Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 10, 2022

Among the many topics addressed in this weeks Torah portion is the obligation to safeguard ones health: And you shall verily safeguard your body/soul (Devarim 4:15). The Hebrew word used is nafshoteichem, which could mean either your physical body (nefesh) or your spiritual soul (also referred to as nefesh).

The Rambam in Hilchot Deot (4:1) says (and I paraphrase), Its all very nice to be a talmid chacham and devote all your time to the study of the Torah, but if you neglect your health and become ill, then you cannot continue to learn or to perform mitzvot. The Rambam, physician to Saladin, devoted entire chapters to discussing ways to preserve ones physical health. This sentiment is echoed by the Shulchan Aruch (32a).

Chazal tell us that our soul is comprised of three parts. The highest level is called neshama, the intermediary level is called ruach and the lowest level is called nefesh. The first letter of each of these levels makes up the Hebrew abbreviation Naran.

Reb Chaim of Volozhin (Nefesh Chaim, Alef, 15) explains this structure using the parable of a glass blower creating a glass vessel.

The first stage is when the breath (neshima) is still in the mouth of the glass blower. This corresponds with the highest level, the neshama. The next stage, the intermediary ruach stage, is when the glassblower blows the breath through a straight glass pipe. The final stage, the lowest nefesh level, is when the breath enters the molten glass and inflates it to the shape of vessel.

Similarly, from a spiritual perspective, the most elevated neshama level is the breath of Hashem (as it were), which is so spiritually elevated that it cannot physically reside in the body. The ruach level is when this breath is in transit, and the nefesh level is the destination in the physical body.

R Chaim is describing a one-directional flow of spirituality, but in fact the traffic is always bidirectional. Not only does our soul affect our bodies, but what we do with our bodies affects our soul. This is the basis for the laws of kashrut. Chazal say that by eating bugs and unclean creatures we defile our soul. In Meir Panim I explore at length the physical act of smiling and the effect it has on our mood and service of Hashem bsimcha (Facial Feedback Hypothesis).

The Rambam (Hilchot Deot 3, 3) says, therefore, that it is insufficient for someone to only maintain a physically healthy body e.g., listen to what your doctor tells you, do regular exercise, eat the correct foods, etc. All these things are essential and are an important part of the above mitzvah; however, on their own they resemble a kind of idol worship, like the culture of the ancient Greeks who idolized health and the physical body. The intention of the above verse (Devarim 4:15) applies to when a person maintains their health in order to serve Hashem at a maximal level.

Safeguarding oneself is not only limited to eating the right foods and doing Pilates twice a week; it is also personal safety. Steering clear of hazardous objects and environments at work, in the home, on the road, in the air, on the internet, while reading a newspaper these are obligations no less than the above in preserving our bodies and souls.

Judaism, unlike Hellenism, does not sanctify the body for its own purpose. It considers the body as a means to an end that of serving Hashem. Chazal liken parts of the physical body to the various structures in the Beit HaMikdash.

The brain, which is the repository of knowledge, is likened to the Kodesh Kodashim and the Aron HaBrit, the repository of the Torah. The face, containing the eyes (sight), nose (smell) and mouth (food) corresponds to the Menorah (light), the Mizbach HaZahav (Ketoret) and Shulchan (Lechem Hapanim), etc. The Zohar HaKadosh says that when someone performs a mitzvah with a specific part of their body, the name of Hashem is imprinted on that part of the body.

The purpose of the Mikdash is to serve as a sanctuary for Hashems Shechina (presence). However, the verse that commands us to build a Mikdash (Shemot 25:8) specifies that we should do so in order that Hashem can dwell within us. Not only within the confines of a building but within every one of us.

We just finished mourning the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash and have spent the last three weeks fervently praying that Hashem rebuild the third Mikdash speedily in our days. Perhaps that will be achieved when we first rebuild our own personal Mikdash, preparing ourselves to be a suitable structure for Hashems Shechina. Working on our middot, working on preserving the precious gift of life that Hashem gave us and using it to serve Hashem.

Parshat HaShavua Trivia Question: How many differences are there between the Ten Commandments in Yitro and VaEtchanan?

Answer to Last Weeks Trivia Question: In the first verse of Devarim, why does Moshe use euphemisms? Why doesnt he spell out exactly which sins Am Yisrael angered Hashem with the eigel, the meraglim, baal peor, etc.? Moshe was using something called lashon sagi nahor, which means saying something in a nice way. Nobody likes to be reminded of their shortcomings. By using hints, Moshe was showing his respect for Am Yisrael and at the same time, Am Yisrael knew exactly what he meant.

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Posted By admin on August 10, 2022

A rare 300-year-old Torah from Yemen was recently dedicated to the BNai Vail Congregation, to be used and preserved by the Jewish community in the valley.

