Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By simmons on June 28, 2017

Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather spoke in the Commons last week in support of Bill S-232, which designates the month of May as Canadian Jewish Heritage Month, recognizing the contribution of Jewish Canadians over 280 years.

Housefather pointed out that Jewish Canadian Emile Berliner was the first person to make telephones and microphones workable, and Montrealer Louis Rubinstein was the first Canadian world figure skating champion.

"As a Jewish Canadian, I cannot begin to express how proud I am that Canada is my country, that Quebec is my province, and that I am a Montrealer," the MP told the Commons. "I thank Canada for what it has done for me and my community. The reason we love this country and are so patriotic is that it gave us opportunities no other country ever did. Therefore, Jewish Canadian Heritage Month would not only celebrate the contributions of Jewish Canadians but for Jewish Canadians, it would also celebrate the country that gave us such enormous opportunity."

Housefather also mentioned that this year is the 100th anniversary of Federation CJA.

"Federation is our prime organization that gathers all the other Jewish organizations.

"I hope in Canadian Jewish Heritage Month, all Canadians will take the time to learn about their local Jewish communities," Housefarher added. "In that way, we will be able to fight and eradicate the anti-Semitism that exists. Once we know our neighbours, we are much less prejudiced against them."

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Housefather celebrates Jewish Canadian contributions - The Suburban Newspaper

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Posted By richards on June 28, 2017

Facebook's content rules are under scrutiny again. A recent ProPublica report gives greater insight about how Facebook determines who to protect from hate speech on the platform.

The outletobtained an internal presentationoutlining Facebook's content rules. Basically, it protects some groups of people from harassment while leaving posts targeting other groups alone.

According to its policy, Facebook can remove posts that attack groups based on race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, ethnicity and serious disability or disease.

Related StoryArtificial Intelligence Is Facebook's New Terrorism Watchdog

Non-protected subsets of protected groups are fair game for targeting. One slide illustrated that a post attacking all white men should be taken down, while attacks on women drivers or black children are to be left up.

This is justthelatest publicationof Facebook's internal documents about content moderation, including how they dealt with tricky legal situations like Holocaust denial and online extremism.

Offensive content is increasingly putting Facebook and other social media giants at odds with governments around the world. A billrecently proposedin Germany would fine companies $53 million if they don't remove content quickly enough.

The problem is only going to get more complex as Facebook's user base grows the site recently passed2 billionmonthly users.

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Here's How Facebook Determines What Hate Speech Looks Like - Newsy

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Posted By simmons on June 28, 2017

A Hasidic rebbe made headlines in the ultra-Orthodox media when he danced, by holding hands with his daughter and son-in-law at their wedding in Tel Aviv on Sunday.

In what he claimed was an old custom which he wanted to reintroduce, the head of the Karlin-Stolin Hasidic group, Boruch Meir Yaakov Shochet, held hands with his daughter, her new husband and the grooms father, and the four of them danced for several minutes in a circle.

Hasidic Jews are known for being extra stringent about contact between men and women, even close family members. Usually at a Hasidic wedding the father or other male relatives dance with the bride by holding one end of a long cloth and she holds the other end.

His innovation was widely commented on in the ultra-Orthodox press, with at least two papers headlining the move.

Thousands of Hasidim attended the wedding, including rabbis and leaders of other Hasidic sects. The Behadrei Haredim ultra-Orthodox news site reported that 8,500 meals were ordered and 130 buses were hired for the guests.

The website explained that there was once a Karlin-Stolin custom for the father to dance with his daughter alone, and afterward for the groom to dance alone with his bride. This time the rabbi danced with his daughter and then called his son-in-law and his father to join them.

However, not all were supportive of the rabbi.

On the Kikar Hashabbat news site many people wrote shocked and angry comments, expressing their outrage at the public display of mixed dancing. One pointed out that although the rabbi said it was an ancient custom, the Hebrew letters of the word custom (minhag) when written backwards spell hell (gehinom).

