Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 18, 2017

Denver, CO, June 17, 2017The Anti-Defamation Leagueon Mondaywelcomed the arrest late last week of a white supremacist suspected of placing an anti-Israel sticker on the front door of a Colorado Springs synagogue in June.

William ScottPlaner, who lives in Denver, was arrested on misdemeanor charges on July 14 for allegedly affixing a Fight Terror, Nuke Israel sticker to the door of the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Center in Colorado Springs. He is being held at the El Paso County Sheriffs Office on a $500,000 bond as a fugitive from justice for felony charges in California. The charges, assault with a deadly weapon and participating in a riot, stem from Planers alleged attack on a protester during a clash at a June 2016white supremacist marchin Sacramento, California.

Scott L. Levin, ADL Mountain States Regional Director, issued the following statement:

The Anti-Defamation League commends the Colorado Springs Police Department for investigating the incident at Chabad Lubavitch of Southern Colorado as a hate crime and welcomes the arrest of a suspect in not only this incident, but other extremist activity outside of Colorado.

There is a difference between free speech, open political discourse and criminal conduct. The anti-Israel sticker placed on the door of the synagogue crossed the line from the expression of one persons opinion into criminal activity.

Originally from Sacramento, Planer has been on the ADLs Center on Extremisms radar for a number of years. He is associated with at least two known white supremacist groups, including the Golden State Skinheads (GSS), a California-based racist skinhead crew founded in 2003, and the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), a white supremacist group led by Matthew Heimbach and Matt Parrott.

Planers arrest comes as white supremacists appear to be increasingly focused on carrying out explicitly anti-Semitic vandalism and plots. More information on Planer and the incidents occurring nationwide can be found onADLs blog.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the worlds leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

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ADL Welcomes Arrest of White Supremacist Accused of Vandalism at Colorado Springs Synagogue - Boulder Jewish News

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Posted By admin on July 17, 2017

PARIS Two days after treating President Trump to a Bastille Day parade, Emmanuel Macron welcomed yet another world leader to Paris for a symbolic summit.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose hard-line politics have earned him few friends across the French ideological spectrum, arrived for talks on Sunday, the French president condemned anti-Zionism as the new form of anti-Semitism.

The backdrop for their meeting was the 75th anniversary of an infamous Holocaust roundup in Paris, and Macron used the occasion to reiterate his declaration that the French state bore the responsibility for the arrest and deportation of about 13,000 Jews in 1942.

We will never surrender to the messages of hate, Macron said, standing on the site where French police, on the night of July 16, 1942, detained thousands of French and foreign-born Jews before facilitating their forced relocation to Nazi concentration camps across Eastern Europe. We will not surrender to anti-Zionism, because it is a reinvention of anti-Semitism.

After devastating terrorist attacks in recent years, thousands of French Jews left France for Israel, encouraged in 2015 by Netanyahu himself. But as Macron vowed Sunday to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms, the Israeli leader changed his tone and spoke of solidarity with France.

Your struggle is our struggle, Netanyahu said, referring to Fridays attack in Jerusalem, in which Arab Israeli gunmen shot and killed two Israeli police officers. The zealots of militant Islam, who seek to destroy you, seek to destroy us as well.

The wartime roundup known in France as the Vel dHiv raid, for the now-demolished indoor stadium where Jews were temporarily held featured prominently in Frances recent presidential election, in which historical revisionism and denial were constant themes.

In one of the campaigns most controversial moments, Marine Le Pen, Macrons far-right opponent and the daughter of the convicted Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, insisted that the French state had not been responsible. Along the same lines, a French journalist reported that Le Pens principal deputy denied the use of the poison gas Zyklon B in the Nazi gas chambers.

In repudiating these assertions, Macron joined ranks with several of his recent predecessors.

After decades of government silence, Jacques Chirac, in 1995, became the first sitting French president to acknowledge the countrys complicity and collaboration in the Holocaust, during which 76,000 Jews were deported from France.

In his own remarks at the site of the Vel dHiv, Chirac, in 1995, put it this way: France, on that day, committed the irreparable. Breaking its word, it handed those who were under its protection over to their executioners.

Macron echoed those remarks Sunday. I say it again here, he said. It was indeed France that organized the roundup, the deportation, and thus, for almost all, death.

Macrons remarks come after a years-long wave of anti-Semitism and a subsequent surge in the number of French Jews who have moved to Israel.

In 2012, a terrorist attacked a Jewish day school in Toulouse, killing four including three children. In 2014, the Franco-Cameroonian comedian Dieudonn Mbala Mbala likened Jews to slave drivers and promoted a version of the Nazi salute. In January 2015, an attack on a kosher supermarket on the outskirts of Paris left four Jewish customers dead.

Sunday was Netanyahus first visit to France since his appearance in January 2015 at Pariss Grand Synagogue, immediately following the attack on the supermarket, when he delivered a controversial speech urging Jews to consider leaving France.

About 8,000 French Jews left for Israel in 2015, out of an estimated Jewish population of about 600,000. The number has since fallen.

In 2016, 5,000 Jews left France, according to statistics released by the Jewish Agency of Israel to Agence France-Presse, and analysts expect a similar number in 2017. In general, critics also caution that the figures do not necessarily represent an exodus, as each individual case cannot easily be attributed to anti-Semitism. Some French Jews have also since returned to France.

