Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

Perceived Israeli threats to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islams third-holiest site built on the ruins of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalems Old City, have long been a rallying cry for Palestinian terrorism. For example, the 1929 Hebron massacre, in which Arabs murdered 67 Jewish inhabitants of the city, was sparked by rumors that Jews were planning to seize control of the mosque.

More recently, after Palestinian gunman Raad Hazemkilled three Israelisand injured more than a dozen others in Tel Aviv on April 7, 2022, terror groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip werequick to link the attack to the claim that the sanctity of Al-Aqsa was being threatened.

International media outlets in recent weeks perpetuated the Palestinian narrative, describing Jewish visitors strolling the Temple Mount as ultra-far-right Israeli nationalists (VICE), right-wing Jewish nationalists (NPR) and religious extremists (Associated Press).

But while religious freedom for Jews on the Temple Mount is a hot topic within Israeli society, the suggestion that only extremists (Agence France-Presse) hold the site sacred is completely ahistorical.

In fact, Jews have visited and prayed on the Mount for centuries.

According to mainstreamJewish oral tradition, as well asmystical sources, the Temple Mount (Hebrew: Har Habayit) contains the Foundation Stone (Even Hashetiya) from where God created the world. TheMidrashandJerusalem Talmudfurthermore state that Adam, the first man, was formed from the dust of the Jerusalem plateau. Then, Cain, Abel and Noahbrought offerings on the same Mount. InGenesis 22, the Jewish patriarch Abraham is commanded to offer his son Yitzchak as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah identified as another name for the site.

Later, King David purchased the threshing floor from Araunah the Jebusite (II Samuel 24:24,I Chronicles 21:22-30) in order to construct an altar. His son Solomon eventually established the First Temple, the focal point of Jewish worship, around 950 BCE, with the Holy of Holies and its Ark of the Covenant placed on the Even Hashetiya.

Archaeological treasures found in excavationsseem to confirm the Hebrew Bibles accountof this period in ancient Israel.

Related Reading: Israeli Archaeological Treasures Align With Hebrew Bible Accounts

Although the Temple is now in ruins Solomons Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE the religious status of Judaisms holiest place never changed. The Jewish sage Maimonides (1138-1204), in his magnum opus Mishneh Torah, concludes that a person must hold [the site] in awe, as one would regard it when it [the Temple] was standing.

The centrality of the Temple Mount to Judaism is beyond dispute. During prayer three times a day, Jews since time immemorial have faced the sacred Jerusalem hilltop. Contrary to what some news outlets like to suggest (see, for instance, here,hereandhere), the Western Wall is not Judaisms holiest site. Case in point: the wall the last remaining part of the Second Temple compound only became a place of importancein the sixteenth century.

While some religious Jews maintain that ascending the Temple Mount itself is currentlyforbidden due to ritual impurity issuesand theabsence of the red heifer, Maimonides presumablyprayed on Har Habayit in the fall of 1165. Another famous Jewish sage, the Chatam Sofer (1762-1839), evenissued a ruling on Jewish lawstating that it is still possible to bring the Passover offering on the Temple Mount if the ruling authority permits it.

Leading rabbis have noted that, by praying on Mount Moriah, Jewsfulfill five commandments simultaneously.

Related Reading: HonestReporting Prompts New York Times Correction in Article About Temple Mount

Since Israel gained control over eastern Jerusalem in a defensive war in 1967, an informal set of rules known as the status quo has governed the state of affairs at the holy site. Fearing a wider religious conflict following the Six-Day War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan agreed to let the Jordanian-run Islamic Waqfcontinue administering the Temple Mount.

Under this status quo agreement, which Prime Minister Naftali Bennetts government haspledged to uphold, Jews and other non-Muslims can visit the Temple Mount but not pray there. However, courts have at times questioned the bans legality (seehereandhere). The 1967 Preservation of the Holy Places Law ensures freedom of access and protection to all holy sites under Israeli jurisdiction, including those in the eastern part of its capital.