Marc and Rhonda Strauss have been members of BNai Vail for the past six years, and were looking for a Torah to donate to the congregation. They said that BNai Vail has become the congregation where they feel most at home, and they wanted to give something back to the community that has given so much to them over the years.

Growing up in various Jewish communities throughout my life, seeing so many different kinds ofTorahs, dedicating aTorahis something I had always hoped to be able to do, Marc Strauss said. This is the most fundamental and sacred part of our religion. Thats where we get all of our commandments and our ways to live, our values everything comes from the Torah. So we wanted generations that would follow us to be able to have those same values, and have something that they can learn and study from.

During their search, Rabbi Joel Newman of BNai Vail came across a rare deerskin Yemenite Torah at an antique dealer in Israel, where it had been sitting, unused, for a century.

The Torah was commissioned in the early 1700s by the Wahab family in Yemen, who passed the intricately constructed scroll from generation to generation for over 200 years. After journeying to Palestine in the early 20th century, the Torah was loaned to a local synagogue, before landing with a dealer of rare antiquities in Jerusalem.

With its long history and unique appearance, Rabbi Newman knew it was the perfect Torah for BNai Vail, but it was in need of repair. The missing letters, tears in pages and other imperfections meant that the Torah was not kosher and could not be used for worship until it was made complete.

Serendipitously, Rabbi Newman is a trained sofer, or Jewish scribe, who spent four years helping to repair the nearly 1,600 Torahs that were recovered from the Czech Republic after the Holocaust.

He spent the past 13 months painstakingly going over all 304,000 Hebrew letters in the Yemenite Torah, repairing and rewriting them with a quill, filling in missing sections and stitching up any holes or tears in the 55 deerskin pages.

Rabbi Newman said that the biggest challenge was ensuring that each of the letters did not touch, as it could confuse the meaning of the sacred script. The rarity of the deerskin material and the small sizing of the print made it a difficult project, but one that he assured was well worth the effort.

A Torah dedication is so special and having the opportunity to restore the Torah was quite the honor, Rabbi Newman said. This Torah is an incredibly rare piece of Jewish history that we are so proud to now have as a piece of our congregation.

Rabbi Newman completed the restoration process at the end of July, and on Saturday, July 30, the now kosher Torah was used for the first time in a century at a Shabbat service held at the top of Vail Mountain. The Torah was brought to the ceremony under a chuppah, or Jewish wedding tarp, as around 500 worshippers celebrated its adoption into the BNai Vail congregation.

Rhonda Strauss had the honor of singing the first lines of scripture from the Torah, and each member of the Strauss family read from the Torah at the dedication ceremony. The family members even had the opportunity to correct the final letters in the restoration process as a mark of their contribution.

In Judaism, we always say, From generation to generation, and thats exactly what this is doing, Rhonda Strauss said. This will be here long after were gone, and one day, hopefully, our great great grandchildren will say, Wow, that was my great great grandparents, and pass on the feeling of Jewish tradition.

Steven Wellins, president of the BNai Vail board, also emphasized the connection that the Torah creates between the BNai Vail community and the broader history of Yemenite Judaism. The Jewish community in Yemen around 45,000 people at the time was relocated in its entirety to Israel by a 1950 American and British operation called Operation Magic Carpet. Today, the estimated Jewish population in Yemen is less than 10 people.

Having this rare religious artifact in Vail not only allows the Strauss family to maintain their family legacy, but extends that connection to generations of Wahab family members who read and learned from the Torah before them.

One of the cool parts of Judaism is that you preserve these Torahs and religious artifacts forever, and you cant destroy them, Wellins said. So the painstaking process that it takes to make them kosher is worth it, because it fulfills a bigger need, and that is that youre supposed to keep these. Youre supposed to use these. These are supposed to be around forever to remind us of where we came from as a community and as individuals.

The restored Torah will be read at Saturday morning Shabbat services at BNai Vail for generations to come. BNai Vail also holds Shabbat services every Friday evening at 6 p.m. at the Vail Interfaith Chapel. For a full list of upcoming services and more information about BNai Vail, visit BNaiVail.org.

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Family donates rare 300-year-old Torah to the B'Nai Vail congregation - Vail Daily

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Posted By admin on August 10, 2022

The Star of David, also known as a Magen David, has been a symbol of Judaism for centuries, and typically is worn by Jews as a sign of their faith. However, in recent years, evangelical Christians have also been wearing Stars of David, explains The Conversation. They tend to support Israel because they believe the Jewish state is part of the divine plan to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus.

Sarah Palin's necklace infuriated many Jewish Twitter users who resented her appropriation of another religion, not to mention her wearing it at this particular event. CPAC is noted for its popularity among so-called Christian Nationalists, who want to declare America a Christian nation and establish its laws accordingly (via Slate).

