Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 29, 2022

Students come to Jewish Queer Youth secretively through a Google search, a meme on social media, a pamphlet in their local pizzeria, a chat between two friends who suspect they might be the same in some way.

I told my parents I was hanging out with a friend after school, said N., a Bronx area native who asked to remain anonymous because some of their family members dont know that theyre trans.

N.s alibi was technically true. The friend was the person whod told N. about JQY in their freshman year at a private Jewish high school, now six years ago. Together, the two attended one of JQYs weekly events in Manhattan. There, they had access to social workers, kosher food, games and the sympathetic ears of mentors and peers who understood the weight of their secrets.

The drop-in center that N. and their friend visited is the hallmark of JQYs programming. When the organization first formed unofficially in 2002, it was simply as a place in Manhattan for queer Jewish young adults to just be, without having to explain themselves to anyone. Since then, the organization has evolved to offer not only a sense of community, but also mental health services and a fresh link to Jewish identity for queer Jews aged 13 to 23 who come from Orthodox, Sephardic or Mizrahi communities, which can sometimes be unwelcoming to LGBTQ people.

Most of our teens are not yet out of the closet, said JQYs clinical director, Mordechai Levovitz.

The only drop-in center currently open is the one in Manhattan, near Times Square. Its a bright and colorful room equipped with board games, kosher snacks and bean bag chairs sporting inspirational messages. Theres also a library, a kitchen, and multiple private consultation rooms. When there are no events being held there, teens and parents can schedule visits, and the staff uses the space for team meetings and training.

There is also a drop-in center in Five Towns, Long Island, but it closed during the pandemic and has not yet reopened. JQY hopes to reopen it for the 2022-2023 school year.

But having just received a $1 million donation the organizations largest ever from Toronto-based real estate developer Paul Austin and his partner, Dalip Girdhar, JQY plans to expand, and open physical drop-in centers in Teaneck, New Jersey; Monsey, New York; Chicago; Baltimore; and South Florida.

They already know something of the communities theyll work with in each place. Young adults from each area, primarily from Orthodox communities, joined their virtual drop-in events during the pandemic. They also plan to expand their hopeline for people experiencing crises.

Its a big idea, and thank God we matched this big idea to this big donation, Levovitz said.

When a teen or young adult attends a JQY drop-in session, whether in person or online, for the first time, their first stop is a private meeting with a social worker. In that conversation, the staff member asks about things like self-harm, access to food and housing, and the community the young adult comes from, with the goal of understanding their needs and assimilating them to the new environment.

Then, after the intake interview, the new JQY participant can meet people and participate in activities in the common area, like games, concerts or speaker events.

The pattern is more or less the same whether the drop-in session is in person or virtual. JQY started hosting virtual events during the pandemic, and while theyve since resumed in-person events, theyre still committed to offering virtual programming even if the pandemic doesnt require it. Each week, JQY sees an average of 25 teens at its in-person drop-in session and 15 at its virtual session.

But since drop-in is only one night a week, JQY provides other resources, too, includinganappthrough which verified users can chat in community groups. JQY also holds phone drives to distribute cellphones to participants who otherwise might not have smartphones often those from Haredi backgrounds so that they can connect to the internet.

They even have a program through which they provide structure and support for students meeting unofficially at religious high schools where students arent officially allowed to form gay-straight alliances or similar clubs.

If they need pizza for their meetings, we sponsor their pizza, said JQYs executive director, Rachael Fried.

But JQY knows that as useful as these resources can be, they only represent a first step toward helping young adults who feel like their gender identity or sexual orientation puts them at odds with their family and community.

According to a 2021 JQY report,over 70%of first-time JQY participants said they had experienced suicidal thoughts.

Thats why one of JQYs most important offerings is their hopeline, a number that youth can call or text when theyre experiencing a crisis in order to speak to a social worker.

It was mostly aligned so that you would call to speak to someone on the phone, Fried explained, but since the pandemic began, weve shifted much more toward a texting model because people were stuck at home and not able to talk out loud in the same way.

In the past few months, the hopeline has gotten multiple texts and calls every week. Part of the recent donation JQY received will go toward expanding staffing for it.

And while the organization currently only serves young adults between the ages of 13 and 23, it plans to start a program for children under 13 in the coming years in response toa trend of youth disclosingtheir sexual and gender identities at younger ages.

Without JQY, it would be a lot harder for me to reconcile my identities Theyre both part of who I am, whether I want them to be or not.

B. is a 21-year-old from a Mizrahi community in the South who asked to remain anonymous because their parents dont know that they are trans and pansexual.

My parents are very set in their state of mind, and very traditional people, B. said. My older sister has come out to my parents already and I saw how they reacted to that. They still havent really accepted it, a few years later.

When a friend of B.s from summer camp told them about JQY, B., now attending college in Chicago, decided to join a virtual drop-in. Theyve been a regular attendee ever since.

Its made me feel less alone, they said. And theyre particularly excited that Chicago is one of the cities to which JQY plans to expand.

Its really cool for me to see, especially because through JQY Ive met a lot of queer Jewish people who live in Chicago, and a lot of them are younger people, B. said. I think especially for younger people who still live at home and are having difficulty with those experiences, it can be really isolating and lonely.

To have a place where you can go and look forward to attending, I think that means the world.

But opening a drop-in center is not a simple process. It takes a while to begin integrating a JQY chapter into its local community.

In Teaneck, where the process is already underway, getting started has involved a lot of one-on-one and group conversations important work, but time-consuming.

We went in to get to speak to parents of LGBTQ teens, rabbis and educators of LGBTQ teens, tell them about JQY, talk to them about the concerns of the community, get to know the community a little more, figure out with them whats the best location, and get to know some of the local leaders, therapists, and social workers who already work in the community who may partner with us, Levovitz said. Were going to do that in each of our locations.

JQY hopes to open the Teaneck center in spring 2023, the Monsey center in fall 2023 or spring 2024, and the centers in Chicago, Baltimore, and Florida within five years.

Years after they told their parents they were spending time with a friend when they were actually visiting JQY, N., now 21, is out to their parents and attending college in New York City.

Without JQY, it would be a lot harder for me to reconcile my identities, being from a community that puts so much emphasis on Judaism and has that in opposition to my queer identity, they said. Theyre both part of who I am, whether I want them to be or not.

N.s experience means that they have seen JQY and their role within it evolve over the years.

We joke around in drop-in that Im the veteran, they said. Its really been exciting to be that mentor for others that people used to be for me.

Whats really incredible is that even though JQY has branched out its gained some staff members but it still only has a handful of full-time staff its still just as devoted and just as caring to each individual.

Yet even while the demand for resources like those provided by JQY has become more clear, N. says that many rabbis in their Orthodox community still dont know how to deal with community members who are LGBTQ. They know because theyve tried discussing the matter with them personally.

Rabbis have either brushed it off, probably because they were wary of attention, or had very negative reactions, they said.

The worst reaction was from a rabbi comparing being homosexual to being an alcoholic as an urge.

Still, though, N. thinks that speaking up about homosexuality is better than staying quiet, even if it leads to negative reactions. That way, they said, people can at least learn that theres a word for how they feel, and that there are other people out there who feel the same way. Ultimately, they hope, that exposure even if its initially negative will help more people learn about and access helpful resources like JQY.

Thats important, N. said, because once you grow up, no ones going to stop you from being who you are; only you can stop you.

Assuming you dont get in your own way, its important to be able to figure out who you are.

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Jewish Queer Youth 'means the world' to queer Orthodox teens J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on May 29, 2022

Over the last two years, the Bay Areas Jewish schools have gotten larger. And while they welcome that growth, the schools have also had to expand their tuition assistance, lending support to many families whose needs increased during the pandemic.

The Bay Area is home to nine Jewish K-8 schools, from San Rafael to Los Gatos to Walnut Creek. They vary in size, but together have a combined student body of some 1,750 students. The two main Jewish high schools Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco, and Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto collectively enroll approximately 400 students.

Many of the schools experienced unlikely growth spurts amid the two hardest years of the pandemic a trend that was mirrored nationwide.The increased enrollment was greatest at non-Orthodox Jewish day schools, which, unlike Orthodox schools, had previously experienced two decades of slow decline. At the same time, more families sought aid in the face of rising tuition costs and the financial impacts of the pandemic.

Now, with the Covid-19 pandemic well into its third year, the schools are working to retain their expanded student enrollment. They know managing tuition costs is key to achieving that.

At the Brandeis School of San Francisco, the largest of the K-8 Jewish day schools with 336 students enrolled this year, an additional 15 students were added to the rolls during the course of the pandemic, according to head of school Dan Glass. That may not sound like a large number, but given the steady downward trajectory of enrollment in previous years, the sudden uptick was noteworthy.

