Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 11, 2022

There is, on the face of it, a fundamental contradiction in the Torah. On the one hand we hear, in the passage known as the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, the following words:

The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious G-d, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness and truth but who does not acquit the guilty, holding descendants to account for the sins of the fathers, children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation (Ex. 34:7).

The implication is clear. Children suffer for the sins of their parents. On the other hand, we read in this weeks parsha: Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents. A person shall be put to death only for their own sin (Deut. 24:16).

The book of Kings records a historic event when this principle proved decisive.

When Amaziah was well-established as king, he executed the officials who had assassinated his father. However, he did not kill the children of the assassins, for he obeyed the command of the L-rd as written by Moses in the Book of the Law. (2 Kings 14:5-6).

There is an obvious resolution. The first statement refers to Divine justice: at the hands of Heaven. The second, in Deuteronomy, refers to human justice as administered in a court of law. How can mere mortals decide the extent to which one persons crime was induced by the influence of others? Clearly the judicial process must limit itself to the observable facts. The person who committed the crime is guilty. Those who may have shaped his character are not.

Yet the matter is not so simple, because we find Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the two great prophets of exile in the sixth century BCE, restating the principle of individual responsibility in strong and strikingly similar ways. Jeremiah says:

In those days people will no longer say, The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the childrens teeth are set on edge. Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes their own teeth will be set on edge (Jer. 31:29-30).

Ezekiel says:

The word of the L-rd came to me: What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the Land of Israel: The parents eat sour grapes, and the childrens teeth are set on edge? As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign L-rd, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For everyone belongs to Me, the parent as well as the child both alike belong to me. The one who sins is the one who will die (Ezek. 18:1-4).

Here the prophets were not speaking about judicial procedures and legal responsibility. They are talking about Divine judgment and justice. They were giving the people hope at one of the lowest points in Jewish history: the Babylonian conquest and the destruction of the First Temple. The people, sitting and weeping by the waters of Babylon, might have given up hope altogether. They were being judged for the failings of their ancestors that had brought the nation to this desperate plight, and their exile seemed to stretch endlessly into the future. Ezekiel, in his vision of the valley of dry bones, hears G-d reporting that the people were saying, Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost (Ezek. 37:11). He and Jeremiah were counseling against despair. The peoples future was in their own hands. If they returned to G-d, G-d would return to them and bring them back to their land. The guilt of previous generations would not be attached to them.

But, if this is so, then the words of Jeremiah and Ezekiel really do conflict with the idea that G-d punishes sins to the third and fourth generation. Recognizing this, the Talmud makes a remarkable statement:

Said R. Yose b. Hanina: Our master, Moses, pronounced four [adverse] sentences on Israel, but four prophets came and revoked them Moses said the L-rd punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. Ezekiel came and declared, The one who sins is the one who will die (Makkot 2b).

In general, the Sages rejected the idea that children could be punished, even at the hands of Heaven, for the sins of their parents. As a result, they systematically re-interpreted every passage that gave the opposite impression, that children were indeed being punished for their parents sins. Their general position was this:

Are not children then to be put to death for the sins committed by their parents? Is it not written, Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children? There the reference is to children who follow in their parents footsteps [literally seize their parents deeds in their hands, i.e., commit the same sins themselves] (Brachot 7a, Sanhedrin 27b).

Specifically, they explained biblical episodes in which children were punished along with their parents by saying that in these cases the children had the power to protest/prevent their parents from sinning, but they failed to do so (Sanhedrin 27b; Yalkut Shimoni, 1:290) As Maimonides says, whoever has the power of preventing someone from committing a sin but does not do so, he is seized (i.e., punished, held responsible) for that sin.

Did, then, the idea of individual responsibility come late to Judaism, as some scholars argue? This is highly unlikely. During the rebellion of Korach, when G-d threatened to destroy the people, Moses said, Shall one man sin and will You be angry with the whole congregation? (Num. 16:22). When people began dying after King David had sinned by instituting a census, he prayed to G-d: I have sinned. I, the shepherd, have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let Your hand fall on me and my family (II Sam. 24:17). The principle of individual responsibility is fundamental to Judaism, as it was to other cultures in the ancient Near East.

Rather, what is at stake is the deep understanding of the scope of responsibility we bear if we take seriously our roles as parents, neighbors, townspeople, citizens and children of the covenant. Judicially, only the criminal is responsible for his crime. But, implies the Torah, we are also our brothers keeper. We share collective responsibility for the moral and spiritual health of society. All Israel, said the Sages, are responsible for one another. Legal responsibility is one thing, and relatively easy to define. But moral responsibility is something altogether larger, if necessarily more vague. Let a person not say, I have not sinned, and if someone else commits a sin, that is a matter between him and G-d. This is contrary to the Torah, writes Maimonides in the Sefer haMitzvot (Positive Command 205).

This is particularly so when it comes to the relationship between parents and children. Abraham was chosen, says the Torah, solely so that he will instruct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the L-rd by doing what is right and just (Gen. 18:19). The duty of parents to teach their children is fundamental to Judaism. It appears in both the first two paragraphs of the Shema, as well as the various passages cited in the Four Sons section of the Haggadah. Maimonides counts as one of the gravest of all sins so serious that G-d does not give us an opportunity to repent one who sees his son falling into bad ways and does not stop him. The reason, he says, is that since his son is under his authority, had he stopped him the son would have desisted. Therefore it is accounted to the father as if he had actively caused his son to sin (Hilchot Teshuvah 4:1), referring to a son under the age of thirteen.

If so, then we begin to hear the challenging truth in the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. To be sure, we are not legally responsible for the sins of either our parents or our children. But in a deeper, more amorphous sense, what we do and how we live do have an effect on the future to the third and fourth generation.

Rarely has that effect been more devastatingly described than in recent books by two of Americas most insightful social critics: Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, and Robert Putnam of Harvard. Notwithstanding their vastly different approaches to politics, Murray in Coming Apart and Putnam in Our Kids have issued essentially the same prophetic warning of a social catastrophe in the making. For Putnam, the American dream is in crisis. For Murray, the division of the United States into two classes with ever decreasing mobility between them will end what has made America America.

