Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 18, 2022

This article originally appeared on The Jewish Experience, Brandeis Universitys website devoted to Jewish issues. Subscribe to the monthly newsletter.

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Shema Yisrael, or the Shema, is the central affirmation of Judaism.

The prayer expresses belief in the singularity of God, that is, in Gods oneness and incomparability.

It is traditionally recited twice a day, as part of the morning (Shacharit) and evening (Arvit or Maariv) services.

It serves as the climax of the liturgy on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Jews often recite the prayer as their dying words, including Jewish martyrs who, throughout the ages, made it their final profession of faith before being put to death.

Brandeis University professor of classical rabbinic literature Reuven Kimelmansaid the Shema summons Jews to feel an all-consuming love of God.

Its a love that is unreserved, all-demanding, at all times, in all places and in all circumstances, he said. Nothing is excluded. Thoughts are to be focused, words are to be spoken, and deeds are to be done.

The prayer dates from the first millennium B.C.E. when it was recited as part of regular services in the ancient temple in Jerusalem. It consists of three separate passages taken from the Hebrew Bible: Deuteronomy (6:49 and 11:13-21) and Numbers (15:37-41).

Below, Kimelman, a leading scholar on the Jewish liturgy, provides a translation and line-by-line analysis of the first passage, which is the best known.

Though this opening verse is now taken as the ultimate affirmation of monotheism, it seems likely that the ancient Israelites originally saw it as a declaration of monolatry.

Monotheism holds that there is only one God for all peoples, in this case, the God of the Hebrew Bible. Monolatry recognizes that there are other gods, but that the Israelites believe in the God of the Hebrew Bible.

In the Talmud, a compendium of rabbinical commentaries gathered between 200 and 500 C.E., the rabbis offered a new interpretation of this verse. They wrote, the Lord is our God applies to the present and the Lord is one to the future.

The idea is that Jews are the ones who acknowledge God in the present, while in the future, the hope is that all humanity will. Thus, the verse is seen as promoting universal monotheism, not monolatry, an interpretation that stuck forever after.

This verse is a threefold demand to love God. It serves as the opening for a miniature manual on the art of loving. Acting out the behaviors of love promotes the corresponding feelings of love. Going through the motions fosters the corresponding emotions.

Looking at each part of the verse separately:

In the Bible,leivcan refer to both thought and feeling, so with all yourleiv entails being totally mindful of Gods teachings and accepting them wholeheartedly or unreservedly. By using a single term for thought and feeling, both mind and emotion are enlisted in an all-consuming love.

Possessing both biological and psychological elements,nepheshin the Bible constitutes the self or ones life force. All yournephesh goes even further than just the self, connecting to the children mentioned later in the prayer.

The expression thus connotes a personhood that includes ones self and ones progeny.

Meodhas a double meaning here.

First, it means might, suggesting you must love the Lord with all your strength. Second, it connotes financial means, suggesting you must love the Lord with all your wealth and possessions.

This is the basis for saying the Shema twice daily.

This verse refers to tefillin (phylacteries), small leather boxes with straps that Jews wear during prayer. They are placed on the upper arm across from the heart and on the head between the eyes. The boxes contain parchment scrolls with verses from the Shema in Hebrew (along with other biblical paragraphs that mention tefillin).

Tefillin connect to the meaning ofmeodas might. Symbolically, tefillin are a means of harnessing ones mightphysically (on the arm), emotionally (in the heart) and intellectually (between the eyes).

It somewhat follows the model of Exodus 13:9 and 16, where the tefillin worn on the hand evokes Gods mighty hand delivering the Israelites from bondage in Egypt.

This is a reference to the mezuzah, decorative cases Jews post on the doorposts of their homes. The verses in the Shema taken from Deuteronomy are written on parchment inside.

A mezuzah connects to the meaning ofmeodas financial means. The home is the quintessential possession and financial investment. The Shema commands that it be dedicated to the love of God as symbolized by the mezuzah.

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The Opening of the Shema Prayer Explained - jewishboston.com

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Posted By admin on May 18, 2022

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch (seen here in 1980) was seen as slow to respond to the AIDS crisis. Photo by Getty Images

By Benjamin IvryMay 17, 2022

A decorous, unjudgmental New York Times article appeared May 7 about the sexuality of the late American Jewish politician Ed Koch.

