Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 7, 2020

Come in: Theres Room Now for Women Too in Talmud LearningIlana Blumberg

On a cold night in Jerusalem, more than 3300 women and men gathered for the first public celebration of womens Siyum HaShas. The seven-and-a-half-year global cycle of daily Talmud learning came to its close for the thirteenth time since the practice began nearly a hundred years ago, founded by Rabbi Meir Shapiro. While celebrations are held worldwide, and last week saw the MetLife Stadium filled with more than 90,000 Jews, the celebration in Jerusalem held by Hadran, an Israel-based organization devoted to fostering womens Talmud study around the world, was the first of its kind in Jewish history.

With one exception, all its speakers were women, and nearly the entire audience was female, from young girls accompanying their mothers to teenage high school students, soldiers, midrasha students, middle-aged and older women, all marking the revolution in Jewish womens Torah study and in particular, Talmud study, that has taken place in the past three to four decades.

When I was in junior high, I learned Gemara, said Yoheved Novogroder Shoshan, a fifty-year-old resident of Efrat, originally from New York. But my high school didnt teach girls Talmud and I didnt learn it when I studied in Israel. But I came tonight because this is a historic moment, a public recognition of women who have finished Shas. I wanted to support it.

A long line of mostly modern Orthodox women stood waiting to enter Binyanei Hauma, chatting in English and in Hebrew. The mood was joyous.

Jenny Brenner Zivotofsky, a rabbinical court advocate, confessed that she had hesitated before signing up to attend. Siyum hashas is for people who finish the Shas and I didnt finish it. But I decided to come because its a way of showing support for womens learning and for women who did finish Shas. I wanted to be part of a really momentous occasion, to be part of the history of womens learning.

Ilana Blumberg

Hadran Siyum Hashas in Jerusalem

As one after another female scholar got up on stage, the audience spontaneously rose to its feet, honoring the Torah they embodied. Each woman who spoke was introduced as Rabbanit, a term that for generations served as an honorific for the wife of a rabbi, but means something new and totally obvious today, as a woman in the crowd pointed out to me: Rabbanit is a female scholar of the highest order, a teacher of Torah in her own right. Who shes married to is not the story.

From the emcee Rabbanit Racheli Sprecher Frankel (known to many as the mother of the teenager Naftali who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in 2014) who serves as the director of the Advanced Halakha Program at the Matan Institute, one of the first institutions to teach women Talmud, to Rabbanit Esti Rosenberg, head of the Migdal Oz seminary and daughter of the renowned Rav Aharon Lichtenstein and granddaughter of the Modern Orthodox luminary Rav Soloveitchik, to Rabbanit Malka Bina, founder of Matan, to women who are lesser known outside of Israel but have, as one teenager noted, rock-star status in Israeli learning circles.

Rabbanit Michelle Cohen Farber of Hadran was by all counts the spirit behind the evening. Originally from New Jersey, now a resident of Raanana with her husband, Rabbi Seth Farber, and a mother of five, Farber taught every single page of the 2711 folio pages of the Talmud to a small class at her home, but more importantly, recorded these classes as podcasts in Hebrew and in English, enabling women around the world to follow her explanations as a guide. Reciting the ancient words of summation, hadran alach, we will return to you, she expressed the hope that in seven and a half years we might all meet again in a much bigger hall!

Toba Goldberg, an American tourist in Israel, marveled at having known Farber as a girl Goldbergs daughter had studied with her in the Yeshiva of Flatbush. My own experience with Talmud as a girl was not a good one, Goldberg reflected. As a matter of fact, I voted against studying it in high school. While Goldberg attends other classes in Jewish text regularly, she has steered clear of Talmud. But now, she may give it another chance. My husband has a hevruta (study partner for Talmud), and my daughter, too. For this siyum, I signed up to learn one daf (page). I sat down and learned it with my husband. I went to a shiur in Gemara, and it was inspiring.

Throughout the evening, the main message was that it was not too late for any woman to get started and that starting small leads to great things.

In an evening as revolutionary as this one, it was notable that the terms equality, feminism, and gender were not mentioned by a single woman. While the leading Talmud scholar Rabbanit Dr. Michal Tikochinsky joked at one point, Ive heard there are also men who study Torah, the theme of the evening was not social progress but the deepening and widening of the reach of Torah. As Rosenberg put it, When my father and grandfather opened up Torah to women, I dont think it was so much because of what they thought about women, but about what they thought about Torah. They couldnt imagine life without it.

Deep gratitude was expressed to Sarah Schnierer, the founder of the Bais Yaakov girls schools a century ago; also to male luminaries who opened the pages of Torah and especially Talmud, to women; and to the rabbis, publishers, and patrons who have made the Talmud more and more accessible in recent generations, so that it is no longer the province of the elite; and in a nice flip from the norms, thanks were offered to husbands, fathers, and grandfathers who made their wives learning possible.

At the evenings close, after the singing of the Israeli national anthem, I asked Rabbanit Devorah Evron, who was marking her completion of the Shas, what the evening had meant to her. Searching for words, she said, A sense of elevation. Of gratitude to be a Jewish woman living in this generation.

Rabbanit Dr. Tamar Meir, a teacher of Torah and a popular author of childrens books, put it this way in her post, We have seen tonight, for the first time, a female learning public. Until now, Meir worried that Jewish womens learning was only an elite affair, on the fringe of modern Orthodox society. Tonight it has come into the mainstream, she wrote. There are many of us. The path before us is still long. And yet there was something that said to each and every woman you have a place. You have a stake in Torah. You have a large and powerful community standing behind you. You are not alone.