It is worth noting that the same status quo prohibits the display of flags of any kind at the holy site. Yet journalists, focused on Jews uttering words of prayer at their most sacred place, are seemingly uninterested in the incessant display of the flags of US-designated terror organizationsat Islams supposed third-holiest site.

Related Video: The Real Status Quo: Unrelenting Palestinian Terrorism Desecrates Jerusalem Holy Sites

Indeed, while the government in Jerusalem constantly works to maintain calm and prevent violence, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Jordan constantly encourage clashes with Israeli security forces who seek to protect pilgrims of all faiths.

It is clear that, despite Arab leadersinsistencethat peaceful visits by Israelis amount to the defilement of the sacred hill, the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount area and indeed, the entirety of Jerusalem predates the term Palestine by at least a thousand years.

Found this article informative? Follow the HonestReporting page on Facebook to read more articles debunking news bias and smears, as well as others explaining Israels history, politics, and international affairs. Click hereto learn more!

Featured Image: Shalev Shalom/TPS

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Before 'Palestine': Exploring the Unbroken Jewish Connection to Temple Mount - Honestreporting.com

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

Road tennis has gained international attention with three African countries expressing interest, says Minister of Youth, Sport and Community Empowerment Charles Griffith as he spoke during this mornings launch of the Barbados Road Tennis Open tournament.

While at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex this morning where Griffith addressed a group of road tennis enthusiasts including the godfather of road tennis Deighton Pa Roach and many other familiar faces in the industry, the minister while opting not to name these countries that have shown an interest, said they had reached out to have road tennis as part of their culture.

One of the things I am pleased about is the fact that our brothers in Africa are reaching out in relation to road tennis. To that end it means we must have persons who are skilled at coaching level in order to go to Africa to showcase road tennis at that particular level, Griffith said.

The minister explained that this level of interest can only augur well for Barbados indigenous sport which has the potential to create job opportunities in the areas of coaching and officiating.

In the not too distant future, Griffith said he hopes to see a regional road tennis championship which in his opinion was very much needed before taking the sport on to the international stage.

We are looking to certify coaches, we will vet them because obviously, coaches who are going overseas on behalf of the government to promote this sport must be our ambassadors. So, we will vet those coaches to ensure we have quality for export. It will provide employment, it will provide an opportunity for those coaches to embrace the new culture and to promote Barbados as a place to be.

I am hoping that in the not too distant future we can stage a Caribbean championship here on the island. The fact that it is here on the island means we must promote it in the region before we look to go to the international level. And if we do that then I am sure that those youngsters who are skilled at road tennis would be able to make a living out of this particular sport. So, it is not just a situation where it is being treated for fun but it is a way of people being able to earn, Griffith explained.

Just last year road tennis featured at the 2020 Dubai Expo and the Barbados delegation that attended described the event as a major success. Also, it is no surprise that the African countries are showing interest in road tennis given that in April this year the President of the Republic of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, was in Barbados and tried his hands at playing.

During his address, Griffith also announced that a month ago cabinet approved the National Sports Policy and embedded in that policy are two main sports, cricket and road tennis, that will be treated as the plank going forward.

There are two main sports that we are treating as the plank going forward, cricket for reasons that are known to all of us, the fact that we have turned out more talented cricketers than any other country on this earth in terms of where they would have reached. Road tennis is the other discipline within that document that is of prominence because it is the indigenous sport and the fact that we are looking to grow road tennis not only here on island but at the national level, it is given that prominence in the national sports policy, the minister shared.

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Griffith eyeing road tennis in the diaspora - Barbados Today

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

LOS ANGELES, Calif. On December 20, 2021, a group of Armenians concerned about the future of their nation established a new organization known as The Armenian Society of Fellows (ASOF). This international network of Armenian scholars, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs is currently comprised of 155 individuals, including Nobel Laureates and thought leaders from both the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora.

ASOFs mission is to help raise Armenias educational and research capacity and institutions to world-class levels and to contribute to the development of a modern, sophisticated and internationally networked civil society in Armenia.