Another commentator repeated a line attributed to the 19th-century rabbi Moshe Sofer who said that innovation is forbidden according to Torah law.

Another wrote that the rebbe had gone astray because he had been corrupted by the Zionists.

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Rebbe's wedding dance with daughter causes a stir - The Times of Israel

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Posted By richards on June 28, 2017

Rafi Ashkenazi, Amaya's CEO told reporters after an annual meeting in Montreal last Wednesday that the company intended to make waves in the Indian market, lured by the country's 1.2 billion mobile users.

Ashkenazi said "We want to be there in time and we want to make sure that we are, as usual, the market leader when it comes to poker." By all accounts, Amaya will be aiming to pick up at least half of the Indian market which they believe could eventually be worth $150m per annum.

Above: Amaya CEO Rafi Ashkenazi is determined for PokerStars to make their mark in the Indian smartphone gaming market

Amaya will be hoping that revenues generated from new business in India could help offset some of the losses they will incur if, as planned, they exit the Australian market in order to comply with upcoming legal changes outlawing, among other things, online poker.

Bloomberg.com notes that "While India too has a lack of legal clarity, some states have given licenses to online poker companies on classifying their products as 'games of skill'". It further states that KPMG estimates that India's online gaming industry will more than double to $1bn by 20121, adding 190 million gamers, most of whom will be using mobile devices.

At the annual meeting itself shareholders agreed to rename the company The Stars Group Inc. as had been proposed last month. The have also agreed to move the company headquarters from Montreal to Ontario.

Global Poker Adding over 10% to Gtd Prize Pools in the Online World Challenge

WSOP 2017: Luis Calvo Wins First Bracelet in $3K PLO 6-Handed Event

Fist fight Erupts in Bobby's Room?

Highlights from Fedor Holz's Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything)

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PokerStars Target Indian Smartphone Market - HighstakesDB - HighstakesDB

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Posted By admin on June 28, 2017

In the reams of articles marking the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, there has been little focus on Israels population of Jews from Arab lands.

This is no great surprise, nor a great failing: Israels half-century-longoccupation of those Palestinian territories clearly has far-ranging repercussions that do not relate to Israels Jewish ethnic composition. And yet still, this group of Jews coming from Muslim and Jewish lands described in Israel as Mizrahim do have a different narrative, and one that was impacted and influenced by the Israeli occupation.

Once the majority population in Israel, Mizrahi Jews have long suffered discrimination in a country run by European communities who viewed those from Arab countries as being somehow inferior.

Jews from countries such as Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia were, when they arrived in Israel mostly after its creation in 1948, greeted with ignorance and prejudice. Their Eastern European co-nationalists were shocked to discover that, yes, there were toilets, cars and Communism in Baghdad and Cairo. Unfortunately, such preconceptions filtered into policy-making and distribution of resources, resulting in a correlation between social status, class and ethnicity in Israel, across sectors such as education, housing and professional attainment.

Mizrahi culture was assumed to be something of an oxymoron, and was disparaged and dismissed, while use of Arabic an official language in Israel was frowned upon in public. Israel essentially de-Arabised its Mizrahi Jews stunting not just this population itself, but also the potential for them to act as a bridge between Israel and its neighbouring Arab nations.

The occupation put some 900,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank and around 66,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem under Israeli control. But it also made this population an available workforce for Israel and that changed the social order for Mizrahi Jews, who were more often, until then, on the bottom rung.

Many Mizrahi Jews then spoke Arabic, an advantage in this situation and one of the factors that allowed a move into positions in Israeli society where they could run small businesses or manage small teams of Palestinian workers.

Moshe Behar, senior lecturer in Israel studies at Manchester university, says the occupation meant Mizrahi Israelis were able "to upgrade financially and economically suddenly other people, with less protection and less rights, could do the work they did before 1967.

But if the employment status of Mizrahi Jews changed, post-occupation, so, too, did their visibility in Israeli society.