Ilana Blumbergs is the author of Open Your Hand: Teaching as a Jew, Teaching as an American and Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books. She is the Director of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University.

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Thousands gather to celebrate women's Talmud study in Jerusalem - Forward

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Posted By admin on January 7, 2020

In honor of the completion of the 7 1/2-year cycle of Talmud study this month, and the publication of its new translation of the Talmud, Jerusalem-based Koren Publishers recently donated an entire set of its Talmud to Cedars-Sinai Medical Centers chapel. To help mark the event, we unveiled the original luchot (tablets) of the Ten Commandments used in the movie of the same name. Director-producer Cecil B. DeMille had these tablets carved from stone of the Sinai desert, and in the 1956 movie, Charlton Heston, who played Moses, held them aloft. DeMille later gifted them to Mount Sinai Hospital (before it merged with Cedars of Lebanon).

At our event, the tablets were displayed in our chapel during a keynote lecture by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan. Soloveichik argued that the famous Rembrandt painting of Moses breaking the tablets of the law is actually a depiction of him holding up the second set of tablets, reminiscent of the way the Torah is held up in synagogues after it is read.

Soloveichik maintained that these second tablets actually were holier than the first, which Moses smashed, because they embody a central idea of Jewish history the ability to come back after disaster, to not lose hope after all we had was shattered, to re-create anew what has been destroyed. The second tablets affirm faith in our ability to achieve consolation and re-creation after desolation. While the first tablets were entirely a product of the Divine, the second tablets required Moses human effort in partnership with the Divine.

Soloveichik pointed out that although today it is customary to step on a glass at a Jewish wedding, in the past, a glass would be thrown down to the ground at the end of the wedding ceremony, symbolically shattering the tablets. Soloveichik suggested that this was intended to remind us of the rebuilding that followed the breaking of the original tablets, and that despite past tragedies, we must always rebuild and re-create Jewish homes.

Soloveichik linked this concept to our celebration of the Talmud, the first tablets were the ethereal production of the divine, but the second helped create an oral law through extraordinary human intellectual exertion. The Talmud represents a covenant renewed through human initiative; tablets of the law created not only by the Divine but in partnership with painstaking human intellectual effort. Re-creation after disaster is itself the foundation of the oral law.

While the first tablets were entirely a product of the Divine, the second tablets required Moses human effort in partnership with the Divine.

Indeed, after the Holocaust, Jewish refugees asked the leaders of the American armed forces to help publish a Talmud. Although its primary role isnt publishing books, the U.S. Army saw this as a way of preserving Jewish civilization in the face of totalitarian forces of evil. And so, in 1948, the U.S. Army used a printing plant in Heidelberg, Germany, which during the war had printed Nazi propaganda, to publish 500 sets of the U.S. Army Talmud. Soloveichik read us the moving preface from his set of this Talmud: This edition of the Talmud is dedicated to the United States Army. The Army played a major role in the rescue of the Jewish people from total annihilation. This special edition of the Talmud, published in the very land where, but a short time ago, everything Jewish and of Jewish inspiration was anathema, will remain a symbol of the indestructibility of the Torah.

Human initiative and effort created the second tablets and the Talmud, ensuring the Talmuds transmission and interpretation throughout the generations in the face of all we have endured. In this way, argued Soloveichik, the contents of our Talmud can be seen as even more connected to Sinai than our tablets, donated by DeMille, which were literally carved from Sinai.

The story of tablets lost and tablets regained does not pertain only to Cedars-Sinai. Every one of us embodies the miracle of Jewish fortitude and survival. Continued talmudic study, after so many communities have been destroyed, remains a timeless force of our creativity and endurance.

Rabbi Jason Weiner is senior rabbi and director of spiritual care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

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The Power of the Second Chance - Jewish Journal

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It is not easy to understand what the leftas opposed to liberalsstands for. If you ask a Christian what to read to learn the basics of Christianity, you will be told the Bible. If you ask a (religious) Jew, you will be told the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. If you ask a Mormon, you will be told the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Ask a Muslim and you will be told the Quran.

But if you ask a leftist what one or two books you should read to understand leftism, every leftist will give you a different answeror need some time to think it over. Few, if any, will suggest Marxs Das Kapital because almost no leftists have read it and because you will either not finish the book or reject it as incoherent.

So, then, how is one to understand what leftism stands for?

The truth is it is almost impossible. What leftist in history would have ever imagined that to be a leftist, one would have to believe that men give birth or men have periods, or that it is fair to women to have to compete in sports with biological males who identify as females?

There are two primary reasons it is so difficult, if not impossible, to define leftism. One is that it ultimately stands for chaos:

And much more.

The other major reason it is impossible to define leftism is that it is emotion-based. Leftism consists of causes that give those who otherwise lack meaning something to cling to for meaning.

Two things about Greta Thunberg, Time magazines 2019 person of the year, embody these explanations.

With regard to chaos, here is what Greta Thunberg wrote at the beginning of the month: The climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice and of political will. Colonial, racist and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all.

Thunberg, like all leftists, seeks to dismantle just about everything. As former President Barack Obama said five days before the 2008 election, We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

As regards emotion and meaning, The Guardian reports, this is what Thunbergs father just told the BBC:

Greta Thunbergs father has opened up about how activism helped his daughter out of depression how activism had changed the outlook of the teenager, who suffered from depression for three or four years before she began her school strike protest outside the Swedish parliament. She was now very happy, he said She stopped talking she stopped going to school, he said of her illness.