The outrage was further fueled by the fact that one of the featured speakers at CPAC was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn, who has consistently used anti-Semitic imagery in his political advertising (per Politico) and who recently spoke out against "race mixing" (via The Guardian).A Twitter userexclaimed, "Oh my God Sarah Palin is wearing a Star of David while she speaks at a White Nationalist Event. Obran is pro-Hitler. Is she just ignorant or mean?"

Another commenter was far more blunt: "As a Jew, I want Sarah Palin to take off the Star of David she is wearing," they said. "It makes me sick, and if I could, I would rip it from her neck."

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Why Sarah Palin's Jewelry At The CPAC Rally Has Twitter Seeing Red - The List

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Posted By admin on August 10, 2022

Henry Herskovitz protesting outside Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in December 2021. He holds a poster that says "No More Holocaust Movies." Photo by Henry Herskovitz

By Stewart AinAugust 08, 2022

The 76-year-old Holocaust denier who has protested outside a Michigan synagogue nearly every Shabbat for 19 years was born Jewish, attended Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah and used to attend High Holiday services at the synagogue he targets.

What began as a protest against Israeli policies has morphed into one that challenges the Jewish states right to exist and traffics in blatantly antisemitic tropes. The organizer, Henry Herskovitz, holds signs with slogans like Resist Jewish Power, No More Holocaust Movies and End Jewish Supremacism in Palestine, along with one honoring a man who loved Hitler.

The weekly vigil outside an Ann Arbor synagogue building attracted national attention after two congregants sued, accusing the protesters of violating their right to freely exercise their religion. The lawsuits failed. Federal judges ruled that the Constitution protects the protesters free speech, and ordered the congregants to pay $159,000 in legal fees. The U.S. Supreme Court this spring refused to hear appeals.

But little has been written about the man spearheading the ongoing Shabbat demonstrations. In an interview, Herskovitz said that visits to Iraq, Israel and the West Bank led him not only to abandon Judaism but to believe baseless conspiracy theories implicating Israel for the 9/11 terror attacks and to reject the historical record of the Holocaust.

Herskovitz, in short, blames Jews for antisemitism. Im convinced that anti-Jewish sentiment always follows bad Jewish behavior, he said.

When Herskovitz started protesting at the Ann Arbor synagogue nearly two decades ago, his group was called Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends. He said there were as many as 13 Jewish regulars. He said the others have since died. Most weeks, the group Herskovitz now calls Witness for Peace includes just himself and a couple of others gathering in front of the synagogue. He has also picketed outside a local Holocaust museum and Jewish Federation office.

Herskovitz said he grew up in the Turtle Creek section of Pittsburgh before moving to the heavily Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood, site of the 2018 Tree of Life massacre that killed 11 Jews during Shabbat services.

My mother wanted my sister to marry a Jew and Turtle Creek had very few Jews, he recalled. My family and my aunt and her family were the only Jews there. He was bar mitzvahed at Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative shul in Squirrel Hill, in 1959.

Herskovitz, who worked as a mechanical engineer for a compressor manufacturer in Michigan before retiring in 2019, cited two experiences that caused him to question what he was brought up to believe about Israel and Jews.

The first was in 2000, when he and a friend decided to fly to Iraq to take a little tour to observe the effects of the sanctions that had been imposed by the United Nations Security Council following Iraqs invasion of Kuwait. There, he said, they visited a hospital where families who couldnt afford a nurse were tending to their own children. He saw a father sitting on the bed of his son, a cancer patient.

The man looked like a terrorist with a dark beard, but then I noticed that he was crying. Then I started crying, Herzkovitz recalled. I had been told by the press that these were terrorist people, and I found out that this person was a real human being. It struck me very hard.

After returning to Michigan, he made a sign that read, End the Sanctions on Iraq and held it aloft on an Ann Arbor street corner.

But Herskovitz said 9/11 had an even greater impact on his thinking. He bought into the false claims that Israel had something to do with the Sept. 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and other U.S. targets. And he continued to question what he had been taught about the country. I asked, What else have I been wrong about? he recalled.

Now, Herskovitz said, he believes Israel has no right to exist and that the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean belongs to Palestinians, not Jews. He traveled to Tel Aviv in 2002, and said that aboard the plane, a rabbi told him that Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews.

After landing, he said, he went to the West Bank and asked a Palestinian teacher if what the rabbi said was true.

You cant teach people to hate, you have to show them, he recalled her saying. She talked about how Palestinian are made to wait for hours at Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank, and are often humiliated in front of their children by the soldiers. Herskovitz said her conclusion made sense to him, and he came away agreeing that, as he put it, hatred is earned, not taught.

There are three synagogues in Ann Arbor. Herkovitz said he chose to demonstrate every Shabbat outside a building that houses both the Conservative Beth Israel Congregation (as well as another congregation) because he had attended Yom Kippur services there.

I went there for 15 years and followed the fasting, he recalled, admitting that he sometimes bought a ticket and sometimes snuck in. I probably stopped going shortly after the vigil began in 2003.