In any case, the perception of France as an inhospitable place for Jews has persisted, and it was this that Macron appeared to address in his remarks. Netanyahu pointedly did not repeat his previous remark encouraging immigration.

Some French Jewish leaders vehemently opposed the presence of the Israeli leader at an event they said should otherwise have remained apolitical. In the words of Elie Barnavi, Frances former ambassador to Israel, the Vel dHiv roundup had nothing to do with Israel. But others welcomed Macrons remarks about the realities of contemporary anti-Semitism.

He understands what it is today, not just what it was in the past, Yonatan Arfi, the vice president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Organizations (CRIF), Frances largest Jewish advocacy organization, said in an interview.

Its at once from the extreme right, but also present on the extreme left and among radical Islamists, he said. Anti-Zionism has definitely become part of anti-Semitism today, and its a real satisfaction to find someone before us who speaks the same language.

Read more

The dark history at the heart of the French election

Marine Le Pen: France not responsible for deporting Jews during Holocaust

In France, an uncertain future for Jews

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Macron hosts Netanyahu, condemns anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism - Washington Post

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Posted By admin on July 17, 2017

Newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron at a press conference at the Chancellery in Berlin, May 15, 2017. (Axel Schmidt/Getty Images)

PARIS (JTA) French President Emmanuel Macron condemned anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism during the commemoration of the 75thanniversaryof the Vel dHiv deportations.

We will never surrender to the expressions of hatred; we will not surrender to anti-Zionism because it is a reinvention of anti-Semitism, Macron said on Sunday in Paris during the commemoration ceremony.

On July 16 and 17, 1942, French police officers rounded up more than 13,000 Jews at the Winter Stadium, or Velodrome dHiver. The men, women and children were imprisoned there for days in unsanitary conditions and without sufficient water, leading to dozens of fatalities, including by suicide. Then, the Jews were transported, partly on French national railway cars, to Nazi death camps in Eastern Europe.

More than 1,000 people, including Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attended the ceremony heldnear a monument that was erected where the stadium, which was demolished decades ago, used to stand.

Netanyahu, in a speech he delivered partly in French, thanked Macron for inviting him to the ceremony, calling the gesture a strong message attesting to the friendship between Israel and France. He said the two countries must stand united against militant Islam.

Many politicians in France have acknowledged Frances responsibility for the murder of nearly a quarter of its Jewish population, including Jaques Chirac who, as president in 1995, said that France carried out the criminal insanity of the occupier at Vel dHiv. But the phrasing of Klarsfelds assertion about complicity in genocide rarely appears in such terms in French mainstream media.

Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has consistently called anti-Zionism a form of anti-Semitism, but this statement had not been made publicly by a presiding French president prior to Macrons speech.

Macron in his address said he had come to be part of the succession of French presidents who, following Chiracs address, acknowledged French culpability for Vel dHiv.

Not a single German was involved, Macron said, adding that he rejects those who wish to say that Vichys France wasnt representative of the French nation because the Nazis knew they could count on the obedience of that government and thousands of Frenchmen serving it. He also praised Frenchmen who saved Jews.

French presidents rarely attend the annual commemoration for the Vel dHiv deportations.

The Vel dHiv roundup was carried out under orders from the Nazis by the authorities of the Vichy collaborationist government, which controlled part of France following the countrys occupation by Nazi Germany.

In April, Marine Le Pen said: France, as a nation, is not responsible for what happened at Vel dHiv, prompting Macron, who was then running for president against the far-right leader of the National Front party, to visit a Holocaust monument in protest of her statement.

Earlier this month, the Communist Party of France condemned Netanyahus attendance at the Vel dHiv commemoration. An Israeli prime minister had not yet attended the annual ceremony, which is an official day of commemoration in France. The ceremony is about peace, whereas the Israeli prime minister is a man of war, the party said in a statement.

Natan Sharansky, chairman of the board of the Jewish Agency, praised Macrons declaration on anti-Zionism.

When one of the most important leaders in Europe recognizes that modern anti-Semitism frequently cloaks itself with the veil of anti-Zionism, tearing the mask off the face of radical anti-Zionists, this is a highly significant development. President Macrons remarks serve to further clarify the nature of modern anti-Semitism and facilitate efforts to combat it.

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Anti-Zionism is new anti-Semitism, France's Macron declares at Holocaust memorial - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By richards on July 17, 2017

We will never surrender to the messages of hate; we will not surrender to anti-Zionism

There is an increasing recognition that most of the anti-Zionist movement, including Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), is the new format for centuries-old anti-Semitism.

The reason anti-Zionists, with few exceptions, seek the destruction of Israel and deny the Jews the right to a homeland in their historic homeland, is because of Israels Jewish identity.

As we have posted before, historian Benny Morris documents how the Arab war against Israels independence was viewed in the Arab world as a religious holy Jihad:

Morris:What I discovered in the documentation relating to the war, at least from the Arab side, was that the war had a religious character, that the central element in the war was an imperative to launch jihad.There were other imperatives of course, political and othersbut the most important from the enemys perspective was the element of the infidels who had the nerve to take control over sacred Muslim lands and the need to uproot them from there. The decisive majority in the Arab world saw the war first and foremost as a holy war, but until today historians have not examined the documentation that proves this. In my view, they have also ignored Arab rhetoric of the day, which universally included religious hatred against the Jews, because they thought the Arabs adopted this as normal speech that did not emanate from deep mental resources. They thought this was something superficial, that everyone talked like this. But I am positive the Arab spokesmen in 1948 did go beyond this and clearly and explicitly talked about jihad.