The post-Judeo-Christian world the left has created has left a vast number of the Wests citizens, especially more and more young people, with no meaning. This Grand Canyon-sized hole is filled by leftist causes.

The fact is life is better, safer, and more affluent, and offers more opportunities for more people, than ever before in history. Just about all emotionally stable, mature people should be walking around the West almost delirious at their good fortune. Americans in particular should feel this way.

But leftists (again, as opposed to many liberals) are not usually emotionally stable and are certainly not mature. That is why depression among young Americans (and perhaps Swedes) is at the highest levels ever recorded.

So, like Thunberg, they look to left-wing causes to find meaning and emotional fulfillment. Until she embraced climate crisis activisma chance, as she sees it, to literally save the worldThunberg was so depressed she stopped talking. But thanks to climate activism and other left-wing activism, she is now very happy (an assessment I suspect many observers find hard to believe).

Feminism and fighting patriarchy (in an age when American women have more opportunities than ever before and more opportunities than women almost anywhere else in the world), fighting racism (in the least racist multiracial society in history), fighting white supremacy (which has almost disappeared from American life), and fighting on behalf of myriad other leftist causesin other words, fundamentally transforming societygives meaning to people with no meaning.

None of that is morally or rationally coherent. But it is very emotionally satisfying. Just ask Greta Thunbergs dad.

Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU.

This article appeared at The Daily Signal on December 31, 2019.

Image: Reuters.

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How Greta Thunberg Explains the Problem With Leftists - The National Interest Online

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Posted By admin on January 7, 2020

Monday, January 6, is Jewish and Proud Day in the United States.

Twenty-five thousand people joined together for the Solidarity March Against Anti-Semitism in New York, taking a stand against rising anti-Semitism and recent horrific hate crimes against Jews.

For those of us in the rest of the country, social media was our parade ground, as Jews posted pictures of themselves with Jewish stars, often with the hashtag #JewishANDProud.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) declared Monday, January 6, Jewish Pride Day when Jews are urged to wear their Judaism with pride. Whether a kippah, or anything else identifiably Jewish, we urge you to wear your Jewishness publicly the AJC explained. Post of photo of yourself wearing your Jewish pride on social media. If you like, include a sentence explaining why you are proud to be Jewish. Non-Jews who wish to stand their Jewish friends are being encouraged to post pictures of themselves with Jewish stars and declare they are allies with their Jewish neighbors, opposing anti-Semitism.

My young son and I spent the day as Jewish Pride was trending visiting the Art Institute of Chicago and his kippah and tzitzit were clearly visible, declaring to all the world that we are Jewish and proud. On the elevated train, walking around the city center, my sons kippah drew plenty of curious glances as well as warm outpourings of friendliness and warmth.

Sit here! one woman, who didnt seem Jewish, told us, waving us over to her park bench when my son and I stopped to sit and have a snack. Please, after us, offered a museum-goer as he held open the door for my son and me and smiled warmly. I wasnt sure if it was simple friendliness, or a desire for people to take a stand after weeks of news coverage of anti-Semitic attacks (or perhaps both), but time and again my sons kippah seemed to spark kindness. People of every ethnicity made an effort to smile at us, including a friendly Muslim mom in a headscarf who shared a long, warm grin with me as our kids took in the museum displays.

In addition to wearing Jewish symbols with pride, there are so many ways to ramp up our Jewishness. Here are some additional suggestions of ways Jews are wearing their Jewishness with pride today, and every day.

The campaign echoes the words of Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, himself a victim of horrific anti-Semitic violence within the past year, when his synagogue, Chabad of Poway, was attacked by an anti-Semitic gunman. From here on in I am going to be more brazen. I am going to be even more proud about walking down the street wearing my tzitzit and kippah, acknowledging Gods presence. And Im going to use my voice until I am hoarse to urge my fellow Jews to do Jewish. o light candles before Shabbat. To put up mezuzahs on their doorposts. To do acts of kindness. And to show up in synagogue he wrote.

So let's ramp up our Jewishness and the role that being Jewish plays in our lives.

I looked around for ways to connect more with my Jewish community. A woman in my neighborhood had appealed for help taking her child to school in the mornings. Normally Id have scrolled past her post, but now I connected with her and volunteered to help her out. Kol Yisrael Arevim zeh bazeh the Talmud declares (Shavuot 39a): All Jews are responsible for one another. Inspired by Jewish Pride Day, I tried to do what I could to make this maxim a reality in my own life.

We all have myriad chances to increase the Jewish content in our lives. Sign up for a Jewish class. Donate to a Jewish charity. When you go out to dinner next, choose to visit a kosher restaurant. Call up a neighbor and invite them for a meal this Shabbat. Go to synagogue. Reach out and call a friend who needs your help. Read your kids a Jewish book at bedtime. Infuse your life with Jewishness in any way you can.

When we stand together, we are all so much stronger. This Jewish Pride Day, lets all work to strengthen our connection with the Jewish community, to follow the footsteps of our Jewish ancestors who never let anti-Semitism wipe away their commitment to living Jewish lives. And lets wear our Jewish identity with pride and joy.

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Jewish and Proud - Aish

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Posted By admin on January 7, 2020

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How smart are Jews?

Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, was enthralled by Norman Lebrechts new book Genius & Anxiety discussing the intellectual achievements of Jewish thinkers, artists and entrepreneurs between 1847 and 1947. So he decided last week to devote a column to this fascinating question: How is it that people who never amounted even to one third of 1% of the worlds population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations? In short, what is the secret of Jewish genius?