Their argument is roughly this: that at a certain point, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, a whole series of institutions and moral codes began to dissolve. Marriage was devalued. Families began to fracture. More and more children grew up without stable association with their biological parents. New forms of child poverty began to appear, as well as social dysfunctions such as drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancies and crime and unemployment in low-income areas. Over time, an upper class pulled back from the brink, and is now intensively preparing its children for high achievement, while on the other side of the tracks, children are growing up with little hope for educational, social, and occupational success. The American Dream of opportunity for all is wearing thin.

What makes this development so tragic is that, for a moment, people forgot the biblical truth that what we do does not affect us alone. It will affect our children to the third and fourth generation. Even the greatest libertarian of modern times, John Stuart Mill, was emphatic on the responsibilities of parenthood. He wrote, in On Liberty and Other Writings:

The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To undertake this responsibility to bestow a life which may be either a curse or a blessing unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being.

If we fail to honor our responsibilities as parents, then though no law will hold us responsible societys children will pay the price. They will suffer because of our sins.

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To The Third And Fourth Generations - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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Posted By admin on September 11, 2022

Love: the strangest and most profound human experience.

Love is a funny thing. Even though most people view it as one of the most important aspects of their lives, they have a tough time defining it. Poets and painters have labored to capture and express its essence through their arts. Scientists and sociologists have probed it, endeavoring to explain its origin and purpose - all with questionable results.

How can we be so confused about something so fundamental to the human experience?

Love is at the root of our most precious relationships, craved in all times and in all places, and, strangely, its a bottomless pit that can never be filled. There never will come a time when we say, "Ah, I've had the last interaction I'll ever need with this person." Even if we lived 1000 years, it wouldn't be enough. If only our beloved could be here just a little longer.

That's why I ask the Lord in Heaven aboveWhat is this thing called love? Cole Porter

There are those who suggest that love is a chemical illusion created by the brain and "designed" by evolution to promote the survival of our species.

If thats the case, evolution did a pretty lousy job. If anything, love is a great hindrance to us. It causes us to make crazy and rash decisions (Romeo and Juliet), to have fewer offspring so that we can pay more attention to each one, and to lay down our lives often for the weaker, less-viable portions of the population.

Other life forms do a perfectly fine job of reproducing in a loveless manner salmon do not carry a torch for "the one that got away," and mosquitoes do not endlessly pine for their departed fore-bearers as there's nothing productive in that. Love seems to be something quite different.

The film Interstellar has a fantastic scene in which two astronauts (Cooper and Brand) are trying to pick which world to explore for possible life as the Earth was slowly dying. With limited time and resources, the decision was critical but how to make it? Brand was in love with another astronaut who had preceded them to one of the planets and had placed himself in a state of hibernation. She suggested that love was enough of a guide to choose that world:

COOPER: It [love] means social utility child rearing, social bonding.

BRAND: We love people who've died where's the social utility in that? Maybe it means more something we can't understand yet. Maybe it's some evidence, some artifact of higher dimensions that we can't consciously perceive. I'm drawn across the universe to someone I haven't seen for a decade, who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't yet understand it.

These lines, written by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, are profound. Perhaps love, the prime directive of all human life, the un-useful yet massively powerful force, is not part of this physical world at all. If so, then perhaps it is the only way to remain connected to those who have departed this material existence and the only hope of plugging the desperate, insatiable hole that opens whenever true love is generated between two people.

Perhaps love, the prime directive of all human life, the un-useful yet massively powerful force, is not part of this physical world at all.

In his book "Judaism: a Way of Being" David Gelernter outlines the Jewish concept of human separation from the spiritual realm. We are blocked from accessing it directly though we can come as close as we like our noses almost pressed against the surface to discern its contours and to make inferences about what lies just beyond. The veil both separates and connects but only one thing in this universe is capable of creating that connection beyond the veil - love. Love is the key that unlocks "the other side."

Only one thing can penetrate the veil. 'The People of Israel are beloved,' says the TalmudGod is hidden like the mezuzah text, separated from Israel by a sacred screen that is like a bridal veil opaque except to love.

Love is the key that unlocks "the other side."

What about our dead who we miss so dearly and the love of them which can never be requited? In truth, they are not so very far away they are separated from us by only a thin screen. In describing her near-death experience, Sharon Stone gestured in front of her and said, "[the other world] is so close. It's right here."

In Gelernter's words:

When someone dieswe ask that God grant the departed "perfect peace beneath the wings of God's presence." We ask that the departed be gathered to God's side beyond the veil. The phrase recalls cherubim's wings screening the Ark of the Covenant, curtains screening the Holy of Holies, Moses' veilor the blanket spread over a sleeping child on a cold night. Judaism has developed many doctrines about death over the millennia, but the simplest and deepest is this: our dead are beyond the veil which is opaque, inviolable, and impenetrable, except by love.

In what ways should this knowledge affect us? The generation and enhancement of love between individuals is conceivably the single most significant activity a person can engage in. Most cultures and religious systems acknowledge this few of us follow through. How many of us proactively worked on this today, the day before, or ever?

Nonetheless, it is part of the definition of a successful and fulfilling life. How many of us are consciously engaged in it? What is our plan to carry it out? The good life requires teaching ourselves how to love. As Elizabeth Kubler-Ross once wrote:

I'm going to talk with you about love today, which is life and death; it is all the same thing. If you live well, you will never have to worry about dying. You can do that even if you only have one day to live. The question of time is not very important; it is a man-made, artificial concept anyway. To live well means basically to learn to love.

Love is the unique property of existence that is capable of creating eternal, soul-level bonding that can never be extinguished by distance, time, or death itself.

Dedicated in loving memory to Dovid ben Beryl

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Love is a Skeleton Key - aish.com - Aish.com

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Posted By admin on September 11, 2022

NUR-SULTAN- The seventh Congress of World and Traditional Religious Leaders, scheduled for Sept. 14 15, will hold a special session devoted to the social status of women for the first time in the congresss 20-year history, reported the congresss press service on Sept. 8.

The congress will focus on the role of leaders of the world and traditional religions in mankinds spiritual and social development in the post-pandemic period. Photo credit: press service of the congress

The session will focus on womens contributions to the sustainable development of modern society. It will also address the role of religious communities in advancing womens social position.