That religious war, according to Morris, continues to motivate anti-Zionism:

GNB: In your view, was the Palestinian rejection of Israel always rooted in Islamism? Was 1948 a jihad?

BM: One of the things I understood from my work in the 1990s, and later, is that Islam plays a major role in the hatred of the Zionist movement by Arabs in the Middle East and in Palestine. Its not just a political matter of territory;its also a matter of religion and culture which opposes the arrival of the infidel and his taking of Muslim holy land.

Sometimes Palestinian rejectionism is more political in nature, while at other times, such as now, Islam playsa major role in Palestinian thinking about the conflict with Israel and the Zionist movement. In 1929 the big riots were all about the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall and how these holy places are being threatened by the infidel Jews. Were in one of those times again, partly because the entire Islamic world has radicalized, including the Palestinians. When I was young you could walk in the streets of East Jerusalem and you never see veiled women. Never. So the Muslim Arabs of Palestine have changed over the last 40 years and this is a reflection of what has happened in the Muslim Arab world in general.

You cant avoid the conclusion that Islam is playing a major role in whats happening.

Occasionally Israel captured would-be suicide bombers whose vest didnt work or who were weak-willed and didnt blow themselves up. Some were from the Fatah, which had began to copy Hamas and send out suicide bombers. When they interrogated the Fatah secular suicide bombers, they found that their motivation was exactly the same as the Hamas suicide bombers: religion, the 70 virgins and paradise, and all the rest of it. The secularism of the Fatah is not that deep. Its maybe a varnish

Its not just Arab rejectionism that is motivated by religious hate. We see it in groups like so-called Jewish Voice for Peace (which isnt actually a Jewish group) which just launched a campaign to blame Israel and American Jewish groups for US police shootings of minorities, even though there is not proof to support such a claim.

Prof. Miriam Elman documented JVPs Deadly Exchange campaign and how it plays on traditional international anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,With Deadly Exchange Campaign, Jewish Voice for Peace moves from enabling to promoting antisemitism:

In dozens of posts weve highlighted how the anti-Zionist, non-Jewish group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) enables, legitimizes and mainstreams antisemitism by providing aseemingly Jewish coverfor the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and similar movements.

But JVP isnt merely an enabler of antisemitism. JVP alsoitselfis a producer of anti-Jewish animus.

In addition to its pro-boycott activities, JVP has been at the forefront of the effort to stoke racial tension and hatred of Jews through intersectionality theory in which Israel is portrayed as a global oppressor of minority communities and the source of problems that these groups face. The Jewish state thus serves the role in intersectionality theory that the Jews historically have served in international conspiracy theories, and JVP is at the forefront of trafficking and disseminating these antisemitic tropes.

Now, with a national program called Deadly Exchange: Ending U.S.-Israel Police Exchanges, Reclaiming Safety, JVP is explicitly stating what in the past it has stated implicitly: Jewish organizations are responsible for the killings of non-white minorities in the U.S. by police.

JVP supports theChicago Dyke March anti-Semiteswho targeted LGBT Jews carrying a Jewish Pride flag,andPalestinian activists like Bassem Tamimi, who spread claim Israel arrests Palestinian children to harvest organs:

As I documented in my lecture,When Does Anti-Israelism Turn Into Anti-Semitism?, anti-Semitic imagery is central to the anti-Zionist movement, such as this cartoon by Carlos Latuff, who won second prize in the Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest. His cartoons regularly appear in anti-Zionist publications like Mondoweiss.

The result of supposedly anti-Zionist activism is Europe is anti-Semitism, including street harassment of Jews. Its what Ive called the Walking While Jewish problem. In places like Malmo, Sweden, the theoretical distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has completely vanished. Thats the case in places like Copehagen as well:

Increasingly, political leaders are calling out this anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism. When he visited Israel in 2015, then Prime Minister Harper of Canada stated in a speech to the Knesset (Israels parliament):

And so we have witnessed, in recent years, the mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism and the emergence of a new strain. We all know about the old anti-Semitism. It was crude and ignorant, and it led to the horrors of the death camps. Of course, in many dark corners, it is still with us. But, in much of the western world, the old hatred has been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society. People who would never say they hate and blame the Jews for their own failings or the problems of the world, instead declare their hatred of Israel and blame the only Jewish state for the problems of the Middle East.

As once Jewish businesses were boycotted, some civil-society leaders today call for a boycott of Israel. On some campuses, intellectualized arguments against Israeli policies thinly mask the underlying realities, such as the shunning of Israeli academicsand the harassment of Jewish students. Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state. Think about that. Think about the twisted logic and outright malice behind that: A state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish, as Jews, and seek shelter from the shadow of the worst racist experiment in history, that is condemned, and that condemnation is masked in the language of anti-racism. It is nothing short of sickening.