Based on interviews with Koch friends and sympathizers, the article described how the onetime New York mayor publicly denied his own homosexuality, while admitting it to intimates, a fact that is long familiar to theatergoers who saw Larry Kramers 1985 play The Normal Heart or Tony Kushners Angels in America (1991).

Kramer and Kushner, both gay Jewish writers, excoriated Koch in their works for having been slow to react to the outbreak of AIDS when he served as mayor in the 1980s. One theory is that Koch did not wish to appear to favor the sexual minority he belonged to, since AIDS at the time was incorrectly identified as mainly affecting gay men and intravenous drug users.

Jack Drescher, clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, wrote to the Times in response to the article to express his anger about the closeted mayor who refused to advocate forcefully enough for his fellow citizens, with tragic results for many New Yorkers.

The Times article inspired more ire in the form of a petition signed by a number of gay Jewish journalists and colleagues, including Lawrence Mass, co-founder of Gay Mens Health Crisis; journalist Donna Minkowitz; activist Allen Roskoff; publisher Mark Segal; and historian Sarah Schulman.

All objected to the wistfully sympathetic tone of the article, which relied on accounts by Kochs friend, the journalist Charles Kaiser, of Ukrainian Jewish origin, and implied that the Times belated reportage about Kochs sexuality was any revelation.

In fact, the subject was all too familiar to alert observers of the political scene since the 1970s. As the petitioners note, Koch made a repugnant political decision to avoid creating new public benefits and new costs for the city budget. He wanted to avoid being associated with an infectious disease that was killing gay men and IV drug users.

The article was supposedly published in response to an ongoing attempt to remove Kochs name from the Queensboro Bridge, officially renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge in 2011. It may also be worth inquiring whether a Jewish politician, regardless of their sexuality, might reasonably be expected to empathize with suffering humans, especially those in persecuted minority groups.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his 1963 speech on Religion and Race, delivered in Chicago, reminded listeners that the prophets great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. The prophet is a person who suffers the harms done to others.

This attitude conformed with the command in Leviticus 19:34 to love the stranger as yourself. Amid repeated exhortations to protect the socially vulnerable in the Torah, strangers are referred to dozens of times, since those unlike us were also created in Gods image, the Book of Genesis tells us.

And the Babylonian Talmud (Nedarim 40A) states that Rabbi Akivas compassion toward the sick was such that he stated: Anyone who does not visit the sick, it is as if he has spilled blood.

So even had Koch not been gay, Jewish tradition would argue that compassion was required of him. Yet on the contrary, his response for several years after the AIDS crisis was brought to his attention was obliviousness and inaction.

In 1981, New Yorks gay community called on Koch to do something about AIDS, but only 21 months later the Gay Mens Health Crisis was granted an inconclusive meeting with the mayor, who waited until 1988 to take any real action against the pandemic, which by then had already killed several thousand New Yorkers.

The filmmaker David France argued in 2013 that Kochs greatest failure was that he seemed to lack even the faintest stirrings of empathy when the AIDS crisis came. As has been chronicled repeatedly, Koch stood silent through years of headlines, obituaries, and deaths.

It is as though Koch, France went on to say, couldnt empathize with the dying or the rest of us who stood helplessly at their bedsides.

Koch, who had started his career in politics as a progressive, sponsoring gay rights legislation, turned into a different kind of politician when he aspired to occupy Gracie Mansion. On the campaign trail, he denounced New Yorkers who exploited social welfare programs, calling them poverty pimps, an insult seen as having racial connotations.

His confrontational, pugilistic rapport with constituents soon created problems with African Americans, as Bryant Rollins, editor of the Amsterdam News, declared in 1979: Koch has operated with arrogance and disdain toward the Black community in New York City. He doesnt take criticism well.

Koch characteristically replied, If you hit me, I hit back. His espousal of bellicosity as a response to protest inspired him to write a 2012 editorial approving Vladimir Putins suppression of dissenters who had staged a rally in Moscows Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Koch deemed the protest religious hatred and likened it to a 1989 demonstration at New Yorks St. Patricks Cathedral by the AIDS activist group ACT UP against the Catholic Churchs banning condom use and sex education as pandemic prevention measures.