And thats when the roof caved in for Bret Stephens. As one of the lone conservatives and vocal supporters of Israel on the Times staff, Stephens is no stranger to controversy. His views have often elicited strong negative reactions. This time though his critics are calling for his head. After all, how dare Stephens suggest there is even the slightest truth to the idea that Jews are somehow intellectually superior.

Never mind the inconvenient facts: Jews, more than any other minority, ethnic or cultural, have been recipients of the Nobel Prize, with almost one-fifth of all Nobel laureates being Jewish. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates. Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, and 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction. A remarkable study conducted by psychologist Richard Lynn and political scientist Tatu Vanhanen, published in 2006 in IQ and Global Inequity, calculated that a Jewish average IQ of 115 is 8 points higher than the generally accepted IQ of their closest rivals Northeast Asians and approximately 40% higher than the global average IQ of 79.1.

But, Bret Stephens, you better not dare even hint at Jewish intellectual superiority because that makes you guilty of the contemporary crime of racism.

Regretfully, Stephens did make one mistake of judgment. In citing data about Jewish intellectual achievement and IQ, Stephens linked to a paper written by three anthropologists, one of whom, as it turns out, has been accused of being a racist. The Times subsequently removed the link. But guilt by association is wrong; nowhere did Stephens proceed to base Jewish genius on faulty racist doctrine.

Before political correctness would surely have prevented him from stating it so boldly, Mark Twain wrote this about the Jews in the 19th century:

[The Jews] are peculiarly and conspicuously the worlds intellectual aristocracy [Jewish] contributions to the worlds list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world and has done it with his hands tied behind him.

Twain wasnt a racist; he was a realist. He chose to recognize the remarkable gifts of a people who excelled for a host of reasons and passed on their commitment to education and to excellence to their children. And Bret Stephens, searching for the traits that have clearly allowed one people to stand out at the peak of human achievement, did nothing more than focus on possible reasons for Jewish greatness, reasons as he himself points out that are not genetically exclusive to Jews but potentially available to all who are willing to pursue excellence.

Why are Jews so smart? At the very same time the fire Bret Stephens for racism protest gained steam, Jews around the world offered a highly visible answer. A little shy of 100,000 Jews gathered in the cold at Met-Life Stadium in New Jersey; tens of thousands at Barclays center in Brooklyn; similar numbers in major cities across the country as well as around the world. Venues accustomed to serving as sites for major sports events and entertainment were filled to capacity with Jews celebrating a joyous achievement. For more than seven years, every single day no matter the weather, their other commitments, their health or their schedules they learned one full page of the Talmud. In a little over seven years they finished this momentous project. To have studied the Talmud is to recognize the difficulty involved. It is a curriculum which affords no degree at its conclusion. It will in no way add to anyones ability to achieve greater financial security. It is purely learning for the sake of learning. It is knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It is making the statement that as our bodies need food for physical sustenance, so too our souls require soul food, the nourishment of wisdom and understanding.

I know of no other people who have a similar universal commitment to study and to perfection of the intellect, the quality which Maimonides teaches is the meaning of being created in the image of God.

It is not racism to recognize that Jewish respect for scholarship has been a highly significant factor in the creation of an intellectual aristocracy. Here is Talmudic advice for acquiring a suitable mate:

Our Rabbis teach, Let a man sell all that he has and marry the daughter of a learned man. If he cannot find the daughter of a learned man, let him marry the daughter of one of the great men of his day. If he does not find such a one, let him marry the daughter of one of the heads of the congregation, or, failing this, the daughter of a charity collector, or even the daughter of a schoolmaster; but let him not marry the daughter of an illiterate man, for the unlearned are an abomination. (Pesachim, 49: 2).

What makes Jews special is that they arent, Stephens contends in his allegedly eugenicist column. Others might achieve the same goal if they chose to live by similar values. Stephens explains the Jewish focus on education as a consequence of roughly two millennia of exile and persecution.

And there is the understanding, born of repeated exile, that everything that seems solid and valuable is ultimately perishable, while everything that is intangible knowledge most of all is potentially everlasting. We had been well off, but that was all we got out, the late financier Felix Rohatyn recalled of his narrow escape, with a few hidden gold coins, from the Nazis as a child in World War II. Ever since, Ive had the feeling that the only permanent wealth is what you carry around in your head. If the greatest Jewish minds seem to have no walls, it may be because, for Jews, the walls have so often come tumbling down.

Jews in the diaspora learned that the only possession they could truly call their own was what they accumulated in their mind. The people of the book cherished the book above all and that is the secret Jews passed on from one generation to the next.

Poor Bret Stephens. Little did he realize that when he chose to acknowledge Jewish genius he opened the floodgates for Jew haters who found yet another way to deny Jews recognition for their achievements by confusing racism with hard-earned excellence.

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Jewish Genius and Bret Stephens - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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When it was first published last week, a controversial New York Times column about the secrets of Jewish genius linked to a 2005 study from a researcher labeled an extremist, revered by white supremacists and discredited by scientists and who, for years, worked as a distinguished professor at the University of Utah.

Citing the late U. anthropologist Henry Harpending, expectedly, touched off criticism. Hours after it appeared online, The Times commentary was updated with an editors note saying it had been a mistake to mention the study, which has been widely questioned and long seen as an argument of racial superiority.

The note suggests that conservative columnist Bret Stephens did not know that Harpending promoted racist ideas. It also says Stephens was not endorsing the study or its authors views but acknowledges that his reference to the research, nevertheless, left an impression with many readers that Mr. Stephens was arguing that Jews are genetically superior. That was not his intent.