The growth was definitely a shift, Glass said. Some of the new students transferred from public schools, and current families were not as apt to relocate out of the Bay Area during the pandemic.

At Kehillah Jewish High School, the spike in enrollment was unprecedented, jumping from 189 students before the pandemic to 206 students today. The junior class, in particular, added a significant number of students.

In our current junior class, we enrolled 14 transfer students between August of 2020 and January of 2022, Daisy Pellant, the head of school, said in an email to J.

Its not just Bay Area Jewish schools that witnessed these changes during the pandemic. Eighteen months in, Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, a national network of Jewish day schools and yeshivas, commissioned a study to find out why enrollment at Jewish schools across North America was growing, rather than slumping, for the first time in two decades.

Prizmah recruited Berkeley-based consulting firm Rosov Consulting to seek out the answers. The August 2021 study included interviews with 114 parents of children who transferred to one of 24 non-Orthodox Jewish schools across the United States and Canada during the pandemic. The results were conclusive: Schools saw an average growth of 4.3% in student populations during the 2020-2021 school year.

Five Bay Area schools were included in the survey: Contra Costa Jewish Day School, Brandeis SF, Brandeis Marin, JCHS and Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City.

(Orthodox schools, a separate October 2021 Prizmah study found, didnt have remarkable enrollment gains, growing by about 2.5% over the course of the pandemic.)

The August study found that parents were opting for Jewish day schools because theyd reached a tipping point during the period when many public schools were slow to return to in-classroom instruction, and their children were suffering academically and socially. Jewish day schools were faster to return to full-time classroom instruction, a major draw for Covid transfers, according to the study.

Parents who transferred their students out of public schools were looking for a more stable and reliable place for their children, said Peg Sandel, head of school at Brandeis Marin. The San Rafael school saw enrollment grow from around 175 to 195 students in the 2021-2022 school year.

Jewish day schools were also attractive to families interviewed in the study because they felt the schools did a better job of communicating Covid-19 updates, maintaining strict health and safety protocols, and giving their children more individualized attention from teachers.

We were very meticulous, said Sandel. I think that really helped.

In Palo Alto, Ronit Alcheck Bodner, president of the board of directors at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, said we put together a risk management crew. It really kind of became like a Covid task force.

Drawing on responses collected a year and a half into the pandemic, the survey concluded that, by all indications, this growth would be sustained. Three-quarters of parents who enrolled because of the pandemic planned to enroll their children for another year, while 15% expected to leave and the rest were undecided.

In the October 2021 study, more than 30% of respondents who planned to leave noted that cost was the main factor.

Staying in the school would require a change in their families lifestyle to a degree they are not able or willing to bear. Some of these families also mentioned social factors and the claustrophobic sense created by the small class sizes, the study found.

Annual tuition at the two largest Bay Area Jewish high schools, Kehillah and JCHS, tops $52,000 just shy of the $56,000 tuition for undergraduates at Stanford University. JCHS confirmed that tuition costs increase by approximately 3% to 5% on average every year, standard for most independent schools in the Bay Area, including Jewish day schools.

Tuition at Brandeis SF costs $38,775 for grades K-4 and $39,835 for grades 5-8. In Palo Alto, Hausner, the areas second-largest day school with 315 students this year, costs $33,750 for K-5 and $36,780 for grades 6-8.

Other day schools fall somewhere in between those figures. At the lower end are Contra Costa Jewish Day School in Walnut Creek, which costs $21,750 for K-5 and $24,750 for 6-8, and South Peninsula Hebrew Day School in Sunnyvale, which is $24,050 for K-5 and $26,310 for 6-8.

That said, the amount of financial aid many of these schools provide to families is often significantly more than what large private, non-Jewish peer institutions in the Bay Area provide, according to Rabbi Howard Ruben, head of school at JCHS.

At JCHS, over 60% of students receive some form of financial aid, Ruben said. We actually have a financial aid program for a school comparable to a school two or three times our size.

Kehillah dedicates more than a quarter of its operating budget to financial aid, according to the schools website.

Approximately 40% to 50% of students at Brandeis SF, many of whom go on to attend high school at JCHS, receive needs-based tuition assistance, according to head of school Glass. The aid covers a huge range of tuition costs, from 10% to 90%, while a majority of families get half of their tuition covered.

For us, its sort of the double-edged sword of affordability. On the one hand, how do you make this educational experience as affordable and therefore accessible to as many families as possible? Glass said. On the other handwere always trying to thread the needle of raising tuition as little as possible while still paying competitive salaries for our teachers.

This school year at Brandeis SF, tuition assistance for financial need increased to $3.7 million, Glass said. Two years ago, it was $2.7 million.

My experience over the last stretch of years is were seeing increasing need from the families that are coming to Brandeis, Glass said, noting that this is not unique to his school.

From what I hear from my colleagues in other schools, theyre seeing very similar patterns, that there are more folks that need support in trying to make those tuition payments, Glass added.

Typically a considerable portion of tuition assistance at Jewish schools comes from fundraising efforts, but during the pandemic the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation also increased its funding to schools to cover families in need due to pandemic-specific financial pressures.

It became clear very quickly that there were a number of families that were losing their jobs, losing their income, and they were going to need to apply for tuition assistance when they never had before, said Federation chief impact officer Beth Cousens. So the Federation stepped in.

During the pandemic, the Federation nearly doubled the amount it normally gives to all Bay Area Jewish day schools and high schools, from a collective total of approximately $800,000 to $1.5 million.

At JCHS, with 190 students, our families with the highest levels of financial need have not yet bounced back from Covid financially, Ruben said. That puts a strain on the familiesand it also puts a strain on the school.

Its a strain many schools are feeling, Cousens said. About 15 months ago the Federation, along with the San Francisco-based Jim Joseph Foundation, independently started brainstorming ways to reduce financial pressures on schools and families.

We think that the increase in tuition assistance is going to be permanent, Cousens said, noting that in the three years prior to the pandemic, schools were already starting to see a need for spending more on tuition assistance.

Working with the heads of schools at all of the Bay Area Jewish day schools, plus the Shalom School in Sacramento, the Federation and Jim Joseph Foundation formed the Day School Growth Initiative, now in its first year.

Through a series of research projects funded by the Federation, schools are coming up with ideas on how to resolve an array of potential factors that may inhibit their ability to grow and retain students, from transportation challenges in getting kids to school, to the way the school is marketed to prospective students.

Next year, well look at scaling some of these projectswell look at the research and try to figure out how we turn that into action, Cousens said.

What Jewish schools have that other independent schools may lack, she said, is each other.

We have the capacity now for them to plan together, Cousens said of the new initiative.

The collaborative work and investment from the Federation are steps that give Brandeis Glass a feeling of optimism around school affordability.

Im hopeful that in the next stretch of years, Glass said, that is something we can really solve.

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Pandemic's impact on Jewish schools: more students, more tuition aid J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on May 29, 2022

Israels capital has always been home to diverse Jewish communities.

One of Netflixs most popular new shows is the Israeli import The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. Based on Israeli author Sarit Yishai-Levis bestselling novel by the same name, the show stars Israeli heartthrob Michael Aloni, the star of Shtisel.

The story traces the fortunes of the Ermosa family, a Sephardi clan that has lived in Jerusalem for generations. Much of the drama comes from tensions between the Espanola, the Spanish Jewish community and other Jewish sects. The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem throws a spotlight onto the many diverse Jewish communities whove long called Jerusalem home.

In honor of Jerusalem Day, here is a roundup of a few of those colorful Jewish communities.

In the early Middle Ages, Jews living in Jerusalem maintained distinct customs and prayers. They were led by a sage known as a gaon (a great one), and the gaonim (plural for gaon) of this period traced their family lineages back to the Biblical leaders of Israel.

The glory of Medieval Jewish Jerusalem came to a horrific end when Crusaders attacked the city in 1099. Contemporary accounts describe how the Crusaders forced most of the citys Jews into a synagogue and set it on fire, burning everyone alive. When the Medieval Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela visited Jerusalem in the year 1160, he found a much smaller, traumatized Jewish community living near the present-day Tower of David.