Koch did not suddenly become a Putin supporter; he gradually transformed into someone capable of approving a murderous dictator. As the civil rights advocate Richard Socarides noted in 2013, Kochs long-disputed sexuality was a smoke screen for more fundamental leadership problems on life and death matters. Socarides concluded that, had Koch possessed the courage to overcome the era in which he lived and its prejudices, he could have done enormous good in this [sociopolitical] arena, even later in his life, when there were no more elections to win.

That never happened, reportedly because he refused to give his longtime adversary Larry Kramer the satisfaction of admitting that he had been lying for all those years about his sexual identity.

Instead, Koch privately ogled gay art films like Come Undone (2000), directed by Sbastien Lifshitz and starring Jrmie Elkam, of Moroccan Jewish origin, likened to soft-core pornography by the Jewish journalist Maer Roshan, a friend of Koch.

While Koch indulged himself, gay Jewish politicians able to win elections in America remained scarce, lacking role models after the retirement of Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts in 2013.

In 2020, Alex Morse, now town manager of Provincetown, Massachusetts, lost the primary for Massachusettss 1st Congressional District to the incumbent. And the septuagenarian Barry Wendell will be Democratic candidate for Congress this autumn in West Virginia. Wendell told the Jewish Telegraphic Agencyin February that as a Jew, of course I believe in miracles that happen every day. But it probably would take a miracle to defeat the Republican candidate.

Wendell claims that his spouse, Rabbi Joe Hample of Congregation Tree of Life, a Reform synagogue in Morgantown, West Virginia, encouraged him to compete. As Hample explained: Isnt it a Jewish value to stand up and be counted? At the beginning the Book of Numbers, we stand up and we are counted. I think thats huge.

Ed Kochs refusal to acknowledge the sufferings of others at a time of crisis may be, as David France and other critics suggest, the single most significant aspect of his public life, but it is surely the most un-Jewish aspect of his career.

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Why Ed Koch's response to AIDS was very political and not very Jewish - Forward

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Posted By admin on May 16, 2022

Nicholas Fuentes hosting his weekly livestream "America First with Nicholas Fuentes"

1. Nicholas Fuentes is a white supremacist leader and organizer and podcaster who seeks to forge a white nationalist alternative to the mainstream GOP.

Nicholas Fuentes first gained widespread notoriety in 2017 when he left Boston University after he reported receiving threats tied to his attendance at the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He has since become a prominent white supremacist pundit and organizer who has united disparate groups within what was until recently known as the alt right. In 2017, Fuentes began hosting his livestream show America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes, which attracted a cult-like following. Fuentes refers to these supporters as Groypers or the Groyper Army, who see their bigoted views as necessary to preserve white, European-American identity and culture. They believe that the mainstream conservative movement is just as responsible as liberals and the left for destroying white America, and that Groypers are the true future of the conservative movement.

Fuentes seeks to carve out a space that deliberately and publicly challenges the mainstream conservative movement while doubling down on themes central to the white supremacist movement. Fuentes and his America First adherents vocally support the closure of the U.S. borders to immigrants, while opposing liberal values such as feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. Fuentes views these societal changes as the bastardized Jewish subversion of the American creed. The Founders never intended for America to be a refugee camp for nonwhite people. He often uses his platform to further conspiracy theories about the impending destruction of the white race, also known as white genocide. In one Tweet, Fuentes stated, Our civilization is being dismantled, our people are being genocided, and conservatives cant think past what will play well with liberal media in the next election.

His podcast, titled America First, was initially inspired by the speeches and platform of former President Donald Trump. However, Fuentes later adopted the term for his own purposes after distancing himself from the GOP platform to attract young conservatives. Fuentes and his followers angrily objected to the Trump administrations embrace of Israel, as well as mainstream conservatives support for globalism, (a right-wing slur/theory about a cabal of elites who are controlling the world), endless wars and other issues they felt ran counter to a truly America First agenda.

In an effort to further distance himself from the mainstream GOP, Fuentes founded the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in 2020. AFPAC ostensibly serves as a counterweight to the annual CPAC event held at the same time, which is largely attended by mainstream conservative activists and elected officials. In 2021, AFPAC included a variety of right-wing pundits, including Michelle Malkin and Steve King, along with white supremacists like Vincent James Foxx of the Red Elephant. Speakers expressed contempt for the Republican Party, describing members as sell-outs willing to betray their constituents.