The paragraph Stephens wrote about Harpendings research has since been deleted online. And on Friday, the University of Utah deleted a complimentary memorial post from its Department of Anthropology that had said Harpendings scholarly and personal footprint will be long lasting in the field.

The U. also noted in response to the column that none of the three authors of the paper Harpending, Gregory Cochran or then-student Jason Hardy work at the school any longer. Harpending was there from 1997 until he died of a stroke in 2016.

Statements attributed to Henry Harpending that promote ideas in line with white nationalist ideology stand in direct opposition to the University of Utahs values of equity, diversity and inclusion ... " said Annalisa Purser, the universitys spokeswoman.

As such, we will meet these words with ours: Racist views and rhetoric that position one race as superior to another are inaccurate and harmful," she said. "The University of Utah is bolstered by its diversity, which allows individuals from different backgrounds and perspectives to come together to address challenges in new and creative ways.

Neither Cochran nor Hardy could not be reached by The Salt Lake Tribune for comment. Its unclear why none of the researchers faced censure while at the university for publishing the piece, though Purser added, Speech even when it is racist is protected by the U.S. Constitution and is necessary for the free exchange of ideas.

This has been a very painful time already for Jews in the United States, said Amy Spiro, a Jewish journalist whose work has been published in Variety, Jewish Insider and The Jerusalem Post. And then this column came out, she told The Tribune in a phone interview. Its just generated a lot of controversy. It doesnt seem like this is helpful in any way.

In their disputed study, the U. researchers focused on Ashkenazi Jews, or those who settled in central and Eastern Europe (as opposed to Spain or the Middle East). Among supremacists, the group is often seen as pure because many are white.

Harpending, Cochran and Hardy argue that Ashkenazi Jews have higher IQs, on average, than the general public (including other non-Ashkenazi Jews). Their theory is that in medieval times, individuals in the faith group in Europe were pushed into finance jobs because of the Christian prohibition of usury, or lending money for interest. Over time, many became rich and had more surviving children than poorer families who worked on farms. They also married within the community and stayed fairly isolated.

The University of Utah has long been known as an expert in genetic research, but this paper Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence is typically seen as a low point in that expertise. The authors created their own algorithm for determining genetic makeup and cited several scientists also viewed as racist.

The researchers have been criticized on and off since the study came out in 2005 and was published in The Journal of Biosocial Science the next year; that publication was previously called The Eugenics Review up until the 1970s. Eugenics is the controversial pseudo-science popular among Nazis for improving the human race by forced sterilization of poor people.

The Times piece on the study was largely uncritical beyond that; it was written by reporter Nicholas Wade, who later wrote his own book on genetics that shares some ideas with Harpending and Cochran. (Cochran had previously written about incorrect claims that being gay was caused by an infectious disease.)

The head of New York Universitys human-genetics program said: Its bad science not because its provocative, but because its bad genetics and bad epidemiology.

In a 2007 press release about later research by Harpending, the school acknowledged his 2005 paper had created a stir and that critics had questioned the quality of the science.

Harpending continued to speak, though, including at white supremacist conferences, about his also inaccurate ideas that black people are genetically prone to be lazy. His profile on the Southern Poverty Law Centers page lists him as a white nationalist and an extremist who believed in eugenics.

In other words, as an anthropologist looking around the world, he said in 2009 at the Preserving Western Civilization conference, what I see is that men work and produce things when theyre forced into it, and when theyre not, they quit. And Im thinking about, you know tribes in central Africa, but you know its true in Baltimore too, right?

His obituary noted he came to Utah from Pennsylvania State University after earning his doctorate at Harvard.

Stephens, who is Jewish, ultimately argues in his column that theres a cultural not genetic explanation for Jewish genius, stemming from Judaisms religious tradition of encouraging believers to not only observe and obey but also discuss and disagree. He also believes group members became more innovative and creative by typically being in the minority wherever theyve lived.

His original mention of the study read: The common answer is that Jews are, or tend to be, smart. When it comes to Ashkenazi Jews, its true. Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average I.Q. of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data, noted one 2005 paper. During the 20th century, they made up about 3 percent of the U.S. population but won 27 percent of the U.S. Nobel science prizes and 25 percent of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions.

That data on awards is not technically wrong, though it broadly counts anyone as Jewish who has a grandparent with ancestry in the faith.

Stephens mentioned Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka and Karl Marx as prime examples of Jewish intelligence, before asking: How is it that a people who never amounted to even one-third of 1 percent of the worlds population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?

His use of the paper is just stunning, Kennedy told The Tribune, saying the study was obviously a main tenet of Stephens argument, and not a minor point, like the editors note suggests. I think it should have been killed before it ever got published.

In the later edits, all references to Ashkenazi Jews (which also appeared in two other places in the column) were removed. Many have questioned why Stephens referred to Ashkenazi Jews at all if he didnt agree with the paper and was generally talking about Jewish culture, and not superiority.

What was even the point of the column? Spiro asked. Its confusing.

Stephens joined The Times in 2017, after winning a Pulitzer Prize for his work at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and serving as editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. He has previously come under fire for bullying a professor who called him a bedbug.

Some have called for his resignation, particularly liberal readers who disagree with his more conservative pieces, but Kennedy believes the Jewish genius piece is a new low. The associate professor, who teaches ethics in journalism at Northeastern, said the commentary needed more than an editors note about the concerns raised.

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A New York Times column on 'Jewish genius' draws criticism for linking to a debunked University of Utah study - Salt Lake Tribune

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ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA) As an Orthodox Jew, Aryeh Rov had little interest in this port citys rich and vibrant bar scene.