Jerusalems Medieval Jewish community slowly grew again, thanks in part to immigration from other lands. Historian Norman Roth notes that many Jews immigrated to (the Land of Israel) throughout the Medieval period, including Jews fromSyria, Persia, Germany, and even Spain. (Medieval Jewish Civilization, Norman Roth, ed. Routledge: 2003)

Inside the Ramban synagogue, Jewish Quarter, Old City

Entire communities of Jews often moved to Jerusalem along with their spiritual leaders. In 1211, a group of Jews from the French town of Sens relocated to Jerusalem, led by Rabbi Samson of Sens. One of the most famous Jewish sages to make Jerusalem his home during the Middle Ages was Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (also known as Ramban or Nachmanides). He moved to Jerusalem in the 1200s, and established the famous Ramban Synagogue, which still exists as a flourishing synagogue today.

Many of Jerusalems Jews during the late Middle Ages came from Spain, which was then the largest and most vibrant Jewish community in the world. Yet even in the midst of whats sometimes called the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry, Spanish Jews continued to long for Israel, and for Jerusalem in particular.

The Medieval Spanish Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi put this longing into words in his poem My Heart is in the East in which he lamented that It would be easy for me to leave behind all the good things of Spain: it would be glorious to see the dust of the ruined Temple in Jerusalem. Yehuda Halevi did leave Spain and travel to Jerusalem, arriving after an arduous journey in 1141.

Many other Spanish Jews moved to Jerusalem, and in 1492 the trickle became a flood. That was the year that Spains King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella decreed that no Jew could remain living in Spain. Over a hundred thousand Jews fled the country, many settling in Jerusalem. One of the new arrivals was Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura (1445-1515), one of the leading rabbis of his generation, who established Jerusalem as a major center of Jewish scholarship once again.

At first, the new arrivals prayed in the Ramban Synagogue. In 1586, the local Ottoman governor appropriated the Ramban Synagogue, and Jerusalem's Spanish Jewish community built their own house of worship, the Yochanan ben Zakkai Synagogue, which still functions today, serving Jerusalems Sephardi (Spanish) Jewish community.

Four Sephardi Synagogues, Jerusalems Old City

From now until the early 20th century, the streets ofJerusalem would ring with the lyrical tones of their new Judaeo-Spanish language, Ladino, the language of Spanish Jews, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore observes. (Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Alfred A. Knopf: 2011)

Jews have lived in central Asia since ancient times. When the Mongol-Turkic military commander Tamerbek (1336-1405) established Samarkand as the capital of his Timurid Empire in 1370, he employed thousands of artisans in his cities. Many Jews moved to Samarkand and its environs, eventually adopting the local Persian language. These Jews were later called Bukharan, and formed an insular, intensely religious community, spanning present day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

In about 1827 a Jewish traveler named David ben Hillel visited Samarkand. Little is known about his origins: he described himself only as born in Europe, established in Safed near Jerusalem and a devout Jew. He lived in the land of Israel, spending at least some of his time in Jerusalem, and traveled the world raising money for the new building projects of Jerusalems burgeoning Jewish community.

David ben Hillels presence in Samarkand and its environs electrified Bukharan Jews. Many decided to move to the holy city of Jerusalem, and began the difficult journey to the Land of Israel. The first Bukharan Jews reached Jerusalem in 1827. For decades, they sent word to their families and friends in central Asia, fueling yet more immigration. They maintained their own unique customs, even as they mixed with Jerusalems wider Jewish communities.

In the 1880s, as Jerusalems Jews began to build neighborhoods outside of Jerusalem's Old City walls, Bukharan Jews bought property to the north of the city, near the present-day neighborhood of Meah Shearim. This Bukharan Quarter was home to dozens of modest homes. The synagogues were tiny - until one Bukharan Jew named Shlomo Moussaief (1852-1922) intervened. A wealthy merchant, Shlomo encouraged more Bukharan Jews to move to Jerusalem, and opened his own family home to house recent arrivals.

He built a grand synagogue in the Bukharan Quarter. Known as the Moussaieff Synagogue, it contained a Jewish ritual bath, a Turkish-style bath house, a museum (housing hand-written manuscripts by Jewish sages including Maimonides) and housing for poor Bukharan Jews. For years, the Moussaieff Synagogue employed poor Jewish scholars to write religious texts, helping to support Bukharan religious life in the city.

Thousands of Bukharan Jews moved to Jerusalem between the 1820s and the 1920s, but for many years the Soviet Union forbade Jewish emigration to Israel. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, over 5,000 more Bukharan Jews moved to Israel. Many settled in Jerusalem, but by then, the old Bukharan Quarter had changed. Its no longer exclusively Bukharan - yet the area is still incredibly vibrant and the Moussaieff Synagogue continues to thrive today.

Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720-1797) was known as the Vilna Gaon - the Great One of Vilna, in Lithuania. A towering figure in European Jewry, he always wished to move to Jerusalem, but was unable to do so in his lifetime. His students, however, decided to make the Vilna Gaons dream a reality.

The Vilna Gaon

In 1809, 70 of his students traveled to Israel. The journey was difficult; they traveled overland in carriages to Istanbul, then sailed to the Israeli port of Acre. Eventually, over 500 of the Vilna Gaons students and their families made the long voyage. Denied permission to settle in Jerusalem by the Turkish authorities, this community moved first to the northern Israeli city of Safed. After an earthquake devastate Safed in 1837, this community of Jews finally succeeded in gaining permission to settle in Jerusalem. They hoped to lease land for agriculture, but for many years their pleas to become self-sufficient were met with denials from the local Muslim authorities.

By the mid-1800s, the thousands of Jews who called Jerusalem home were horribly oppressed by their Turkish overlords, who ruled the Land of Israel. English writer W. E. Bartlett visited Jerusalem in 1853 and described the horrific situation of Jerusalems Jews:

There are approximately 7,000 Sephardim and 4,000 Ashkenazim. (Those who move to Jerusalem from Europe) usually bring small amounts of savings with them. It is a wretched life in a city where drinking water costs three to five pence for a donkey-load of four gallons. Non-Muslims, if they wandered by mistake into the Temple compound, were beaten to the ground. (Jerusalem Revisited by W.E. Bartlett)

Help came from Sir Moses Montefiore, an Orthodox Jewish nobleman from Italy whod moved to Britain and made a fortune in banking. Montefiore and his wife, Lady Judith Montefiore, traveled to Israel many times starting in the 1820s and they became fierce champions for the rights of Jews, both in the Land of Israel and all over the world.

A consummate diplomat, Sir Moses persuaded the Turkish authorities to close a garbage pit next to the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem which routinely poisoned the groundwater and sickened Jerusalems Jews. In 1860, Sir Moses and Lady Judith funded a Jewish settlement outside of the Old City walls, freeing Jerusalems Jews from the tyranny and squalor of the cramped Jewish Quarter.

The settlement contained housing and even a windmill-powered grain mill so that Jews could mill their own flour and become self-sufficient. Many of the first settlers in the area were the Lithuanian followers of the Vilna Gaon.

Yemin Moshe

The very first buildings that the Montefiores funded were a set of cottages for the poor called Mishkenot Shaanim (Dwellings of Delight). It was part of a wave of innovation that helped Jerusalems Jews venture out of the Old City of Jerusalem and start building the vibrant new neighborhoods that make Jerusalem so stunningly beautiful and lively today. Yemen Moshe still exists, as a popular neighborhood of Jerusalem filled with parks and upscale restaurants and galleries.

Yemenite Jews began to arrive in Jerusalem in large numbers over a hundred years ago. An ancient and intensely religious community, the Jews of Yemen always nurtured hopes of returning to the Land of Israel. In the early 1800s, some brave Yemeni Jews began to make the arduous trek, walking from the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula all the way to Jerusalem, a distance of about 1200 miles.

At the time, Yemeni authorities were increasing their persecution of Yemens Jews, particularly in the capital Sana; messages were arriving from Jerusalem describing the new building taking place their and some Yemeni Jews decided to be part of Jerusalems future.

Shalom Kassar and his father were some of the first Yemeni Jews to arrive in Jerusalem, in 1881. The journey had taken them six months. Dressed in old-fashioned Yemenite clothing and speaking the Yemenite Jews dialect of Arabic, they seemed foreign to Jerusalems Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. Shalom described their first encounter:

As dark fell, we arrived at the Jaffa Gate (of Jerusalems Old City)... At the time, they locked the gates at night. At long last, we arrived at the Jewish market. Sincewe were wearing the clothing that we brought with us from Yemen, we looked different. The Jewish-Arabic language that we spoke was also strange to the people. The Jews from the Old City asked us: Who are you, and where did you come from? And we replied: We are Jews, and we came from the far away place Yemen.