French President Macron just made similar comments about the new form of anti-Semitism.The Times of Israel reports:

French president Emmanuel Macron on Sunday condemned anti-Zionism as a new form of anti-Semitism, in what observers said was an unprecedented statement from the leader of France in support of the Jewish state.

We will never surrender to the messages of hate; we will not surrender to anti-Zionism because it is a reinvention of anti-Semitism, Macron said an event in Paris marking the mass deportation of French Jews during World War II. He was directly addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the event.

During a lengthy and introspective speech commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Vel dHiv roundup, a mass arrest of 13,152 French Jews in July 1942 that was part of the Nazi effort to eradicate the Jews of France, Macron forcefully denounced Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

Haaretz has a slightly different translation of the key phrase:Its a new type of anti-Semitism and providesthis video with closed-captioning:

The anti-Zionist and BDS movements, and supportive groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, dont like it when the truth is exposed.

But the evidence is insurmountable, and increasingly being recognized, that in the vast majority of cases, anti-Zionism is simply a ruse for anti-Semitism.

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French President Macron: Anti-Zionism is the reinvented form of anti-Semitism - legal Insurrection (blog)

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Posted By admin on July 17, 2017

Edmonton Sun

Fire may have been deliberately set at Talmud Torah School Edmonton Sun A neighbour called Edmonton Fire Rescue Saturday just after 9 p.m. to report a recycling bin beside the Talmud Torah School at 6320 172 St. was on fire. Fire crews were able to douse the flames within minutes and contain the damage to the recycling bin. and more »

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Fire may have been deliberately set at Talmud Torah School - Edmonton Sun

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Posted By admin on July 17, 2017

NEW HAVEN >> Rabbi Yosef Kalmenson, the revered dean at Yeshivas Beis Dovid Shlomo, said the rabbinic school was given a unique blessing when it opened 45 years ago.

The late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Rebbe and spiritual leader of Hasidic Jews, said of the new school that we should always be tight and be growing, said Kalmenson, a Talmudic scholar and author of 22 books on the subject.

The yeshiva has indeed become tight in its quarters at 292 Norton St., as its grown to become a leading Chabad institution, with 140 students (60 during the summer) who come from across the United States and beyond to be trained in the Talmud, the Jewish law and teachings that have been handed down for centuries. Most will go on to become rabbis themselves.

The yeshiva also serves as a community center for the estimated 70 Orthodox families in the Beaver Hills neighborhood who participate in Sunday school, after-school programs, classes and activities that bring the residents together.

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In September, however, there will be much more space available for the students, teachers, mentors and community members as the yeshiva moves to the Whalley Avenue campus of the former St. Brendan Roman Catholic Church, which it recently purchased for $1.525 million.

We are busting at our seams here, said Rabbi Yosef Lustig, principal of the yeshiva. This will allow us to expand.

Theres a flourishing community here in Beaver Hills thats growing, Lustig said. Were getting, every year, five to 10 new families joining us. The yeshiva and community are intertwined and we support each other. While attending the school, students are housed with neighborhood families.

The yeshiva, named after its founder, Dovid Shlomo, is academically rigorous. But that is only part of the preparation for the young men, ages 15 to 20. In addition to the full course of Talmud that we teach here, we impart a sense of giving and responsibility, Lustig said.

While extracurricular activities during the week are offered to their Hasidic neighbors, on Friday and on holidays we reach out to the whole of New Haven and beyond, going as far as Stamford and Hartford, Lustig said.

When we go to nursing homes, to old-age homes, we do our best with everybody, Lustig said. We visit all residents and try to bring the light and spirit to everybody.

Something that we try very hard and thank God are very successful at: All our boys are very happy here, theyre very content, Lustig said.

In the Chabad movement, theres this sense of responsibility and this sense of caring and giving to others is central, he said.

The most well-known event held by the yeshiva is the annual menorah lighting on the Green on the first night of Hanukkah. After that, said Mendel Deitsch, a director of the school, one of the celebrations is to put the menorah on the car, basically to publicize the miracle that happened. So a popular practice is to tie a menorah to the car and drive around.

According to Basya Deitsch, director of development, a lot of light dispels darkness and were all lamp-lighters. Thats ultimately our message to ourselves, to our children and to our families.

Mendel Schaeffer, 17, of Monsey, New York, is in his third year at the yeshiva. I came here to learn leadership skills that we teach here, he said, to learn how outreach and programs that we do both within the community and outside in the greater community in Connecticut as well, [bring] Jews closer to their heritage and all people closer to a divine message of goodness and kindness, and those skills will take me very far in life, wherever that takes me.

Mendel Nemes, 16, of New Orleans, said it took some time to get used to being far from home, but then I got right into it and I enjoy it.

The learnings very good and also theres a very big focus on helping others, Nemes said. We help other Jews with mitzvahs. Theres a big focus here on learning and doing good deeds.

Mendel Mintz of Brooklyn, New York, is a mentor to the younger students. We have a twofold role, he said. On one hand we work with the students who have difficulty learning on their own, and then we also arrange extracurricular activities and outreach in order to change the world for the better.

Its so nice to see how each and every one has their mission in addition to their own studying They all have their passion to have an effect on the entire world and to spread goodness and compassion, Mintz said.

We dont teach them that they exist, Basya Deitsch said. We teach them that theres life, the sanctity of life, having an impact on the world. Wherever they are they will take these skills and the passion that they are given here.