ASOFs long-term objectives are:

ASOF represents a historic undertaking that unites the Armenian Diaspora and the Republic of Armenia, to create a network dedicated to national renewal and international cooperation.

ASOF will hold its inaugural meeting on June 27 and 28, 2022 on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni in Venice.

Guest contributions to the Armenian Weekly are informative articles or press releases written and submitted by members of the community.

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The Armenian Society of Fellows to hold inaugural meeting in Venice - Armenian Weekly

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

2022 0528 South Asian Studies books and documentaries-1

Prof Tan Tai Yong, Dr Jayati Bhattacharya, and Assoc Prof Rai (fifth, sixth and seventh from the left respectively), with former and current graduate students of the NUS South Asian Studies Programme.

The NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) showcased a series of books and short documentaries that focused on Singapores lesser-known South Asian communities at a book launch-cum-documentary screening at the Indian Heritage Centre today. Titled Hidden Heritage: Minority South Asian Communities in Singapore, the series shines a spotlight on the Bengali, Gujarati, Hindustani (the diaspora from the Gangetic Heartland), Tamil Catholic and Telugu communities.

An initiative of the NUS FASS South Asian Studies Programme, the series explores the everyday experiences of these communities and demonstrates the unique and shared historical trajectories and cultural values made while interacting with other Indian and non-Indian communities in Singapore; sifting the intricate tapestry within the Indian ethnic category to unveil the rich heritage of the diaspora. The South Asian communities were chosen for their unique social, historical and cultural characteristics and the series aims to share and shape popular discourse beyond flattened, homogenised imaginations that do not match the histories, learned heritage, or lived realities of many Singaporean Indians.

The list of five books are as follows (the five documentaries bear the same title):

2022 0528 South Asian Studies books and documentaries-2

The series explores the everyday experiences of these communities and demonstrates the unique and shared historical trajectories and cultural values made while interacting with other Indian and non-Indian communities in Singapore.

The project is led by Head of the Programme Associate Professor Rajesh Rai, and Senior Lecturer Dr Jayati Bhattacharya, with research and writing support from the Programmes former and current students. It is supported by the Heritage Research Grant of the National Heritage Board.

Professor Tan Tai Yong, Chairman of the NUS Institute of South Asian Studies and Guest-of-Honour at the event, said, The Hidden Heritage Series contributes to our understanding of lesser-known South Asian communities in Singapore. Collectively the books and documentaries raise awareness of the intricate tapestry of Singapores diverse multicultural society.

Associate Professor Rajesh Rai added, A fascinating aspect of this research has been in the unveiling of the immense contribution of these small communities in the historical development of Singapore. At the same time, these studies also draw attention to how their identities have transformed over time in the context of living in a global city.

The event saw a panel discussion with the authors to introduce the series. This was followed by a screening of the documentaries. The event was attended by distinguished members of the local Indian community, guests from the Indian Heritage Centre and National Heritage Board, as well as representatives from FASS.

Book copies will be distributed to the National Library with the documentaries used as a teaching aid for NUS students. The Programme is planning to produce a second series that will focus on five other minority South Asian communities in two years time.

Click here for the synopses of the books and documentaries.

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NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences launches series of books and documentaries on Singapore's minority South Asian communities - NUS News

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

Rabbi Harold Kudan, 90, worked for years in an underground network of clergy who helped women access abortions. Courtesy of Harold Kudan

Like many American Jews, Rabbi Harold Kudan is angry about the Supreme Courts expected ruling undoing the constitutional right to an abortion. But for Kudan, 90, the leak of the draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade brought back vivid memories of his years helping women obtain illegal abortions as part of an underground clergy network.

There was, for example, the middle-aged widow and principal of a Catholic school who beseeched him: I cant have a child. It will be the end of my career.

There was the low-income woman with six kids who confided, Ill kill myself if I have another.

