Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

On March 27, 1942, the first issue of the Detroit Jewish News was published. Eighty years later, the JN is still published every week. It has been a remarkable run for one of Americas prominent English-language Jewish newspapers.

The Detroit Jewish News was not the first Jewish newspaper in Metro Detroit, nor was it the first English-language Jewish newspaper in the city. The latter honor belongs to the Detroit Jewish Chronicle, 1916-1951. The JN, however, developed a reputation that extended well beyond the Michigan border.

The JN saga began when Philip Slomovitz (1896-1993) resigned as editor of the Detroit Jewish Chronicle in 1942. Editor of that newspaper since the early 1920s, Slomovitz was not happy with limits upon his personal ideas regarding the role of a Jewish newspaper. The Chronicles tepid reporting regarding the events of Kristallnacht was the last straw for him.

Slomovitz was not alone in his opinion. He quit the Chronicle, and with investments from the Jewish Welfare Federation (now the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit) and prominent Jewish Detroiters such as Leonard Simons, Fred Butzel, Federal Judge Theodore Levin and Maurice Schwartz (co-publisher), he launched the Detroit Jewish News.

At that time, American Jews faced several massive ideological questions, with divided opinions among the members of the religiously diverse Jewish community in America and Detroit.

One important question: In an era of rampant antisemitism, led by right-wing populists like Father Charles Coughlin and G.L.K. Smith, should Jews aggressively call out their antisemitic speeches and behaviors? Or would such protests increase hatred toward Jews?

Also important were these questions: Should American Jews support the Zionist vision of a homeland in Middle East? Or would it be better to just concentrate on promoting themselves as good citizens of the United States? What communal groups should the local Jewish community support? WWII was raging in 1942 what should America do about the atrocities occurring to Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe? And, how should America deal with the problem of Jewish refugees before, during and after the war?

Then, as now, there was a wide range of opinions about these questions as well as other important issues facing American and Detroit Jews.

In 1942, Slomovitz decided the JN would take firm positions on the leading issues of the day. While attempting to listen to all voices, the JN, nevertheless, staked out principles that were largely his personal convictions.

The newspaper would educate its readers on the local, national and international affairs that affected Detroits Jewish community. It would fight antisemitism wherever and whenever it was found; it would promote the growth of and participation in local Jewish communal organizations; it would be a staunch supporter of Zionism; and, as Slomovitz stated, the JN would never be silent whenever there is the merest semblance of injustice anywhere.

These original principles have served the JN well throughout its history.

Within a few years, Slomovitz bought out the investors and became the sole owner and publisher of the JN. In 1951, he bought the Jewish Chronicle and merged it with the JN. Along the way, Slomovitz become widely known as the Dean of English-Language Jewish Editors. Not a bad career for a Russian-born immigrant with eyesight so poor that, in the later years of his life, he was legally blind. Slomovitz continued to write a column for the JN until 1990. He passed away three years later at age 96.

In 1984, Slomovitz sold the Jewish News to Charles Chuck Buerger, the grandson of the founder of theBaltimore Jewish Times. Two years later, Buerger hired Arthur Horwitz to lead the JN. Horwitz moved to Detroit, beginning a 36-year career with the JN. In 2000, with other investors, Horwitz purchased the JN and continued as publisher.

Both Slomovitz and Horwitz are now ensconced in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.

Horwitz remained publisher until Oct. 1, 2020, when the JN became the property of the Detroit Jewish News Foundation. On Jan. 1, 2021, the Foundation was restructured to manage the publishing of the JN and the William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History under the leadership of Board Chair Gary Torgow and Senior Advisor to the Board Mark Davidoff.

The past 80 years have been exciting, often tumultuous, to say the least. When the JN was established during WWII, it had the important, but particularly horrific duty of reporting the slaughter of Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany the devastation into the abyss of the Holocaust. At the same time, the JN also reported about the Jewish community development in British-mandate Palestine. In May 1948, the news was joyous the State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948. This was the lead story for May 21, along with reports of celebrations in Detroit. Since then, the JN has followed events in Israel with a keen eye.

As Detroits Jewish community moved from the city to the northwest suburbs, the JN followed. Its offices moved from the Penobscot Building in Downtown Detroit, to Seven Mile, to several locations in Southfield, and to its current home in Farmington Hills. It also continued to provide extensive reporting about and announcements of local communal events, as well as other stories from Metro Detroits and Michigans Jewish communities.

The JN itself had a dramatic moment on Jan. 27, 2002. Its offices in Southfield were destroyed by fire. For the only time in its history, the JN was published late. In a remarkable feat, while temporarily housed in the ballroom of the nearby Embassy Suites Hotel, using borrowed equipment, the JN staff pulled together and published the weekly JN. This issue was, however, only one day late!

The fire also led to another significant achievement. Miraculously, the back issues of the JN were saved. The Jewish community nearly lost an invaluable record of its history. Publisher Horwitz then established the Detroit Jewish News Foundation with a mission of digitizing all back issues of the Detroit Jewish News and making them available to the public. It was a great success.

In October 2013, the online Detroit Jewish News digital archive was launched. Two years later, the Detroit Jewish Chronicle was digitized and added to the Archive. It was then renamed the William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History in honor of a major grant from the William Davidson Foundation. In 2018, the Archive also became a permanent collection at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.