Now, Herskovitz said, Im out of the faith. It doesnt appeal to me.

Instead, Herskovitz said, I call myself a fledgling Christian and I go to church on Christmas Eve. On one occasion, he recalled delighting in a live creche in which Joseph was talking on a cellphone. I thought that was pretty hilarious, he said.

He could not really explain why the protests have persisted for so many years. He said he initially hoped to change congregants minds about their support for Israel. Now, he sees his audience as the entire community.

His supporters have also protested when Israeli groups or speakers come to town or when the local Jewish federation holds its events. On Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2014, they picketed a Holocaust museum with signs saying Free Ernst Zundel, author of a book titled The Hitler We Knew and Loved, who was jailed in Germany for Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred. He said he visited Zundel in prison and that his sister was aghast that I visited him. (Zundel died in 2017.)

In January, the Ann Arbor City Council for the first time condemned the protests.

Herskovitz said his parents died before he started the protests and that he doesnt speak with his sister about them.

Asked about the sign decrying Holocaust movies, Herskovitz said: Were sick of the movies the Jews crying out in pain. Films about the Holocaust, including director Ken Burns upcoming documentary for PBS, are a way for Hollywood to manufacture sympathy for Jews, he added.

Herskovitzsaid he has never spoken with a Holocaust survivor, but has visited Auschwitz and Dachau. Still, he rejects the historical record, and has convinced himself that there were no gas chambers at these or other concentration camps. He said that Hitler never ordered the mass extermination of the Jews of Europe, and that crematoria were only used to dispose of bodies of people that succumbed to overwork, malnutrition or disease. The Anti-Defamation League has labeled Herskovitz a Holocaust denier.

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Born and raised Jewish, the man leading 19 years of protests against a Michigan synagogue embraces antisemitic tropes - Forward

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Posted By admin on August 10, 2022

With two degrees in Asian studies and 15 years of his life spent living and working in China everything from acting to the diamond business to real estate Rabbi Matt Trusch has a lot of experience with China.

But antisemitism wasnt one of those experiences until he began posting on Douyin, Chinas TikTok, from his home back in Texas in 2021.

Speaking in fluent Mandarin peppered with Chinese idioms, Trusch passionately shares Jewish parables from the Talmud and the Tanya a book of Hasidic commentary by the rabbi who founded the Chabad Orthodox movement and the life and business lessons they may offer Chinese viewers. A video camera captures him in front of a bookshelf lined with Jewish texts.

As of recently, he was closing in on 180,000 followers, and his videos had accumulated nearly 700,000 likes.

But the comment section under Truschs videos is revealing.

In China, the line between loving Jews and hating them for the same stereotypical traits can be thin. On his most viral video, which has more than 7 million views and explains how China helped give refuge to Jews escaping Europe during World War II, comments laced with antisemitic tropes seem to outnumber the ones thanking Trusch for sharing Jewish history, culture and wisdom.

You dont want to take my money, do you? reads one top comment. Wall Street elites are all Jews, reads another; others call Jews oily people, a play on the Chinese characters that spell out the word for Jew. Many blame Jews for the mid-1800s Opium Wars between China and foreign powers, or for inflation in preWorld War II Germany. Other commenters repeatedly ask Trusch to address Palestine on videos that have nothing to do with Israel.

The comments reflect the fact that in the minds of many in China, the Talmud is not a Jewish religious text but a guide to getting rich. The belief has spawned an entire industry of self-help books and private schools that claim to reveal the so-called money-making secrets of the Jews.

In his Douyin biography, Trusch appeals to this belief, describing himself as a rabbi who shares wisdom of the Talmud, interesting facts about the Jewish people, business thought and money-making tips.

In an interview for this article, Trusch said that appealing to Chinese stereotypes about Jews was a strategic decision meant to expose more Chinese people to Jewish precepts.

We do sort of exploit the fact that [Chinese people] are interested in listening to Jewish business wisdom to get them to follow us. We have sort of played to that before, he said, referring to himself and a Jewish Chinese-speaking partner in Australia who is helping with the project.

Appealing to Chinese interest in the Talmud as a business guide is strategic for another reason: Religious activity is complicated in China, where Judaism is not one of the five recognized religions, and proselytizing by foreigners is forbidden.

Pirkei Avot and the Talmud do not mean religion in China, even though those are Jewish texts that we learn Torah from, Trusch said. If I were to say, Im going to teach Torah concepts in China, that will be forbidden, probably. But if I talk about things from the Talmud, then its not threatening.

Trusch always had an interest in China. After getting an undergraduate degree in Asian studies at Dartmouth College and a masters degree at Harvard University, he spent 12 years in Shanghai doing business in a range of industries. While he was there, he grew closer to Judaism and began flying to Israel every two weeks to study at a yeshiva there.