The yeshivas plans for the new campus will be to refurbish the school and use the church as a synagogue. The rectory will be used for offices and to house guest lecturers and the convent will be used as a dormitory.

Its a magnificent building, said Mendel Deitsch. The whole campus was really built to the highest standards It will be filled with sounds of happiness and joy and community celebrations.

Call Ed Stannard at 203-680-9382.

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New Haven yeshiva growing, moving to former St. Brendan campus - New Haven Register

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Posted By simmons on July 17, 2017

Women from the Jewish community of Carpentras chatting while preparing for Shabbat at the towns synagogue, July 7, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz )

CARPENTRAS, France (JTA) The synagogue in this Provence town is Western Europes oldest functioning Jewish house of worship and one of theprettiest on the continent.

The Synagogue of Carpentras, which this year is celebrating its 650th anniversary,has a Baroque-style interior and a gold-ornamented hall with a blue domed ceiling. The rabbis pulpit is, unusually, on a balcony that overlooks the pews and the Torah ark the work of thenon-Jews who built the synagogue in a Christian style in the16th century atop its earlier structure, which was first established in 1367.

Most impressive of all is that the synagogue is housed withina larger building that once functioned as an ancient Jewish community center of sorts. The space boasts spectacular facilities, including a 30-foot-deep ritual bath, or mikvah, fed by turquoise waters from a natural spring, another heated bath, a kosher abattoir and a bakery with large ovens that burned year round.

Yet the architects did their best to conceal the buildingssplendor. The small, wooden front door is buta drab opening in a simple facade that unlikeEuropes other majestic synagogues does not even hint at the bling inside.

The juxtapositionbetween the majestic interior and basic exterior is theresult of French Jewrys long-held desire to celebrate its greatness without attracting too much attention.

A view of the Synagogue of Carpentras, July 7, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

The Synagogue of Carpentras is, to French Jews today, a testament to that conflicted sentiment and tangible proof of their deep roots in a country where many of them nonetheless feel they are treated as outsiders.

At a time when on some streets in France people are shouting Jews, get out, France is not yours, the Synagogue of Carpentras and its 650th anniversary are proof of just how deep our roots run here, CarineBenarous, the communications officer of the Fleg Jewish Community Center in Marseille, 80 miles south of Carpentras, told JTA last week.

Benarous was referring to a slogan that shocked many in France in 2014, when the media reported its use at anti-Israel protests in several cities.

In May,the chief rabbi of France, Haim Korsia whom many French Jews treat with the kind of adoration typically reserved for rock stars traveled more than six hours from Paris tospend Shabbat with the Carpentras Jewish community of 125 members. Alongside a regional archbishop, an influential imam and other rabbis from across the Provence region, Korsia also attended a ceremony marking the 650th anniversary.

Here we acknowledge how deeply our history and our roots are anchored in the soil of France, he said, noting that a Jewish presence has been documented in Provence since the first century.

In his speech, Korsia recalled a different slogan one used several times by Frances former prime minister, Manuel Valls, following a wave of terrorist attacks on Jews. Valls had said that without Jews, France isnt France.

The Synagogue of Carpentras, Korsia said, is proof of that.

Meyer Benzecrit, the president of the Jewish community of Carpentras, delivering a speech at the towns synagogue, May 28, 2017. (Courtesy of the municipality of Carpentras)

I still have goose bumps from his speech, said Franoise Richez, a Carpentras Jew who gives tours of the synagogue.

But Carpentras, she added, is also a testament to the long and, unfortunately, unfinished history of anti-Semitism.

Carpentras was one of only four locales in present-day France where Jews were allowed to stay even after the Great Expulsion of French Jewry, decreed by King Philip IV of France in 1306, according to Ram Ben-Shalom, a historian and lecturer at theHebrew University of Jerusalem specializing inthe Jewry of Provence.

Jews were allowed to live in closed, guarded and crowded ghettos, known as carrieres, in Carpentras, Avignon, Cavaillon and LIsle-sur-la-Sorgue because these locales in Provence were on lands owned by the pope, who took in Jews in exchange for payment. Additionally, he said, Jews were made to wear distinctive clothing, often a cape.

As for the synagogues serving the carrieres, they were designed by Christians because the Jews were only allowed to work as traders or moneylenders, according to Yoann Rogier, a guide at the Synagogue of Cavaillon, which was built in 1494 but now functions as a museum of the towns historic Jewish population, its door frames lacking a mezuzah.

As such, in both Carpentras and Cavaillon, congregants must turn their backs to the Torah ark if they want to face their rabbi, and vice versa. (In most synagogues, the rabbis pulpit sits on a bimah, or platform, situated in front of the ark or in the middle of the sanctuary.) To read from the Torah, the rabbis of both synagogues had to carry the Torah scroll up to their balcony. The Cavaillon synagogue still has a portable ark with wheels for this purpose.

Despite the imperfect circumstances, the Jews of Carpentras ingeniously turned their synagogue into a labyrinthine community center, making maximum use of the limited space allotted to them thanks to partitions, underground passages and interior courts that offered facilities for every aspect of Jewish life. The synagogue complex even had a special matzah bakery.