The speakers of this meeting include several prominent religious and public figures such as Assistant Secretary-General of the League of Arab States for Social Affairs Haifa Abu Ghazal, Bishop of Los Angeles and Metropolitan of Southern California and Hawaii of the Coptic Orthodox Church Serapion, Head of the Center for the Study of Islamic History Mahmud Erol Kilic, Art and Culture at the OIC (IRCICA), General Director of the Office of the UAEs Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence Afra Mohammed al-Sabri, Chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Uzbekistan Grand Mufti Nuriddin Kholiknazarov, President of the UnioPlanetria Isis Maria Borges de Resende, and President of Christian Solidarity Worldwide Jonathan Aitken.

The congress, which will focus on the role of leaders of the world and traditional religions in mankinds spiritual and social development in the post-pandemic period, is expected to gather more than 100 delegations from 50 countries. Among them are representatives of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and other religions, including the Head of the Catholic Church Pope Francis, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, and Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem.

As part of his visit, Pope Francis will conduct an open-air holy mass for Roman Catholics and representatives of other religions and confessions on Sept. 14 at the EXPO square.

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Congress of World and Traditional Religious Leaders to Address Social Status of Women - Astana Times

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Posted By admin on September 9, 2022

The U.S. and the Holocaust, a three-episode film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, will debut on Sept. 18 on PBS. Burns and his partners and staff at Florentine Films work out of a production studio in Walpole, N.H. After watching the film, I interviewed Burns.

Our discussion has been shortened and lightly edited for length and clarity.

Did your thinking about this project change between when you started it, before the Trump presidency, and when you finished it?

We did it because we were interested in the subject. Were not interested in scoring any contemporary points. We know that whatever we work on will resonate with today, that the echoes of yesterday will fully engage with the present moment, but its our responsibility not to pay any attention to that.

After the World War II film [The War] came out in 2007, we were approached by people saying, How come you didnt talk about what an anti-Semite FDR was? or Why didnt you explore why the St. Louis [a ship carrying Jewish refugees] was turned away from American shores? or Why didnt the United States bomb Auschwitz? Finally, we said, You know what? We really have to do this.

Coincidentally, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., had just started an exhibition called Americans and the Holocaust and asked if we would be interested in making a film about it. We said yes, wed love to be associated with you and get your help in identifying sources, archives, and scholars.

Then it was just pushing to get to a complex relationship between what transpired in the Holocaust through the filter of what Americans saw, what we knew, what we didnt know, what we did, what we didnt do, what we should have done. You could just march the Holocaust story along while going back and forth between the United States and Germany and seeing uncomfortable echoes between the two places.

What do you hope people will take from the film in the current political environment?

Were storytellers, and every person will relate, or not relate, in their own individual ways. And thats a good thing.

A sensitivity to our fragility is an important reason we accelerated the project it was going to come out next year. I think everyone in the film articulates this, but no one more precisely than Daniel Mendelsohn, when he says, dont kid yourself, theres no bottom to what human beings can do and how fragile our institutions are.

I insisted on putting a paragraph early in episode one saying that if you wanted to be in the hippest, most democratic, artistically exciting, vibrant place in 1931 and 32, youd do no better than Berlin in arts, architecture, music, intellectual circles. And the change was almost instantaneous.

The willingness of people to believe the lies of an evil regime and manipulative leaders demagogues isnt something thats a one-off. It isnt, Oh, its too bad that happened. We see the rise of authoritarianism, we see the stresses on democratic institutions, we see that the superficial appeal of order has a huge human consequence.

I was glad to see Mendelsohn in the film. Years ago, I read his book, The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million. He goes looking for six family members killed by the Nazis. The book changed the way I saw the Holocaust.

The number 6 million is impenetrable. It means nothing anymore. We begin the film by saying lets reconfigure that equation. There are 9 million Jews in Europe in 1933, and by 1945, two out of three are missing. Were looking at a woman looking out the window joined by, one assumes, her father and her mother, and you realize that in any given threesome, two are missing.

Or it is Mendelsohn devoting so much of his life to finding out what happened to his great uncle, Shmiel Jager, and his wife and four daughters, whatever it takes. And he particularizes it that was the word he used.

More than half the Jews in Germany and Austria escaped. They often had connections in Western Europe and the United States. But when Germany expanded for the breathing room the lebensraum that Hitler wanted in places where he considered people stateless and nameless, much the way we treated Native Americans, he ended up acquiring Jews. That led to a decision to kill them all.

In your film the United States before World War II is full of anti-Semitism, racism, eugenics, the Chinese Exclusion Act, forced deportation of Mexicans who had become American citizens, attempts to restrict immigration to Nordic races. This is so different from the history I learned in high school. Should this be part of the curriculum?

Nell Irvin Painter [historian quoted in the film] is smart about this: We are an exceptional country, but sometimes were not. If you say, as Lincoln put it, you are the last best hope of earth, youve got to be tougher on yourself than anybody else.

We cannot get by anymore with a sanitized view of our history. It exposes women to all the things that the Me Too movement is trying to say. It relegates Native peoples and African Americans to backseat, passive victims or non-existent people whose stories dont need to be told because its upsetting to some. That is not right.

Were obliged to tell a fuller story, and that makes it richer. We need to honor what actually takes place.

Your film describes Franklin D. Roosevelts Holocaust strategy. It was to win the war as quickly as possible and punish the perpetrators afterward, not to rescue the Jews. He could see no way to rescue them, and with all the losses his armies were suffering, he thought it impolitic to lose more lives in a rescue attempt. Was he wrong?

Politically, nothings wrong with it. Its accurate. Hes not a king or absolute dictator he cant by fiat rescue Jews and admit them to the United States.

Hes not unmindful of the problem. He just knows what he has to do. It seems, in retrospect, perhaps cruel, but lets back up were all culpable. We repeatedly tell you about the polls taken at the time. Theyre devastating. Even after we learn about Kristallnacht, even after we see the footage from liberated concentration camps, nobody wants to let any more Jews in.

