamed Hasidic Jewish developers for pressuring longtime residents of African-American neighborhoods to sell their homes, which he said has happened in Brooklyn and Lakewood as well.

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Harris said that African-Americans in Jersey City and in Montclair live in fear of being replaced by these strangers who really arent friendly.

How many people are familiar with the Hasidics? he said. The Hasidics are generally not too friendly to anybody other than themselves. So, some stress started to develop because people remember Brooklyn and Lakewood. Are we going to be displaced by these people who are not all that friendly?

Screen capture from video of NAACP official James Harris speaking in Montclair, New Jersey, December 30, 2019. (Facebook via JTA)

Later, he pushed back at the notion that criticizing Israel or Jewish people is necessarily anti-Semitic. He had not mentioned Israel previously in his speech.

I found out that people are very, very quick to label anything thats critical of Israel or the Jewish people as anti-Semitic, he said. Excuse me, if the facts are facts it doesnt necessarily make it anti-Semitic.

He also urged people in the audience to to go on their cellphone and look up the word Semitic. What is a Semite? Look it up in the dictionary. Youd be surprised.

Harris, who also serves as president of the New Jersey Association of Black Educators, claimed that the Lakewood Jewish community controls the local Board of Education as well as the City Council, and said that the school board drained funding from the local public schools. He said that the board apportioned $15 million for busing to Jewish private schools.

The Jewish community controls the Board of Education and the City Council but they spend huge amounts of money sending kids to the yeshiva, and they gutted the budget for the black and Latino students who are left in the public schools, he said.

On Tuesday, the president of the Montclair NAACP, Al Pelham, announced that Harris was suspended for six months. In his statement, Pelham noted that the groups mission is to secure equal rights and well-being for all people.

Some of Mr. Harriss overall comments and tone that evening were in clear contradiction of the NAACPs mission and thus the Montclair Branch condemns them, Pelham said, according to the publication Montclair Local. There is much work to be done regarding the many issues facing the Montclair Public Schools and the branch does not want this unfortunate issue to be a distraction.

Harris apologized for the remarks, and expressed his condolences for the victims of the shooting at a Jersey City kosher supermarket, which had taken place about three weeks before his speech. He said his remarks did not represent the NAACP or the New Jersey Association of Black Educators.

Orthodox Jews in Lakewood, New Jersey (YouTube screen capture)

I would like to express my sincere regret and apologize for the remarks I made about the Hasidic community and the development of Montclair, NJ, he said in a statement, according to Montclair Local. My personal statement was meant to focus on the impact of gentrification on lower socioeconomic communities in Montclair, NJ. Instead, I used a regional example of Lakewood, NJ real estate and public education funding. Unfortunately I used terms and examples that have been interpreted as anti-Semitic.

Over the weekend, Montclair Mayor Robert Jackson condemned anti-Semitism and racism, and announced that he would convene a meeting of African-American clergy and rabbis to address the incendiary cloud hanging over our community at the moment.

Heinous incidents nationwide, and in Jersey City and Monsey in particular, shocked and sickened all of us, he said in a statement on Janury 4. However, recent developments have made it abundantly clear that there is much work to be done, even in our beloved Montclair. Hate, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, and intolerance have no place anywhere and particularly in our community and as a community we will work tirelessly to ensure that they are addressed head-on and rooted out.

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NAACP suspends official who said 'the Hasidics are generally not too friendly' - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on January 11, 2020

The statements from organized racists are noteworthy due to the racialized nature of two prominent attacks that took place in December 2019: The suspects accused in both incidents are black.

Two black suspects allegedly shot and killed four people in a Jersey City, New Jersey, kosher supermarket on Dec. 11, 2019, and another allegedly attacked Hasidic Jews at the home of a rabbi in Monsey, New York, on Dec. 28, 2019. Both incidents brought renewed attention to a spike in antisemitic hate crimes taking place not only in and around New York City, but also nationwide. Hate crimes targeted Jews above any other groupin New York, Los Angeles and Chicago during 2019, according to research conducted by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE) at California State University, San Bernardino.

Jewish people try to reach the area where five people were stabbed at a Hasidic rabbi's home in Monsey, New York, Dec. 29, 2019. Photo by REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

White nationalists, who regularly produce a deluge of propaganda that is both antisemitic and depicts black people as violent criminals, used the attacks primarily to focus on sharpening their attacks on Jews.

If its an altercation between a black and a white, my sympathy goes for the white, white nationalist podcaster Michael Enoch Peinovichsaid in a Dec. 30, 2019 broadcast of his show Strike and Mike. But If theres an altercation between a black and Jew, it happens differently.

Peinovich stopped short of endorsing the Dec. 28 machete attack on his show but nevertheless admitted to laughing at what he described as a video of a man punching an Orthodox Jewish person.

Neo-Nazis on the messaging app Telegram praised the attackers outright. One channel run by a pseudonymous internet personality referred to the suspects as based Synagogue Stabbers after the Monsey machete attack.

One neo-Nazi channel on Telegram attached to a group that promotes committing acts of terrorism republished a list of non-white heroes written by someone going by the name Bobby Bowie on Dec. 11, 2019. The list included the names of the suspects of the Jersey City shooter attack next to the tagline, 3 K***s, 1 Cop, referring to the victims of the attack.

Another Telegram channel that traffics in neo-Nazi propaganda posted a series of videos following the attacks that highlighted black speakers voicing criticisms of Jews, appearing to portray them as allies in a shared struggle.