In the days before the second Palestinian intifada and the construction of Israels separation wall, Palestinians from the occupied territories could move more freely than today. This almost certainly had an effect on the constant filtering process that occurs inside Israeli society: over who is one of us and who is not.

For Mizrahi Jews, the problem was always the fact that they came from enemy lands, sharing the same cultural heritage, language and features; they looked like the enemy. So in the areas that border the occupied territories, Mizrahi Israelis are often stopped, ID cards and Hebrew accents checked, their Jewishness, or not, scanned for.

When I researched my book on Israels Jews from Arab Lands, the half-Mizrahi Israeli writer Almog Behar told me: Its a kind of Jerusalem experience, to be considered Arab.It happens to me lots of times, like Im standing in the bus station and military police stop and ask me for an ID card, and so on.

But while Mizrahi Jews are subject to these ID checks they also have disproportionately ended up serving the army in Israels border areas, on the frontline of enforcing the occupation in Palestinian territories. This idea was explored by photojournalistMati Milstein in the project Black labourwhich focused on the soldiers of Israels border police. Mizrahi-Jewish activist Tom Mehager argues that deploying Mizrahior Ethiopian-Israeli soldiers in this way isnt just about assignment of low-status roles within the army, but also about offloading theviolent and conflict-heavy aspectsof the occupation onto non-whites.

Israels Mizrahi population is, inside the country, often disparaged for supporting the militaristic right-wing. Its a myopic analysis, that fails to understand what might be behind such voting patterns, not least the fact that Israels left wing is associated with the Ashkenazi hegemony that for decades dished out a sneery and devastating discrimination towards the Mizrahi population. And there have always been undercurrents running counter to this dominant narrative some of these emerging in the post-67 period.

One prominent example is the Israeli Black Panthers, who in the early 1970s began to organise against the levels of social inequality between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi. The group fast became a coherent movement with thousands of supporters and, notably, was the first Israeli group to make contact with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, consciously linking the Palestinian fight for self-determination to the Mizrahi cause.

This approach, finding common cause between Mizrahi Jews and Palestinians, is clearly not mainstream, but it still continues in Israel today. One example is the open letter penned in solidarity, from second and third generation Mizrahis to their Arab peers during the uprisings of 2011.

Saluting the spirit of the revolutions across the Middle East,the Young Mizrahis wrote:"We now express the hope that our generation - throughout the Arab, Muslim, and Jewish world will be a generation of renewed bridges that will leap over the walls and hostility created by previous generations...We draw on our shared past in order to look forward hopefully towards a shared future."

This sentiment has always been against the odds, seemingly impossible in the face of the ever-worsening Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But global events in the past few years have shown that sometimes things can turn in an instant, long-held political assumptions can crumble overnight. Today it sounds impossibly naive but we may yet see a time when this Mizrahi population acts as a bridge between two peoples, forging a path of peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis.

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Understanding Israel through its marginalised Mizrahi Jews - TRT World

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Posted By richards on June 28, 2017

WASHINGTON The Anti-Defamation League, with the support of religious leaders of various faiths, urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to appoint a special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.

The letter sent Wednesday asks Tillerson to refill the position, which has been empty since the end of Ira Formans term five months ago. Two dozen faith leaders, representing Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, Hindus, Sikhs and Jews, signed the letter.

It notes that the post was mandated by an act of Congress in 2004, and takes issue with Tillersons assertion earlier this month that in lieu of a dedicated envoy, all diplomats would be educated enough to work against anti-Semitism.

Countering the assertion, the ADL letter says that concerns about anti-Semitism do not always make it onto the agenda of diplomatic meetings, especially when many other legitimate and pressing issues require attention. By contrast, when the Special Envoy meets with foreign officials, anti-Semitism is the agenda.

Ira Forman, the US State Departments special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, speaking at the Hungarian parliament in Budapest, October 2013. (Tom Lantos Institute/ JTA)

The letter also refers to a letter from March in which 167 members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, emphasized the need for US global leadership in fighting anti-Semitism.