And there was the young congregant at his own synagogue in suburban Chicago, a college student afraid to tell her parents. She thought theyd kill her, Kudan recalled. No, I know your parents, he told her, and Im sure theyll support you.

Kudan was a member of Clergy Consultation Services, a network of some 1,400 to 2,000 rabbis, ministers and even a few Catholic priests across 38 states that operated for six years. These clerics pooled their local and national connections to develop a roster of doctors willing to perform abortions despite the legal risks, helped negotiate lower fees for the services, and then instructed the women on where to go usually out of state and how to connect with the physicians once there.

It all came back to me, Kudan said during a recent phone interview from his home in Glencoe, Illinois. Now he thinks that reviving that underground clergy network might well be necessary, and that the Reform movements Central Conference of American Rabbis should start working on this in anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling this month.

Wherever we are, we must help women who are in states where they cant get an abortion get to where they can obtain one, Kudan continued. We cant stop the fight; we have to fight!

Rabbis for Repro

The next generation of rabbis is engaged in the fight in different ways. More than 1,000 of them including the leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements have joined Rabbis for Repro, a group formed in 2020 that lobbies lawmakers and convenes Repro Shabbats in their shuls.

They and other Jewish supporters of abortion rights an estimated 83% of Jewish Americans believe it should be legal in all or most cases have grown more active since the draft ruling overturning Roe became public. More than 1,500 people turned out for a Jewish rally for abortion rights in Washington in May.

Long before the leaked court ruling, Rabbi Mara Nathan of San Antonio began plotting for a post-Roe future in which the country might become a patchwork of states with differing laws regarding abortion, from outright bans to full access. I would find the funds to get them out of Texas and get what they needed, Nathan said in a 2021 interview. And I also know we have allies in the congregation who would help.

With a new Texas law empowering ordinary citizens to seek hefty bounties from anyone aiding a woman in getting an abortion, Rabbi Nathan and her colleagues could face risks not unlike Kudan and the others involved in the pre-Roe clergy network more than a half-century ago.

Founded in 1967 at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, the Clergy Consultation Service was inspired by and, in many cases, drew its members from clergy who had been involved in the civil rights movement, according to Sabrina Danielson, a professor of sociology at Creighton University who did her dissertation on the group in 2014. Kudan himself had marched in Selma in the early 1960s with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Chicago chapter, of which Rabbi Kudan was a member, saw 10,000 women between 1969 and 1973, when Roe made abortion legal, according to the chapters chairman, the Rev. E. Spencer Parsons of the University of Chicago. He said he created the group after reading a 1969 Chicago newspaper article reporting that thousands of women each year were turning up at Cook County Hospital with complications from botched abortions.

Kudan was at the time assistant rabbi at North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, a tony Chicago suburb on the shores of Lake Michigan. He said it was a Church of Christ minister from the nearby suburb of Wilmette who urged him to join the group.

I respected him a lot, said Kudan. So I thought about it, and after some conversation, I realized how important it was.

An act of rachmanis

Kudan, who grew up in an Orthodox family in the Adirondacks, said he staunchly opposed abortion until he was about 30 years old. He began to reconsider in the early 1960s, when he was a volunteer prison chaplain in Illinois and met a woman serving time for performing abortions. Her accounts of the circumstances faced by the pregnant women she saw shook him.

It was the first time I saw it as an act of rachmanis, Kudan recalled, using the Hebrew term for mercy. She felt she was doing something to help others. She wasnt doing it for the money.

Years later, when he joined the clergy network, he found that the work often went beyond just connecting women with doctors. It included pastoral care, too.

Prior to the Catholic school principals procedure, for example, Kudan said he arranged for her to see a sympathetic priest. It was to let her know that what she was doing was not wrong, he said. She didnt imagine the priest would be supportive. I knew he would. He was active in our group.

Kudan said that almost all the women who came to see him were in the early stage of their pregnancies. With a few exceptions, they were white and middle class to upper middle class, reflecting the area where he lived.