For one thing, most drinks served in Odessas bars are not kosher, limiting his choice to a handful of certified brands.

He also usually doesnt feel at ease at a bar.

A person wearing a kippah just stands out in places like that. Certainly an Orthodox Jewish couple, said Rov, who is 40 and married.

But that changed in August, when Rov attended the opening of Kosher Bar, which its owners say is the first kosher-certified drinking establishment in the former Soviet Union.

Its a great addition to evening activities, said Rov, who now goes there regularly with his wife on date nights and sometimes with friends on other nights.

The zigzag-shaped marble counter, which is meant to facilitate eye contact between patrons, has 20 seats, and couches accommodate another 15. All in all, the bars 1,300 square feet of floor space has a capacity of about 100 people and features a patio and a dance floor.

The music selection is eclectic but Jewish, ranging from the Israeli dance rock group HaDorbanim, whose lyrics about the Tel Aviv nightlife scene are anything but chaste, to the rhythmic lamentations of the Hasidic singer Avraham Fried, who delivers his numbers in Hebrew with strong Ashkenazi pronunciation.

On Wednesday nights, the bar is usually packed with members of an informal weekly Torah study group that is led in Russian by Eliyahu Hussid, a local rabbi and standup performer.

On Thursday nights, patrons enjoy homemade kugel along with some of Kosher Bars native cocktails named after Jews with a connection to Odessa or Ukraine. The Sholem Aleichem (tequila, pineapple juice, lemon and syrup) is named after the famed Yiddish writer. Theres also the Meir Dizengoff (a fruity aquamarine concoction based on gin that is served with a frothy top to evoke the Tel Aviv beach) named for that citys first mayor.

Patrons of Kosher Bar toasting outside the establishment in Odessa, Sept. 1, 2019. (Courtesy of Kosher Bar)

Getting a kosher drink isnt a problem in Odessa, a city home to about 40,000 Jews and which has six kosher restaurants, each serving alcohol. Many brands of hard liquor including vodka, gin and whiskey are either certified kosher or accepted as such by many observant Jews. Cocktails, however, generally require certification by a mashgiach, a rabbi whose job is to make sure the products and facilities used to make food and drink are kosher.

But a bar that is 100-percent certified kosher, with its own signature house drinks, had never existed anywhere in the former Soviet Union, according to David Roitman, the Ukrainian-Israeli businessman who opened Kosher Bar with his business partner, Shimshon Korits.

Theres a good reason why Roitmans experiment hasnt been tried before.

To be certified kosher, the bar must import much of its ingredients from Israel, inflating costs. Kosher Bar is significantly more expensive than most other local bars, with house cocktails costing about $8.50 a pricey luxury in a country where the average monthly salary is about $330.

Additionally, Kosher Bar is closed on key portions of the weekend because of Shabbat, which diminishes profitability. During the academic spring break period, a crucial time for bars and pubs, Kosher Bars observance of Passover dietary laws means it can serve only some wines.

Kosher Bar does not have much of a captive clientele, either of Odessas 40,000 or so Jews, most of them are not observant. The business relies on a mix of local Jews, Israeli and Jewish tourists, and non-Jewish tourists searching for an authentic experience in a city where the population was about one-third Jewish before the Holocaust, Roitman said.

A view of the zigzag counter of the bar. (Courtesy of Kosher Bar)

Roitman also hopes the bar will appeal to non-Jews through a high standard of service. Top Israeli barmen helped train the staff for weeks before the launch.

Still, the financial bottom line is a bit complicated, Roitman conceded. He declined to say whether the establishment is profitable, saying that will only become apparent later this year.

But we took the risk for the sake of doing it, said Roitman.

Roitman regards Kosher Bar as a pilot for a model he hopes could be implemented across the former Soviet Union, which is home to approximately 500,000 Jews.

This is not just a bar but a community institution. A wholesome place you and your friends can bring your kids after a simcha [celebration], he said. I think it can really make a difference.

For now, Roitman says if the bar just covers its own overhead and opening costs, dayenu the Hebrew word for that would be enough.

Roitman, 40, immigrated as a child to Israel from Odessa, where his family had lived for at least five generations. He said he regards it as a personal duty to help rebuild the community he left behind.

David Roitman, left, opened the bar out of a sense of personal duty. (Courtesy of Kosher Bar)

After the Holocaust, and after Communism, I was the last living person carrying my familys name, he said. If I hadnt made a Jewish family, it would have been lost to the Jewish people. Some were murdered by the Nazis. Others died as Red Army soldiers. So my coming and opening a bar for the community means a lot.

The owner of several business ventures, Roitman, a 40-year-old father of four living in Jerusalem, can afford to bet some money on a project with limited profitability.

Since 2015, his factory in Odessa, David Roitman Luxury Tallit, has been manufacturing some of the worlds priciest Judaica items, including exotic designer yarmulkes made from crocodile, snake and ostrich skins.

When I was living in New York, I just couldnt believe how some Jews would wear designer suits worth tens of thousands of dollars, and then slap a crumpled rag on their head and called it their kippah, he said. I decided we could do better and have been moving forward in leaps, baruch hashem, he said, using a Hebrew phrase that means Gob be blessed.

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Posted By admin on January 7, 2020

A centuries-old Jewish artifact was recently discovered near a building that once housed a bakery in Cologne, Germany. It was fascinating despite its lack of sacredness. Etched on a slate in neat Hebrew are peoples names, and alongside them letters that represent numbers. Its a list of debts to a grocery store, says Effie Shoham of Ben-Gurion University, an expert on Ashkenazi Jewish history.