Nothing mentioned above, however, could have been accomplished without JN editors and leaders such as Philip Slomovitz, Gary Rosenblatt, Phil Jacobs, Robert Sklar and Arthur Horwitz, and current Editorial Director Jackie Headapohl and Foundation leaders Gary Torgow and Mark Davidoff. Hundreds of dedicated reporters, editors, writers, columnists like Danny Raskin, advertising salespeople, and publishing staff contributed their creativity and talent to the task. Indeed, neither paper nor websites make a successful journal it is the staff who create and distribute the JN.

This leads to the final point of this brief history. The JN would not exist, let alone enjoy an 80-year run, without you, our readers. You are the people whom we strive to engage and to serve. The JNs mission, as stated in each issue, is, in part, to inform and educate the Jewish and general community to preserve, protect and sustain the Jewish people of greater Detroit and beyond, and the State of Israel.

Thank you for your loyalty and support for the Detroit Jewish News.

Want to learn more? Go to the DJN Foundation Archives for free at http://www.djnfoundation.org.

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Looking Back: 80 Years Serving the Community Detroit Jewish News - The Jewish News

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

Elizabeth Bleiman, 101, is a Holocaust survivor and part of Jewish Family and Childrens Services Holocaust Survivor Support program | Photo by Sasha Rogelberg

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Holocaust survivor Elizabeth Bleimans photo album is worth an autobiography.

Among photos of her Hungarian childhood home, husband and daughter and concentration camp paperwork is also a clipping from a June 29, 1951 Jewish Exponent article, detailing her time as a cottage parent for a group home for children through the Association for Jewish Children, a precursor to Jewish Family and Childrens Service.

Seventy one years later, Bleiman, 101, is still involved in JFCS as a client for its Holocaust Survivor Support program. Active in the Jewish community, Bleiman and her story are not only representative of American Jewish history, but of a story close to the heart of Jewish Philadelphians.

Her history is like the history of the immigrant in Philadelphia, said daughter Hannah Fishman.

Born in Ofehrt which translates to Old White Lake Hungary to the prominent Jewish Zuckerman family, Bleiman described her childhood as a happy one until it wasnt. When she was five, her mother died after a miscarriage, leaving behind Bleiman, her older brother and younger sister.

Despite early tragedy, Bleiman has fond memories of her childhood, becoming close with her stepmother, despite her siblings lack of emotional connection to her.

As the children grew older, even as the war began, they were mostly untouched by Nazi rule, though were sent to different parts of the country to attend gymnasium, similar to high school, because as Jews, they were not allowed to attend many public schools.

We had antisemitism later on or in a certain time, but not [much] in my time, Bleiman said. In the village we did not feel it because the family was respected and well-liked.

Though Hungarian Jews are safe for most of the war, when Nazis invaded the country, change was quick and unrelenting.

As soon as the Germans came in, everything changed, Bleiman said.

In April 1944, Bleiman and her father and stepmother were sent to the Kisvarda ghetto. By then, Bleiman was a young adult and became a nurse at the field hospital there. Only weeks later, the Germans began shipping people off to concentration camps. Bleiman was torn between staying with the sick to care for them or travelling with her parents. Her father convinced her to stay with him, a decision that ultimately saved Bleimans life.

In June 1944, Bleiman arrived in Auschwitz and was separated from her father and stepmother, making friends with the four women who shared her bunk. While they remained friends and were transferred to Stutthof labor camp until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army the following year, half of them died of typhus shortly afterwards.

Bleiman spent three years after the war at a displaced person camp in Germany, where she met her husband, a teacher who taught Bleiman Yiddish, which was not commonly spoken in her Hungarian Jewish community.

The two settled in Philadelphia with their young daughter, where an aunt of Bleiman lived, and looking for work, found jobs as cottage parents at AJC.

They thought that maybe itd be good to be with children. I guess we went through plenty of hardship, Bleiman said.

By 1952, when the Bleimans left the cottage home so Bleimans husband could make a living working in a junkyard, AJC continued to change as well. Originally founded as the Jewish Foster Home in 1855, AJC was the oldest Jewish childrens service in the country, according to a 1963 fact sheet from the organization. By the time Bleiman left, AJC was starting to shift their model from a group home to foster model, later rapidly expanding the services they provided to children. Though still a part of the Federation for Jewish Charities, the group merged with Jewish Family Service in 1983, becoming the Jewish Family and Childrens Agency.

Bleiman has been part of JFCS Holocaust Survivor Support program for 10 years, working with various case workers there. Decades after her first involvement in the organization, she continues to make her mark at JFCS.

I do not think that Ive ever had a conversation or interaction with Elizabeth Bleiman where she hasnt been smiling, laughing or just overall pleasant, said Carly Bruski, director of JFCS Holocaust Survivor Support program. Shes probably one of the most positive people I have ever met, survivor or not.

Just as seven decades ago Bleiman cared for the vulnerable populations AJC assisted, she now has come full circle, receiving care and building community with the same organization that has evolved parallel to her.

We really look at Holocaust survivors as a core group to this agency, Bruski said. Theyre truly the backbone of this agency.