Roosevelt, a masterful politician, knows this what he can pass, what he cant do. Lets not just put it on FDR. There are lots of forces operating.

If we had been more public about the crimes being committed, earlier and louder, that might have helped. We didnt do that. That is on FDR, but its also on members of his administration who were virulently anti-Semitic and slow-walked or obstructed anything good. It is true of Congress, reflecting the mood of the country a vast majority of American citizens.

Holocaust survivors, long the tellers of this story, are dying off. Has that reduced the attention rising generations pay to this tragedy and what they know about it?

Youre sadly right were losing a lot of witnesses. A generation from now, there wont be any around, so it seems important to hear their stories.

Fortunately, Steven Spielberg and the Shoah Foundation have saved 54,000 testimonies. Hes got an elaborate hologram project that has asked questions of dozens of survivors. Its almost impossible when a school group comes through for someone to ask a question these survivors havent already been asked and have a hologram answer it. That is a way to keep it alive.

But there were themes that needed to be told. There were back eddies of American experience germane to this story, whether its the Germans modeling their exclusionary laws against the Jews in the early 1930s by studying our Jim Crow laws in the South, whether its Hitlers approval of our treatment of Native peoples or our immigration act.

And then hearing that some of the titans of our mythological past Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, just to mention two were virulent anti-Semites. And the eugenics movement that bone-chilling comment by Helen Keller essentially approving of death committees. Here is a kind of eugenics that would not have let her live.

How do you think what your film conveys about our behavior 75-80 years ago can help us face the problems were having today with similar issues: a rise in anti-Semitism, a racial divide, white supremacist violence, prejudice against immigrants?

Yes, there are similar issues, which is why, in the past, we rarely brought our films up to the present, but in this film we do. Its just information, but its important. As the novelist Richard Powers said, the best arguments in the world wont change a single point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story, and we hope weve told a good story.

Why do you think anti-Semitism persists in American today?

When I was working on the country music film, I realized that I had been making films about the U.S. for nearly 50 years. But I had also been making films about us, the lower-case, two-letter plural pronoun all the intimacy of us and all the majesty, intricacy, complexity, and controversy of the U.S. Thats been my beat.

The epiphany was that theres only us, theres no them. When you see somebody creating a them, were on our way. It was the malevolent strategy and tactics of an evil demagogue to blame a group of others. In this case that was Jews, people without a country, people who brought us the ideas of the Golden Rule, fair play, the ideals of socialism, an internationalist view.

If you are appealing to the lowest common denominator in people, its easy to make Jews or someone whose skin pigmentation is slightly different the enemy.

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'The number 6 million is impenetrable': Burns discusses new film, 'The U.S. and the Holocaust' New Hampshire Bulletin - New Hampshire Bulletin

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Posted By admin on September 9, 2022

Protesters with signs linking the late Jeffrey Epstein to conspiracy theories at the sex trafficking trial of his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell , in November 2021 in New York City. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images hide caption

Protesters with signs linking the late Jeffrey Epstein to conspiracy theories at the sex trafficking trial of his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell , in November 2021 in New York City.

Jeffrey Epstein has been dead for three years, but his ghost still wanders the dark halls of the internet.

In life, Epstein was a secretive financier, arrested for a series of sexual crimes with underaged girls. In death, speculation about his suicide in jail formed an additional layer of conspiratorial fog around his legacy.

When the FBI searched former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in early August, it took less than a day for far-right internet personality Jack Posobiec to summon Epstein's ghost. "We now know the judge who signed off on the Mar-a-Lago raid was Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer. Don't question it!" Posobiec posted to his 185,000 Telegram followers.

The claim, repeated across fringe threads and deceiving "headlines," is misleading. While in private practice, federal magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart had previously represented some of Epstein's employees who had also been accused of facilitating sex trafficking. In the case of the Mar-a-Lago search, the Miami Herald reported any magistrate judge would have signed off on the warrant when presented with probable cause from the FBI. Reinhart just happened to be available that night.

Within days, the false claim took off in far-right circles, drawing the attention of Fox News, which later had to issue a clarification for airing an edited picture that falsely showed Reinhart next to Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted as an accomplice to many of Epstein's crimes.

This is just the latest spike of Epstein-related yarn-spinning, but Epstein is likely to remain a narrative for some on the right for years to come.

One clear reason for the staying power of conspiracy theories involving Epstein is his frequent socializing with the world's rich and famous. He hobnobbed with Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Donald Trump. Britain's Prince Andrew lost his royal privileges over sexual assault allegations involving Epstein. Those relationships are potent examples for conspiracists to cast all nearly all political events as driven by hidden, sex-fueled abuses and coverups.

Epstein's death by suicide in jail under Bureau of Prisons custody also fueled a popular wave of theories and memes. But it's the established facts of his crimes that make him a useful character in an extended universe of fringe bogeymen.

A protester outside of the Maxwell trial wearing a hat claiming that Epstein's death was not a suicide. Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A protester outside of the Maxwell trial wearing a hat claiming that Epstein's death was not a suicide.

Systematic child abuse and exploitation is real. Reporting by news organizations has uncovered major abuses in churches, among celebrities, the foster care system and so on. But these revelations can also easily be plucked and reassembled to form the backbone of conspiratorial narratives.

Before his 2018 arrest, the Miami Herald, which broke many of the stories about Epstein, saw the most online engagement with stories about him. An NPR analysis of data compiled by the media intelligence company NewsWhip found that today, online engagement with these stories has migrated almost entirely to conservative sites such as The Daily Wire and Western Journal, both outlets with massive social media audiences that mostly repackage professional journalism into narratives of conservative victimization and other right-wing themes.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones invoked Epstein's life and death repeatedly as he defended himself in the course of a recent defamation trial brought by parents of children murdered at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Jones' courtroom mentions of Epstein blurred the lines between established facts and popular speculation, framing Jones' lies about the parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims as reasonable.

"It's effective because lots of these things that are said about Epstein's life are, in fact, true. And actually do kind of plug into a pre-existing kind of narrative about what our elites get up to," says Quassim Cassam, a philosophy professor at Warwick University in the United Kingdom and the author of a book titled "Conspiracy Theories."