The ADL also recently created an online petition demanding a special envoy be appointed.

The lone staffer in the office monitoring anti-Semitism is currently on a fellowship that was extended recently for 30 days by its sponsor. The fellowship is schedule to conclude at the end of July.

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ADL, religious leaders call on Tillerson to appoint anti-Semitism envoy - The Times of Israel

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Posted By simmons on June 28, 2017

Boston's Holocaust Memorial was damaged overnight.

CBS Boston/Ben Parker

Last Updated Jun 28, 2017 5:49 PM EDT

BOSTON --A vandal used a rock to shatter a glass panel on the New England Holocaust Memorial early Wednesday, drawing quick condemnation from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and religious groups.

"As a city we stand with the Jewish community," Walsh said at the memorial later in the morning.

Police responding to a call from a witness at about 2 a.m. found a roughly 9-foot tall glass panel on one of the memorial's six 54-foot-high towers shattered. They quickly arrested James Isaac, 21, of Boston, and charged him with malicious destruction of personal property and destruction of a place of memorial.

Isacc's lawyer said he suffers from mental health issues. Isaac was held on $750 bail on Wednesday on charges of malicious destruction of personal property and destruction of a place of memorial. But he had his bail revoked and was held for violating the terms of his probation in other pending cases.

Not-guilty pleas were entered on his behalf.

His court-appointed attorney, Rebecca Kozak, said her client is "struggling considerably" and is participating in a partial hospitalization program at a mental health facility.

"When we hear the sound of broken glass, we shudder," said Barry Shrage, president and CEO of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, referring to Kristallnacht, a wave of anti-Jewish violence in Germany in 1938.

The Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also denounced the vandalism.

"Desecration of a religious memorial is always heartbreaking and must be condemned," chapter Executive Director John Robbins said in a statement.

Izzy Arbeiter, 92, a Holocaust survivor who played a key role in building the memorial, came out to see the damage late Wednesday morning, CBS Boston reports.

Arbeiter said he found out about the vandalism this morning when his wife came to him crying.

Izzy Arbeiter speaks with CBS Boston. The tattooed numbers Arbeiter was given during the Holocaust is seen in the photo on the right.

CBS Boston/Ben Parker

"I lost my entire family in the Holocaust, in Auschwitz. I was in Auschwitz myself. It was a terrible thing," he said.

His number, etched on him from Auschwitz, was on that panel.

"The Jewish people are strong. The city of Boston is strong," he said.

The memorial designed by architect Stanley Saitowitz opened in 1995 and is located just off the Freedom Trail, near Faneuil Hall and City Hall. It is open at all times.

The glass towers are lit internally and etched with millions of numbers that represent tattoos on the arms of many Jews sent to Nazi death camps.

Extra panels were made and stored when the memorial opened, and the organization that oversees the memorial did not expect repairs to take long.

"When a memorial is desecrated, when this glass is shattered, people feel that," said Robert Trestan from the Anti-Defamation League. "It really impacts people in a very profound way."

Investigators are not currently ruling the act a hate crime. Members of the Jewish community came together for a prayer service there just before noon.

Arbeiter asked, "Why did they do it? Did they pick it because it is a memorial for the Holocaust?"

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Boston's Holocaust Memorial vandalized; suspect in custody: police - CBS News

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Posted By richards on June 27, 2017

The incident in Chicago, where a rainbow flag with a Jewish star was banned, unleashed a flood of reaction from Haaretz readers. Hear what they had to say, vote in a poll and join the conversation

After women carrying Jewish Pride flags were banned from the annual Chicago Dyke March over the weekend, a debate on hostility to Zionism and Israel - and perceived anti-Semitism in the LGBT community - ensued.

In Chicago, lesbians participating in the event were told they could not march with flags bearing a Star of David on a rainbow background. Organizers charged that its resemblance to the Israeli flag was a trigger that "made people feel unsafe" and flew in the face of the Dyke March's collective "pro-Palestinian" and "anti-Zionist" politics.