Commenters on the private forum for the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer took a similar tone about the story across dozens of posts in the aftermath of the Monsey attack.

What a fantastic end to 2019, a pseudonymous poster going by the name WhiteShariaEnforcer. Black k*** slayers sending white pills to the goyim.

White pills refers to an event that is positive or hopeful for white nationalists. Goyim refers to non-Jews.

White nationalists and neo-Nazis have been arrested for executing or plotting antisemitic acts of intimidation and even terror in recent years allegedly fueled by propaganda that dehumanizes Jews or targets them with violence.

The list of these incidents includes the Tree of Life synagogue terror attack in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 2018. Police arrested a 46-year-old man who frequented the extremist-friendly social media site Gab, for allegedly shooting and killing 11 people during Shabbat morning services. The accused pleaded not guilty to 19 different charges in February 2019 and is currently awaiting trial.

Police say a 19-year-old man fired his gun into a synagogue in Poway, California, in April 2019, killing one and injuring three others. The same man may have also targeted Muslims, and is suspected of setting fire to an Escondido, California, mosque in March 2019. The suspect allegedly immersed himself in hateful propaganda on the now-defunct forum 8chan, and also published a manifesto to that site heralding the attack. He pleaded not guiltyto charges of murder, attempted murder, arson and allegations of a hate crime in October 2019.

Thwarted terror plots received considerably less media attention in 2019, but still happened with relative frequency: James Reardon, an alleged white nationalist, pleaded not guiltyto charges related to making threats against a Jewish center in Youngstown, Ohio, in August 2019. Alleged neo-Nazi Conor Climo pleaded not guilty in September 2019 after the FBI arrested him on charges related to a plot to bomb Jewish and gay communitiesin Las Vegas. Richard Holzer, 27, pleaded not guiltyin November 2019 to charges related to threatening to bomb a synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado. Holzer allegedly posted pictures of himself draped in neo-Nazi symbols to Facebook prior to his arrest. All three men are currently awaiting trial.

Jewish people try to reach the area where five people were stabbed at a Hasidic rabbi's home in Monsey, New York, Dec. 29, 2019. Photo by REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

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White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis Applaud Recent Spate of Antisemitic Attacks - Southern Poverty Law Center

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Posted By admin on January 11, 2020

City & State NY is hosting a full dayNew York in Transit summiton Jan. 30 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. This summit will bring together experts to assess the current state of New Yorks transportation systems, break down recent legislative actions, and look towards the future of all things coming and going in New York. Join Keynote Speaker Polly Trottenberg, commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation, along with agency leaders, elected officials, and advocates. Use the codeSTREETSBLOGfor a 25-percent discount when youRSVP here!

This is what happens when city officials ignore unsafe streets right in their faces.

On Friday, a cyclist was injured when he was struck by a car driver on the nightmare portion of Flushing Avenue just east of Kent Avenue a through street and crucial bike route in a community with a long aversion to road safety projects.

The cyclist, who gave the name Anthony, was not critically injured, but the collision itself revealed the many ways in which the city has failed cyclists 29 of whom died last year:

The fact is Flushing Avenue is a death waiting to happen. Since Jan. 2018, there have been 170 reported crashes on just the three blocks between the BQE and Franklin Avenue, injuring five cyclists, four pedestrians and 33 motorists. (It is unclear if Fridays collision will even make it into the official records: Cops did not show up while Streetsblog reporter Julianne Cuba was on the scene.)

That part of Flushing Avenue is also a through street through a community which has long been at war with street safety advocates and cyclists.

The clash between the Hasidic community and the citys efforts to build out the bike network were best dramatized when the city erased a bike lane on Bedford Avenue in 2009 after complaints from Hasidic leaders.

A year earlier, the Post covered more opposition to bike lanes from religious leaders in the neighborhood.

The communitys leaders are not the only ones hostile to cyclists, as this 2013 Streetsblog article showed.

The city continues to show great deference to the neighborhoods car culture. To this day, there are no Citi Bike racks in the heart of the neighborhood and safe bike routes mysteriously do not continue through that portion of the neighborhood (see Citi Bike app, above left, and the citys bike map, above right).

Most cyclists just ride on the sidewalk hardly a solution.

We reached out to the Department of Transportation and will update this story if we hear back. Citi Bike has long declined to comment about the gaps in its service in Williamsburg.

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Another Cyclist Injured Along Dangerous Flushing Avenue in Williamsburg - Streetsblog New York

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Posted By admin on January 11, 2020

I have friends who leap, screeching with joy, whenever the opportunity to don fancy dress presents itself.

They are willing to go the full overblown hog at a moments notice weird and wonderful colours and shapes and headgear and make-up are suddenly magicked up from some secret stash. Feathers, tails, horns, wings, savage wounds, robo-limbs, coloured contacts all seem to be instantly on tap, just in case.

Me, Ive never really had the guts. Or perhaps the imagination. Or maybe Im just lazy or overly Scottish or something.

Whichever, when such an evening is proposed, based as it always is on some abstract, ludicrous theme, I feel the creative part of my mind shut down. How the hell do you dress as freedom or DNA or, I dont know, the VAR rule? Whats wrong with jeans and a carry-out and a t-shirt that was washed at some point within the past month? Evening, folks. Ive come as defeated by life.