Gilberte Levy, another member of the Carpentras Jewish community, is among the many local Jews who can trace their lineagenearly to the year that the synagogue was established.

They call me the communitys Brontosaurus, she said, laughing.

To Richez, whose husband is descended from a Jewish family forced to convert to Christianity in Spain during the Inquisition, the Carpentrassynagogue shows that despite everything, we prevailed, she said.

Yet Carpentras also is symbolic of more recent struggles for French Jews.

Franoise Richez talking about the ritual bath, or mikvah, of the Jewish community of Carpentras, July 7, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

In 1990, it saw one of the worst cases of anti-Semitic vandalism in France after the Holocaust: Neo-Nazis smashed dozens of tombstones in the ancient graveyard. The incidentpredated the current wave of anti-Semitic violence that is causingmany thousands of Jews to leave France and was particularly shocking.

Today, Carpentras is one of the few active synagogues in France without army protection. Unlike most French synagogues, visitors may enter without first undergoing a security inspection. While this is good for tourism, the important thing is that the tourism stops at 6 p.m. and this returns to being an active Jewish synagogue, said Richez, a mother of two. We dont want to end up with just a museum, like in Cavaillon.

There used to be more incidents, anti-Semitic shouts and such around the synagogue, Richez added, but matters improved after the municipality closed the synagogues street to vehicles.

All in all, she said, I think were pretty privileged here.

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How this 650-year-old French synagogue withstood centuries of anti-Semitism - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By simmons on July 17, 2017

by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila | Dec 16, 2016 | Featured | 0 Comments

What is the larger purpose of a rabbi in society? Are rabbis only concerned with the kashrut of pots and pans, or does the kashrut of business practices also matter? Must a rabbi tend to a broken heart and soul as much as he tends to a broken Eruv before Shabbat? Is...

by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila | Dec 16, 2016 | Featured | 0 Comments

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by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila | Jun 24, 2016 | Featured | 0 Comments

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by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila | May 26, 2016 | Featured | 0 Comments

Although the Omer period is not intrinsically a period of mourning, events that took place during this period transformed it from a period of celebration to one where we observe certain rituals of mourning. What happened? The Talmud (Yebamot 27b) records that during...

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These words are taken from his book Eshed Nehalim, and were translated by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila. It is these types of teachings that make Classic Sephardic Judaism worth teaching and preserving. Dont you agree?

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Posted By admin on July 17, 2017

LONDON Those close to the Rabbi Joseph Dweck affair have described is as a behemoth of an issue. Its a suitably biblical term for what might seem, on the face of it, an arcane spat between British religious scholars over the permissibility or not of homosexuality.

But, in fact, the repercussions of a lecture which seemingly condoned homosexual relationships that Dweck delivered in London this past May go far beyond that. At stake could be the Jewish religious status of anyone who has availed themselves of the rabbis services, whether for circumcision, conversion or marriage.

The uproar follows a 97-minute talk the rabbi gave to members of the Ner Yisrael Community in Hendon, northwest London, on homosexuality in Jewish law.

[W]e have to see ultimately how it is we deal with it in terms of Torah and society, Dweck said at the lecture. If we do not hang our prejudices at the door when we deal with it, and dont look at Torah as it is and what it is saying to us, and stop with the insane bigotry and prejudice weve got, we will be on the out and society will move forward because [God] doesnt wait for anybody. He is taking His world into love.

As the senior rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation and thus, effectively, the titular head of Britains small but vibrant Sephardi Jewish community the Los Angeles-born rabbi has attracted a devoted following since taking up his post three years ago.

Now deceased Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef seen with his son Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef during a ceremony inaugurating the latter as the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel at the at the Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakai Synagogue in Jerusalem old city on September 16, 2013. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Dweck studied in Jerusalem under the tutelage of the late Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, whose granddaughter, Margalit, he married.

Before coming to London, Dweck served as rabbi of Congregation Shaare Shalom, a Syrian Sephardi synagogue of over 700 members, in Brooklyn, New York, from 1999 to 2014. For the last five years of his time in the US, he was also headmaster of Barkai Yeshivah, a large Jewish day school in Brooklyn.

While in the running for the London job, Dweck contended against and beat out Rabbi David Bassous, whose brother, Rabbi Aharon Bassous, heads a small Sephardi community in London. The latter Bassous has spearheaded the outcry against Dwecks lecture.

This history may have colored Dwecks most recent tweets, one of which quotes poet Robert Frosts axiom that The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.

Rabbi Joseph Dweck speaks at a Lights Out WWI Remembrance Ceremony at the Bevis Marks Synagogue on August 4, 2014, in London, United Kingdom. (Dan Dennison/Getty Images/via JTA)

Though Dweck began his lecture with disclaimers warning of the trepidation hed felt while preparing it and of the controversy he suspected it might cause, he did not anticipate the fallout that would ensue on three continents.

During the course of the speech, he said that the Torah had little to say about homosexuality and that, although sexual intercourse between men was forbidden, men could love each other in other ways.

He also said that he genuinely believe[s] the entire revolution of feminism and even homosexuality in our society is a fantastic development for humanity.

In response, during a two-hour lecture to his own Golders Green Sephardi community Aharon Bassous described Dwecks talk as false and misguided corrupt from beginning to end.