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Holocaust Survivor Shares 70 Years of JFCS History - Jewish Exponent

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

In the days after the attack on the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed seven people and left many more wounded, some grievously, we got emails from two prominent local people Rabbi Cathy Felix of Teaneck and William Lipsey of Livingston who had grown up there. They have fond memories of their childhoods, and describe their anguish at what happened there earlier this month.

Igrew up in Highland Park, Illinois, and graduated from Highland Park High School. I try to get back once or twice a year. My brother is in Highland Park, two blocks from the parade route. My 95-year-old mom moved three miles away to Deerfield, and other family members still live in the area.

In recent years, my husband and I have made it a practice of bringing our New Jersey family to Highland Park over July 4th to celebrate grandmas birthday. This holiday was special because my son Dan brought his new bride Jamie to meet grandma for the first time. My sister drove up from Santa Fe to join us. We love the ice cream from Sweet Home Gelato on Central Avenue, which was on the parade route.

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A week ago, I attended my high school reunion at the Womans Club, one block away from the parade route. I was struck by how many classmates chose to stay in the area in general, and specifically in Highland Park. They found there what my parents had found when they moved to that suburban town in 1965.

Rabbi Cathy L. Felix

They discovered a green and gracious community, welcoming to Jews, boasting many congregations and much Jewish infrastructure. I sat next to a classmate at the reunion who said that he wasnt Jewish but admired the many Jews in our class: their drive to achieve, their sense of community, and their commitment to family. The community felt safe and secure.

Over this Independence Day weekend, the plan was for our kids to join us on Thursday night. Because of the turmoil in the transportation industry, their Thursday evening flight was canceled, and only by splitting up and after patient negotiation were they able to get flights late Friday. We had planned that Friday, July 1, would be our downtown day, and we had tickets for a river cruise and plans to go to the parade on Monday. The cruise was willing to reschedule, so on the morning of July 4 we went downtown, instead of to the parade. We had a wonderful time on the cruise and no idea what was happening 25 miles away till I got a text asking me if I was safe. Someone else who knew we were visiting grandma in Highland Park also texted me to ask if we were safe.

Our high spirits descended into grief, mingled with relief that we were far away.

I feel less safe than I did a week ago. I feel vulnerable. We are living in increasingly turbulent times. The continuing destruction of middle-class jobs, the continuing aggression of Russia, the increasing pace of technological and economic change all destabilize our society. For Jews, the radical left demonizes Israel and Jews, and the radical right descends into antisemitism, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and far-reaching conspiracy theories. In such turbulent times, there is an increase in anti-social violence and antisemitic violence. Easy access to weapons of mass murder add to the likelihood of escalating bloodshed.

If Highland Park was not safe, perhaps no neighborhood in contemporary America can be. I am feeling vulnerable.

As Jews, we know too well the fragility of life. We say on the High Holy Days: who by (gun) fire and who by water, who will live through the coming year and whose life will end. Our tradition teaches us to recognize the tenuous grip we all hold on this world. It encourages us to face this fragility with gratitude for the moments that we have. We savor our happy times and focus on the miracles of the everyday. As Jews, we respond to tragedy with grief mixed with hope and optimism.

In this environment, in which violence will escalate, we must gather our tools of resilience. Our Jewish tradition, with its focus on gratitude, acts of kindness, human relationships, its valorization of Torah and mitzvot and its teachings of faith, optimism, and hope, can guide us to peace in a world of chaos.

Rabbi Cathy L. Felix is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am in Bayonne. She lives in Teaneck with her husband, Rabbi Elliot Schoenberg, where they are members of Congregation Beth Sholom. She was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1980, where she was in one of the first classes of women rabbis.

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Reflections on Highland Park - The Jewish Standard

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

Ive been thinking a lot about community this week.

There is nothing that diminishes the horror of what happened on July Fourth in Highland Park, Illinois. Saying that it revealed something good is not to say that is caused something good. The stories of instinctive, unstoppable human kindness are wonderful, but their price is far too high.

But the story also uncovers truths that were there all along. I was astonished to get not one but two stories written by people who live here now, but grew up there, in Highland Park. Both Rabbi Cathy Felix are Bill Lipsey are deeply involved Jews, Rabbi Felix as a spiritual leader and Mr. Lipsey as a lay leader and creative philanthropist. It is possible that both of them might have followed those paths had they come from a less connected, less Jewish and also less American, less idyllic small town, but that would be a counterfactual. They came from where they came from.

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Its also fascinating that Highland Park, Illinois, and Highland Park, New Jersey, which are different in many ways to begin with, no one would mistake Jersey for the Midwest theyre both such strong Jewish communities that you cant say You know, the Jewish one, when youre talking about Highland Park. You really have to specify. Theyre both the Jewish one.

This weekend, I was in Maplewood, one of many idyllic small towns in north Jersey; towns with lovely town centers filled with local businesses and houses, ranging from cozy to palatial, from many periods, many of them accurately painted for their periods, almost all of them gorgeous. The towns are open to the world but tight-knit too. To a confirmed city person like me, they are glimpses of an entrancing other life.

This weekend, for the first time in three years, Maplewood was able to hold its annual, paid-for-by-sponsors, not canceled-for-covid-this-year music festival, called, perhaps inescapably, Maplewoodstock. (No, I dont know how to pronounce it. Its harder than it looks.)