Most, like the young college student who worried about her parents and the Catholic school principal who worried about her reputation, seemed desperate. Those were easy, Kudan said. Others, who at first glance seemed merely inconvenienced by their pregnancies, the rabbi found more morally complicated.

There was one couple who said that their lifestyle, which included a lot of traveling, was such that they didnt really want a child, he recalled. He told the couple that he could not help them that day, and asked them to return a few days later. In the interim, the rabbi looked inward.

I thought about it and decided that its not my decision to decide whats right and whats wrong, he said. Perhaps if they didnt want a child, it would be best if they didnt have one. Thats almost the crux of it. Women have a right to their own bodies.

Risks and consequences

During the years he was involved in the clergy network, another member, Rabbi Max Ticktin, who ran the Hillel at the University of Chicago, was arrested for setting up an abortion in Michigan. The woman who had come to Ticktin for help turned out to be an undercover cop.

The Chicago police, working in coordination with Michigan law enforcement, executed a search warrant on Ticktins home, where they found a trove of files they hoped would lead them to other clergy in the network. But Ticktin, who died in 2016, was apparently prepared for such a raid.

He did all his files in Hebrew, recalled Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, another member of the Chicago network. He joked about that. His files were all written in Hebrew. That made them useless unless the cops could read Hebrew cursive.

The Chicago Board of Rabbis strongly protested Ticktins arrest as an attack on clergy confidentiality, as did numerous Christian and Jewish clergy in both Chicago and Detroit. The Michigan prosecutor ultimately dropped the charges, though he went forward against the Detroit doctor slated to perform the illegal abortion.

Kushner, 79, a noted author on Jewish mysticism who now lives in San Francisco, said in a recent interview that he was scared enough about the risks of helping women get illegal abortions that he carried a bail bond card in his wallet all the time.

Kudan said he did not recall feeling that way, and joked: Maybe I thought I had enough lawyers in my congregation to not have to feel scared.

Today, Kudan is rabbi emeritus of Am Shalom in Glencoe, which he himself founded in 1972 and served full-time for 30 years. It has more than 950 members.

Meanwhile, the Orthdox shul where he grew up in the upstate New York town of Glen Falls, he said, has become Conservative and is hanging on by its fingernails.

As a child in Glen Falls, Kudan recalled, he fell under the sway of Rabbi Kurt Metzger, a Holocaust survivor who led the only other synagogue in town, which was Reform. He was a prison chaplain, so I became a prison chaplain, Kudan recalled. He taught me the right path.

One of Kudans four children, David, followed the same path and is now a Reform rabbi in Peabody, Massachusetts.

Now in the winter of his life, Kudan did not seem disheartened at the prospect that the abortion rights for which he risked arrest and then saw enshrined as a constitutional right could soon be reversed.

Asked why, he invoked a famous King quote with an addendum.

The arc of history is long but bends towards justice, he said, and yes, sometimes it even bends backwards.

Larry Cohler-Esses was the Forwards assistant managing editor and news editor. He joined the staff in December 2008. Previously, he served as Editor-at-Large for the Jewish Week, an investigative reporter for the New York Daily News, and as a staff writer for the Jewish Week as well as the Washington Jewish Week. Larry has written extensively on the Arab-Jewish relations both in the United States and the Middle East. His articles have won awards from the Society for Professional Journalists, the Religious Newswriters Association, the New York Press Association and the Rockower Awards for Jewish Journalism, among others.

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As a young rabbi, he helped women obtain illegal abortions. At age 90, he's fighting for them once again The Forward - Forward

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

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A Tearful Reunion in Ukraine For an Elderly Congregant and His Rabbi - Homebound through pandemic and war, Jewish man has been cared for from afar -...

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

After three decades of providing spiritual care to the sick, dying and bereaved, the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center has been forced to fold due to insurmountable financial difficulties. The S.F.-based nonprofit will close its doors June 30.

Its a loss the centers leadership believes will be keenly felt across the region.