Until this new year I had only allowed myself to be pressed into fancy dress once, many years ago. To be fair the party was at my flat, so it would have been especially grinch-like even by my standards to ignore the rules. The look was superheroes. I hummed and hawed for weeks and then on the morning of the party went to a shop in Glasgow and rented the last available Batman outfit.

This wasnt the kind of sleek, muscled container that adheres to the toned bodies of Christian Bale and the like they were all long gone. All that was left was a shabby, spongy, loose-fitting thing, the kind of onesie youd buy for a baby, with added fag burns. I was a cute, teddy-bear Batman, and none the worse for it. The only problem was that the outfit zipped up the back. As the night wore on and galactic quantities of drink were taken, my toilet trips increased in frequency and I spent more time asking people to unzip me. It wasnt deliberate whatever my then girlfriend, now wife, said later that cute batman seemed to favour attractive women to help him achieve the necessary state of deshabille.

Anyway, Ive resisted ever since, and decades have passed. When friends threw a big bash a year ago theme: Utopia/Dystopia. Eh? I put on a suit, a look of sullen resistance, and headed along. I was having quite a good time gawking at the various weirdos (one guy, puzzlingly, came as a banana. Even more puzzling, and much to his outrage, so did another guy) until I noticed the hostess glaring at me with unmistakable contempt. Shes a nice lady and Id failed her. I vowed to do better next time.

And so, this new year, came the opportunity. The same friends were hosting, and for once the theme was straightforward: steampunk. This I could do. Id read the books, watched the films. Its basically just waistcoats, goggles and a couple of random cogs, right?

As the date of the party approached, friends were swapping texts and photos about the various pieces of gear theyd ordered from around the globe, the intricate pieces of equipment theyd accessed, the exquisite attention to detail they were paying. Some had even gone to the vast warehouse of the RoyaI Opera and rented costumes. I hadnt ventured much beyond a preliminary scan of Amazon.

Inevitably and predictably, time ran out. With a few days to go, and no hope of any postal delivery getting through, I threw myself on my wifes mercy. Youve actually got plenty of suitable stuff already, she told me. Youre quite odd as it is.

She was right. I had garish tartan sta-press trousers and clumpy old engineer boots and a velvety tuxedo jacket that would all do the job. She had bought a steampunk hat that was too big I was having that, once Id ripped off the gauzy lady-bits. I bought a cheap waistcoat and borrowed a designer silk neckscarf from my mum. I sprayed my hair pink, and my daughters entertained themselves painting on eyeliner ow! and yuck! You do this every day, girls? and highlighter and the like.

In the end I dont think I looked very steampunk more like a grown-up Artful Dodger with Hasidic leanings and a Sex Pistols fixation. But I was undeniably in fancy dress. I wasnt letting anyone down.

And you know what? I loved it. I was properly part of the evening. No one glared at me. The hosts had made up their house to resemble a scene from HG Wellss Time Machine. A well-known novelist was there, dressed as what I can only describe as Little Blue Peep on a hoverboard. The banana guy was there, looking like a bodysnatcher. Another bloke had an amazing clarinet gun (half shotgun, half clarinet). A former rugby international seemed to have come as Sinbad each to their own. It was a brilliant, brilliant night.

Now I find within me an unmistakable urge to do it all again, as soon as possible. Send me your address, tell me your theme, and Ill be there, fully made-up, with dayglo hair and enough gold lame to daunt the doughtiest drag artist. Truly, a monster has been unleashed.

Chris Deerin is a leading journalist and commentator who heads independent, non-party think tank Reform Scotland

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Chris Deerin: Fancy that, being a grown-up Artful Dodger with Hasidic leanings and a Sex Pistols fixation is rather fun after all - Press and Journal

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Posted By admin on January 11, 2020

KVELLER via JTA The state of Washington has sworn in its first Native American Supreme Court justice, Raquel Montoya-Lewis who also happens to be Jewish.

Governor Jay Inslee appointed Montoya-Lewis, 51, to serve on Washingtons highest court. While it is newsworthy shes the first Native American to be sworn in, as Montoya-Lewis herself said, The most important thing is that I not be the last.

Montoya-Lewis is only the second Native American person to serve on any state supreme court, ever. Her appointment was to fill a vacant seat, and runs through this fall, when she will be on the November 2020 ballot.

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Montoya-Lewis is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Isleta Indian tribe, and a descendant of the Pueblo of Laguna Indian tribe through her father. Her mother is Jewish.

Montoya-Lewis was born in Spain in 1968, where her father was stationed as he served in the US Air Force. She attended University of New Mexico for undergrad, then University of Washington for law school. After getting her law degree in 1995, she went on to receive a masters in social work. Why? According to the Spokesman-Review, She wanted to blend her legal training with an understanding of how the law affects people.

Judge Raquel Montoya-Lewis, left, walks with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee from the Capitol Building to the Temple of Justice for her introduction as the newest member of the state Supreme Court Wednesday, December 4, 2019, in Olympia, Washington. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Montoya-Lewis has had a remarkable career thus far. She was a tenured professor at Western Washington University and served as chief judge for three Washington Native American tribes: the Nooksack Indian Tribe, the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, and the Lummi Nation. She also served on the Washington Superior Court from January 2015 to December 2019.

Her appointment was announced in December 2019.

Because Judge Montoya-Lewis is Native American, many will focus on the historic nature of this appointment, Gov. Inslee said. And its entirely appropriate to do so. But I want the record to show that Judge Montoya-Lewis is the kind of exceptional judge I want serving on the highest court in our state because she is the best person for the job.