They did not believe us, and they demanded that we show them some signs. We showed them a prayer book and tzitzit, we recited Shema Yisrael - but they still did not believe us. In the end, they took my father into the Beit Midrash (study hall), opened a book of the Talmud, and asked him to read it. He read several lines fluently. Only then did they believe that we were really Jews (When the Yemenite Pioneers Arrived in Jerusalem)

As more Yemeni Jews poured into Jerusalem, they built homes in Silwan, an ancient area adjacent to the Old City walls that is mentioned in the Talmud as a place where Jews used to joyously gather on the holiday of Sukkot in ancient times. There was already a Muslim village on the site: an 1870 Turkish census records 92 houses in the village. Starting in 1881, Yemenite Jews moved into Silwan; a 1891 record shows theyd built an additional 45 houses in the southern end of the village. Soon, Silwan was a major center of Yemenite Jewish life in the city. In 1948, during Israel's War of Independence, Jordan seized the Silwan neighborhood, along with Jerusalem's Old City, and forced all Jewish residents to leave. Yemenite Jews relocated to Israeli-held neighborhoods in the west of the city.

The center of the Jewish world for over 3,000 years, Jerusalem today is home to Jews from every corner of the world, each bringing their own beautiful traditions and customs with them, ensuring that every Jew, no matter where they come from, feels at home there.

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The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem: 6 Jewish Communities Who've Long Called Jerusalem Home - aish.com - Aish

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Posted By admin on May 29, 2022

In Gov. Gavin Newsoms $300.6 billion spending proposal for the upcoming year sent to the state Legislature on May 13 $93.2 million is allocated for issues on the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of Californias legislative agenda.

JPAC executive director David Bocarsly said the advocacy network, which lobbies in Sacramento to make sure the voice of the states Jewish community is heard, has never seen so many of their priority items funded this early in the budget process.

We think our lobbying efforts made a huge impact. We think our partnership with the Jewish caucus and their leadership made a huge impact, said Bocarsly, who has been on the job since January after serving for three years as the director of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.

Items in the governors draft, known as the May Revise, are expected to remain in the final budget, Bocarsly said, once the Legislature finalizes its own proposal and reconciles it with the governors budget by June 15.

Of the $93.2 million allocated, $50 million will go to the states Nonprofit Security Grant Program, an initiative for which JPAC and the caucus lobby heavily every year. The NSGP provides $200,000 grants for security measures to California nonprofits including synagogues, mosques and Planned Parenthood centers that are considered at high risk for hate crimes.

In 2021-22, Bay Area Jewish organizations received more than $4 million through the NSGP.

JPAC asked for $80 million for the program for 2022-23, as last years allocation of $50 million a previous all-time high funded several organizations but left many without resources, Bocarsly said. Nonprofits arent allowed to apply for the grant two years in a row.

I still think it wont meet the demand, but it will do a significant amount of work to get close to it, he said.

This budget draft also calls for $40 million to rebuild summer camps damaged by recent wildfires. The six camps ticketed to receive funding include URJs Camp Newman in Santa Rosa and two other Jewish camping entities: the Wilshire Boulevard Temple Camps and the Shalom Institute, both in Los Angeles County.

Camp Newman was nearly destroyed in the Tubbs Fire, losing 81 of its 90 structures. The camp has raised more than $65 million for its rebuilding efforts, camp leadership said, from personal donations and grants from the state. Camp Newman has been allotted $11.83 million in the proposed budget.

Camp Newman executive director Ari Vared said that this allocation will be the largest lump sum the camp has received so far.

I live and I think the whole community lives with just immense gratitude for the recognition of the important roles that we play, not just as a Jewish summer camp, but also as a year-round retreat and conference center for the whole community, Vared said.

Also included in the proposed budget is $1.4 million for the Governors Council on Holocaust and Genocide Education and $1.8 million for the Commission on the State of Hate, two other programs supported by JPAC.

The proposed funding comes after JPAC Advocacy Day on May 9-10, when hundreds of politically minded Jews gathered in Sacramento to lobby legislators and the governors office for JPACs legislative items. These included the Holocaust Survivor Assistance Program, which provides resources for Jewish family service agencies, and the proposed California Extended Case Management Program, which, if created, would aid refugees, asylum seekers and trafficking victims.

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When U.S. soldiers fought Germany during World War II, there was one group that was particularly motivatedabout 2,000 mostly German and Austrian Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis and then returned to Europe to take on their tormentors as members of American military intelligence.

The so-called Ritchie Boys were among roughly 15,000 graduates of training programs at Camp Ritchie, a former National Guard Camp in Maryland named for the late Maryland Governor, Albert C. Ritchie. Many of the German and Austrian Jewish refugees reported to Camp Ritchie while still designated as "enemy aliens." In exchange for their knowledge of German language, culture and topography, which proved critical in extracting information vital to the war effort, the Army offered citizenship.

The Ritchie Boys were one of World War IIs greatest secret weapons for U.S. Army intelligence, said Stuart E. Eizenstat, shortly before becoming chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2022, when the museum bestowed the Ritchie Boys with the Elie Wiesel Award, its highest honor. Many had fled Nazi Germany but returned as American soldiers, deploying their knowledge of German language and culture to great advantage. They significantly helped the war effort and saved lives.

The Ritchie Boys, some of whom landed on the beaches at Normandy, helped to interpret documents and gather intelligence, and conducted enemy warfare. Divisions that liberated concentration camps included hundreds of Ritchie Boys, who interviewed survivors. According to the Holocaust Museum, two Jewish soldiers were taken captive and executed after being identified as German-born Jews, and there were about 200 Ritchie Boys alive as of May 2022.

Investment banker David Rockefeller and civil rights activistWilliam Sloane Coffin were among the Ritchie Boys, who were assigned to every Army and Marines unitand to the Office of Strategic Services and the Counter Intelligence Corps.

Although members of the Ritchie Boys were awarded more than 65 Silver Stars, their group was not very well known during the war. That changed over the years as the Ritchie Boys began to receive more recognition. In addition to the Holocaust Museums award, the U.S. Senate passed a resolutionin 2021 honoring the bravery and dedication of the Ritchie Boys, and recognizing the importance of their contributions to the success of the Allied Forces during World War II.

David S. Frey,a history professor and director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide at the United States Military Academy,said that in the late 1930s, Gen. George Marshall, then the Army Chief of staff, realized that if the United States was going to war, it needed battlefield intelligence capabilitywhich its military lacked.

In the age of mechanized warfare, you need to know what these large armies look like, what their capabilities are, how theyre arrayed, Frey says. So to get that kind of information, particularly from those you capture on the battlefield, you need people who are trained to get that information. To do so, they learned photo analysis, terrain analysis, aerial reconnaissance, enemy army analysis, interrogation, signals intelligence and much more.

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At a time when the U.S. military urgently needed foreign language speakers, the Ritchie Boys offered a key resource. Many were foreign-born or had lived abroad for significant amounts of time. The group also included large numbers of first- or second-generation Americans who still spoke German or other languages at home, Frey says.

There were at least 30 languages spoken at Camp Ritchie, but the preference obviously was for German speakers because most of the enemy forces would be German, Frey says.

He added that the military chose intelligent people because they had to process a tremendous amount of information." They were asked, in some cases, to memorize battle books, which told soldiers about the enemys organization, structure, capacity, leadership and experience. Some of these books, Frey says, were nearly 500 pages long by the end of the war.

After the war, Frey says, a survey of battalion commanders concluded that intelligence gathered by graduates of Camp Ritchie was responsible for at least 60 percent of actionable intelligence for the Western Front Theater.

Some faced antisemitism from their fellow soldiers. Most of the guys in basic training were Southerners who hated the Jewish boys from New York and busted our chops most of the time, George Sakheim, who had fled to the United States by way of Palestine, told POLITICO Magazine.

Many of the Jewish refugees lost family members, and at the end of the war, they searched for them.

Some of them were very involved with the collection of information that became the basis of the trials at Nuremberg and subsequent war crimes trials, Frey said.

Beginning in September 1944, the United States military trained Japanese Americans at Camp Ritchie, and their language skills were also used in the war effort, this time against Japan. Frey noted similarities between the Jewish refugeeswho were considered enemy aliens until mid-1942 because they had come from countries the United States was at war withand Japanese Americans who had been interned.

Its not just a story about Jewish emigres, Frey says, its also a story of what I would call marginal soldiers and their defense of this country.

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Earlier this year, on a spring day in France, Barbara Belmont was finally able to honour her late father a man she never knew.

Belmont, 80, was just three years old when her father, Pvt. Albert Belmont, was killed in the Second World War. Her mother remarried soon after, and her stepfather adopted her and her siblings.

"As with many families from World War II, and I guess other previous wars, they tend not to talk about a family member that is killed in war because it's too painful," the Alexandria, Va., woman told As It Happens guest host David Gray. "We were not allowed to discuss our father."