In 2009, Trusch moved back to the United States with his family and settled in Houston, where he is active at two Chabad centers. Still, he made frequent visits to China on business (including starting his own Chinese white liquor company called ByeJoe) until the pandemic struck in 2020. With no way to visit China in person, Trusch and his partner began making videos about Judaism on Douyin as a way to connect with people there.

When I was in China, I very rarely felt anything but a fond appreciation of Jews from Chinese people, Trusch said. He was aware of the stereotypical way Chinese people think about Jews: as intelligent and business-savvy, paragons of worldwide wealth and power with control over Wall Street and the media. Much of the time, these traits are viewed with admiration, and stereotypes are perpetuated even in mainstream media.

And yet, some of the most popular antisemitic comments on Truschs videos reference the so-called Fugu Plan, a 1930s proposal by several Japanese officials to settle 50,000 German Jews in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Some in the Japanese leadership were inspired by the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, believing that resettling Jews in occupied China would attract great wealth and the favor of world powers like Britain and the U.S.

The Fugu Plan never came to fruition, but the antisemitic and ultranationalist political blogger Yu Li (who blogs under the name Sima Nan) has shared the story with his nearly 3 million followers. In a 20-minute-long antisemitic rant, he says the Fugu Plan is evidence that the Jews colluded with the Japanese to establish a Jewish homeland on Chinese territory a conspiracy that fits a nationalist narrative that China is constantly under attack by foreign powers. A simple search for Fugu plan on Douyin reveals countless videos explaining the Jewish-Japanese conspiracy and questioning whether Jews are worthy of sympathy for atrocities like the Holocaust.

Sima Nan isnt the only prominent figure known for antisemitism.

Even in a country with as few as 2,500 Jews mostly foreign nationals among 1.4 billion Chinese, antisemitic conspiracy theories appear to be alive and well, at least among online commenters, anti-Israel leftists and some prominent Chinese nationalists.

As Tuvia Gering, a research fellow with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security puts it, ideas like Sima Nans are seamlessly couched in state-sanctioned nationalistic narratives that warn against foreign encirclement and influence.

Jews living in China are likely to tell you that theyve rarely experienced what they would consider antisemitism. As in any other country, young people on social media are being introduced to antisemitic ideas and conspiracy theories such as a correlation between the Jews and Covid that they would be unlikely to encounter elsewhere, said Simon K. Li, executive director of Hong Kongs Holocaust and Tolerance Center.

I think that the problem of the Jewish conspiracies in our region persists and runs deeper than we think because its expressed more openly in the anonymity of social media and web portals like Douyin/TikTok and Tencent QQ rather than in face-to-face interactions, he said.

One recent study of Chinas online alt-right community did not find signs of significant antisemitism, but Kecheng Fang, a co-author of the study, said its no surprise that sensationalist nationalist figures are spewing antisemitism online.

Chinese authorities are aware of hate speech online: In June, a BBC investigation into an industry of racist videos popular in China prompted a response from the Chinese government. Chinas embassy in Malawi, Africa where one racist video was shot said it strongly condemn[s] racism in any form, by anyone or happening anywhere.

Later that month, China released a set of draft rules instructing content platforms to review social media comments before they are published and to report illegal and bad information to authorities.

But these developments havent seemed to make much impact, at least on Truschs videos, which receive a fresh set of antisemitic comments each time he posts daily.

The Chinese Consulate in Israel did not respond to requests for comment.

Truschs mission since he started posting on Douyin was to connect Chinese people with Jewish culture and wisdom, especially given strict Covid-19 restrictions in China that have prevented cultural exchange.

Its reflective of the Chabad movement, which often provides the only outposts of Jewish engagement in places with few Jews, including in China, where the movement operates in half a dozen mainland cities. Trusch is even working on translating the Tanya into Chinese an accurate and academic translation, he says, unlike the copies of the Talmud sold in Chinese bookstores.

He and his Australian partner were at first reluctant to address the antisemitism he was getting on his videos.

Initially I wanted to just ignore all these people and never comment about these things theyre saying, he said. But I think sooner or later, we did sort of say, listen, what theyre saying is not right, its not correct, and these people are being fed false news.

Theyve since begun responding to some antisemitic comments or making more videos that attempt to address and debunk common stereotypes or conspiracy theories.

I want to ask the bloggers attacking Jews, what are you contributing to society? he asks in one Douyin video posted in May about Jews contributions to the world.

Not all comments under Truschs videos are negative; in fact, in recent weeks the antisemitism seems to have quieted down somewhat, he said. A majority of commenters continue to express their support and interest in learning about Jewish culture and history from an actual rabbi Trusch was ordained last year after many years of study given that good information is limited within the confines of Chinas great firewall.

Those positive responses, and even the opposition, are what keep him going, he says.

We do try to have a very positive message. We dont try to say negative things about other people in any way and we are trying to portray Jews in a very positive light, he said. And because of the opposition, were trying even harder.