The park in the center of town was absolutely packed; when I walked through it with my dogs early on Shabbat morning people already had set their chairs up, even though the music wasnt set to start for hours. There were vendors and food smells and little kids running around with obvious joy and huge numbers of people, of all ages, in their chairs, loving the music. It was Shabbat, so we walked there, but that would have been a wise call anyway. It would have been as easy to find a parking space as a diamond in the grass.

One of the festivals slogans was All Together Again, and it worked.

We are living through a very bad time in our public life right now. Its unwise to pretend that were not. The level of polarization and hatred is terrifyingly high; its entirely possible that the shooter in Highland Park was a random monster with a stupidly complicit father, but if he hadnt had an assault rifle, seven dead people would be alive, an orphaned toddler would have both his parents, and gravely wounded people would have intact bodies. Abortion, guns, January 6, voting rights, climate change, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court all of these are hot-button issues, and there are many more. And for Jews who love Israel, the countrys pending election, its fifth in three years, the result of its hair-trigger political system and the instability of its government, and the lack of respect, understanding, and compassion that different segments of the Jewish world, both in and out of the country, have for each other are profoundly troubling as well.

It seems that the hatred comes out of abstractions, and support and love come from being together, from sharing food and laughter and the feeling of sitting on a blanket on the grass, the way its supposed to feel good but actually the grass is pretty stiff and what are you supposed to do with your shoes? Of watching the sun move across the sky until you finally realize that its dinnertime. Of being together.

I hope that our readers are able to spend time outside with the people they love this summer, and that they will glory in it. JP

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All together now - The Jewish Standard

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

Jul 13, 2022, 9:44pmUpdated 26m ago

By: News 12 Staff

Young Israel of White Plains held an event Wednesday to honor the life and legacy of Holocaust survivors.

About 70 Holocaust survivors gathered for the second annual Holocaust Survivor Day hosted by the Westchester Jewish Community Services.

The event was not only a time for the survivors to enjoy food and music, but also to socialize with others who have similar stories.

Hanne Holsten says she, her parents, her brother and her sister all survived the Holocaust. She says the event was about celebrating life.

"We were hunted and tried to evade concentration camps for two years, and we did, Holsten says. "I'm grateful for my life, I love my life, even though we went through horrors. I was only 7 or 8 years old."

For others, they say celebrations like this are a bittersweet moment of realization.

"The reason we're here is because we are survivors, says Jerry Kaidanow. "It's very touching to see people our age and olderthat every year we come, there's less of us."

Holsten says it's important to ensure their stories and legacy are eternal.

"We did survive, and we have to tell our story, she says.

Earlier this year, the state passed a bill ensuring that the Holocaust is taught in every New York school classroom to make sure history is never forgotten.

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'We have to tell our story.' Holocaust survivors honored at Westchester Jewish Community Services - News 12 Brooklyn

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

A Jewish Israeli man was sentenced on Monday to three years and two months behind bars for his part in a mob assault of an Arab man last year during a wave of intense intercommunal violence in the country.

Nissim Azulay, 29, of Petah Tikva was convicted of aggravated assault and vandalizing a vehicle, both with racist intent, during the May 2021 incident outside the Sidna Ali Mosque in Herzliya.

According to police, as many as 15 men participated in the assault on Ghassan Haj Yahya, an Arab Israeli resident of Taibe, who was eating the Ramadan fast-breaking meal in his car outside the Sidna Ali Mosque in Herzliya on May 12, 2021, as Jewish-Arab ethnically motivated violence was tearing through the country, particularly in mixed cities, against the backdrop of the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas.

The suspects waited for a parked police car to drive away before converging on Yahyas vehicle, shouting Arab! the indictment said. At one point, one of the suspects hit Yahyas head with a rock, while another suspect sprayed pepper spray in his face.

Azulay was indicted for throwing a bottle at Yahyas vehicle while others threw rocks at the victim and his vehicle. According to the indictment, Azulay was actively involved in the intentional and racially motivated assault.

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Azulay, who has previously served two jail sentences of one and two years respectively, had intended to search for and confront Arab individuals during the evening of the assault, the prosecution claimed throughout the case.

Describing his attackers to the Ynet news site after the assault, Yahya said there was murder in their eyes. They were looking for someone to murder no matter if I did anything or not.

I was sure I was a dead man. The attackers broke the car window They wanted to murder me and kept stating that I was an Arab. I was fearful and in shock.

Yahya required hospitalization due to the injuries he sustained in the attack.

The plaintiff, a 60-year-old man, was trapped alone in his car, unable to escape, as the defendants and a group of 20 people were surrounding him like a pack of wolves, the judge wrote in his ruling.

Without diminishing from other incidents, I believe that attacking a person on the street, where he can escape and defend himself, is not the same as attacking a person trapped inside his parked vehicle. A group of young assailants attacking another group of young individuals is not the same as a group of young people attacking a single 60-year-old person, who could not be heard even if he screamed and shouted, the judge added.

A second man, Yaakov Atenau, was sentenced in May to five years for taking part in the same assault. He was also ordered by the Tel Aviv District Court to pay Yahya NIS 5,000 in compensation.

Six people in all were indicted in the incident.

Hundreds of indictments have been filed against mostly Arabs, but some Jews as well, over the days of rioting in which mobs on each side attacked members of the opposite ethnicity, in a rash of violence the likes of which hadnt been seen in decades. The tensions were partially fueled by Israels conflict with Gaza-based terrorists and violent pro-Palestinian protests in Jerusalem.