Only as an adult did she realize what hole this left in her heart. She'd never had a chance to mourn.

But in April, at the Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint-Avold, France, she was finally able to pay her respects. With her daughters by her side, she criedover her father's grave as the cross on his headstone was replaced with a Star of David.

The rededication ceremony was courtesy of Operation Benjamin, a U.S. non-profit that identifies Jewish American soldiers who were given Christian burials then works to honour their true Jewish heritage.

"It was so important to me on the two levels, because I would like to have some closure, and also because I wanted my daughters to feel a connection to my real father," she said.

Operation Benjamin estimates there are more than 500 Jewish American soldiers who were mistakenly buried as Christians with crosses as their headstones.

Shalom Lamm, the group's CEO, says these errors were sometimes part of the fog of war. Young men died in breathtaking numbers, and their remains were often reburied several times before they ended up intheir final resting places.

But more often than not, he said, it was the soldiers themselves who hid their identities, putting P for Protestant orC for Catholic on their dog tags.

"Most often, it was a Jewish soldier having the good sense to say: 'If I'm captured by the Germans and I'm identified with an H on my dog tag, which stands for Hebrew, that's probably a really bad thing," Lamm said.

"And that hunch turned out to be true. Very sadly, we know historically it's a fact [that] Jewish [prisoners of war]were often separated from the U.S. comrades, and many were sent to the Berga concentration camp, where many of them were worked to death or executed."

Lamm first became aware of the problem when he had a conversation with a friend, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, who had just returned from a tour of the Normandy American Cemetery in France in 2014.

Schacter saw a sea of white crosses, but only a handful of Stars of David. This didn't sit right with him,Lamm said.

After all, he says 2.7 per cent of U.S. Second World War casualties were Jewish. That means that more than 250 of the 9,500 American soldiers buried in Normandy would likely have been Jewish. But there were only about half as many Jewish headstones.

"So it was a simple question: Where did all the Jews go?" Lamm said.

The duodecided to investigate. Not knowing where to begin, they started with a Christian headstonethat bore a Jewish sounding name Benjamin Garadetsky

"It's almost embarrassing to say, because it's so amateurish. But what did we know?" Lamm said.

But their hunch proved correct. Garadetsky was, indeed, Jewish. They spent several years tracking down his living relatives.

In 2018, Garadetsky's grave was rededicated with a Star of David, and Operation Benjamin was born. Since then, Lamm says the group has rededicated19 headstones, and has 27 more under review.

"Our goal is to do this for these young men and give them the recognition in death that they were denied, and then disappear into night, job done," Lamm said.

"We don't accept money from the families of these heroes. There's no financial goal here. We don't want anything from the families. We want to introduce them to their relatives."

Many of the family members Lamm speaks to know verylittle about their relatives who died in battle, Lamm says.

Barbara Belmont says she didn't even see a photograph of her father until she was about 13 or 14. Her older sister had kept one hidden. Then, in her senior year of high school, she had a conversation with her paternal grandmother.

"Shetold me that he was a wonderful man. He was very generous. He gave to many causes. He was a successful businessman," she said. "Withouthesitation, he would give it to family, to friends, whatever. And that was the first I really knew about him," she said.

She learned a little bit more about him as an adult from her uncle Nathan. He told her that his brother had donated money to help build a Jewish community centre in his hometown of Syracuse, N.Y.That was the first inkling she got that her father's Jewish identity was meaningful to him.

"He said to me that his greatest wish would be that my father's headstone could be a Star of David and not a Latin cross," Belmont said. "I would have done just about anything formy Uncle Nathan, but I certainly didn't know how I was going to do that."

Years passed, but her uncle's wish was always in the back of her mind.So she was thrilled when Operation Benjamin reached out.

Finally, she says, she had an opportunity to do something to honour her father'ssacrifice and feel some closure.

"I felt very strongly that the Jewish religion meant something to him, and so that is why I felt so good about knowing that I could do this," she said.

"I did it not only for his younger brother and my uncle, Nate, but I did it for myself. But I did it mostly for my father."

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview with Barbara Belmont produced by Leslie Amminson.

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As we recoil from the vicious hate crime in which ten innocent African Americans were murdered, we commit our communities to uniting to fight ideologies of hatred that threaten all of us and threaten the very fabric of the diversity of the United States of America.

Those who would want us to disappear would like nothing more than for us to be divided and at war with each other.Instead, as Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Christians, and African Americans we declare that we are proud of who we are, and along with the majority of Americans of any color and ethnicity, we will not let Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave be replaced by a xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic, antisemitic and Hinduphobic paranoid subset who do not understand what America is all about.

We stand together; we have each others backs; We are committed to examine and eliminate the racism dwelling in people and institutions and societies and we will strive to uplift one another.

Through our diverse narratives and histories, we come together to protect not only our communities but the very essence of our country.

The latest tragedy involving a school shooting in Texas reminds us that we have much work to do, but we should all comfort each other, protect each other and find a way to work together to bring about a more peaceful world.

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Hadidi, President, Michigan Muslim Community CouncilPhillip J Neuman, President, JCRC/AJCRabbi Asher Lopatin, Executive Director, JCRC/AJCNarayanaswamy Sankagiri, President, HCRCRev. Dr. Wendell Anthony, President, NAACP Detroit BranchSteve Spreitzer, President and CEO, Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and InclusionBob Bruttell, Vice Chair, InterFaith Leadership Council

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COLUMBUS, Ohio Members of the Jewish community spoke out Thursday against an abortion ban in the Ohio House, citing that this legislation infringes on their religious freedom.

As abortion continues to be a hot topic across the state and the country, House Bill 598 had its third hearing. The Human Life Protection Act is a total abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. It is a trigger bill, meaning that if passed, it will only go into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Religious leaders, doctors, advocates and community members spent the day testifying about why Ohio shouldn't enact it.

"These beliefs are neither Jewish nor are they respectful of the right of Jewish people to practice our religious values in accordance with Jewish law," Sharon Mars, senior rabbi at Temple Israel Columbus, said.

A major argument brought up in testimony today was religious freedom. Mars explains that H.B. 598 violates her liberty.

"This isnt our belief," she said. "H.B. 598 is not in the flow with what Jewish law commands."

RELATED: Ohio bill would ban abortion without rape exemption

There are three main reasons for this, she said.

"One, it places tantamount the mother's life, even over the fetus, but her life takes precedence," the rabbi said. "Secondly, the child is not considered a child until it actually has left the womb a soul is not a soul, a person is not a person until it leaves the womb. And thirdly, the important thing that I try to emphasize is that not only the physical health of the mother is at stake, but also the mental health, which is critical in this whole conversation."

The Talmud states that a fetus is "mere fluid" before 40 days gestation, however, it is not considered to have a life of its own or independent of the pregnant person's body until "the onset of labor and childbirth," according to the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW).

The Torah also says that the Jewish law doesn't consider a fetus to have the status of personhood, nor can it be murdered, since it is not alive, the organization stated.

"Jewish law insists that the viability of a fetus is somewhere around 24 weeks of gestation not at conception," Mars said. "Jewish law recognizes both a fetus and a pregnant person as having worth and value, but at no point does a fetus ever have more value than the pregnant person carrying that pregnancy."

Jerry Freewalt with the Catholic Conference of Ohio disagreed, stating he understands that Judaism may think that way, but Catholicism thinks another.

"We do believe that life starts at conception," Freewalt said. "In terms of the Catholic Church, we support the rights of the unborn child."

It also supports the mother, he added. His religion has charities, hospitals, schools and services that help people before, after birth and during the raising of the child, he said.

"There's an opposing side to the abortion issue, and I listened to it, but I want to say that we still believe that every life is worth something from the moment of conception," Freewalt added.

It's expected that different religions have different beliefs, but one organization told News 5 that the bill supporters do not represent their faith.

"We at Catholics for Choice are here to give a voice for the silent majority who is so often overwhelmed by this very vocal minority who does not represent the real views of Catholics in this country," Shannon Russell, policy director for Catholics for Choice, said.

Russell shared statistics from Pew and Gallop that one in four abortion patients is Catholic and that 75% of Catholics think abortion should be legal either in all circumstances or in certain circumstances.

"At the very core of Catholic faith is the role of individual conscience and that is determining for yourself what you believe is best and letting others do the same," she said. "I think that we as Catholics should follow our consciences in all matters of moral decision making, and also that we should value religious pluralism and diversity because whatever you believe the person next to you might believe differently."

The Catholic Conference of Ohio does not speak for all Catholics, she made sure to point out.

"We can't enshrine one religious view about life or the morality of abortion into law, that's just a violation of our faith and of our Constitution," she said.