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Posted By admin on August 10, 2022

NUR-SULTAN Accreditation of international media to cover the seventh Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, which will take place on Sept. 14-15, as well as Pope Francis official visit to Kazakhstan on Sept. 13-15 is now open, Kazakh foreign ministrys press service reports.

The upcoming Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions will bring together religious leaders from across the world to discuss the role of religious leaders in the spiritual and social development of humanity in the post-pandemic era.

Nearly 100 delegations from 60 nations are scheduled to attend, including representatives from Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and other religions.

As of today, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem, Pope Francis, and delegations from leading religious and international organizations from the United States, Europe, and Asia plan to attend the Congress.

During the days of the conference, Pope Francis will also pay a state visit to Kazakhstan.

The deadline for international journalists to submit for accreditation is Aug.31.

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Kazakh Ministry of Affairs Announces Accreditation for Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, Popes State Visit to Kazakhstan -...

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Posted By admin on August 8, 2022

By PJ GrisarAugust 04, 2022

The prosecution in the Alex Jones defamation case revealed on Wednesday that the InfoWars hosts lawyers had accidentally sent them the contents of Jones phone. This leak would seem to be a career low for any attorney and yet, in a closing argument, the defense somehow went lower by citing a famous quote about silence during the Shoah in an effort to sway the jury.

Yes, in his closing argument, Jones lawyer Andino Reynal, who is representing his client in a case to determine how much Jones owes for calling the Sandy Hook massacre a hoax, concluded with a quote from German pastor Martin Niemller. Appealing to the jury, Reynal said that they were, in their verdict, speaking not just for themselves, but for the many who listen to Jones. By bringing up Niemller to make his case, Reynal was essentially saying that should their decision come with a hefty penalty for Jones, it would be a crackdown on consumer choice somehow tantamount to staying quiet while millions were murdered by the Nazis. (Bizarrely, Reynal also invoked the need for truth in their determination, an odd thing given Jones all but admitted he lied about Sandy Hook and may have perjured himself on the stand.)

Do you want to choose what you get to watch and listen to or do you want a plaintiffs attorney to decide for you? Reynal asked, before paraphrasing Niemllers words, which are prominently displayed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

There was a Lutheran minister named Martin Niemller in the 1930s, and he was imprisoned in a concentration camp, Reynal said. When he got out he reflected on the fact that he had stood quiet. And he said, first they came for the communists, and I said Im not a communist and didnt do anything. Then they came for the trade unionists and I said Im not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I said, Im not a Jew. And when they came for me, there was no one left.

By now you may be thinking, Huh? Are we really using that quote in defense of a man who repeatedly denied the killing of 20 kids? Are we arguing that Jones, who has spotlighted antisemitic conspiracy theories on his show and blamed his many lawsuits on Holocaust survivor George Soros, will be the first victim in a line of silenced voices? Look, I can see some case to be made for people consuming the sort of media they want, but is the right to listen to InfoWars really on par with the right to not be imprisoned in a work camp or murdered on an industrial scale?

But, I suppose First they came for InfoWars, and I did not speak out because I did not listen to InfoWars doesnt quite pack the same wallop as the original. Then again, its hard to find a winning argument for a guy who said grieving parents lied about the murder of their children.

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Wait, did Alex Jones lawyer really invoke the Holocaust to defend his client? - Forward

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Posted By admin on August 8, 2022

How can the U.S. president reject the "Apartheid" characterization of Israel when 60% of Israeli Jews support segregation of Palestinian-Israelis?

By Juan Cole | Informed Comment

When President Biden met with caretaker Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid, the two issued a joint statement that rejected Apartheid as a descriptor for Israel. In contrast, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli human rights organization BTselem, and theUN Rapporteurfor human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, have all concluded in the past year or so, despite a previous reluctance, that the situation in Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories fits the definition of Apartheid in international law (such as the Rome Statute that underpins the International Criminal Court). The allegation is not that the situation precisely resembles that in Apartheid South Africa in all particulars. The word is now a term of art in international law and refers to the systematic disadvantaging of one ethnic group, on the basis of their ethnicity, by another.

One of the hallmarks of regimes of Apartheid (including Jim Crow in the United States) is coercive residential segregation.

So it is ominous that according toOr Kashti at Haaretz,a poll by the Israeli Institute for Democracy this spring found that 60% of Israeli Jews believe that Jews and Arabs (i.e. Israelis of Palestinian heritage, what I call Palestinian-Israelis) should live apart.

This attitude is not about the stateless Palestinians under Israeli military Occupation in the West Bank. We are talking about the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are of Palestinian heritage.

The figure rose from 45% in spring of 2021, before the 11-day Israeli military campaign in the West Bank and Gaza of that year, which provoked widespread Palestinian-Israeli sympathy protests and strikes.