At a press conference announcing her appointment, a reporter asked Montoya-Lewis, What do you see as the biggest problem with implicit bias in the courts right now?

The biggest hurdle is getting people to understand that we all bring biases to our decision-making, that its across the board I do it, you do it, we all do, she replied. Thats often, in my trainings, the first place we have to start: to recognize that its not something to be embarrassed about, but something to recognize.

Members of the Port Gamble SKlallam Indian tribe sing and play drums during a swearing in ceremony for new Washington Supreme Court Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis, center-right, and new Chief Justice Debra Stephens, center-left, Monday, January 6, 2020, during a swearing in ceremony in Olympia, Washington. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

At the swearing-in ceremony earlier this month, a lawyer in attendance, Shannon Kilpatrick, tweeted that Montoya-Lewis spoke movingly about her background and experiences with a father from the Pueblo tribe and a Jewish mother and the importance of having diverse judges.

As Montoya-Lewis said of Washingtons Supreme Court building: The first thought I had was that these hallways, and those steps, were not built with people like me in my mind.

At the ceremony, there was an invocation from the president of the Quinault Indian Nation, opening and closing songs from Port Gamble SKlallam Singers, and a benediction by Rabbi Seth Goldstein, a rabbi based in Olympia, Washington.

Goldstein tweeted he was honored to offer the benediction:

Heres a short clip of Montoya-Lewis walking in:

I was raised to remember that I come from those who survived. My ancestors on both sides of my family survived genocide, survived institutional boarding schools, survived attempts to eradicate their cultures, and yet as my father reminded me often we survived, Montoya-Lewis said after her appointment. I am here because of their resilience, their courage, their intelligence, and their deep commitment to what is just.

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State of Washington swears in first Native American-Jewish Supreme Court justice - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on January 11, 2020

NEW YORK Fidler afn Dakh, the Yiddish adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, closed on Jan. 5 after a wildly successful 11-month run off-Broadway and an equally successful seven-month stint at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Shraga Friedmans Yiddish translation of Fiddler is a miracle (of miracles) and it was a joy to see it and Yiddish celebrated not just in my little shtetl, but in the mainstream, too.

And yet, when I recently stepped onto a stage and spoke Yiddish, I was less appreciated and more iconicized. Let me explain.

I didnt even know it happened until I read about it in the newspaper afterwards. I had done something quite out of the ordinary for my life: I took a gig as a performer at a Cocktails and Klezmer evening in Philadelphia. My job was to lead the audience through some Yiddish questions and unpack a few elements of Yiddish grammar. I was the educational content in between the booze and schmooze.

If one had to locate Yiddish within the popular imagination, it would be found in the primeval Jewish throat.

The success of Yiddish Fiddler shows that Yiddish, from afar, can attain a certain symbolic stature in the public eye of the theatre class. But the intimate experience of Yiddish, up close and personal, still speaks to nothing so much as lingering discomfort, and an estrangement between observer and object.

Linguistic anthropologists Judith Irvine and Susan Gal describe those linguistic features which were believed to depict or display a social groups inherent nature or essence as iconic, hence the process of iconicization. When European anthropologists began describing the languages of southern Africa in the mid-19th century, they focused on the phonetically unfamiliar click sounds, describing them as similar to the sounds of animals, or rocks striking each other.

Clicks were a linguistic feature which indexed the peoples who used them. Drawing on the prevailing racial-scientific logic of their day, European linguists concluded that the more clicks a language contained, the more degraded or subhuman was the speaker.

I dont think Billy Crystal, or Jesse Bernstein for that matter, are expressing a personal hatred or contempt when they index Yiddish speakers by the depth of their gutturals or the volume of their phlegm. In fact, Im pretty confident theyre expressing their feelings of affection and intimacy, using the ordinary vocabulary of Jewish life, terms for which any of us might reach.

The problem is that those feelings of personal affection and intimacy are in tension with a whole bunch of received ideas about the relative worth of the language. Without even knowing it, weve all absorbed a set of intensely negative beliefs about Yiddish. The origin of those beliefs are so distant, and have become so tangled up with recent history, as to be mystified.

But, if we were to unravel those negative beliefs to their origins, I believe we would find that they lie in the very foundations of Western academia, in which Europes Jews were depicted as a deformed, corrupted Other. The first scholars to study Yiddish were German Humanists, who believed that the language was a degenerate ancestor of the evolved German they spoke. The beliefs of these scholars were clothed in the new language of science and scholarship, which made their truth all the more undeniable, even to the Yiddish-speaking Jews they diminished.

I think theres quite a bit of truth within those explanations. I would suggest that theres another, even more powerful process at work. Fiddler is one of the most beloved and well known texts in American Jewish culture, not to mention American pop culture overall. It is so well known that by attending the show in Yiddish, even non-Yiddish speakers can have the experience of direct access to a language that would otherwise be closed off to them. Yiddler bestows the feeling of bilingualism, without the risks of investing in formal language study. It is deeply, uniquely, accessible to everyone, not just a small circle of Yiddish lovers.

As much as I want to see more Yiddish language shows land off-Broadway, its unlikely that the smashing success of Yiddler will translate to similar levels of success for other Yiddish theater, or that there will be a sudden increase in American Jews signing up to learn Yiddish. For one thing, though were living in a golden age of Yiddish education, the resources and infrastructure just arent there for large numbers of people to begin learning the language. Moreover, American Jews are still Americans, and monolingualism is a powerful American value, one much stronger than the unsexy time and effort it takes to learn a second language especially a low prestige language like Yiddish. Its exhausting to have to justify to everyone why you are spending your precious time learning what is supposedly a dead (and useless) language.