Freewalt was able to testify in a hearing that was just for supporters the week prior.

RELATED: Total abortion ban hearing at Ohio Statehouse gets unsurprisingly heated

During that hearing, bill supporters addressed religion, saying it didn't apply in this case.

"The protection of life is not competing with religious rights," Mary Parker, director of legislative affairs for Ohio Right to Life, said.

Many pro-life individuals believe science proves that life begins at conception.

"Science says that each life has its own DNA, it's a living and growing human being," Freewalt said. "We base this on a deep religious conviction, but also on science."

The three doctors in attendance at the hearing would disagree with that sentiment.

"This represents a stunning and sweeping intrusion into the patient-physician relationship and threatens to irreparably harm the health and autonomy of women in Ohio," Dr. Amy Burkett, past chair and current District V legislative chair of the Ohio section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist, said.

Many doctors do not believe they can answer the question of when life begins, since there is no consensus among scientists, according to Swarthmore College.

A study done by the University of Utah found that about 60-70% of fetuses survive pre-term birth by 24 weeks. The Jewish faith believes this as well, according to Mars.

The doctor and her two colleagues, Dr. David Hackney and Dr. Thomas Burwinkel, answered the legislators in a panel session.

"Patient autonomy is at the heart of our decisions in the exam rooms and is at the heart of the reason that House Bill 598 cannot be passed," she said.

Freewalt is free to believe what he wants to believe, but Mars said he should keep it off other people's bodies.

"I ask you to oppose H.B. 598, which disregards my religious tradition and my religious values by codifying someone elses religion in law that governs the bodies of all Ohioans," the rabbi said. "My religious values are not represented in this legislation, and people who hold my religious values will indeed suffer great harm if this bill is signed into law."

It is likely that the Roe v. Wade decision will come out before the next bill hearing, so Mars wants to make the position of her Judaism clear.

"We can't paint with such a broad brush base from one particular religious sensibility or belief system and apply that to all religious faiths, to all people of whatever religious stripe they happen to be," Mars said. "What makes me fearful is the fact that we would apply this broad stroke to individual cases, which are incredibly complicated, one by one, and can't be just reduced to this one particular law."

Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.

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Toronto Police have charged a man who allegedly showed up to a North York Jewish school with a weapon, yelled at students, assaulted a staff member and said I want to kill Jews.

Community members said while these types of antisemitic incidents are always alarming, this one was especially scary in light of a mass shooting that occurred at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., the day before, where 21 people were killed.

An incident like this, especially on the heels of the horror that happened at a U.S. school earlier this week, its been very disturbing. And obviously no hate crime is more disturbing than one that appears to target children, as this one did, said Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, director of policy at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, who helped the school work with investigators.

Toronto Police are investigating the incident as a suspected hate-motivated crime.

According to news release, the man was riding a bike through a school property in the Lawrence Avenue West and Bathurst Street area when students confronted him for being on the property.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center identified the school as Yeshiva Gedolah.

The man allegedly left the scene, returned as short time later and started yelling at students. Police say he made antisemitic comments Kirzner-Roberts says an investigator told her he said I want to kill Jews.

Police say the man was confronted by school staff and a fight occurred. A staff member was assaulted and threatened.

Police would not confirm what kind of weapon was found, nor the extent of the injuries.

According to Kirzner-Roberts, the staff member who confronted the man was reportedly a cook at the school and a former member of the Israeli Defense Force.

The man was allegedly a delivery person for Uber Eats, Kirzner-Roberts was told. Uber did not respond to a request for comment.

Kirzner-Roberts said, according to her understanding of what happened, the man was advancing on the children and uttering threats.

Kirzner-Roberts praised the staff member who reportedly confronted the man.

The staff member was able to somehow hold or apprehend the perpetrator until police arrived. So obviously, were very grateful that something much worse that could have happened was averted . We look forward to learning more about what sounds like a heroic staff member.

Marvin Rotrand, national director of The League For Human Rights with Bnai Brith Canada, thanked the police for apprehending the man and laying the charges.

Its going to reassure a lot of people. And while it may well be an isolated incident, it still causes a lot of concern in the community, he said.

Jews are the most targeted group in Canada for hate crimes. While comprising only 1.25 per cent of the Canadas population in 2021, they faced 61 per cent of all police-reported hate incidents against religious minorities, according to Bnai Briths most recent annual audit of antisemitic incidents.

Ontario recorded 821 antisemitic incidents in 2021, which includes harassment, vandalism and acts of violence, down from 1,130 such incidents in 2020.

The one caveat that I have is before everyone congratulates themselves the number of violent incidents in the province went from three to 25, Rotrand said.

In other parts of the country, the number of overall incidents increased, including in British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta. Nationally, the total number of antisemitic incidents rose from 2,610 in 2020 to 2,799 last year.

Kirzner-Roberts lamented the kind of fear these incidents create in the Jewish community, whose members sometime feel like theyre perpetually living on edge.

It speaks to this moment of fear that I guess has become a reality for those of us in the Jewish community, she said.

In our community, its normal to have armed guards outside of our religious buildings, community buildings and outside of our schools and its just so unacceptable that this has become necessary.

Police have charged Kyle McLeod, 21, of Toronto, with causing disturbance, uttering threats, assault, assault with a weapon and possession of a dangerous weapon. He is scheduled to appear in court on July 28.

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There are many hundreds of small textual differences between the Jewish and Samaritan Pentateuchs, the most important of them being a long addition in Exodus 20:17 mentioning Mount Gerizim, and the wording in Deuteronomy 27:2-8 (God had already chosen this place, Mt. Gerizim). A recently analyzed fragment of Deuteronomy 27:4 from Qumran possibly strengthens the Samaritan reading (as does the ease with which the Solomon-built Temple kingdom had disintegrated). Most Jews of our time remain confused as to the physical location of Mount Zionthe one where the Zion Gate in Jerusalem is, a southwest hill heavily built up by Christian buildings and cemeteries, the Temple Mount (the former eastern hill), or the City of David (the southeast hill).

John Hyrcanus (135-105/4 BCE) the Hasmonean, led an army to Mount Gerizim and burned the Samaritan altar (or temple) in about 112 BCE. The date of the destruction of the Samaritan temple, the 21st of Kislev, became a Jewish holiday on which it is forbidden to mention the dead. Herod rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple, and many other huge temples of the Levant, built in the span of a couple of decades, were then partially modeled on the Third Temple of Herod, like the temples of Damascus , Palmyra, and Baalbek.

David Flusser in his article No Temple in the City, writes that:

Apparently, many Jews were not happy with the Third Temple of Herod, or even with the Second Temple, as was evident by the existence of the Jewish Temple of Yeb/Elephantine; the Temple of Honio/Onias at Tell al-Yahudi/Leontopolis in Egypt, and the existence of a sect noncommitted to the Jerusalem Temple and identified mostly with the Essenes and Qumran. This theology of living without the Temple can be seen also in Josephus writings, as Michael Tuval has recently demonstrated in From a Jerusalem Priest to a Roman Jew: On Josephus and the Paradigms of Ancient Judaism.

In perhaps the most important eschatological Jewish tradition preserved in the Babylonian Talmud, the Temple is replaced by some kind of a floating Kangdizan enormous Iranian paradisical city rooted in Zoroastrian mythology and located somewhere far away, maybe not here at all, and adorned with precious stones.

In Rev. 21:15ff., the measurements of the New Jerusalem are given, based on Ezekiel 40-48, but on a scale a thousand times larger. Parallel descriptions appeared in Qumranic texts in Aramaic 4Q554 and 5Q15 and other texts from the Dead Sea area. The city is built with precious stonesthis is based on Isaiah 54:11-14, cf. Tobith 13:15-17; the chapter of Isaiah is red, in Oriental rites, as the Haphtarah for the Parashath Noah, when the story of Noah is read in the synagogue, so the rabbis made the connection too, see further. This passage is referred to in Rev. 21 and on the same passage is based Tobith 13:15-17. The 12 gates of the city are mentioned (Rev. 21:21) together with the motif of all the 12 tribes reunited, which is based on Ezekiel 48:33-34, cf. 4Q554. The list of the jewels used as the foundations of the wall is modeled on the jewels on the breastplate of judgment of the High Priest (Exodus 28:15-19), implying that the descending city itself is founded on one crucial element of the Temple service. All this implies the gathering of the Faithful of Israel (in the extant text of Rev. 21:24, based on Isaiah 60:3,5, and Psalms 68:30, just ta ethn, *,) from all the corners of the world in this Noahs Ark-like gigantic vessel of Salvation.