Each detail of Epstein's real, elaborate predation of young girls serves as a factual toehold for believers of the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories. Both are unfounded, interlocking narratives about powerful cabal of elites sex-trafficking children. In turn, they feed into fanciful depictions of Trump as a mythic hero, unfairly maligned and cheated out of a second term as he takes on an imagined satanic cabal. (Anti-trafficking organizations in fact sent President Trump an open letter saying "Anybody...who lends any credibility to QAnon conspiracies related to human trafficking actively harms the fight against [it].")

Epstein's ties to Trump himself are generally left unspoken in extremist, fringe communities according to Michael Hayden of the Southern Poverty Law Center, because the goal of an Epstein reference in these circles, he says, is to discredit anyone seen as attacking Trump. When unfavorable news breaks, any reference to Epstein is a quick way for his supporters to frame a debate as a false choice between Trump's side or Epstein's. It provides validation for fellow believers, Hayden says, and serves to diminish criticism about Trump. However bad a news event may look for Trump, by citing Epstein, the other side looks worse and more depraved.

"These are tools in the shed of people who are, for lack of a better word, fascist propagandists who understand how to use this friend versus enemy binary," he says.

Within the current right wing media ecosystem, Hayden says whatever cultural barriers that once existed between the furthest fringes and mainstream commentators have eroded badly. The way disparate corners of the pro-Trump world come together in agreement over Epstein theories reminds him of the blend of crowds drawn to the January 6th capital riots.

"It's a combination of people who are of a harder-edged variety and people who you would not expect to be mingling with them," says Hayden, potentially leading to ever-deeper radicalization.

He says pro-Trump audiences have been exposed to years of tropes and hateful stereotypes anti-Semites want associated with Jews.

"We're talking about explicit anti-Semites here who...like to portray Jewish people as being sexually deviant...or being predatory, particularly with young women. This is propaganda that goes back decades and decades. It's very old," says Hayden.

With that groundwork laid, "all you need is somebody like Posobiec, just need a big influencer to say 'Epstein judge' and ...you yourself don't even have to be dirtied with anti-Semitism," says Hayden.

After Posobiec and a choir of right-wing publications promoted the "Epstein judge" idea, the real Judge Reinhart was inducted into the growing club of people whose home addresses have appeared in internet message boards alongside calls for execution and anti-Semitic slurs. He probably won't be the last.

Hayden says to expect a very extended haunting from Epstein's ghost. "It's like - what is the opposite of a piece of classic literature?"

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Here's why conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein keep flourishing - NPR

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Posted By admin on September 9, 2022

A refrigerator bearing the Ben & Jerry's logo is seen at a food store in the Jewish settlement of Efrat in the Israeli-occupied West Bank July 20, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun//File Photo

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NEW YORK, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Ben & Jerry's said it plans to amend its lawsuit challenging the sale of its ice cream business in Israel by its parent company, Unilever Plc (ULVR.L).

In a letter filed on Tuesday night in federal court in Manhattan, Ben & Jerry's said it plans to file an amended complaint by Sept. 27, with Unilever's response due by Nov. 1.

Unilever has agreed to the timetable, the letter said. Its response to Ben & Jerry's original complaint had been due on Tuesday.

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Ben & Jerry's had sued on July 5, saying the sale of the Israeli business to local licensee Avi Zinger breached Unilever's 2000 agreement to buy the Burlington, Vermont-based company because it would allow ice cream sales in the West Bank.

In July 2021, Ben & Jerry's decided to end sales in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, calling it "inconsistent" with the progressive values and social mission it retained the right to promote. That decision prompted a backlash against Unilever, including divestments by pension funds from the consumer goods company and accusations of anti-Semitism by some Jewish groups.

On Aug. 22, U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter in Manhattan said Ben & Jerry's did not deserve an injunction against the sale to Zinger because it failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm. The judge did not decide the lawsuit's merits.

Unilever has said Ben & Jerry's had no power to stop or undo the sale, which has already closed.

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Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Posted By admin on September 9, 2022

Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal

Congregation Beth Yeshurun and Americans for Ben-Gurion University are presenting When a Heretic and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar. Stories portraying heretics in rabbinic literature are many and make for some lively discussion.

The community is invited to hear Assoc. Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, as she explores what happens when two opposites meet. The presentation will be held on Monday, Sept. 12, 7:30 p.m., at Beth Yeshurun, 4525 Beechnut St. A dessert reception will follow.

Prof. Siegal was the Rosen Family Career Development chair in Judaic Studies at BGU (2012-2016). The chair, the first of its kind in Judaic Studies at BGU, was given in honor of Rabbi David Rosen and his family.

Currently, Siegal is a faculty member at The Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. This academic year, she is the Horace Goldsmith visiting professor in Judaic Studies at Yale University.

Her first book is Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2013). It is winner of the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award. Her second book, Jewish-Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2019) was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award (2019).

We are thrilled to partner with Beth Yeshurun in bringing Michal Bar-Asher Siegal to Houston, said Deborah Bergeron with Americans for Ben-Gurion University. Her work is groundbreaking and, during her tenure as the Rosen Family Chair recipient, she brought her research to the Vatican and an audience with the pope.

To register for the evening event, go to bethyeshurun.org/event/americansforbgu091222.

For more info, email Deborah Bergeron at [emailprotected].

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What happens when a heretic and a rabbi walk into a bar? - Jewish Herald-Voice

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Posted By admin on September 9, 2022

Real history is complicated. Its long-term moral arc might bend toward justice, but it zigzags on the way there, and it certainly takes its own sweet time.

Sometimes, though, someone does something thats straightforward.

According to Alexander Smukler of Montclair, the Russian-Jewish migr who is our analyst for Russias war on Ukraine, thats true of Mikhail Gorbachev, who became the Soviet Unions youngest leader in 1985, its only president (his title kept changing, becoming progressively less clunky), and then fell from power and died in near obscurity at 91 last week.

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Although many people, including Mr. Smuklers friend and mentor Natan Sharansky, think that Gorbachevs decision to let Russian Jews go was the result of a combination of the global pressure and the increasing strength of the internal movement to release Soviet Jewry, Mr. Smukler feels nothing but pure gratitude toward the Soviet president.