Yaakov Bona, whose name hints that either he or his family came from the nearby city of Bonn, is one of the people listed as owing a debt, Shoham says as he gazes at a scan of this rare archaeological find on his computer. Theres also a hole in the slate that indicates that maybe someone hung it on his belt and walked around town with the list of debts, Shoham adds with a smile, hypothesizing that the baker gave one of his workers the list and sent him out to collect the money.

The item was found in digs that have been going on for more than a decade in Colognes city center in search of remnants of a Jewish community that flourished in the Middle Ages. About 400 such texts have been found, but only around half are legible and decipherable. Shohams research partner, Prof. Elisabeth Hollender of Goethe University Frankfurt, is working to decipher the slates and publish the results.

The texts were written in the first half of the 14th century. Theyre written in Hebrew letters some are in Hebrew and some are in German written with Hebrew letters, Shoham says.

Scholars are divided on whether this language is essentially an early form of Yiddish. The writing was etched on the slates with a nail-like chisel.

In the Middle Ages, these slates were used for daily needs rather than parchment or paper, which were very expensive, Shoham says. Their material was cheaper and more available, to use as drafts.

Shoham likens these finds to the famous Cairo Geniza, Jewish manuscripts that were preserved for centuries; a geniza is a storage area in a synagogue or cemetery for used Hebrew-language books or religious writings destined for a proper burial.

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Obviously were not talking about something quite that size, but the dig in Cologne has yielded several hundred texts and partial texts in Hebrew and in Hebrew letters that were never moved from the place where they were created in the citys Jewish quarter, Shoham says. This is something unique, and it matches the sort of things we know from the Cairo Geniza.

As with the Cairo Geniza artifacts, which contributed to the study of Jewish literature, the Talmud, religious law and daily life, the Cologne texts are on a very everyday almost popular level, Shoham says. They illuminate the dynamics of daily life in the thriving Cologne Jewish community of the time.

Not a people apart

In recent years, Shoham has been closely involved in the Cologne dig and in the building of a new museum at the site. One objective of his research, which is supported by the Israel Science Foundation, is to highlight the very close ties between the Jews and their Christian environment, he says. I want to challenge the notion that the Jews are a people that dwells apart in a closed ghetto, he says.

The findings so far help to support this argument. For example, alongside a mikveh found in excavations done in the 1950s, the new dig has uncovered a bathhouse that was used by both Jews and non-Jews. Also, in the late 19th century, a kind of neighborhood register from medieval times was found; it shows that the Jewish quarter wasnt inhabited exclusively by Jews.

Jews rented houses to non-Jews, too, Shoham says. These findings could be fruitful material for a discussion on Jewish-German relations past, present and future.

Other cities in Germany took pride in having a significant number of important rabbis, Torah scholars and famous yeshivas. The most famous examples are the ShUM cities on the Rhine: Speyer, Worms and Mainz.

Cologne, however, was based more on commerce. Until the 14th century, it was one of the largest cities in Germany, a huge city in medieval terms, with a population of 50,000 at its peak, a mega-metropolis, Shoham says. Its location near a strategic point on the Rhine made it a city that drew kings, emperors and traders.

The earliest documentation of a Jewish presence stems from the 11th century, but it probably dates back much longer. Some scholars believe that Jews lived in the city starting as far back as the Roman era. Shoham describes the Cologne community as a kind of secular alternative to other Jewish communities in Germany at the time, a place where the rabbinical influence was much less pronounced.

Another interesting text found in the dig is a fragment from a Yiddish-language novel; the artifact could be the oldest literary text in this language ever discovered. One excerpt, which is being researched by Prof. Erika Timm of the University of Trier, says: The knight stepped forward and asked, please let me sleep by your side.

This is believed to have been written in the 14th century before 1349, the year a mob attacked the Jewish quarter, torched the synagogue, killed and wounded Jews and plundered their property due to a libel alleging the Jews had spread the Black Plague that killed tens of millions of Europeans. The Jewish community was wiped out. Survivors were expelled from the city, and a Jewish presence was only revived there in 1372.

This newer version of the community more closely resembled the other Jewish communities in Germany, with a strong rabbinic presence. But in 1424 the Jews were expelled from the city once again, bringing the medieval Jewish community of Cologne to an end. Jewish life didn't resume there until after the French Revolution.

Reluctant outsiders

Shoham teaches in Ben-Gurion Universitys Jewish History Department. He wrote his doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on outsiders in medieval Ashkenazi Jewish society, exploring the societal attitude toward the insane, lepers and the disabled and producing the Hebrew-language book Reluctant Outsiders. Shoham, who this summer will publish a book on Jewish involvement in crime in medieval Europe, is the only Israeli researching the current project on Jewish life in medieval Cologne.

The excavations in the city began shortly after World War II, when 85 percent of Cologne was destroyed. German archaeologist and historian Otto Doppelfeld, who was wounded in action at the start of the war, persuaded the British occupiers to let him excavate in the city.

Doppelfeld was mainly interested in Colognes Roman past, but in the 50s he discovered that some of the sites told a different story of the citys forgotten Jewish past.

Once he realized this, Doppelfeld began working with the local chief rabbi, Zvi Asaria (also known by his German name, Hermann Helfgott), who survived the war in German captivity as a soldier in the Yugoslav army. In the 50s he was sent from Israel to Cologne as part of the reparations delegation. Doppelfeld and Asaria uncovered the synagogue, the room where the Jewish archive is believed to have been kept (though nothing of it was preserved), and the beautiful mikveh.