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Jewish Israeli sentenced to 38 months for racist assault on Arab last year - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

Pressure on Russias Jewish institutions has stoked fears of retaliation over Israels support for Ukraine. The reality is more complex.

By Yair Rosenberg

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The average person has not heard of the Jewish Agency, but the organization has been a lifeline for Jews around the world for decades. Its primary mission is to facilitate immigration to Israel, particularly for Jews in need. This is how some 30,000 Ukrainian refugees have found their way to Israel since the outbreak of the war. The agency also provides assistance to Jews across the globe, often with significant impact. In 2019, when a gunman attacked a synagogue in Germany on Yom Kippur, the security system of cameras and reinforced doors that stymied the assailant and prevented greater loss of life was funded by the Jewish Agency.

Over its nearly 100-year history, the agency has often been called upon to operate in fraught environments. One of those is todays Russia, where it has been helping Jews who seek to leave Putins repressive regime. This week, however, Russian authorities ordered it to shut downor at least, thats what was initially reported in both the Israeli and international media.

The move understandably raised alarm bells. Russia has already effectively pressured Moscows chief rabbi into exile and resignation over his refusal to support the invasion of Ukraine. And dating back to the days of the Soviet Union, the country has a long and ugly history of collectively punishing its Jews and using them as international bargaining chips. Moreover, it was hard to disconnect this development from another one: the changing of the guard in Israel from former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to the current premier, Yair Lapid.

As foreign minister, Lapid was Israels leading voice against Putins war on Ukraine. While Bennett was careful to avoid criticizing Russia directly, and sought to negotiate an end to the conflict by mediating between the two sides, Lapid has been sharply critical of Putins advance. Under his diplomatic leadership, Israel publicly condemned the invasion, voted against it in the United Nations, helped lobby Arab states to join the anti-Russia effort, and sent both humanitarian and defensive aid to Ukraine. At the same time, Israel has held off on sending offensive weapons to Ukraine, despite entreaties from President Volodymyr Zelensky. There are two chief reasons for this reticence. First, there is concern that Russia might retaliate against Israel by contesting its air strikes against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group in Syria. At the moment, Russian forces sit on Israels northern border but permit Israeli action. Second, Israel worries that Russia might punish the approximately half-million Jews in Russia and Ukraine over the Jewish states actions.

In the days since Lapid assumed the top office, both these concerns have seemingly been borne out. Russia has dramatically escalated its criticism of Israeli air strikes in Syria, while threatening the Jewish Agency in Russia. Its fair to wonder whether these acts are part of an effort to dissuade Lapid from altering Israels Ukraine policy. But at least when it comes to the Jewish Agency, that does not appear to be the case.

To begin with, contrary to initial reports, the agency has not been shuttered. Jewish Agency activities are going on as planned, and nothing has been canceled or shut down, Yigal Palmor, its official spokesman, told me. Rather than a response to recent events, the letter threatening the organization with closure was the latest development in a yearslong investigation by Russian authorities into the agency. While undeniably a form of intimidation, it is part and parcel with Russias general crackdown on civil society, rather than a form of geopolitical pressure. And the letter is a threat, not an order, and invited a response from the agency. As such, Palmor said, We are examining the request from the Russian government in the spirit of negotiation.

In the meantime, the agency is continuing to operate, and anticipates that an agreeable compromise will be reached with the authorities. Asked whether they expected the agency to be shut down, a senior Israeli official told me, I think we are a long way from that.

The dispute is a reminder that while outsiders often view states like Russia as single-minded, centrally controlled operations, the reality tends to be far more confused and chaotic. As one official with knowledge of the situation put it, We tend to see the Kremlin and Russian government as a monolithic machinethey all get their instructions from the top, and they all act accordingly. Its not exactly like that. You have many centers of power within the government that compete with each other, and dont necessarily see eye to eye on everything, certainly not on Israel.

At any point, any one of these groups might be acting independently on its own agenda, especially in a poorly governed kleptocracy like Russia. Some of these actors are more anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli than others, and see the Jewish Agency as a convenient target, while others are less hostile. The challenge for both the Russian Jewish community and any outsiders seeking to help them is figuring out which is which, and finding a way to navigate between them.

Thank you for reading this edition of Deep Shtetl, a newsletter about the intersection of politics, religion, and culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. This edition was free, but others are exclusively for paying subscribers. To get access to those, and to support journalism like this, please subscribe to The Atlantic.

Its worth acknowledging some little-acknowledged history here. While the international community eventually turned against Russias attempts to bite off larger and larger chunks of Ukraine, it mostly shrugged at Russias incursion into the Middle East. In 2015, President Obama dismissed this development as a strategic error that would turn into a quagmire for Putin. Instead, far from becoming a debacle, Russias entry into the region enabled it to shore up its allySyrian dictator Bashar Assadand its continued presence in the Middle East has enabled it to project greater power and to pressure countries like Israel. The Jewish states predicament, like Ukraines, is the result of the international communitys prior failure to take Putins expansionist ambitions seriously.