Whoever saves one life saves an entire world, he quoted the Talmud. Gorbachev saved many lives, and therefore many worlds; when you count the descendants of each saved Jew, who have full universes.

I and my family and probably thousands of others are members of Gorbachevs list, Mr. Smukler said. Its thanks to Gorbachev that we are living as Jews, living free and happy here, being Jewish, and celebrating Shabbes every week.

Yes, of course the West influenced him, but Gorbachev was different from the others, he said, comparing him to the line of outwardly stolid, gray-suited, gray-faced Soviet leaders who presided over the failing superpower.

Gorbachev was a different person inside, Mr. Smukler said. He had a heart. He had neshuma. He had a soul.

Heres the story, as Mr. Smukler tells it.

As weve recounted in another story (Living Through History, November 12, 2021) Aleksandr Smukler Sasha to his friends was born in Moscow in 1960, to Jewish parents whose Judaism was a deeply buried part of their identity, themselves children of Jewish parents deeply scarred by the Holocaust and World War II. After meeting refuseniks a group largely half a generation or so older than he was and feeling drawn to them, and then joining them; after many adventures and machinations, he, his wife, Alla Shtraks, and the two oldest of their three sons left the Soviet Union on September 20, 1991. (My third son was born in Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, he said, with pleasure.)

Mr. Smuklers first of what turned out to be several meetings with Gorbachev was in 1991, he said. The Russian leaders peak was well past; his power and strength were waning, and he soon was to be toppled temporarily by an ultimately failed coup.

In 1991, Alexander Smukler, with his back to the camera, greets then-President Mikhail Gorbachev.

When we left, I had no clue that Gorbachev would resign on December 25, 1991, Mr. Smukler said. And if someone had told me that the Soviet Union would completely collapse and break into 15 different states. I had no idea. I had no reason to think that would happen.

We left because after being refuseniks for seven years, waiting for our exist visas, Gorbachev was the one who gave us permission to emigrate, like hundreds of thousands of other Soviet Jews who live happily in the West and in Israel now.

He was the first pharaoh who let our people go. That is why for me he is a righteous person.

My grandson was born in the United States, and his name is Theodore. He was named after Theodor Herzl. I could never have imagined, living in the Soviet Union, behind the Iron Curtain, that my grandson would be born in the United States and that my son would name him after Theodor Herzl without fear, without pressure, without feeling any antisemitism.

Mr. Smukler disagrees carefully and respectfully with some of Mr. Sharanskys conclusions about Gorbachev conclusions that the onetime Prisoner of Zion, the first political prisoner that Gorbachev released, who later became an Israeli politician and for years was the head of the Jewish Agency, and who remains a widely respected figure in Israel, published in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

Mr. Sharansky said that Gorbachevs actions were the result of outside pressure. But Gorbachev changed the Soviet Unions policy toward Israel, Mr. Smukler said. It took him more than five years, and an incredible fight inside the Politburo and with other Soviet leaders. But Gorbachev is the one who established diplomatic relations with Israel. He did that just before his resignation on December 25, 1991; the first Soviet ambassador arrived in Israel on December 19, after 29 years without diplomatic relations. So Gorbachev was the one who established that, not Yeltsin.

I wasnt the only one to think that the Soviet empire wouldnt collapse. I think that even Gorbachev didnt realize that it would explode so quickly. The situation was shaky for him that December thats when Yeltsin was trying to minimize Gorbachevs role as president of the Soviet Union, working hard to prepare the meeting of the leaders of some of the republics in Belarus, where they signed a treaty about every republic being independent that was the Belovezhskaya Pucsha Agreement but I dont think that he realized how dangerous it was, even 10 days before he was forced to resign.

Gorbachevs outstanding importance is that he let the Soviet Union collapse without bloodshed. He could have been like Khrushchev or Brezhnev. He could have sent Russian tanks to the Baltic states or started a civil war against Yeltsin and the others who signed that treaty.

But Gorbachev was the first leader to accept that he would resign his enormous power without spilling human blood, and without starting a civil war to protect the dying Soviet empire.

Thats why he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, which he got in 1990, after the peaceful reunification of Germany.

Mr. Smukler talked about a conversation that he had in early 1991 in the British embassy in Moscow with the woman he refers to by her nickname, the Iron Lady thats Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She was coming to Moscow because she was visiting Gorbachev, he said. She felt a great sympathy for him, and particularly for his wife, Raisa. I agree with Natan that Gorbachev would never have let our people go without people like Ronald Reagan and the Iron Lady, and without the trust that existed between them.

Gorbachev really listened to them because he opened up to the outside world, Mr. Smukler continued. He grew up inside the Soviet system, and he was like other Soviet and Communist Party leaders because he had been isolated from the outside, from the civilized Western world. He opened that world for himself; he was hungry to learn how the outside world worked, how real democracies existed, how they operated, how the system worked.

Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is flanked by Alexander Smukler, left, and refusniks Valery Engel and Roman Gefter in 1990.

Thats why his communications with Reagan and with Bush Senior were so important. Not many people know that Gorbachev met with those two American president 11 times in five years. He met with Mitterrand Franois Mitterrand was the president of France from 1981 to 1995 and was personal friends with Kohl. Helmut Kohl was Germanys chancellor from 1982 to 1998. And after the Iron Lady retired as prime minster, she came to Moscow almost every month. It was pure friendship and common sympathy. Theyd been friends, together with Raisa.

The Iron Lady told me that she that Gorbachev had changed, and his ability to feel softness as the leader of the last empire in the world amazed her. She talked about his ability to listen, to learn, to change, to leave communist dogma and hardline ideas behind, and that it was because of the incredible influence of the Western leaders hed built real personal relationships with.

Thats my major disagreement with Natan. I think that by the end of his term, Gorbachev was a completely different person than he was when he started.

I agree that without enormous pressure, he probably never would have let Jews go. But he fully understood that the Jewish movement in the Soviet Union was the leading group in the dissident movement. In my conversation with him after he resigned, he told me that the Jewish dissident movement, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, changed him deeply.

He said it was the Jews who made the first crack in the Iron Curtain.