Throughout Jewish history, there have been those who deviate from the Torah the reformers, Conservative, Liberal and their ilk, Bassous said. But theyre not dangerous, because we know where we stand, and we know where they stand.

From the outside, hes Orthodox, but his mouth spouts Reform

When is it dangerous? When you have someone who comes in front of you with two hats, he continued. Hes got the hat of an Orthodox and the hat of a Reform. From the outside, hes Orthodox, but his mouth spouts Reform.

Where have we had this before in Anglo Jewry? Louis Jacobs. Rabbi Dweck is another Louis Jacobs. Its not only this talk. Ive heard subsequent talks, and hes even more poisonous than Louis Jacobs.

The late Rabbi Louis Jacobs founded the Masorti movement in Britain, causing a schism with mainstream Orthodox Jewry in the early 1960s. After a public conflict with the then-chief rabbi Israel Brodie, Jacobs accompanied by many of his congregation set up the New London Synagogue.

For many, the Jacobs affair, which became a cause celebre in the general British media, was a watershed for Anglo Jewry. But its ramifications still echo in the country today as unions blessed by the Masorti rabbinate are not recognized by clergy under the aegis of the Chief Rabbi. There are many recorded instances of people marrying in both a Masorti and an Orthodox synagogue in order to get a valid ketubah, or marriage certificate.

In addition to objecting to the contents of Dwecks homosexuality lecture, Bassous claimed that the rabbi made dubious rulings during other classes, such as granting permission to watch TV or ride a bicycle on Shabbat. Soon, within Orthodox circles, controversial quotes from Dweck lectures began circulating.

Two weeks after the original lecture, both Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and the London Beth Din were distancing themselves from the situation, saying that as Dweck was a senior Sephardi rabbi, he did not fall under Mirviss control.

Nevertheless, there were private meetings between Dweck and Mirvis, who also spoke to the Spanish and Portuguese community.

Adding fuel to the fire, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the present Rishon lZion, or Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, addressed a letter to rabbis of the Syrian community in New York which argued that Dweck was not qualified to be a rabbi and urged his former colleagues to dissociate themselves from him.

The Archbishop of Cantebury Justin Welby (l) and the British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, visit the Western Wall, Judaisms holiest site, in Jerusalems Old City, on May 3, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Yosef is the son of the former chief rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and is the uncle of Dwecks wife.

This has severe reverberations in the Sephardi world, a source told The Times of Israel. The Spanish and Portuguese community in London cannot continue with a rabbi who does not have the blessing of the Rishon lZion.

The Spanish and Portuguese community in London cannot continue with a rabbi who does not have the blessing of the Rishon lZion

Other commentators have said it is no coincidence that Dweck regularly returns to the US to give lectures in the summer.

However, last month, Dweck canceled his annual summer job as scholar in residence at a major Sephardi summer institute in New Jersey to deal with the fallout from his comments. He has allegedly made himself unpopular with some members of the Syrian community including those who are said to be serious funders of Yosefs office.

Following the first letter, Yosef wrote another to dayan (rabbinical judge), Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Lichtenstein, who is the head of Londons Federation of Synagogues, an Orthodox Ashkenazi denomination which technically does not recognize the authority of Mirvis.

In this letter, Yosef asked Lichtenstein to convene a beit din (rabbinical court) and effectively hold a trial of Dweck.

Lichtenstein reported this to the Federation of Synagogues lay leadership which, uncomfortable with the request, insisted on non-Federation rabbis joining the proposed beit din.

They first looked to Mirvis, but he turned Lichtenstein down flat, saying privately that he did not wish to be involved in what he deemed a kangaroo court a medieval show trial.

Ultimately, Lichtenstein told Yosef that he could not convene a Beth Din as had been requested.

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef meets with newly appointed Supreme Rabbinical Court judges in Jerusalem, July 13, 2016. (Photo by Yaacov Cohen/Flash90)

As the weeks rolled on the controversy escalated, with influential rabbis, both pro- and anti-Dweck, taking increasingly public sides. Externally, things proceeded as usual in the Spanish and Portuguese community.

In mid-June, community president Sabah Zubaida issued a letter to his congregation which said, A great deal of the criticism has been based on misunderstandings, some deliberate and some not. However, Rabbi Dweck accepts that some of the criticism is justified and needs to be addressed within the wider rabbinical world.

At that point it became clear that what had began as a witch hunt, as Dwecks supporters called it, had developed into a legitimate controversy over some of his halachic rulings and aspersions he had cast on rabbinical colleagues.

People hadnt really paid attention to what he had been saying until Rabbi Bassous went after him

The homosexual lecture was the trigger for all this, one insider said. People hadnt really paid attention to what he had been saying until Rabbi Bassous went after him and then there was a new focus on his halachic rulings and a realization that some of them were really suspect.

Concerns were expressed over rulings he was said to have made, including the switching on of fluorescent lights after sunset on a Friday, as well as allowing payment with a credit card for flu medication on Shabbat.

According to a group of rabbis critical of Dweck, he had said that some of his colleagues could be dishonest in their rulings, and that, No rabbi, however long his beard is, however long he has learned, can say you cant ride a bike [on Shabbat] Theyre not allowed to.