Only a minority, 20%, of Palestinian-Israelis believe that they should live apart from Israeli Jews, a figure which has not changed in many years.

Moreover, most Palestinian-Israelis are now saying they want more of a voice in Israeli social and political affairs. The outgoing Naftali Bennett government was the first in Israeli history to include a Palestinian-Israeli party as part of its coalition. It is not an experiment that will likely soon be repeated, since the government fell over the unwillingness of some Palestinian-Israeli members of the government to renew a law giving Israeli squatters on Palestinian-owned land in the West Bank the full privileges of Israeli citizens residing in Israel.

Kashti quotes the leader of the study, Dr. Tamar Herman, as saying that just as Palestinian-Israelis are beginning to want more participation in Israeli politics, there is a rising unwillingness of Israeli Jews to give it to them, or even to let them live outside municipal areas where they predominate. Many Palestinian-Israeli villages in the Galilee are not recognized by the Israeli government and labor under many disadvantages including lack of permission to make repairs to local buildings. The villages that have been recognized often only gained that status by aligning with a Jewish Israeli political party.

Among right wing Israelis, who predominate in the parliament or Knesset, 70% favor segregation from Palestinian-israelis. Israeli youth, ominously are more likely to hold this view than their elders. Haredim or fundamentalist Orthodox Jews overwhelmingly support segregation of Palestinian-Israelis.

Asked if a Palestinian-Israeli who feels part of the Palestinian people can nevertheless be loyal to Israel, 63% of Palestinian-Israelis said yes.

Only 28% of Jewish Israelis agreed.

If the solid majority in a society systematically views a minority as disloyal and doesnt want them living in its neighborhoods, that sounds an awful lot like Apartheid.

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Bidens Wrong About IsraelIts Absolutely an Apartheid State - Scheerpost.com

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Posted By admin on August 8, 2022

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A rally for peace in Ukraine takes place outside the White House in Washington on Feb. 27.

A rally for peace in Ukraine takes place outside the White House in Washington on Feb. 27.

As I follow Ukraine coverage, full of vivid images and detailed, poignantly human descriptions of the upending of common peoples lives, I wonder: Why dont more K-12 curricula especially history classes present other wars in this same way?

Igor, a 54-year-old driver, is shown standing in front of a two-story house turned to rubble, staring blankly into the distance, holding a coffee. He describes an airstrike that killed his wife and 12-year-old daughter sleeping in an adjoining room. This was her wheelchair now shes dead.

Displaced families queue for food outside a hospital after the bombing of a residential area. We are all scared, why us? wonders Svetlana. We are ordinary folk.

Lena, one of 15,000 people hiding in a Kiev subway tunnel, wipes her brow in exhaustion, entertaining 3-year old Max with her smartphone, so his parents can rest.

At a Berlin train terminal, crowds of smiling Germans offer lodging to fleeing, heavy-hearted Ukrainians leaving loved ones behind: Welcome 2 people, as long as you want, one sign reads. Host Ms. Sanchez just wants to make them feel safe.

As adults, we understand war most deeply based on details like these, while textbooks most often omit them altogether. In my 10 years teaching history across grades 1-12, I never came across one textbook that portrayed a war in this way.

In one popular textbook, the Vietnam War is covered in one page: broad government goals and military actions towards stopping communism, general disagreements, years, presidents, casualty numbers. In another, the Cold War is explained as a state of hostility between superpowers. Later the United States used military intervention to keep communism out of countries. No individual experiences mentioned.

Yet, when my undergraduate education students at UC San Diego reflect on the most memorable, impactful lessons from their schooling, and think through future curricula, many corroborate this need for reform. One recalled a guest speech from a Holocaust survivor. That stuck with me more than the rest of my history lessons combined. Another remembered a college classmate describing growing up in Palestine: hiding from soldiers, hearing gunshots, sneaking around the city in fear. Others describe family members moving personal stories of surviving the Japanese invasion of China, and of the Korean War.

Of course, the idea of teaching history in this way raises some valid concerns, but I believe they can be addressed and mitigated:

Understanding that civilians being bombed want to flee and need refuge should transcend political allegiance. Wheelchair-using 12-year-olds and their mothers shouldnt be killed or lose their homes, regardless whose government is in the wrong, and students should learn that collateral damage is inherent in armed conflict. Similar human stories from Vietnamese, Syrian, and Ethiopian wars could produce similar takeaways.

Few students will need to recite dates, presidents or military strategies as adults, but most will cross paths with people displaced by violence, and others from invading countries. They will elect officials who promote and oppose wars and refugee-related legislation. Informed reasoning about military action and fair treatment of future classmates, neighbors, and co-workers from such backgrounds requires an understanding of those human details.