Gorbachev was not a philosemite, Mr. Smukler said; in fact, he knew very little about Jews until he attained power. He was from the south of Russia, the place where historically the Russian Cossacks used to live. (As in the villains who dance so well in Fiddler on Roof, but in real life they were far worse, if less balletically gifted; they led pogroms.) It was a very antisemitic area, historically. And Gorbachev was a very high level communist who was promoted to the top of the Communist Party hierarchy by Yuri Andropov, the powerful head of the KGB. Andropov who, as it turns out, had descended from Jews, a truth that he hid died soon thereafter, and Gorbachev continued his rise. Several times, though, Gorbachev mentioned that he always knew that Andropov was a Jew, Mr. Smukler said.

So, there was an ambitious, smart, young, good-looking politician (and onlookers never should underestimate the power of physical attractiveness) who was neutral, on the whole, about Jews. He was always a pragmatist, Mr. Smukler said.

And then, as he gained power, as he gained more insight, his worldview started to change.

In December of 1989, a group of Jewish leaders in the Soviet Union decided to form the first official congress of Jews in the Soviet Union, and we created the umbrella organization called the Vaad. (It was a secular organization, he explained, although generally in North America that word is used to refer to religious leadership groups.)

I was one of the founders of the Vaad, he added. We sent a request to the Politburo to give us permission to gather, with almost 600 deputies from all over the Soviet Union. The Politburo met and discussed it. Gorbachev was on the side that voted for it, and another group fought hard to prevent it. At the last minute, Gorbachev made the final decision and said that as general secretary, he ruled that the congress would take place.

He let us conduct that congress, and after that, after years of being forced to exist underground, Jewish communal life became official and legal in the Soviet Union, and after that in Russia.

So when it came to letting Jews leave, Gorbachev fully understood the danger of letting thousands and thousands of Jews go, and that giving the refuseniks permission to leave would lead to bigger problems in the Baltics and with other republics with strong national movements. Theyd demand similar treatment, and similar freedom to leave. So he always saw Jewish emigration as a small part of a much bigger problem. He understood that it was a small part of a bigger decision to demolish the Iron Curtain, and that letting Jews go would make it necessary to remove the Iron Curtain altogether.

Natan Sharansky

Still, he let them go.

That is why I think that Gorbachev played an enormous role in the history of the Jewish people, Mr. Smukler said. Although he could not save the Soviet economy and as a result he couldnt hold onto his job because he changed the Soviet Unions relationship to the West he completely changed the world, at least for decades. For what he did for the Jews, his name will be written for thousands of years in the history of my people, Mr. Smukler said.

Mr. Smukler also wanted to talk about Mikhail Gorbachevs relationship with his wife, Raisa. She was the love of his life, and she was also a real partner, he said. I saw them together in 1994 and 1995, and I thought about how people can keep such incredibly strong feelings toward each other. He was the ruler of the biggest and strongest empire in the world and fell down, without millions of dollars without any wealth at all and they went down together, but this incredible feeling for each other survived.

Together, the Gorbachevs were responsible for Americans ability to adopt Russian children; that went on until Putin stopped it. The daughter of a member of an American administration in the Soviet Union wanted to adopt a baby; Raisa Gorbacheva helped convince her husband to give the order that opened the door to these kids, Mr. Smukler said. She initiated legislation that allowed American families to adopt Russian orphans; I want to give Raisa credit because 55,000 Russian orphans were adopted.

Had they not been adopted, they would have had no future at all, he continued; they would have languished in Russian orphanages. Some of them had special needs, including severe diseases, heart disease, cleft palates; some were conditions that could be and were fixed in the United States.

Gorbachev and Yeltsin hated each other, but Yeltsins wife also was supportive of the adoption of Russian kids by American families, and they continued to support the process.

Putin closed the door for thousands of orphans, he added.

Raisa Gorbacheva died in 1999, at 67. Her husband survived her by 21 years. He passed away at the age of 92, after a long-term hospitalization and sickness, Mr. Smukler said. His kidneys were not functioning, and he was suffering for several years.

He was living alone in Moscow, Mr. Smukler said; the only people around him were old retainers who had been with him for years. After Raisas death, he was constantly depressed; his daughter Irina, his only child, lived in Germany with her two daughters. He was abandoned. He didnt have a family. He lived in a dacha that Putin gave him. In the last 10 years he hadnt been active in his foundation, which had been slowly deteriorating.

Mikhail Gorbachev was buried next to Raisa in the Novodevichy cemetery, near many other prominent and powerful Russians. Many prominent and powerful and still-living Russians were at his funeral, but Vladimir Putin was not.

As Mr. Smukler put it, with Gorbachevs death, the last giant of the 20th century passed away.

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Hillel said: do not separate yourself from the community; do not trust in yourself until the day of your death; do not judge your fellow man until you have reached his place. Do not say something that cannot be understood [trusting] that in the end it will be understood. Say not: When I shall have leisure I shall study; perhaps you will not have leisure. (Avot 2:5)

The fifth mishnah of Avots second chapter quotes five warnings issued by Hillel, the first of which cautions us against separating from the tzibbur (community). The Rambam (Mishnah Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:11) sees such separation as uniquely severe and presents the separatist as losing his portion in Olam Haba. He explains (ibid. 4:25) that separating from the community is one of the five things that block the path to teshuvah because the separatist misses the opportunity (to be inspired) to do teshuvah together with the community.

Rabbeinu Yonah (Shaarei Teshuvah 3:168) adds that the separatist seems to object to (and also causes others to disrespect) the holy values the Jewish people are committed to. Conversely, the Maharal (Derech Chaim 2:4) explains that one connected to the tzibbur benefits from the koach hatzibbur the communitys unique strength and eternal destiny.

Many also see the tzibburs unity as having ontological significance. The Ritva (Yevamot 13b) and the Maharal (Gur Aryeh on Devarim 14:1) use this to explain the Torahs juxtaposition of the prohibition against sectorial division to the words in Devarim: banim atem lHashem elokeichem. As the children of G-d, we should represent His oneness with our own. When we separate from the tzibbur, we imply G-dly divisiveness.