In this cubic New Jerusalem, there will be neither sin nor lie (Rev. 21:27).Lie is a concept central to Iranian Zoroastrian tradition. There will be no sea anymore, another notion that has negative connotations for Zoroastrians, as in the old Canaanite religion[s]. There will be no more night and the city has no need for the sun or the moon. There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, and there shall be no more pain.

This description of the New Jerusalem is reminiscent of the way Yimas Vara or Kandgiz are described in Iran.

Yima was the First Man and the First King in Ancient Iran (in fact, there was another first human couple in Iran, too). His name means Twin and he corresponds to Indian Yama, god of Death and Justice, and this Indian Yama tortures bad people in his world of Yama, Yamaloka, or in the place of man, Naraka.

Later, during the late Sasanian period and the first Islamic centuries Yima the Shining became Jamshd, a local avatar of King Solomon/Suleiman. Everything that can be told about Solomon can be told of Jamshd, and vice versa. Both flew on magic carpets, had wondrous chalices and seals, had many things to do with demons, had magic seals, lost their thrones, and so on. And both were great inventors and builders, too.

In an Iranian text, the Late Avestan Vendidad 2.21ff., Ahur Mazd, the benevolent supernatural being of Zoroastrian tradition, spoke to Yima instructing him to build a Vara, a huge subterranean enclosure, in order to keep specimens of all the good creatures before a coming snow deluge inflicted by devils. This corresponds to the Semitic Flood motif.

As translated into English by the great French-Jewish scholar, James Darmesteter (1849-1894), The Vendidad, in: Max Mller (ed.), The Zend-Avesta, Part I (SBE, vol. 4). Oxford: OUP 1880; American Edition 1898:

The Vendidads account of Yimas Vara might be late and influenced by the biblical and Mesopotamian stories about the Flood. This is supported by the fact that Vendidad is a late text, containing at least two Semitic words (namely, tanra, oven, Vendidad 8:91, and ttuk, clay, Vendidad 6:51) and a couple of Greek ones. Furthermore, in the Shhnmahs account of Yima (there Jamd) has no Vara. Rather, it has demons who build Jamd palaces the way they served Solomon. This would seem to imply that the story about Yimas Vara could not have been part of the original Iranian myth and thus was easily dropped, unlike the more authentic stories about Kangdiz, below.

It is clear that Yimas Vara is very similar to Noahs Ark; the main difference is that this is a city, though an underground one, with streets, water courses, gardens, and everything one might expect to find in a paradise, and not a sea vessel, like Noahs Ark. Yet Kangdiz can travel like a vessel, just as the Sabh of Yama, the Indic twin of Iranian Yima (Mahbhrata 2.8.1-5) did:

Kangdiz has walls of gold and silver and 15 gates. This description recalls that of the New Jerusalem, with its 12 gates. Moreover, it can move and is some kind of a paradise on earth. Aydgr Jmspg 7:2-8, a Pahlavi revision of a lost Parthian composition, has the following to say:

We have seen that Kangdiz is some kind of a remote floating paradise; but so is the New Jerusalem of Rev. 21, where the Faithful of Israel can be kept from sin, night, pain, and darkness. Rev. 22 (cf. Rev. 21:6) describes a river of the water of life. It flows through the middle of the great street of the city from the Throne of God, with the Tree of Life that bears 12 fruits planted by the rivers of water. This brings forth its fruit in its season (cf. Ps. 1:3) every month, and the leaves of the tree are the healing of the nations.

The idea of a mobile Jerusalem can also be traced in the Bible. The description of the new Jerusalem in Ezekiel 40:2 can be understood in the sense that Jerusalem shall move southwards from the Temple Mount and the new city of huge proportions shall be set on a mountain:

Ezekiel 40:2 is probably the earliest documentation of the Iranian perception of a moving city.

Isaiah 60, on which Rev. 21 is modeled, belongs to the part of the Book of Isaiah that is referred to as Trito-Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66), as distinct from Proto-Isaiah and Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55).

The author of Proto-Isaiah lived in Jerusalem in the mid-eighth century BCE, under the kings Uzziyah, Yotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

Deutero-Isaiah was a contemporary of Cyrus the Great (?-530 BCE). Deutero-Isaiah was also a propagandist, one would say politruk, of Cyrus, whom he called the Messiah. It was, in fact, noted immediately after the decipherment of the Cyrus Cylinder how close the style of both the Cylinder and Deutero-Isaiahs Cyrus passages are. It was Deutero-Isaiah who called Cyrus the anointed one (Isaiah 45:1-6), and prophesized that Cyrus will rebuild My city and set My exiles free (Isaiah 45:13), and described Zion as Gods wife rejected, but taken back. Deutero-Isaiah is also the first clear-cut example of monotheism in the Bible, declaring (Isaiah 44:6):

Both Rev. 21:6 and the Muslim shahdah are based on this verse.

Isaiah 40:3-5 describes the return of the exiled to Jerusalem on a wide straight road, a kind of strat of Pahlavi texts dealing with the entrance of the blessed dead into the Zoroastrian paradise, or sirt al-mustaqm, the straight Roman road (via strata) leading to the resurrection of the dead, as appears in the srah al-Ftiah. This passage was taken up by all four Gospels and applied to both John the Baptist and Jesus.

Trito-Isaiah is a name of an author, or a group of authors, influenced by Deutero-Isaiah, who lived during the Return to Zion organized by Cyrus. Both Deutero-Isaiah and Trito-Isaiah are full of Iranian imagery, and it was mostly via these two compositions plus Ezekiel that Iranian ideas entered Jewish lore. For our discussion here it is important that Trito-Isaiah (Isaiah 66:1) is the first example in the Bible to have put in doubt whether God needs a temple or sacrifices:

As is well known, Zoroastrians have no centralized temple cult and no sacrifices. So, it seems that the notion of a paradisiacal city (replacing the Temple) entered Jewish lore in the period of the Return to Zion.

In the rabbinic literature, the tradition that the future Jerusalem would be built from precious stones appears in Pesiqta deRab Kahana, 18, and in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 100a, and in Baba Bathra 75b. In the latter it appears toward the end of the chapter One who sells the ship, where the future Jerusalem appears as a vessel of Salvation over turbid waters, a new Noahs Ark for the Righteous ones to whom the New Covenant will be given.

The notion of the heavenly Jerusalem appears only twice in the Babylonian Talmud: Taanith 5aand Baba Bathra, as mentioned, which is parallel to Rev. 21. It is in the eschatological passage of Baba Bathra 75b that we find traces of the no Temple in the City tradition. In Baba Bathra 75b the rabbis discuss the legal implications of selling a ship, a mundane affair in Mesopotamia, and then they turn to stories about naval journeys reminiscent of those of Sindbd the Sailor, and treasures hidden in the depth of the sea.

First came a huge tsunami. The Leitmotiv is Ps 107.23-30, though unmentioned and unquoted, then Jeremiah 5:22 is quoted. Then the rabbis knowledge of Zoroastrianism is introduced, to signal to the listener or reader that there come things Iranian:

Rabbah said: I by myself saw a Hurmiz son of Lilawatha who was bouncing on the wall of Maoze on the cupola and a rider, galloping below on horseback could not overtake him.

Once they saddled for him two female mules in the bridles on two bridges of the Rognag; and he jumped from one to the other, backward and forward, holding in his hands two cups of water, pouring alternately from one to the other, and not a drop fell to the ground. On that day They mounted up to the heaven, they went down to the deeps; their soul melted away because of trouble (Ps 107:26; this is where the biblical Leitmotiv is signaled). When the kingdom heard [of this] they put him to death.

Of course, hrmazd is God in Zoroastrianism, and not a demon; it is Ahriman, hrmazds Satan, who should be looked for here.

Then comes Urzila, a mythological bull, as big as Mt. Tabor (Urzila translated Tannin in the Babylonian tradition). This Urzila drops his kuftas (cowplop) and his droppings block the course of Jordan River (cf. Ps 114.3, unquoted); this Urzila might be an avatar of Ridy from BT Taanith.

Then, in the manner of Had Gadya, comes a frog as large as HGRWNY fortress, then comes the tannina who swallows the frog, then comes the Iranian mythological bird (see further) who swallows the tannina, and then sits on a very high tree.

Then comes the fish Kwwr/Kwr, so big that from his bones they can build cities. On the back of this Kwwr/Kwr fish, the sailors were preparing their food, until the fish felt the heat (like in stories of St. Brendon, Sindbd, and an Iranian mythological hero, Kershsp).

Then comes a giant griffinlike bird standing in deep and turbid waters, Zz day (Ps 50.11 & 80.13-14), the king of the birds, whose ankles rest on the earth, and his head reaches to the sky.