Ongoing coverage in Haaretz of the controversy, which included news ofprotests from Jewish groups as well as an opinion piece from one of the women who was expelled from the parade, unleashed a flood of views on the issue. The vast majority of commenters objected to the removal of the flag and suggested that what happened was anti-Semitism in an anti-Zionist disguise. Others, however, said the flag was a blatant nationalist and separatist display of an oppressive symbol that had no place at an event whose goal is to unite, not divide.

Check out the comments below from Haaretz readers. Vote in our poll and let your voice be heard:

Heres a taste of what Haaretz readers had to say:

Meyer Goldberg: A Jewish Star is not a symbol of Zionism, it is a symbol of Judaism! A cross is not exclusively a symbol of Catholicism or Baptism or the KKK! It is a sign of Christianity and should be taken that way! Shame on the intolerance of the LGBTQ community!

Linda Jericho: Someone has to speak up and be the voice of the Palestinians, Black Jews, and anyone else that Israel is racist toward or forcing an apartheid against! Apartheid and racism are never cool and there is no reason to pinkwash the crimes they have committed against 100,000's of innocent people. ZIONISM is racism, and it's nothing to be proud of.

Edan Hollombe: Why is Antisemitism not OK, but Anti-Zionism is? Is it also OK to be anti-France or Anti-Italy? Why is it permissible to oppose the existence of an entire sovereign nation, if that nation is Israel? I wonder what a Spanish person would think of me if I told him I am anti-Spain...

Sometimes I am ashamed to be a progressive

Emma Phillips: If the Star of David is only a Zionist symbol how come Jews made to wear yellow ones under Nazis . Or was it just Zionist Jews who wore them??? Don't think so... it's very ugly watching today's antisemites turn themselves inside out to carry on their persecutory ways. Oh and do they feel solidarity with the Palestinians who would be very happy to launch gays off roofs, particularly the Hamas government of Gaza. How do they begin to get their muddled Jew hating heads around that conundrum? Intersectionality, don't make me laugh!!

Sylvain Duprey:Why Was I Kicked Out for Carrying a Jewish Pride Flag? Because some racist and insane motherfuckers waving a star of David on a flag stole a land and slaughtered thousands of innocents. It's not the star's fault, not the jewish or gay people fault. The religious symbol became an ethnic supremacist symbol. Ethnic supremacism by definition is an excluding ideology and the Pride fights exclusion.

Trey Anthony Soto: If that's the case with Jews, where does the line draw? Do we not allow German LGBTQ pride because of the holocaust? Do we not allow Turkish LGBTQ pride because of the Armenian genocide? This list can go on forever. It makes no sense to exclude one group of people, especially when the pride parade is centered around inclusiveness and unity.

Tom Charles: The Star of David has been around for thousands of years. It long predates Zionism or the modern State of Israel. So to say a white hexagram on a rainbow flag is pro-Zionism and anti-Palestinian is ridiculous. To ban such a flag and its participants is bigoted. Period.

Christine Gonzales: Sadly, I sense that "trigger" is the new word to excuse exclusion of any kind. It allows people to see themselves as victims and therefore entitled to remove the "trigger" group(s), perpetuating the division they claim to reject. In the end, this will destroy any inclusion that they advocate for and any community that they hope to achieve.

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Haaretz Readers React: Was Banning the 'Jewish Pride' Flag From the Chicago 'Dyke March' anti-Semitic? - Haaretz

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Posted By richards on June 27, 2017

(From left:) Steve Frogue, son Jim Frogue, the late John G. Schmitz and son Joseph E. Schmitz.

What do former (as in retired) far-right South County disgraced politician Steve Frogue and former (as in no more) far-far-far right South County disgraced politician John Schmitz have in common?

BZZZZZ!

The answer is: sons who worked on Donald Trump's transition team (and still sniff around the White House).