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Is Russia Punishing Its Jews? - The Atlantic

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

(July 13, 2022 / JNS) U.S. President Joe Biden met with a warm welcome when he arrived at Jerusalems Ben-Gurion International Airport on Wednesday and spoke of his long relationship with the Jewish state.

Speakers on the tarmac included Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Israels President Isaac Herzog, both of whom recalled Bidens first visit to the country in 1973, just days before the start of the Yom Kippur War.

It is a very personal visit because your relationship with Israel has always been very personal, said Lapid. You once defined yourself as a Zionist. You said that you dont have to be a Jew in order to be a Zionist, and you were right. And in your case, a great Zionist, and one of the best friends Israel has ever known.

Biden followed Lapid at the podium and said he still held such sentiments, recalling his 10 trips to Israel, including his initial one the year before Richard Nixon became the first American president to visit the country. He added that during his first visit, he had the honor of spending time with then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and sat next to one of her aides, future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

I realize that I had the great honor of living part of the great history of this nation, stated Biden. And I did say, I say again, you need not be a Jew to be a Zionist.

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Starting when he was a senator and then vice president, Biden said he has known every Israeli prime minister since Meir and was honored to have built a strong working relationship with each of them.

And now, this is my 10th visit, every chance to return to this great countrywhere the ancient roots of the Jewish people date back to biblical timesis a blessing, he said. Because the connection between the Israeli people and the American people is bone deep; its bone deep. Generation after generation, that connection grows. We invest in each other. We dream together. Were part of what has always been the objective we both had.

Biden said that his affinity for the State of Israel grew from his father, who he called a righteous Christian and who taught the family about what happened in the Holocaust and imbued in us a sense of obligation that we all have.

He then outlined his agenda for the visit, which is expected to last until Friday.

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

Chile's Jewish community was outraged this week by the publication of an advert for cut-price alcohol that displays an offensive depiction of Jewish people.

Chilean alcohol distributor Arbol Verde published an advert for its discount booze featuring an image of a hook-nosed Jew with a hunchback in Mondays edition of the Chilean national newspaper, Las ltimas Noticias.

The distasteful ad has raised a furor in the South American country's political system and its 18,000-strong Jewish community.

"It is not the written press of Nazi Germany in 1940, it is today's Chile publishing in [Las ltimas Noticias] antisemitic caricatures that in other countries would have generated wall-t-wall repudiation! What a shame," Chilean MP Gabriel Silber tweeted.

The leadership of the country's Jewish community issued a statement in which it called the ad an "unacceptable expression of antisemitism."

Israeli Ambassador to Chile Marina Rosenberg joined in condemning the ad on Twitter, saying the caricature was like "the ones used by the Nazis in very dark times of humanity" and added that the media has an "obligatory responsibility to reject racism and hate speech."

Arbol Verde rushed to deny outright the campaign had antisemitic underpinnings. The company said the caricature referred to the purchase of its drinks in cash and ruled out intent to harm the Jewish community.

The company's response only further enraged the Jewish community after it failed to acknowledge its fault and apologize.

The Israeli Embassy in Chile said that even if the company didn't mean harm with the advert, it did not take away from the severity of the incident.

"We hope that the appropriate measures will be taken so that such content will not be published again", the embassy's statement read.

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Posted By admin on July 14, 2022

We were sitting down to dinner under the stars in the palm and citrus tree-filled courtyard of Si Said, a riad in the medina of Marrakech, when manager Luc Fougre appeared through one of the arches and purposefully placed a chanukiah, with all of its nine candles alight, at the end of the table.

We were a small band of Jewish journalists, being whisked through Jewish Morocco at breakneck speed. Fougre was the genial general manager of Angsana Marrakech, a collection of six luxury riads (large private townhouses) in the ancient heart of the city, complete with trickling fountains, limpid pools, exquisite zellij tilework and an exotic atmosphere straight of One Thousand and One Nights.

Im not Jewish, explained Fougre, but a Jewish friend of mine gave me this [the chanukiah] a while ago. I dont know what its for specifically, but tonight seems the perfect opportunity to use it.

His chanukiah solecism was good-naturedly ignored by the group. This was, after all, a touching gesture even if eating in the sultry heat of the evening to the sound of gnaoua (Islamic and West African music) at a table now lit solely by Chanukah candles in mid-May was a slightly odd experience.

The Jewish Past and Present

Such courtesies and experiences are not unusual in Morocco, though. The country was once home to the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world, and Jews have lived here largely free from oppression apart from some rocky periods for more than 2,000 years. And even though most of Moroccos Jews left the country either at the time of the creation of the state of Israel or later, after the Six-Day War in 1967, Jewish life has continued to exist untrammeled in the major cities, namely Casablanca, Marrakech and Fez.

The number of Jewish visitors to Morocco is now soaring for three reasons: the ever-increasing support from philo-Semitic Moroccan King Mohammed VI, the 2020 normalization agreement following the Abraham Accords between Morocco and Israel, and the easing of Moroccos harsh Covid lockdown.

And Morocco, where travel and tourism account for nearly 20% of the countrys Gross Domestic Product, is taking full advantage, rushing to accommodate Jewish travelers as never before. On a practical level, Royal Air Maroc is already operating four weekly non-stops between Casablanca and Tel Aviv in a codeshare agreement with El Al, as well as regular flights from New York, Boston, Washington and Miami, while Israeli airline Arkia now flies nonstop between Tel Aviv and Marrakech. Moroccan Jewish sites already the beneficiaries of generous financial support from the king pre-pandemic are scrubbing up ever more glossily. And, to cap it all, the hospitality industry seems to be on a crash-course learning the laws of kashrut.