Seeking to temper some of the heat, Dweck made an apology to a WhatsApp group of more than 100 rabbis over his repeated criticisms of their rulings. Not everyone was charmed. One rabbi said it was too little, too late, though others were said to have been impressed that he had apologized at all.

A photo from circa the 1930s of the Gateshead yeshiva. (CC-SA-Cecily Davis)

Into this uproar waded the head rabbi of the prestigious northeast British yeshiva at Gateshead, Rav Shraga Feivel Zimmerman. In public letters Zimmerman said that Dweck was not fit to serve due to his limited knowledge, weak halachic reasoning skills, and lack of training.

And in the wake of Zimmermans denunciation, a group of anonymous rabbis warned Mirvis, that if Joseph Dweck is maintained in office as a rabbi, whether it is fully or even partially, in spite of all the letters received from highly respected Orthodox rabbinical authorities in Gateshead and in Israel and worldwide, Chief Rabbi Mirvis should realize that he will be responsible for the splitting of Anglo-Orthodoxy and lose his credibility as a Chief Rabbi to a large consensus of Orthodox communities.

If Joseph Dweck is maintained in office Chief Rabbi Mirvis will be responsible for the splitting of Anglo-Orthodoxy

In response, Jerusalems Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo wrote an open letter to the Gateshead leader, urging him to withdraw his comments. Lopes Cardozo, who studied in Gateshead, said he felt it was his moral and halachic duty to defend Dweck.

He said that the letter warning Mirvis that he would be responsible for a split in the community was blackmail and that some rabbis seem to have lost all sense of proportion.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a contrite Dweck was asking for Mirviss help, Mirvis was aware that he could not become involved in this complex war of words without the backing of Yosef.

As battle intensified in public this week it was announced that Zimmerman would be making a rare public appearance at Aharon Bassouss synagogue, presumably to ramp up the rhetoric in private Mirvis was seeking a missing piece on the chess-board: a blessing from the Sephardi chief rabbi.

Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Finally, after days of delicate negotiations, Mirvis received the letter for which he had been waiting. In it, Yosef says: Seeing as I am not fully familiar with the context of Jewish community life in England, I request from his Eminence, who carries the glory of Torah on his shoulders, in his capacity as Chief Rabbi of England, to take responsibility for dealing with the matter and to reach a decision based on his understanding of the situation. If he finds it necessary, he may appoint a beit din, or any other suitable format, which will enable him to bring the matter to a final resolution. Whatever he decides will be acceptable to us in Israel.

The crucial words are any other suitable format, as well as the last sentence acknowledging Mirviss authority. As chief rabbi, Mirvis is one of the few people in the world who can draw a line under the Dweck affair, but the letters continue to pour into his office, almost exactly split down the middle between supporting Dweck and demanding he lose his job.

It is an urgent communal priority

Now, Mirvis has the thankless task of putting in place a credible process to deal with Dweck. He is all too aware that whatever he does, some will not be satisfied. But, The Times of Israel has been told, Mirvis considers this to be an urgent communal priority.

With a row echoing in three countries, the last thing Mirvis wants is a repeat of the Louis Jacobs Affair. The process is being deliberately kept under wraps, with no time frame; no one knows whether a beit din is being convened, or whether Dweck will be questioned closely simply by Mirvis himself.

It will take as long as it takes, says a source close to the Chief Rabbi. It is one of the burdens of office. But the implications for conversions, marriages, children the unity of the Jewish world is literally at stake.

JTA contributed to this report.

From left to right: Rabbi Joseph Dweck (courtesy), British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis (Foreign and Commonwealth Office), and Chief Sephardi Rabbi od Israel Yitzhak Yosef (CC-SA-GFDL).

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Is UK's Sephardi rabbi fracas about more than condoning homosexuality? - The Times of Israel

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Posted By richards on July 17, 2017

Speaking at a ceremony commemorating the victims of the mass roundup of Jews in Paris in WWII, the French president assailed Le Pen and said France must take responsibility for the Vichy regime and Nazi collaboration

PARIS - French President Emmanuel Macron delivered forceful remarks on Sunday at a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from Paris, attacking his political rival Marine Le Pen and other figures who claimed that the Vichy government which collaborated with the Nazis during WWII didn't represent France.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the ceremony in Paris alongside Macron.

"There are those who say Vichy wasn't France," Macron said. "It's true that Vichy wasn't all of France, but Vichy was the government of France and the French establishment It was responsible for deporting French Jews, and not the Germans."

Macron said that denying or hiding France's role in WWII is a disgrace.

"We have a responsibility to realize where and when we have failed," he said. "The underground and those who rescued Jews saved France's dignity, but the Vichy government was the reality. It's convenient and easy to see Vichy as something perpetrated by foreign agents but it was the reality. You can't build pride on a lie."

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Macron condemned Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism in France today, saying that it has taken a new shape, and that anti-Zionist and anti-Israel expressions should be opposed. "It's a new type of anti-Semitism," he said.

At the ceremony, Netanyahu lauded Macron's statement from a few days ago that France in a war of civilizations against radical Islamic terrorism.

"Your struggle against militant Islam is our struggle," he said. "We must stand against them together and defeat them together."

Following the ceremony, Netanyahu arrived at the lyse Palace for a sit-down with Macron.

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Macron: Anti-Zionism Is a Reinvented Form of anti-Semitism - Haaretz

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