Half of the preceding game show Q&A is brought to you by Dissent the Blog, operated by the ever-rascally Irvine Valley College philosophy professor Roy Bauer.

"The Unabauer" landed the scoop on a Trump healthcare advisor being the son of former South Orange County Community College District board trustee Steve Frogue, first in the IVC instructor's post "Frogue's son was Trump's senior health policy advisor during the 2016 campaign!" and then in the follow-up "Jim Frogue is on Trump's 'beachhead team.'"

Joseph E. Schmitz

U.S. Department of Defense

That remindedthis corner of the dark web that a Trump campaign foreign policy and national security advisor is the son of deceased South Orange County Congressman John G. Schmitz, which is no scoop at all. As the Weekly Way Back Machine shows, Schmitz and son were connected in an item carried by the former (as in no more) A Clockwork Orangea dozen years ago. (Yes, of course, said Clockwork item also connected John Schmitz and daughter Mary Kay LeTourneau, the parolee who recently separated from two of her six children's father, an elementary school student who was 12 when he first started having sex with his teacher, Mrs.LeTourneau.)

Mary Kay's little brother Joseph E. Schmitz servedas Inspector General of the Department of Defense during the George "Dubya" Bush administration.As chairman of the Finance Committee, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) accused Schmitz, who was then the senior Pentagon official charged with investigating waste, fraud and abuse, of fabricating an official Pentagon news release, planning an expensive junket to Germany and hiding information from Congress. Schmitz resigned in September 2005 to join the Prince Group, which was the parent company of defense contractor Blackwater USA. The Presidential Council on Integrity & Efficiency in October 2006 cleared Schmitz of wrongdoing while Inspector General.

His new boss Erik Dean Prince, an ex-Navy SEAL officer who founded Blackwater, later sold the company and now heads a private equity firm. He supported Trump but played no formal role in the transition, although a Jan. 11 meeting he attended in the Republic of Seychelleswhere Prince presented himself as an unofficial representative of Trumpis part of the FBIs investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The Clockwork nugget referenced above noted that Time magazine wondered how Schmitz managed to get his Pentagon job. Whether or not you are down with his competency or politics, at least he's not as nutty (outwardly at least) as his old man, who we described thusly:

[T]he late John G. Schmitz, the ultraconservative firebrand and former Orange County lawmaker whose career highlights included membership in the John Birch Society; loss of the presidency by a mere 44 million votes as the 1972 American Independent Party nominee; his 1982 press release titled "Senator Schmitz and His Committee Survive Attack of the Bulldykes"; that missive's description of feminist attorney Gloria Allred as "a slick, butch lawyeress"; his apology to Allred to settle a $10 million defamation suit; his announcement of his 1982 candidacy for the U.S. Senate with Yasser Arafat at his side; revelations that the staunch critic of declining American morals and father of six also had two more kids with a mistress; and revelations that his then-35-year-old daughter (and Joey's big sis) Mary Kay LeTourneau, a Seattle schoolteacher, had sexand later two babieswith a 13-year-old boy.

Joe Schmitz, a partner in the law firm Schmitz & Socarras LLP, still gets mentioned as a possible Trump appointee. You can read his columns (like this one on the Muslim Brotherhood) on Newsmax. He also authored The Inspector General Handbook: Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Other Constitutional "Enemies, Foreign and Domestic." Exposing government fraud via a book is something else he has in common with James "Jim" Frogue, author of Stop Paying the Crooks: Solutions to End the Fraud That Threatens Your Healthcare.

The latter book's forward was written by Newt Gingrich, Frogue's former boss at the Center for Health Transformation, which despite the name has nothing to do with crystals, incense and swatting imaginary flies like a Dead & Co. audience member. Frogue served as vice president and director of State Policy for Little Newtie, after gigs with the Heritage Foundation, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) and the American Legislative Exchange Council, where he directed the Health and Human Services Task Force.