Not everyone knows a Holocaust survivor, but many students and teachers know survivors of other violence who could share their stories. Books like The Kite Runner, The Sympathizer and War Trash can help supplement that local, human perspective. Resources showing the personal impacts of war can be found on open-access educational databases, including Facing History, OER Commons, the Shoah Foundation which has created lifelike video interviews with Holocaust survivors and individual stories and comparisons of Sudanese, Ukrainian and Syrian refugee experiences.

Unfortunately, textbooks lacking these elements are still often the default, and this needs to change. For kids to understand war on a deep level, teachers need to show the people caught in it.

Marco Chacn is a former K-12 history teacher and current doctoral student in the education studies department at the University of California San Diego, studying curricular models that promote deep learning.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review ourguidelinesandcontact us.

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Posted By admin on August 8, 2022

In a moral institution, particularly one built in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Miloon Kothari would be long gone by now.

During an interview with a notoriously antisemitic website, Mondoweiss, Kothari one of three members of a United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) against the Jewish state told the interviewer, [W]e are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by, whether its the Jewish Lobby or its the specific NGOs. A lot of money is being thrown in to trying to discredit us.

For good measure, Kothari also made a point of questioning whether the Jewish state belonged among the community of nations at the UN.

But, of course, if the UN was a moral institution, Kothari wouldnt be the only one gone by now. His fellow commissioner, Chris Sidoti, took to the UN floor in Geneva in March to accuse Jewish advocacy groups, outraged by the open bias of the COI and its members, of being GONGOs that is, creations and instruments of the State of Israel.

Despite his open spewing of the hateful dual loyalty trope against Jews, not a single country at the UN, nor any UN official, found such remarks detestable enough to say anything at the time.

Finally, if the UN was a moral institution, the third commissioner, Navi Pillay, would never have been appointed in the first place, having sneeringly dismissed Jewish advocacy groups concerned about the vicious antisemitism at a UN anti-racism conference as certain lobby groups focused on single issues.

Rest assured, Pillays contempt for Jewish concerns over antisemitism hasnt diminished. On Thursday, she accused Jewish groups of deliberately taking Kotharis very clear remarks out of context.

She then highlight[ed] [the COIs] position in the clearest terms on anti-Semitism by repeating another line from Sidoti in March:

It seems that accusations of anti-Semitism are thrown around like rice at a wedding. That legitimizes anti-Semitism. Trivialises anti-Semitism. Defiles the memory of the 6 million victims of the Shoah. Frankly, it is an outrage.

The COIs position on antisemitism isnt that its condemnable, but rather that Jews the victims of antisemitism trivialize and legitimize it. In other words, the Jews are asking for it.

Leaving any of these three commissioners in charge of an investigation against Israel is like putting David Duke in charge of the trial of Alfred Dreyfus.

If the UN was a serious, moral institution, not only would Kothari, Sidoti, and Pillay all be long gone from the COI but yet another inquisition against Israel, with yet another deeply skewed and unserious mandate and staffed by known haters of the Jewish state, would never have been created in the first place.

The level of disproportionate focus on the Jewish state is outrageous, and is an extreme insult and disservice to people suffering in actual oppressive states (many of which are proud UN members).

Russia is openly justifying executing prisoners of war. China is throwing entire ethnic and religious minorities into concentration camps. The Taliban once again have taken away the basic rights of every woman. The Syrian government is executing civilians. Yet here we are, with UN officials questioning only the Jewish states legitimacy, questioning whether only the Jew among nations belongs at the table with the rest of the good nations.

So where are the leaders?

Three years ago, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres assured us: I guarantee you that I will continue to call out anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of hatred loudly and unapologetically. Here is an opportunity to show moral leadership and call out antisemitism in his own institution. Why the crickets?

That same year, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet gave another nice-sounding speech, explaining: We must push back against this slowly rising tide of anti-Semitism. Where is her pushback?

What about the members of the UN Human Rights Council, which created the COI? Out of the 47 members, only a handful have spoken up, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.

What about the other 41 member states of the Human Rights Council? What does it say about an institution when nearly 90% of its members remain silent in the face of the open Jew-hatred by individuals they themselves voted to give a megaphone to? Is the UN where the moral conscience of the world goes to die?

What about the President of the Human Rights Council, whose predecessor appointed Sidoti, Kothari, and Pillay in the first place? To his credit, the president acknowledged in a letter to Pillay, using rather forgiving terms, that Kotharis remarks could reasonably be interpreted as stigmatization of the Jewish people.

But the letter also created an easy escape hatch to avoid accountability, and respectfully suggest[ed] that Kothari consider the possibility of publicly clarifying his unfortunate comments. [emphasis added]

There is something deeply objectionable about leaving three individuals known for making antisemitic statements empowered to use the imprimatur of the UN to uniquely delegitimize Jewish self-determination.

Its hard to act surprised. After all, the UN the brainchild of those who fought against the greatest evil the world had ever seen has now become one of the worlds greatest normalizers of antisemitism.

David M. Litman is a Research Analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

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