The search for roots and longing to connect still has to compete with our internalized distrust of the very things we are seeking. I was only half-surprised recently to see a just for fun social media posting addressed to fellow Jews, asking us to share the old country names we thought sounded the most awful or embarrassing. My heart broke at the thought of Tevye ending up on this persons list.

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Audiences loved Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, but Yiddish gets no love - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on January 11, 2020

JANUARY 11, 2020

WHEN ANNA AKHMATOVA wrote, in her fifth Northern Elegy, that her life had been replaced, she had recently turned down a marriage proposal. She returned to Leningrad to find that her lover had married someone else, a woman who was now carrying what could have been Akhmatovas only legal name. The prospect of replacing her own funny moniker of a pen name (she had been born with the surname Gorenko) was one of the main things that had attracted the poetess to the match. But she decided to go another way. She chose a different life, yet still longed for the one she had refused. She kept imagining what it would be like to have both the man and the name.

Like a river, / I was deflected by this bitter era, Akhmatova wrote, in Olga Livshins elegant translation. It was 1945, the midpoint of a century that she wrote was worse than any before it. To be deflected is to be intercepted, to be forced to change course by someone or something. It is to never arrive at a foretold destination. These are the opening lines of Akhmatovas fifth Northern Elegy, in which she traces the direction her life could have taken: The spectacles that I was forced to miss: / o, how the curtain rose without me, fell / the same way. The contours of her unlived life emerge in painful clarity before her. This life which might have been lived is very concretely realized, taking on nearly as much solidity as the life which the persona does live, which is almost exclusively conveyed by descriptions of what it is not, Alexandra Harrington writes of the poem. Akhmatova mourns the loss of her almost-life alongside the continuous, monumental loss of her era. She lives across and in between her two lives, real and imagined. The world unfurls before her and she tries not to think only of what could have been.

Two new works by Russian-American authors reinterpret Akhmatovas fifth elegy. In her inventive new collection of poems with translations, A Life Replaced, Olga Livshin writes in conversation with Akhmatova, using the older poets grief as a guide to navigate the depressing present. In a poem titled Newscast Akhmatova, Livshin addresses our great poetic mother, wondering what news she would like to receive from this darkening century:

Her century swelled with the inequities of all the previousones. I grew up there at the end of a revolution thatoverflowed for seventy years was rocked with the tight-lippedgrief of her poems quoted by my mother, who had her face whose face I now wear.

What news for her would make an adequate reply?

The news infiltrates Livshins poems: she writes of immigrants dying at the border, bomb threats at school, shooting after shooting. When a Russian-American walks away from her American home / [] When she stops by a church and American God is out to lunch, begins another one of her poems. She wonders what it means to be Russian-American in a nation where the word Russian has become a simple stand-in for all manner of sins. The displacement Akhmatova wrote of becomes, for Livshin, a way of exploring the experience of Soviet immigrants in the United States. Like Akhmatova, they were deflected from their anticipated futures. Like Akhmatova, they made a choice. A Life Replaced explores the contours of this shared condition, considering how Livshins own Soviet past, and the pasts of her fellow-travelers, inflect their shared American present. The futures-that-could-have-been follow them along their westward journey.

This book is an attempt to see the United States as a complex country, a place of compassion and tribalism and social justice and intense hatred, Livshin writes in the preface. She sets out to explore and perhaps reclaim what certain versions of my native culture might mean. Examining how Americans think of Russia and Russianness tells her more about her new country than her old one. She speaks of Russian life and culture with affection, and with a wink: I do not mean to suggest that it is possible to forget the Russia that intervenes in other countries under the slogan of pan-Slavism. I do not wish to push it all aside and start celebrating Russian tea and cookies and dare I say ballet?

A Life Replaced is an impressive feat of translation. Livshins original poems appear between and in conversation with her renderings of work by Akhmatova and contemporary migr poet Vladimir Gandelsman. Both writers cherish the wild authenticity of childhood and adolescence, she writes. They see those years as a rich source of the sensual feeling of life-as-is. Their voices allow her to reclaim the past that was once hers. The time of their childhoods was a time before the end of history, a time when joy and lightness could expressively accompany Russianness without much explanation. Translating them, she writes, sparked a fire that is helping her survive this particular winter.

Gandelsman writes of life in chosen exile, playing with the particular intonations of Russian-American English. Now, this, / as they call it, is a beeldeeng, / this is garbage; nothing this, goes his Immigrant Ditty. On the next page is Livshins riff on Gandelsmans poem. The immigrants in her story come not from Moscow but from Latakia, Syria, and find themselves in the ass-crack / of exile, the beak of flight, light turned around / by running webbed feet. Their faces have the signature look of exile, that patina-coated profile. Whenever and wherever they arrive, they will always be too late. Livshin writes, of Gandelsman, that he treats the slow dying of the self that happens to so many middle-aged immigrants in the United States with candor and acmeistically expressive detail, referring to the early 20th-century Russian poetic movement, Acmeism, of which Akhmatova was a prominent representative. This slow dying stems from a failure of translation. Generation zero cannot pass down everything mushrooms, kasha varnishkes, cheburashkas to generation one. During one of their Russian lessons, Livshin imagines how her own child might question the direction in which she steered their lives: I read in Russian, my son asks in English, she writes. Why did you leave that wonderful place?