He left Gingrich to co-found the public affairs consulting firm FrogueClark, whose clients, as of a 2015-16 disclosure reports, included Ehealth, CareSource, Eli Lilly & Co., Georgia Health Care Association, American Healthcare Association, Mountain States Health Alliance, medical helicopter transport company Air Method Corp. andgulpmy HMO, Kaiser Permanente (dont jack up my premiums, pretty please?).

Frogue was a domestic policy advisor for the Trump transition, and like Joe Schmitz his name has come up for permanent administration positions. Politico reported on Jan. 30 that Frogue is part of a Trump "beachhead" team, which refers to folksincluding healthcare industry lobbyists, obviouslywho fill administration jobs until a permanent official is appointed and/or confirmed (by Putin?).

Again, as with Joe Schmitz, Young Froguenstein has displayed no outward nuttiness like his daddy, whose sins I laid out in my April 10, 1998, cover story "The Evil of Froguenstein." Guess what? While the cover image is intact, that story is not in the OC Weekly archives; it is only excerpted. Perhaps New Times disappeared it.

I did find one copy of the, uh, copy atwhere else?The Unabauer's Dissent the Blog. And so, I was able to copy and paste this I scrawled onto a wet cocktail napkin about Steve Frogue:

Frogue, a member of the board of trustees that oversees the district encompassing Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo and Irvine Valley College in Irvine, has been accused of anti-Semitism and minimizing the Holocaust. Meanwhile, he's also part of a reform-minded board majority that-depending upon who you listen tois saving the colleges from financial ruin or driving them into the ground.

The Holocaust denial bit came from a string of utter Frogueness:

* Ten former students of the then-Foothill High School history teacher Steve Frogue swore that hequestioned the Holocaust and denigrated Jews, Asians, Mormons, Hispanics and African Americans during classes. One, who attended Frogue's social-studies class during the 1982-83 school year, said the teacher told his students: "The Holocaust didn't really kill that many Jews. It was more like 6,000." That's quite a bit off from 6 million cited in his history textbooks, no?

* Frogue told Irvine Valley's student newspaper in 1995 that he has read publications from the Institute for Historical Review, the Newport Beach organization of "scholars" who contended the Holocaust was exaggerated. The college district trustee inferred that perhaps the IHR's information should be debated in public.

* Frogue was quoted in a 1997 LA Times story saying he believed Lee Harvey Oswald worked for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an international Jewish civil rights organization that deemed the IHR"the most anti-Semitic publication in America."

And the coups de grace:

* In the summer of 1997, then-board president Frogue got his fellow trustees to approve spending $5,000 in taxpayer money to bring four speakers to Saddleback for a JFK-assassination seminar. Nothing wrong with that, except two would-be speakers frequently contributed to the IHR publication Spotlight. The most controversial wasWashington, D.C., author Michael Collins Piper, whose book Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracycharacterized the Kennedy killing as a joint hit orchestrated by top-level CIA officials in collaboration with organized crime "and, most specifically, with direct and profound involvement by the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad." Piper had also written in Spotlight that the Nazis exterminated far fewer than 6 million peopleand that, in any case, no Jews died in gas chambers.

The seminar was moved off campus and perhaps scrubbed altogether. I can't remember. Oh, let's check those Weekly archives ... oh, never mind. But child, if only cell phones had been invented so I could show you video ofthe SOCCCD board meetings from back in the day. I still have "Die, Nazi scum!" in a thick European accent ringing in my ear, along with the return volley in a plain ol' American construction worker tone: "Subhuman!" Not that I helped matters any with my "The Evil of Froguenstein" introduction:

If you're like most Orange Countians, this is probably how you imagine Steven J. Frogue: he's a big, fat, Nazi goosestepper. He stands in front of his bathroom mirror at night in his swastika jammies, holding a black comb under his nose, and pretends to be Adolf Hitlerfoaming at the mouth and swatting imaginary flies before the masses. Frogue thinks the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith is filled with a bunch of Catholic-president-slaying Juden who have nothing better to do these days than figure out ways to fuck with the Frogue. "Holocaust, schmolocaust," he'll tell youwithout you asking. "So it was strongly suggested the Jews go on a little extended holiday. Is that so wrong? Well, is it?"