It is truly devastating, said Rabbi Eric Weiss, the centers longtime CEO. Thats the response weve gotten from past clients and participants in our program. The [BAJHC] was an agency that had the benefit of specialization, so our absence will create gaps in terms of spiritual care.

Dr. Mary De May, the current board chair, echoed that sentiment, saying, The expertise of the [BAJHC] rabbis is just not something that is easily found or replicated, especially this group of rabbis who have worked together for so long under Rabbi Weisss leadership.

Weiss has been at the center for 27 years. His colleague, Rabbi Natan Fenner, has worked there for 22 years, making them, they believe, the longest serving rabbinic team in the Bay Area. Rabbi Jon Sommer, a certified chaplain, rounds out the centers rabbinic team.

In that time, they partnered with hospitals, physicians, rabbis and Jewish institutions such as the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living (formerly the Jewish Home). They instituted bereavement groups, chaplaincy services, professional development programs and innovations such as the Kol Haneshama End-of-Life volunteer program (hospice care) and the Grief & Growing program (healing weekends for individuals and families).

Most importantly, the centers three-rabbi staff, its employees and its volunteers provided one-on-one spiritual counseling to thousands of people at the most difficult moment of their lives.

It is truly devastating. Thats the response weve gotten from past clients and participants in our program.

What they and the board could not do was keep the center afloat financially. No stone was left unturned in an effort to stay in the black, De May said.

The healing center has struggled financially for many years, she noted. There is nothing new here in that regard. The decision to close was one that we made over a years time, with an extraordinary amount of heart and soul and head involved. It has been absolutely excruciating.

Founded in 1991, the center has been lean its whole existence, Weiss said, though it fought valiantly to remain self-sustaining and in recent years hired consultants to provide fiscal guidance.

We did everything the consultants suggested, he said. We hired a development professional, we expanded our individual donor base. All these were suggestions that we took to heart and followed, and the economic reality still did not yield what would be a budget that could be maintained.

With the end of the center now in sight, Weiss looked back on a gratifying career of service.

We were able to create a vocabulary that did not previously exist around the language of spiritual care, he said. Nobody gets sick outside of a system. People get sick in community, and therefore we wanted to model programs that were cooperative.

The first Northern California institution of its kind, the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center has provided Jewish spiritual care to those living with illness, those who care for them, and to the bereaved through direct service, education and training, according to its website.

It was established at a time when no other such agency existed, Weiss said. The center always functioned on this notion of direct service, but also on the level of what it means to frame ones Jewish identity development along the path of spiritually caring for people.

One approach he and his colleagues took in helping the dying and the bereaved was to address the spiritual yearning they have when they come to the universal experience of grief.

A natural part of any spiritual experience is curiosity, Weiss said. It helps us take a leap of faith. If we want to be a whole human being, we dont just pay attention to our past and what we want now. We pay attention to what we want our future to be. That leap is a spiritual endeavor.

While mourning the loss of the BAJHC, De May hopes the community will find a way to compensate.

I hope that some of the connections and collaborations weve made over the past decades will result in some people trying to step up, but we dont now have a plan for how to do that, said De May, the Hellman Master Clinician and the Hellman Family Distinguished Professor of Neurology at UCSFs Weill Institute for Neurosciences. We know this is going to create stress in the system.

Weiss does not know whats next for him, but he expects to continue making his rabbinate about service and spiritual care. Even though he worked with people at the saddest times of their lives, he said he never lost his enthusiasm for the mission of the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center.

I am endlessly fascinated by peoples spiritual experience in the world and what they do with it, he said, and I am endlessly honored by the spiritual intimacy to which I am invited in. I feel just as fresh as I ever did, and in some ways more confident. I have been moved and changed and nourished by the work.

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Bay Area Jewish Healing Center to shut down after 31 years J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

Fine, readers. FINE. Enough already. We will profile Bill Gates.

And here are some of the reasons we should profile him, according to you, our readers (everything sic):

Well, duh, indeed. Other than the reader who wants us to profile his idol... really? REALLY? Oh, come on, dear readers!