What should one tell ones children of a former life? How much should be passed down? How much can be? These questions also animate Olga Zilberbourgs new book of short fiction, Like Water and Other Stories, her first collection published in the United States. In her artist statement, Zilberbourg explains that she wrote these stories shortly after giving birth to her first child, and that, accordingly, [t]hey invite the reader to consider the way becoming a parent turns ones lived experience into a battleground for potential identities. Her protagonists are all young women, many of them Russian, most of them living in the United States and finding themselves hitting a wall. They are graduate students in comparative literature, adjunct professors, new lawyers, medical residents, and headhunters. They miscarry, mother, and strive; they watch their lovers and parents and mentors come and go. One of Zilberbourgs heroines, newly graduated from college and desiring to learn more about her heritage, goes to live with an elderly Russian woman in a nearby town. When that experience does not suffice, she goes to St. Petersburg, where she catches the flu, gets groped, and feels alienated and stonewalled by the citys bureaucracy. I was back in the United States within a month, our heroine admits. She discovers that the city of her parents owes her nothing, that it is not required to open itself up to those who were deflected from its path.

Zilberbourg relentlessly confronts her characters with the lives they could have had. These women come into focus only when they encounter figures from their abandoned pasts. Elsewhere they can appear slightly underdeveloped; their many similarities sometimes make their story lines blur a bit. One story follows Oksana, a young Russian single mother who has built a new life in San Francisco. One day, the father of her child shows up in town. Heres how Californian Oksana has become: she meets him for coffee, Zilberbourg writes. The man asks about the child and then requests that Oksana help him with his job hunt. In another story, a nameless heroine considers how to reply to a tasteless email from a childhood friend who still lives in the Russian town where they both grew up. The friend apparently thinks she might still enjoy a good Jewish joke. I am to this day the only Jew she knows or thinks she knows well enough, our heroine thinks to herself. Is this Oksana, or someone else? Perhaps it doesnt matter: I do not now nor have I ever practiced Judaism; if, in my Soviet passport, Jewish was listed as my nationality, she, of all people, might remember how little meaning there was for me in this accident of my biography. I havent even suffered for it. She considers replying with a gentle admonishment, but then sends just a wry I love you too and an emoji.

In the titular story, Like Water, another nameless heroine, an adjunct lecturer in Russian literature and culture, remembers what it was like to watch a terrible performance of Pushkins Eugene Onegin with her school friends in Leningrad. [E]ven as a fifteen-year-old [] I knew that the joy my friends and I shared was the other side of terror, born of the spectacle of degradation and loss, she thinks. A star bursts, an empire falls, a ball of fire streaks across the sky. For us, its witnesses, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime event [] The year was 1990, the future, impossible to tell. Twenty-seven years later, on Pushkins birthday, our narrator finds herself at an Akhmatovian impasse, reflecting upon the spectacles that she was forced to miss. To mark the occasion, she posts a story to her Facebook wall about that day at the theater in Leningrad. Her friends respond, reliably and amiably. All are now migrs scattered around the globe except for one. Tatiana, one of her oldest friends, makes a confession: that day at the theater, she writes, was the moment I fell in love with you. She means it. How could it be? Once upon a time, as girls, they had imagined building a house on an island and living there together. At 42, with a husband and children and housework, our heroine considers what her life might have become if only she had considered that women did not need to be with men. She looks up tickets to Tatianas home.

Another story nests inside this narrative. In this story, an elderly couple of Soviet immigrants are ordered by their doctor to drink 16 ounces of water per day. The couple resists plain water makes them queasy. But they try to follow the doctors advice: they fill a mug with water, put it on their kitchen table, and take turns sipping it throughout the day. They return to the doctor and report: [W]ere afraid your advice comes too late. Water is not for us. We drink tea. It is too late for them to assimilate to the American way, just as it is too late for our heroine to experiment with Tatiana. Water isnt for me, she concludes. But she cannot forget that water is there, an unexplored option, an unlived life. Like Akhmatova, she cannot help but imagine all that could have been. For both Livshin and Zilberbourg, the immigrant condition is this kind of permanent deflection. Their words remind the reader that the dream of assimilation is first a fantasy and then a triumph before it is finally a loss.

Linda Kinstler is a writer based in Berkeley, California.

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On Olga Livshin's A Life Replaced and Olga Zilberbourg's Like Water and Other Stories - lareviewofbooks

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Posted By admin on January 11, 2020

Good Wednesday morning!

On Capitol Hill, Top administration officials will brief members of Congress on the situation with Iran. More below.

In Albany, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will deliver his state of the state address. Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg of Monsey will deliver the invocation.

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Iranlaunchedmore than a dozen ballistic missiles atIraqi military baseshousing U.S. troops last night in retaliation for the U.S. killing of Qassim Soleimani last week. President Donald TrumptweetedAll is well! and So far, so good! as the Pentagonindicatedthat there were no American casualties in the attacks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zariftweetedthat Iran does not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression. Zarif said the retaliatory attack had concluded and called it proportionate measures.

Trump saidhe plans to make a statement this morningabout the ongoing situation in Iran. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said yesterday that the U.S. will not be withdrawing troops from Iraq, though the administration isreportedlydrawing up potential sanctions against Iraq if it orders the expulsion of U.S. troops.