L'Chaim!

Instagram/JimFrogue

Kinda makes all this Trump business tame in comparison. Hey, hey, I said, "kinda."

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Connecting Donald Trump Dots with OC's Steve Frogue and John G. Schmitz - OC Weekly

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Posted By richards on June 27, 2017

ArtScroll made it possible for anyone to study Talmud on his or her own, said Samuel C. Heilman, who specializes in Jewish studies as a distinguished professor of sociology at the City University of New York.

The elegant ArtScroll siddur, or prayer book, used for daily Sabbath and holiday prayers is so sought after that more than a million copies have been printed. It is used even by some synagogues in the more liberal Conservative Jewish movement.

ArtScrolls sales have been helped by the striking growth of the Orthodox movement; 10 percent of American Jews identify themselves as Orthodox, according to a Pew Research Center study in 2015, but 27 percent of children under 18 are Orthodox, foreshadowing a mushrooming share of the Jewish population in years to come.

Rather than assume that every Jew knows the sometimes arcane procedures and rationales for prayer, the siddur lays them out in clear contemporary English and features explanatory footnotes, in the way that an annotated edition of Joyces Ulysses might ease that novels reading.

For example, the siddur tells those unfamiliar with the central Amidah prayer to take three steps backward, then three steps forward at the start, and urges a worshiper to pray loudly enough to hear himself but not so loudly that its recitation is audible to others.

J. Philip Rosen, a lawyer whose donation financed the siddurs 1992 edition, said Rabbi Zlotowitz, concerned about making books very user-friendly, agreed to make the type large enough for those with diminishing eyesight, like Mr. Rosens father.

I dont think theres an organization other than Chabad or Birthright Israel that has helped bring people closer to Judaism, Mr. Rosen said of ArtScroll.

Rabbi Zlotowitz, ArtScrolls president, ran the business with his partners of 41 years, Rabbi Nosson Scherman, who has served as general editor, and Rabbi Sheah Brander, its graphics expert. Both are continuing with the company. Rabbi Zlotowitz wrote or edited 15 of the companys 2,000 titles himself, including a six-volume anthology of commentary on Genesis.

Meir Zlotowitz, a soft-spoken man with a flowing white beard, was born in New York City on July 13, 1943, the youngest child of Aaron and Fruma Zlotowitz, immigrants from Lithuania. The father was a ritual circumciser and slaughterer with an almost thorough recall of the Talmud. Rabbi Zlotowitz told friends that he never woke up without hearing the singsong melody of his father studying.

He attended two yeshivas, Rabbi Jacob Joseph School and, for post-high school, Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem, both on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the time. The latter was led by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who was regarded as his generations leading authority on Jewish law. Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem conferred Meir Zlotowitzs rabbinical ordination.

Talented in art and design, Rabbi Zlotowitz took courses in graphics at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and began doing calligraphy for wedding contracts (kesuvos) and honorary scrolls in a Manhattan studio, then set up a print shop on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn that added invitations and brochures to its products.

In 1975, a close friend died childless and, to offer him a legacy, Rabbi Zlotowitz published a translation of Esther accompanied by commentary, with Rabbi Scherman serving as a writer and editor.

It sold 20,000 copies, Rabbi Scherman said in an interview, and Rabbi Zlotowitz, encouraged by the response from leading rabbis, wound down the invitation business and from then on devoted himself to publishing religious works.

In addition to his son Gedaliah, he is survived by his wife, Rochel; their three other sons, Ira, Boruch and Chaim; their daughters, Estie Dicker, Faigie Perlowitz, Devorah Morgenstern and Tzivi Munk; and more than 50 grandchildren.

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Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, Who Made Jewish Prayer Books Clear to All, Dies at 73 - New York Times

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