Rav Kook took this further by comparing a separatist to the woman who was willing to accept Shlomo HaMelechs decision to cut a disputed baby in half (Kings I 3:26). Like a physical human being, the Jewish people are an organic whole and must remain unified (Orot HaTechiah 20 and Arfilei Tohar pg. 101-2).

Through Thick

The Rishonim discuss the times when it is most important to emphasize our connection with the tzibbur. The Rambam (Mishnah Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:11) and Rabbeinu Yonah (Rabbeinu Yonah to Avot 2:4) mention community gatherings for the purpose of mitzvah performance. Mass fulfillment of Hashems Will glorifies His presence; everyone should join.

And Thin

The Rambam also mentions times of tzarah (distress). The Meiri (Beit HaBechirah to Avot 2:4) explains that even one able to save himself should endeavor to save the broader community. He references the words of Mordechai to Esther: Dont think that you are safe in the kings palace. If you are quiet at this moment (and do not help the Jews), the Jews will be saved another way, and you and your family will be the ones lost.

In addition to offering assistance, one should also empathize. The Gemara (Taanit 11a) teaches that one who does not identify with the communitys suffering will also be excluded from their eventual consolation. The Gemara then uses this idea to explain why Moshe Rabbeinu chose a stone (as opposed to a pillow) to hold his arms up during the war with Amalek. Moshe did not want to feel comfortable while the community felt distress.

Moshe Rabbeinu demonstrated this same middah from the very beginning of the book of Shemot (2:11-12), where the Torah describes him as seeing both his Jewish brothers and their pain. Rashi explains that the second seeing means that his eyes and heart sympathized with them. This motivated Moshe to physically help them carry their loads (Midrash Shemot Rabbah 1:27). Hashem shows his empathy in the very next chapter (Shemot 3:1-2) by specifically choosing a thorn bush as the context within which to appear to Moshe. Like Moshe, Hashem identifies with the Jewish Peoples pain.

Dont Daven Divided

Rabbeinu Bachaya adds a third area, that of tefillah. Communal prayer generates heavenly goodwill and gives even a rasha the opportunity to have his prayers accepted (Talmud, Brachot 7a). For this reason, even when unable to get to shul, we should at least daven at the same time as the community.

The Zohar (2:41a) explains that the Shunamite woman, whose story is told in the second Book of Kings, took this even further. Her words to Elisha, who asked if he could request something on her behalf, were betoch ami ani yoshevet. The Zohar explains that it was Rosh Hashanah and Elisha was asking if he could daven for her (as she was barren, and prayers for barren women are answered on Rosh Hashanah). She responded that she did not want anyone to daven for her especially; rather, she wanted to be davened for as part of the Jewish people.

We, too, express this idea by formulating our prayers in plural (Talmud, Brachot 30a). We daven, not only for ourselves but also for all those who need what we need. The Gemara gives the example of tefillat haderech (the travelers prayer), which employs a plural formulation. We use this model for our Shemoneh Esreh and for most of our prayers.

Even when we pray on behalf of individuals, we pray for them as part of the broader community. For example, the Mi Shebeirach, which we recite on behalf of specific sick people (who we mention by name) adds the words btoch shaar cholei Yisrael (amongst the other Jewish sick). Similarly, when we console mourners, we pray that Hashem console them amongst the other mourners for Zion and Yerushalayim. We petition Hashem as part of the broader tzibbur.

Individuality, not Individualism

We live in a world that emphasizes individualism. Judaism values individuality, not individualism. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, ztl, explains that there is all the difference in the world between individuality and individualism. Individuality means that I am a unique and valued member of a team. Individualism means that I am not a team player at all. I am interested in myself alone, not the group Judaism values individuality, not individualism. As Hillel said, If I am only for myself, what am I? (Avot 1:14).

(Transcribed by Rafi Davis)

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Rabbi Enid Lader has announced her retirement as spiritual leader of Beth Israel-The West Temple in Cleveland, effective mid-June 2023.

There comes a time when it is time to try new things and make room for new energies, Lader wrote in the temples combined June and July bulletin. I have been our congregations rabbi for the past ten years and as I begin my eleventh year, this is the final year of my contract. I have chosen not to renew, but to step on to a new path, and make room for the next generation of leaders to take their place in our congregation. I know our temple board will do all they can to make this transition a smooth one as will I. I look forward to the coming year and all the opportunities it will provide for us to celebrate and remember, learn and enjoy together.

Lader has been the congregational rabbi since 2012 and a member of the community for years in various capacities, including cantorial soloist, choir director and congregational educator.

She said as she is about to turn 70 this fall and felt there was an opportunity for a sabbatical decade.

Lader and her husband, Harry, initially lived in Lorain and relocated to Lakewood.

She first connected with the temple through a Realtor and on her first visit spotted the Confirmation photograph of Sally Priesand, who became North Americas first female rabbi.

When she decided to pursue the rabbinate in 2005, she was congregational educator of the temple and commuted from Cleveland to New York City to attend the Academy of Jewish Religion, where one of her Talmud teachers was Rabbi Eric Hoffman, who formerly led Beth Israel-The West Temple. She was ordained in 2010.

Lader shepherded the congregation through COVID-19 as well as following a fire. She said she was pleased that the temple received an Ohio Historical Marker for its work in resettlement of Soviet refugees.

She said she has enjoyed being on the bimah with two generations of bar mitzvah students and their parents, and to marry former students from the temples religious school.

I certainly have come to appreciate the lives that these people have had, and the wonderful aspects of being able to be a part of that life, Lader told the Cleveland Jewish News Sept. 9.

Born in upstate New York, Lader moved to Florida with her family as a child and grew up attending Temple Sinai of North Miami, Fla., and Temple Beth El in Hollywood, Fla. She studied music therapy and music education, earning both bachelors and masters degrees from Florida State University in Tallahasee.

The Laders have two daughters, Abby (David) Wald of Shaker Heights and Leah (Ananth Uggirala) Lader of Mountain View, Calif., and five grandchildren. She said she looks forward to spending more time with her family in retirement.

I felt tremendously blessed to have been able to do this amazing work, Lader said. Its a service of the heart.

Then temple, which is at 14308 Triskett Ave., has started a search to replace Lader.

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