The very minor downside of this surge of Jewish interest can be a tendency to amplify slim Jewish connections to promote tourism, so you need a top-caliber, government-accredited guide (as opposed to a locally-licensed, over-imaginative one) to make sure youre getting facts and not fiction. We found our guide, Zak, in Zakaria, who is based in Marrakech and is often called upon to escort visiting dignitaries. Zak speaks eight languages including Arabic (naturally) and Malayalam, and is currently teaching himself Hebrew. Boker Tov, he cheerfully greeted us each morning of our week-long tour, as if we were native Ivrit speakers ourselves, rather than Americans.

Monday in Marrakech

At the start of our trip, we went to the mellah (Marrakechs Jewish quarter) where until the 1950s 40,000 Jews lived cheek by jowl. We jostled with other groups of American, Israeli, French and Spanish-speaking tourists to admire the restored LaAzama synagogue located at No. 36 Talmud Torah Street and dates, remarkably, from 1492. In 2016, King Mohammed VI, following the repair of the countrys myriad Jewish cemeteries under his aegis five years earlier, earmarked a further $20 million for the restoration of synagogues and known Jewish houses and streets, simultaneously reinstating their ancient Jewish names.

Our Moroccan tour focused on the southwest of the country (Morocco is 32 times the size of Israel, or just a shade larger than Texas). Moroccans, who are by nature gracious, hospitable and perspicacious, seemed genuinely pleased to welcome Jewish visitors. Safe journey, lhitraot! said the smiling, white-jacketed saleswoman at the upscale herbalist store at the edge of the mellah as we departed, even though what she sold our small group following her long and informed sales patter was honestly negligible.

Ouirika Valley

On Tuesday, we headed to Ouirika Valley, an hours drive south of Marrakech. Before the 1960s, the valley, in the foothills of the High Atlas, was, according to the writer Raphael David Elmaleh in his seminal book, Jews Under Moroccan Skies, home to several Jewish families who lived in no fewer than 18 different settlements along its length. Today we were visiting compound housing the tomb of Rabbi Shlomo Bel-Hench, a great tzadik and doctor who, the story goes, had come to Morocco more than 500 years ago from his home in Jerusalem to collect money for his yeshiva back home. But he fell ill and died in Ouirika, and there, over the years, his tomb has become a great center of pilgrimage, especially for the sick and those battling infertility. As we left the small compound where the tomb is housed, a busload of Israelis swarmed in en-masse, one of the ladies immediately hurtling herself towards it, swaying her shoulders and sweeping her long black hair across the marble slab.

On the second floor of the compound, Fatima, who serves as guardienne of the site, showed us the small beit midrash which had recently been added, along with some basic guest rooms and a dining-hall for use as a spiritual retreat, or to accommodate small groups of tourists for shabbatons.

The Town of Red Earth

Past the Ouirika Valley, heading south towards the desert now, the landscape quickly changed, as our valiant slightly aging Mercedes minibus scaled the famed Tizi-n-Tichka pass, its hilltops ablaze with wild flowers and lush ravines and gullies below. Hair-raising hairpin bends and vertiginous drops brought us eventually to Ouazazarte, the town of red earth, often referred to as the gateway to the south, with the Sahara beyond.

Jewish life was once extremely rich in Ouazazarte. Before the 1950s, in fact, this entire area would have been peppered with Jewish Berber villages and settlements, shtetls by any other name. The Berber Jews of Ouazazarte, according to Elmaleh, made their living trading in camel hides, silver, and the buying and selling of dates.

The towns mellah has a tidy Jewish cemetery restored, once again, thanks to the kings munificence and adjoins the towns magnificent Kasbah, or citadel, which is currently under restoration itself. The first floor of one of Ouazazartes two former synagogues, meanwhile, is now a small museum, containing not for sale Jewish artifacts, collected this is perhaps a euphemism from the 70 or so families who lived here before they left for Israel in 1956, at the time of Moroccos independence from France.

In a series of sinuous rooms behind and above what had likely been the sanctuary, a young Moroccan man named Lakshan (lokshen was my Jewish mnemonic for remembering it), who seemed to be in charge of the building, allowed us to pore over the Judaica and ephemera for sale books, Torah breastplates, besamim and even tallitot, along with jewelry and framed photographs (provenance all uncertain). Lakshan applied no pressure.

On the third floor, a box-room purported to be a former schoolroom. I certainly wouldnt have envied any children, Jewish or not, having to study in this small and airless room, but the rather modern-looking blackboard, conveniently chalked with Hebrew letters, suggested the scene had been staged rather than historically accurate, though perhaps I was just being cynical.

We struggled too, to find convincing vestiges of Jewish life, as well as the shrine to another 16th century tzadik, Rabbi Reuben Wiseman, in a village east of the saffron producing town of Taliouine (where top-quality saffron sells for just $3.50 a gram). Even a 98-year-old fellow, perhaps the oldest inhabitant of the village, said he had no recollection of where the shrine was, which was temporarily disheartening.