So let's see. One prevailing theory is RICH = JEWISH. Oh, how we wish it to be true! Sadly, that is not always the case. Yes, dear readers, there are some MANY rich people who are NOT Jewish. That might sound hard to believe, but it's true.

For Bill Gates is NOT Jewish. His lineage is a mix of English, German, and Scotch-Irish, with no discernible Jewishness anywhere on the family tree, going back to the 1700s. He's William Henry Gates III, for crying out loud, named after his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather! His mother is a pure WASP! His sister's name is Kristi! He... Oh, enough already. He is not a Jew!

There you have it, readers. You got your wish. Now please stop asking us to profile Barack Obama.

Verdict: Not a Jew.

March 19, 2010

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Jew or Not Jew: Bill Gates

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

Unhinged Jew-hater Ariyana Love continues to spread conspiracy theories about Jews on her Telegram channel albeit referring to us either as Khazarians, Zionists or the Israeli state. And her latest is a real doozy!

And just in case she deletes it:

For the record, Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan who is not Israeli (he is Chinese-American). And I am sure they have better things to do than mess with the appointments of some random, crazy lady.

No doubt she simply messed something up, given she is a colossal dumbass. And perhaps some people also cancelled their meetings with her when they discovered what a crazy antisemite she is.

Note how she also accuses Google of sending her emails to the Spam folder. And since this happens to other naturopaths, it is clear that Google has it in for them (as if never happens to everyone else using Gmail).

Meanwhile, Love also recently let down her guard and forgot to refer to us as Khazarians, Zionists, or the Israeli state:

She is clearly a DNA strand short of a helix.

A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media

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Jew-Hater Ayiana Love Accuses 'Israeli' Zoom of Deliberately Sabotaging ...

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Posted By admin on June 4, 2022

I was on a short visit to Israel last week, and spent time with a friend with whom I have been engaged in a 30-year argument. Elli Wohlgelernter and I met when he was the managing editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and I was a staff reporter. We would argue about the future of Jewish life in the Diaspora, which even then he considered in unstoppable decline. We continued the argument after he moved to Israel not soon after.

Over the years weve both dug in our heels: I am convinced, even after living for a time in Israel, that aliyah is a happy choice but not the only defensible choice a Jew can make in the 21st century, and that Israel is not the sine qua non of global Jewish creativity or inevitability in the decades since its founding.

Elli is as convinced that the galut the Hebrew term for exile is doomed, physically and spiritually, as Jews assimilate into oblivion or face yet another cycle of historical persecution.

(Neither of us, I hope, is as tendentious or as boring as this sounds, at least not Elli, who is passionate about baseball, Jewish comedy, classic Hollywood and old-fashioned, ink-stained American tabloid journalism.)

Last week we picked up our old argument where we had left off. And thinking to give it a little fresh material, I suggested a visit toANU-Museum of the Jewish People. The museum formerly known asBeit Hatfutsotopened on the Tel Aviv University campus in 1978, and recently underwenta major renovation and rebrandingin order to convey the fascinating narrative of the Jewish people and the essence of the Jewish culture, faith, purpose and deed.

I remember visiting the museum in my 20s, when the oldBeit Hatfutsotwas about a decade old and still considered state of the art. There were dioramas depicting scenes out of various eras in Jewish history and an unforgettable display of models of synagogues throughout the ages. I also remember the criticism at the time: that the museum presented Diaspora Jewish life as a thing of the past. Its exhibit was organized according to gates, the last being the gate of return, with immigration to Israel presented less as a choice than a culmination.

AmirMaltz, the museums vice president for marketing, acknowledged that criticism when he met us in ANUs lobby. People from abroad would visit and say, I dont see myself here, as if their lives outside of Israel werent valid or vital. He suggested we start on the third floor, labeled Mosaic, which, he said, more than acknowledges that 50 percent of the worlds Jews dont live in Israel and insists that there is no one right way of being a Jew.