In the early 2000s, the archaeologist Sven Schtte proposed expanding the project to include the construction of a museum about Jewish life in Cologne. In cellars in buildings in the city hundreds of years old, Schtte found fragments from the synagogue including parts of the bimah, as well as jewelry and the writing slates.

There is evidence of a Jewish community in Cologne already in the fourth century. But Schttes claims that the artifacts prove a continuous Jewish presence in Cologne since Roman times stirred controversy among scholars, many of whom say Jews didnt settle there until centuries later.

Schtte fought his critics as if they were his personal enemies, and there were a number of scandals, mainly because of the mans coarseness, Prof. Michael Toch, an expert on German Jewish history, told Haaretz in 2013. That year, Schtte was demoted after he told Haaretz that opposition to his excavations at the site was due to latent anti-Semitism.

But the excavations have continued full force. The museum, to be called MiQua, will house the artifacts discovered by Doppelfeld, Schtte and others, the same ones being researched by Shoham. The museum will take a different approach than what you usually find at a memorial site in Germany, Shoham says.

The museum wont just commemorate the tragedy of the Jewish community there, it will showcase its complex fabric of life, both religious and mundane even when the archaeological evidence is of a medieval toilet.

In 2011, in a building in the Jewish quarter, outside the synagogue and next to the home of a prosperous family, a Hebrew inscription was found: This is the window through which the feces are to be taken out.

This shows that Hebrew was used for daily needs, and in a way, this message wasnt mundane at all. Etching an inscription like this on stone presumes that whoever removes the feces from the cesspit could understand this writing, Shoham says.

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What it was like to be a Jew in medieval Cologne, etched into a slate in Hebrew - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on January 7, 2020

The physics professor who argued white empiricism somehow creates a barrier to black women trying to enter the sciences field recently went on a Twitter rant about the recent antisemitic attacks in New York City.

Ultimately, those attacks are the fault of white gentiles, the University of New Hampshires Chanda Prescod-Weinstein claimed.

According to Campus Reform, on her now-protected Twitter account (archived version is here) Prescod-Weinstein wrote on New Years Eve that antisemitism in the US historically has been a white Christian problem, and anti-Jewish feelings expressed by blacks are due to the influence of white gentiles.

Further, the prof wrote that people demanding black leaders speak out against antisemitism are probably a garden variety racist[s].

White Jews adopted whiteness as a social praxis and harmed Black people in the process, Prescod-Weinstein said. Some Black people have problematically blamed Jewishness for it.

From the story:

There is no systemic Black on Jewish violence, the professor clarified before insisting that Putting more police and people with guns outside of synagogues may make white Jews feel safer but it will endanger Jews of color, especially Black Jews and Middle Eastern Jews.

Prescod-Weinstein continued her thread by proclaiming that Reifying the Zionist project in Palestine will not lead to long term safety for Jews, especially Palestinian Jews and anyone else who isnt a white Ashkenazi Jew.

She goes on to blame violent attacks against Jewish people on incarceration in that it is a response that begets violence that actively endangers and because prisons are a hot bed of white supremacist gang recruitment.

She then invokes President Donald Trump, calling him the antisemite in chief.

He wants you to be distracted by efforts to throw mentally ill Black people who have breathed in antisemitism into the mass incarceration complex. You choose what you do next, she said of the President.

Prescod-Weinsteins Twitter bio says she is a Black Feminist and queer agender, with locations including Durham, New Hampshire, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Wakanda.

In response to criticism of her white empiricism paper (in the feminist journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society), the prof had tweeted living rent free in white empiricists heads [] new twitter bio?

Read theCampus Reform article.

MORE: Prof: Field of physics is deeply inflected by pro-white biases

MORE: Woke Vassar students try to shut down queer Jew of color

IMAGE: BlueSkyImage / Shutterstock.com

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Posted By admin on January 6, 2020

MONSEY, N.Y. (WCBS 880) Police say the suspect in the Hanukkah stabbing attack at a rabbis home in Monsey had previously been questioned by officers in connection with another stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish man.

Grafton Thomas, 37, was accused in November by Rampo Police after officers followed a lead back to him, following the stabbing of a Hasidic man.

A grainy video of a vehicle in the area lead them to Thomas mother in Greenwood Lake. Police Chief Brad Weidell said they spoke to her and Thomas, but couldnt find evidence to link him to the crime.

We didn't know anything at that time and we had no evidence and we had no probable cause to do anything other than follow a lead, which we did and it didn't go away, he explained.

The stabbing reportedly happened on Nov. 20 as the man walked into a synagogue in Monsey.

Thomas was charged with five counts of attempted murder, one count of burglary and five counts of federal hate crimes for the attack on the seventh night of Hanukkah. Investigators are still trying to connect him to the November attack.

His attorney spoke to reporters Thursday saying Thomas has dealt with mental illness from a young age and to classify him as anti-Semitic is ignorant. He has requested that Thomas undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

On Friday, a grand jury in Rockland County continued to move forward with the case andindicted Thomas onsix counts of attempted murder, three counts of assault, three counts of attempted assault and two counts of burglary.

The 37-year-old may face the death penalty if one of his victims, Josef Neumann who remains in dire condition in a coma dies from his injures.

Meanwhile, the Town of Rampo is looking to enhance security measures with more license plate readers, cameras, lighting and an Israeli security system called Gabriel which would allow houses of worship and schools to send a live video feed to first responders.

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Hanukkah Stabbing Suspect May Be Connected To November Attack On Hasidic Man - WCBS 880

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