Rabbi David Ben Baruch

Across the Souss valley, about 40 kilometers away in the hamlet of Bizou, where the landscape was already becoming softer and decidedly greener and empty plains had given way to orange orchards and fields of barley, our patience was rewarded. In a field in the middle of nowhere was a huge, white-walled encampment. And there, within its plaster walls, quite incongruously, was an impressive newly varnished oak door with a perfectly affixed mezuzah.

This was a somewhat surreal experience and we could have been forgiven for thinking we were in Wizard of Oz country, but in fact we had arrived at the tomb of Rabbi David Ben Baruch, an 18th-century Moroccan miracle worker. The impressive site, complete with nearly 300 guest rooms, dormitories and synagogue, is the center of a major annual pilgrimage (or hilula) for Jews of Moroccan origin. Up to 3,000 pilgrims, chiefly from Israel, the United States and Canada, but also Europe and South America, fly in each December for a few days of prayer, singing, dancing and spiritual immersion, which reach their climax on the eighth day of Chanukah.

The Coast

We were heading west now, towards Agadir and the slightly cooler climes of Moroccos Atlantic coast. In the nearby town of palm-fringed, palm-filled Taroudant, one with a long and distinguished Jewish history (Elmaleh describes its Golden Age in the 16th century), the mellah no longer exists, but once again the Jewish cemetery named Baba Dudu (where David Ben Baruchs great-grandson is buried) is in excellent shape.

A few hundred yards away, a former rabbis house is now a repository full of paintings, furniture, artifacts and jewelry, much of it very beautiful. My eye went immediately to a pair of huge amphoras (two handled ceramic storage jars), bearing pesukim in outsized Hebrew letters and finished in a fetching eau-de-nil (light green) glaze. While I quickly realized that these were modern, decorative items rather than relics of antiquity, they were no less lovely. Again, an ancient Jewish connection had been I hesitate to say appropriated lets say, developed by enterprising retailers to appeal to the Jewish tourist market.

The Real Jewish Deal

The takeaway here is that you need to separate the wheat from the chaff. Yes, there is a staggering amount to see and absorb regarding Jewish life in Morocco and not only in Marrakech, Meknes, Fez and Casablanca, all of which, in addition to their storied Jewish pasts, still have active Jewish communities today. But smaller towns too, such as Ouezzane (home of the 18th century rabbi, Amram Ben Diawan, the most venerated of all Moroccos tzadikim), Tetoun and Chefchaouen are all extremely rewarding, always bearing in mind the pinch of salt with which you may need to take some assertions.

However, one last town to mention, Essaouira, which we did not visit on this trip but where I had the opportunity of spending time a few months ago, has no geegaws or ersatz Jewish history to sort through. This charming walled town on the Atlantic used to be called Mogador and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is undoubtedly the real Jewish deal.

Under the control of Portugal, Mogador was a thriving fishing and trading port and home to large numbers of Jews in the 15th century. By the 18th century, its Jewish population outnumbered the Muslim. And with its partially restored mellah, two Jewish cemeteries, two ancient synagogues (there were once more than 30 in the town) and numerous other notable sites of Jewish interest, Essaouira has long been one of the most worthwhile stops on any itinerary of Jewish Morocco. But it was the recent opening, in January 2020, by King Mohammed VI himself, of Bayt Dakira, the House of Memory museum, which consolidated its position as a place of paramount Jewish interest and significance.

Located in the 19th century former Simon Attia synagogue and one of only two Jewish museums in the Arab world (the other is in Casablanca), Bayt Dakira tells the fascinating story of the Jews of Essaouira, from Phoenician times until their final exodus in the 1980s. Through text, photographs, costumes, artifacts and priceless old cine and video clips, we learned the communitys history and the inextricable relationship between Moroccos Jews and Muslims.

In one section, for instance, we see the story of Mogador as a key post on the Jewish-operated cotton route from Africa to Europe, the cotton brought by land from Timbuctoo to be exported by ship to the (Jewish-owned) cotton mills of Manchester, England. In another, we learn the extraordinary story of Stella Corcos, born in Brooklyn in 1858, the daughter of a wealthy Algerian tobacco merchant who married a Moroccan Jew and later founded the first Jewish girls school in Mogador.

In yet another room, magnified black and white photographs show a community bar mitzvah in 1955. Punctiliously formal in splendid in top hat and tails, the bar mitzvah boy is seen cutting into a magnificent four-tiered cake fit for a sultan. Only a beaming grandfather, standing nearby in tallit and tefillin, gives away the true nature of the occasion.

Is it this dovetailing of the familiar with the wondrously exotic which makes a visit to Jewish Morocco so captivating? As I left Bayt Dakira on a high, pondering this question, I again encountered the local man standing outside his restaurant on the corner, the one whom I had earlier asked for directions to the museum.

How was your visit? he asked me, in perfect English. (Moroccans are not only thoroughly clued-in, theyre quick and gifted linguists).

It was wonderful, I told him.

Good, good my friend, so now you must be hungry. Museums always make people hungry, right? So, come in and eat.

I hesitated, looking for the appropriate answer, but his thinking was already ahead of mine. No worries, dear friend! You are Jewish, so for you we will make it kosher!

For more information, see the book Jews Under Moroccan Skies by Raphael David Elmaleh and George Ricketts.

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