Explain yourself:The House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), hasinvited EditSignSecretary of State Mike Pompeo to appear before a hearing next week on From Sanctions to the Soleimani Strike to Escalation: Evaluating the Administrations Iran Policy.

Window for diplomacy:Pompeohas ordereddiplomats to limit any contact with Iranian opposition groups, including Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which maintains close ties with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. The directive warns that meetings with such groups could jeopardize U.S. diplomacy with Iran.

Brian Hook, the special representative for Iran and a senior policy advisor,reiterated the administrations stance during a news conference at the Simon Wiesenthal Center yesterday. Calling Suleimani the deadliest terrorist in the world, Hook said, We do not make a distinction between the Iranian regime and the proxies it organizes, trains and equips around the Middle East.

2020 watch:Democratic presidential frontrunner former Vice President Joe Bidensaidlast night at a fund-raiser that he is praying, as we speak, that [Trump is] listening to his military commanders for the first time, because so far that has not been the case. At a rally in Brooklyn, Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the attack on U.S. troops is a reminder of why we need to de-escalate tension in the Middle East. The American people do not want a war with Iran.

Now were alone:BidentellsNBC News Lester Holt that relations with Iran deteriorated after Trump pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, explaining: We had a united front relative to Iran until the time he walked away from a treaty that was functioning. He added, We were together. Now, were alone.

In other news:A Ukrainian Airlines Boeing 737 flight from Tehran to Kyiv burst into flames andcrash landedshortly after taking off from Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday morning, killing all 180 passengers on board. The first reports indicated that the crash occurred due to technical problems. The Ukrainian embassy in Iran initially posted a statement on its website that the crash was not caused by terrorism or rockets; that post was later removed and replaced with a new statement saying that it was too early to conclude the crashs cause. Also last night, a 4.9 magnitude earthquake struck southern Iran near the Bushehr nuclear plant.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is holding a hearing this afternoonon how the U.S. and the international community can counter the growing threat of antisemitism around the world on Capitol Hill.Watch live hereat 1:30 p.m. EST.

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), co-chair of the Senate Taskforce for Combating Anti-Semitism, will deliver opening remarks. When antisemitism and bigotry occur, it is critical that we not allow ideological or partisan thinking to blur our perspective of what is right and what is wrong. Combating hate is always a nonpartisan issue, Rosen is expected to say, according to excerpts obtained byJewish Insider. As members of Congress, it is our responsibility, to our neighbors, to our friends, and to our children, to eradicate this evil.

Panelists includeSpecial Envoy on Antisemitism Elan Carr; Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief; Holocaust historian and author Deborah Lipstadt; Gary Bauer, a USCIRF commissioner; the ADLs Sharon Nazarian; and Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.

Fight it out:Lipstadt, the Dorot professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, shared a preview of her testimony with JI. The hatred that is antisemitism can best be compared to a herpes virus, a disease that cannot be cured, according to Lipstadt. There are no easy correctives, no magic pills, and no silver bullets. This fight might be one that can never result in total victory. The roots of this hatred may be too deeply embedded to ever be fully eradicated. However, we must act as if we will be able to achieve that victory. The costs of not doing so are too great.

Heard last night:In a panel on antisemitism hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York at Central Synagogue, Carr discussed recent efforts by the far-right to drive a wedge between African American and Jewish communities: There are far-right neo-Nazi groups [that] are undertaking internet campaigns to turn African Americans against Jews You have neo-Nazis that are creating they have an actual operation for this, and the name of the operation, Im not going to repeat it here because it contains deplorable ethnic slursspecifically a far-right operation to turn [the African American community against the Jewish community], and its despicable.

The Trump administration isreportedly consideringrolling out its long-delayed Mideast peace plan ahead of the March 2 elections. White House Mideast Envoy Avi Berkowitzmet withIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz this week during Berkowitzs first trip to Israel in his new role.

Why it matters:The political component of the peace plan was delayed twice last year after Israel failed to form a coalition governmentand is now heading to a third consecutive election. Former Mideast peace envoy Jason Greenblatttold JI last monththat it was the correct decision at the time not to release the plan in the midst of an election process and a government formation process.

What changed?A former U.S. official tells JIs Jacob Kornbluh that in order to keep the plan viable, the administration would have to release it by spring, ahead of Trumps reelection battle. While the White House wanted to wait until the Israeli elections are over, the official explained, there seems to be no end in sight. The former official suggested that releasing it in the coming months would be as good a time as any.

In the drivers seat:Following the Trump administrations policy reversal on settlements and Netanyahuspushto get U.S. support for the annexation of the West Bank, the plan rollout could benefit the embattled prime ministers campaign, if its contents are favorable to his right-wing base.

Red light for Blue and White:According to Nimrod Novik, a fellow at Israel Policy Forum and former advisor to Shimon Peres, releasing the plan will help Netanyahu divert from his legal situation. Novik said it could also siphon votes from right-wing parties to the benefit of Likud, andhas the potential of motivating a tired base to go out to vote.

View of Jerusalem:Netanyahu, speaking at the Kohelet Policy Forum conference today at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, said, There is a window of opportunity; it opened, but it could close. However, during a press conference on Wednesday, Gantz expressed his hopes that the administration would not release the plan before the elections. This would be a blatant and real intervention in the election process, he said.