And sure enough, the first thing you see are life-size videos of various individuals explaining their distinct versions of Jewishness. The walls nearby are lined with large-format photographs of various families: religious, secular and somewhere in between. There is a mixed-race couple, a same-sex Israeli couple and two heavily tattooed hipsters. It certainly represented the varieties of Jews I encounter in New York, and some of the exuberance seen in and around Jerusalems Mahane Yehuda market. The experts would call this pluralism, although its just the reality of who we are.

Similarly, the second-floor history section begins with a wall title proclaiming A People Among Peoples surely less Zion-centric than A People in Exile or A People Dispersed, two other plausible alternatives.

That history section was the least engaging to me, giving the vibe of an earnest middle school textbook trying a little too hard to make a long, twisting journey from Temple times to the present day palatable. I appreciated the balance the curators appeared to strike betweenthe lachrymose school Jewish history as a series of disasters and the long periods of creativity, stability and autonomy enjoyed by Jews from North Africa to Middle Europe. The exhibit also tries hard to restore women to the Jewish story: I counted at least four main displays centering women.

But Mosaic, subtitled Identity and Culture in Our Times, was to me the most engaging of the three main permanent exhibits, and the one that succeeds the most in transforming this from a museum of the Diaspora to a museum of world Jewry. There are crowd-pleasing touches like a wall (and, on the first floor, an entire temporary exhibit) on Jewish humor (trust me, Seinfeld is as big a phenomenon here as it is back home), and the kinds of interactive features that I suspect are more intriguing to kids than adults. There is a wall dedicated to Jewish literature, from Cynthia Ozick to Clarice Lispector to the Israeli Nobelist S.Y. Agnon, and images of Jews in all their variety: Persian, Turkish, Brazilian and Canadian, to name a few.

One highly symbolic corner celebrates Yiddish, on the one hand, and the revival of Hebrew as a day-to-day language, on the other. My arguments with Elli are a recapitulation of the tension these languages represent. Israels founding generation wasseen to look down on Yiddish, partly out of the expediency of nation-building and partly out of a none-too-subtle disdain for the Diasporic ways that Yiddish represented. The museum tackles this head on in one kiosk, asking Who Will Reign in Zion Hebrew or Yiddish? and acknowledging how the debate often turned vicious and even violent.

There is also an animated film depicting Jewish literary, artistic and music greats accompanied by a Hebrew rap song about their accomplishments. I found it a little ironic that they chose a rap song perhaps the popular art form with the fewest successful Jewish makers (and yes,I am aware of Drake). Then again, it was in Hebrew, and that kind of cultural synthesis and, OK, flat-out appropriation is part of the Jewish mosaic as well.

Like any effort to cram so many arguments and information in a limited space, the Identity and Culture section could feel a little thin. And yet for this Diaspora Jew, it also felt validating. I didnt feel chided for living in galut, nor defensive about regarding Israel as just one of many paths in the Jewish journey. In the history section, Israel, like the Holocaust, is treated in just one room, this time with wall-sized videos displaying highlights of the countrys 74-year history.

Elli said the museum played fair in its presentation of the global Jewish story.It didnt celebrate Zionism nor diss Zionism, he told me. It told that story within the context of the history of the Jewish people. But when I goaded him and asked if that was satisfying, he dropped the gloves: One can walk away thinking that there are so many more chapters to write about the future glory of Diaspora Jewry, when in fact the story is virtually over. It wont survive the 21st century.

I left thinking that if the museum has a Zionist agenda, it doesnt need a wall label or gate of return to make its point. You only need to exit the museum and find yourself surrounded by buildings representing the life sciences, engineering, biotech, security studies and cereal crops improvement. To catch the train back to Jerusalem, you walk along a bluff that offers a spectacular view of the high rises of Ramat Gan and downtown Tel Aviv.

And as you consider the present-day vitality or the nearly inconceivable accomplishments of the Jewish state, you think, Touch, Israel. Touch.

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Who is a Jew? Israel's renovated Diaspora museum attempts an answer. J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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