The above, though having sailors stories as the peshat, and some of the last Psalms as the Leitmotiv, is modeled on a chapter in the Zoroastrian Pahlavi composition Bundahin, where the list of, basically, the same fabulous creatures, is given.

Then our BB stories turn towards a journey in the desert, with an Arab (or, Taya) guide, who shows Rabbah Bar Bar anah the fat and suffering; geese; the dead and giant bodies of the Dead of the Desert ( ; and the generation of those who left Egypt but was unworthy to enter the Promised Land. They lie there as drunk, huge men. Bialik wrote a Hebrew poem based on this short Talmudic description.

Then the Arab guide shows Rabbah Bar Bar anah Mt. Sinai, and the motives of Exile/Flood are introduced. The guide shows his Vergil the sufferings of Korah and his community; they are cooked inside pans in the Gehenna (a similar description is found in a Zoroastrian text that is a distant forerunner of Dantes Divine Comedy; the BT is the first attestation of this Iranian motif).

William Blake, Behemoth and Leviathan, 1825-26The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Then back to the naval stories; here comes again the fish Kwwr/Kwr, who is a horned Sea Goat, then pearls and precious stones in the depths guarded by sharks, some of the kept for the wife of anina ben Dosa in the World to Come; then stories about Leviathans, then back an excursion in the desert, back to the tanninim. The Almighty kills the sea monster Yamm, as in the Canaanite mythology; then there comes the known story about the Feast of the Righteous ones on the flesh of Leviathan, and an inside joke about fishmongers in the markets of Jerusalem (apparently, an old one, prior to the destruction), and how tabernacles will be made from the hide of Leviathan for the righteous ones.

Then Lev 26.13 is quoted (I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright, ), understood that the men will be bigger twice than the First Adam, introducing thus the shiur Qomah mysticism; people will be more close to their Lord than the First Adam was, and then Ps 142.12 is quoted understood in the sense that people of Israel themselves will be the Temple.

The creatures that appear in these passages are taken from Iranian lore, among them the kara-fish of Vendidad 19:42 and Yasht 14:29 and the avatar of the urinating donkey living in Kangdiz.

The rabbis then address the question of what is to be done with the remains of the shining hide of Leviathan, a naval creature. The Talmud expounds a verse from Isaiah 54:11-12, leading to the topic of precious stones as building material for a new Jerusalem. However, in order to better appreciate the Talmudic discussion, the whole of Isaiah 54, on which Rev. 21, and especially Rev. 21:18-21, is constructed, must be borne in mind:

After having discussed the precious stones, the Talmud in Baba Bathra 75b has a passage interpreting a verse from Isaiah 4:4-6 that speaks of the appearance of the sanctuary on Mount Zion in the glow of the fire and pillars of smoke. This is understood as referring to the glory of the righteous ones and of a new Jerusalem.

It is into the midrash interpreting this verse as talking about the future of Jerusalem that an account is inserted which deals with an Old Man who shows Rabbah bar Bar Hana a lower Jerusalem. Rabbah bar Bar Hana is an authority on the Temple service as it comes to dimensions and locations and to a situation when there is no Temple at all:

The story about the lower Jerusalem appears after a tradition in the name of Rabbi Yohanan had been introduced, interpreting an obscure verse from Zechariah 14:10 as saying that the lower part of Jerusalem will be inhabited. The Talmud deduced from this that the lower part of future Jerusalem will be three parasangs afar from its upper part.

Thus the Old Man leads the hero of the Sindbd-like portions of the Talmudic chapter, Rabbah bar Bar Hana, to the place where one can see the future Jerusalem ready-made in the heavens to descend one day to earth. He tells Rabbah bar Bar Hana that the inhabitants of this future Jerusalem will travel within the city flying like doves, quoting the verse from Isaiah 60:8 ( / Who are these who fly like a cloud, and like doves to their roosts?). Thus, the future Jerusalem is a completed structure of huge dimensions, whose parameters are defined with respect to a numerology of three, floating in the heavens like a spaceship in which the righteous fly like doves. Its walls are decorated with precious stones, but it contains no distinct Temple since the city itself is a kind of the Temple, populated by people who are Temples themselves.

And now let us consider Baba Bathra 75b. We find there the following passage:

What is implied by and over her assemblies? (Isaiah 4:5). Rabbah said in the name of R. Yohanan: Jerusalem of the World to Come will not be like Jerusalem of the present world. [To] Jerusalem of the present world, anyone who wishes goes up, but to that of the world to come only those invited will go. Rabbah in the name of R. Yohanan further stated: The righteous will in the Time to Come be called by the name of the Holy One, blessed be He; for it is said: Every one who is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory. I have formed him, yea, I have made him (Isaiah 43:7).

R. Samuel b. Nahmani said in the name of R. Yohanan: Three were called by the name of the Holy One; blessed be He, and they are the following: The righteous, the Messiah and Jerusalem. [This may be inferred as regards] the righteous [from] what has just been said. [As regards] the Messiahit is written: And this is the name whereby he shall be called, The Lord is our righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6). [As regards] Jerusalemit is written: It shall be eighteen thousand reeds round about; and the name of the city from that day shall be the Lord is there (Ezekiel 48:35). Do not read, there but its name.

R. Eleazar said: There will come a time when Holy will be said before the righteous as it is said before the Holy One, blessed be He (Isaiah 6:3); for it is said: And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called Holy (Isaiah 4:3).

Rabbah in the name of R. Yohanan further stated: The Holy One, blessed be He, will in the Time to Come lift up Jerusalem three parasangs high; for it is said: And she shall be lifted up, and be settled in her place (Zechariah 14:10). In her place means like her place. Whence is it proved that the space it occupied was three parasangs in extent? Rabbah said: A certain Old Man told me, I saw ancient Jerusalem and it occupied [an area of] three parasangs. And lest you should think the ascent will be painful, it is expressly stated: Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their roosts (Isaiah 60:8). R. Papa said: Hence it may be inferred that a cloud rises three parasangs.

This future Jerusalem, inhabited by the righteous, will be airborne. While R. Hanina b. Pappa said that Jerusalem in the midst of which is Thy Name, Thy sanctuary (miqdakha) and the righteous and then said further that the future Jerusalem would have no walls no one followed him. On the contrary, Resh Laqish, a third-century CE amora who lived in the Roman Land of Israel, is immediately quoted to have said that the Lord would, in the Time to Come, add to Jerusalem a thousand gardens, a thousand towers, a thousand palaces, and a thousand mansions, but he did not mention the Temple. Then the giantomaniac mentions of three or 30 Jerusalems are added. There is no gathering of the dispersed exiles, nor the gentiles and their kings coming to the light of Jerusalem, as in Rev. 21, but an exclusive spaceship for the elite.

In an effort to explain why there is no Zoroastrian central temple, Yaakov Elman wrote that the Israelites were heirs to a Mesopotamian tradition of a temple devoted to a city-god, while Iranians stemmed from a different tradition. Indeed, for whatever reason, Zoroastrians failed to develop a central temple cult, but they did create a stock of legends about remote mythical places, such as a huge movable paradisical city of Kangdiz built of jewels. It seems that in our Talmudic chapter we have the oldest documentation that these stories were current in Sasanian (or even Arsacid?) Babylonia. It is the purely Iranian convoy of the eschatological conclusion of the Talmudic chapter in Baba Bathra that makes the annulment of the Temple in the future Jerusalem under the impact of the lack of a temple in Kangdiz more plausible.

One might wonder about the relevance of the sea when speaking of such a land-locked city as Jerusalem (in fact, all the sacred and important culturally cities of the Levant, with the important exclusion of Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon, are deep in the hinterland). The sea is considered demonic by Zoroastrians, but this is also the case with the ancient Canaanite religion, where Yamm (the Sea) and Lotan (the Leviathan) are among the antagonists of the chief Canaanite gods. However, in Baba Bathras chapter the whole apocalyptic narrative is the crescendo for the naval stories and strange things happening in the sea. It is in the floating Noahs Ark of the future Jerusalem that salvation from the maritime voyage of life can finally be achieved, exactly as Tertullian had it: This city we affirm has been provided by God for the reception of the saints by resurrection, and for their refreshment with abundance of all blessingsspiritual onesin compensation for those which in this world we have either refused or been denied.

From the Ark of the revival of life to the Ark of the living dead, the surprising outcome of this Talmudic discourse would be that the rabbis already knew what so many of us feel: Fuck This Dying Planet. Then they return, as usual, to discuss the legal aspects of selling a ship.

See the article here:

The Floating Space City of the Jews - Tablet Magazine

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