Early Warning Signs:Sara Bloomfield, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, discusses the lessons of the Holocaust and the warning signs of hatred and facism inan interviewwithThe Washington Posts Rachel Manteuffel. Nazis didnt fall out of the sky in January 33, she explains.[WashPost]

Cash Reserves:The Atlantics Edward-Isaac Doveredelvesinto the far-reaching consequences of billionaire and 2020 contender Michael Bloombergs spending habits. What he finds is that Bloombergs spending on his campaigns pales in comparison to the money he poured into pushing certain policies.[TheAtlantic]

Profiles in Courage:The New York TimesprofiledCapt. Kavon Hakimzadeh, an Iranian-American who after fleeing Iran as a child in 1979 now commands the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman in the Persian Gulf.[NYTimes]

Beating Expectations:The long-awaited $5 billion American Dream mega-mall in New Jerseyhas securedan almost 90% lease rate, nearing full capacity ahead of its opening in the spring.

On the Job:DP World, the Dubai ports operating giant, hashiredex-Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe to lobby the U.S. government on its behalf.

Protest Vote:Polish President Andrzej Duda said Tuesday that hedeclinedan Israeli invitation to attend a forum in Yad Vashem marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz because he was not given a speaking slot.

Never Forget:A record 2.3 million visitorstouredAuschwitz in 2019, the museum said yesterday.

Hatred Lives:At least a dozen graves in a Jewish cemetery in southwest France were discoveredvandalizedon Tuesday.

Heavy Hitters:The Bloomberg presidential campaign hassecureda 60-second commercial spot, worth $10 million, to run during the Super Bowl next month. The goal is to get under Trumps skin, the campaign told theNYTimes. The Trump campaign alsopurchasedspots worth $10 million expected to run early in the game.

Hollywood:Longtime Hollywood exec Howard Kurtzman isretiringas business operations leader at 20th Century Fox TV, and will be replaced by Carolyn Cassidy.

Funny Man:Ultra-Orthodox British comedian Ashley Blaker is set toriff onantisemitism and Jewish rituals in a new off-Broadway show called Goy Friendly at SoHo Playhouse next month.

Winning the Battle:The Ninth Circuit Court of AppealsupheldArizonas anti-BDS law on Monday, vacating the preliminary injunction that kept the state from enforcing the legislation.

Phone Addiction:The judge in Harvey Weinsteins rape trialthreatenedto throw him in jail on Tuesday after he was caught using two cellphones in the Manhattan courtroom defying previous warnings to put the devices away.

Roll Call:The American Historical Associationvoted downtwo anti-Israel measures at their annual meeting over the weekend.

New Owner: Hedge fund manager Israel Englanderpurchasedan Upper East Side townhouse tied to the Sackler family for $38 million.

Behind Bars:Elliot Kline, the organizer of the deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, has beenjailedfor failing to comply with court orders in a federal lawsuit.

Defiant Hater:Jersey City school board member Joan Terrell-Paige, who called Jews brutes after the Jersey City shooting, isrefusingto step down weeks after state officialscalledfor her ouster.

Whatcha Hiding?The Forwardclaimsthat its repeated efforts to obtain records about antisemitic crimes in New York City have been foiled by the NYPD.

Words Matter:Israels Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has set off afirestormin Israel after he was recorded calling Russian immigrants communist, religion-hating non-Jews.

Bon Appetit:Impossible Foodsannouncedon Monday new fake pork and sausage products for the first time since it launched the first plant-based burger in 2016. But does it hold up? A Muslim reportersampledthe latest fake-meat product.

Distance Dining:Eaterincludedthe Israeli city of Akko on its list of the 19 best global food destinations for 2020.

Tragedy:A 68-year-old Orthodox Jewish womanwas killedyesterday after being struck by a cement truck in Borough Park.

Remembering:Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of 1994s groundbreakingProzac Nation,diedyesterday of breast cancer at age 52.

Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Ted Deutch (D-FL)hostedan interfaith roundtable discussion on antisemitism and Holocaust education at the Jewish Federation of Broward County in Florida on Tuesday.

VP of wealth management at GCG Financial in Deerfield, IL, he was an NFL tight end for the Bears and Vikings (1988-1994),Brent Novoselskyturns 54

Talmudic scholar living in Bnei Brak, Israel, widely acclaimed as the leader of the Haredi community, HaravChaim Kanievskyturns 92 Actor and comedian,Larry Storchturns 97 Sociologist at the American Enterprise Institute, one of his controversial books discussed the high average IQs of Jewish people,Charles Murrayturns 77 Moscow-born classical pianist, living in the U.S. since 1987,Vladimir Feltsmanturns 68 Founder and chief investment officer of Pzena Investment Management,Richard Rich Pzenaturns 61 Co-founder and co-owner of Pizza Shuttle in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,Mark Goldturns 57Founder and president of DC-based Professionals in the City,Michael Karlanturns 52

Attorney, patron of contemporary art, she is the founder and CEO of lobbying firm, Invariant,Heather Miller Podestaturns 50 Former state senator in Maine (2008-2016),Justin Loring Alfondturns 45 Singer-songwriter, musician and actress, she was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the indie rock band Rilo Kiley,Jenny Lewisturns 44 Public policy program manager for Facebook, she was previously deputy director of the White House Council on Women and Girls for President Obama,Avra Siegelturns 38 Dayton, Ohio native, former deputy editor ofNewsweek, he was previously atTheNew York Timesand theWall Street Journal,Ross M. Schneidermanturns 38 Actor, screenwriter and director, he is a son of film director Barry Levinson,Sam Levinsonturns 35

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As good a time as any, Trump team eyes releasing Mideast peace plan ahead of Israeli elections - Jewish Insider

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