AFPAC 2021: (Left to Right) Paul Gosar, Steve King, Nick Fuentes, Michelle Malkin, Jon Miller and Vincent James - Twitter

2) Nicholas Fuentes believes that he is working to defend against leftist cultural changes that are destroying the true America: a white, Christian nation.

While Fuentes promotes white supremacist beliefs, he adamantly claims not to be a white supremacist, calling the term an anti-white slur. Rather, Fuentes positions himself as Christian conservative who opposes societal shifts on immigration, abortion and more -- as nefarious efforts, led by the left, to fundamentally erode Americas Christian values. This cloaking of ideology is a ploy to attract mainstream support and distract from the groups fundamentally white supremacist ideology.

Fuentes often pulls on themes prevalent in the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory, or what Fuentes calls Great Replacement REALITY. This idea focuses on the belief that native white Europeans are being replaced in their own countries by non-white immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, with the end result being the extinction of the white race. Fuentes tweeted in June, If you are a White male zoomer, remember that the people in power hate you and your unborn children and they will try to genocide you in your lifetime. Fuentes attempts to streamline his extreme ideology by aligning himself with Christianity and traditional values. During his AFPAC keynote speech, Fuentes asserted that even though adherents of the America First movement are sheep among the wolves and the snakes, they will ultimately prevail as they have the protection of God and Jesus.

Fuentes rejects the mainstream Republican Party, claiming that many Groypers, including himself, were once strong Trump supporters but are now angry that the Republican Party is not doing enough to deal with demographic and cultural changes that affect the white population in the U.S. According to Fuentes, the new Republican Party is the party of climate change, universal health care and black lives matter. Fuentes and his followers often dress in suits and ties to project a mainstream conservative image, highlighting the Groypers central goal of disrupting and replacing the established GOP. Fuentes says his vision is to redefine the right-wing by solidifying the political realignment that Donald Trump initiated in 2016 under the banner, slogan and principles of America First.

Like many other right-wing extremists, Fuentes often blankets his bigoted beliefs in sarcasm and ironic humor; he uses cartoonish memes and just joking banter, all while spreading white supremacist propaganda. During an April taping of his show, Fuentes responded to an audience members question about how to respond to his wife getting out of line, saying, Why dont you give her a vicious and forceful backhanded slap with your knuckles right across her face disrespectfully and make it hurt?...Just kidding of coursejust a jokeI would never lay a hand on a women, unless she had it coming. Fuentes often uses terms like culture as substitutes for more divisive terms such as race, and promotes American values as a code for white culture and identity. Fuentes largely avoids blatant white supremacist language, and instead focuses on anti-establishment thinking targeting the GOP, mainstream media and leftists. This strategy, along with adoption of mainstream meme culture like Pepe the Frog, allows the America First movement to attract younger, mainstream conservatives, who are then exposed to the groups extremist ideology.

Nicholas Fuentes at MAGA Million March on November 14, 2020. Fuentes served a prominent role in promoting and organizing Stop the Steal events nationwide.

3) Fuentes has used his platforms to make numerous antisemitic and racist comments.

Fuentes has made a number of racist and antisemitic comments under the guise of being provocative and ironic. For example, he has referred to Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh as shabbos goy race traitor because he works for Jews (Ben Shapiro, a Jewish conservative, runs the Daily Wire). On a livestream episode, Fuentes jokingly denied the Holocaust and compared Jews burnt in concentration camps to cookies in an oven. On May 24, 2021, Fuentes participated in a debate on right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones InfoWars with Robert Barnes, a man described as a constitutional lawyer who has legally defended both Jones and Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse. During the debate, Fuentes made numerous antisemitic remarks, including, "I dont see Jews as Europeans and I dont see them as part of Western civilization, particularly because they are not Christians. In April, Fuentes appeared to urge mainstream Republicans to champion an antisemitic focus on Jewish control, tweeting, The next big frontier for populist and conservative inc [sic; this is the America First term for establishment GOPers] to coopt [sic] is discussing Jewish Power. Somehow I dont think theyll broach that one!

Fuentes asserts that whites are under attack and that minorities are changing the texture of life in America. Fuentes often speaks about the white supremacist ideas of race realism, a belief that ones race governs traits such as behavior and intelligence with non-whites being inferior to whites. For example, Fuentes tweeted, Any serious person thinking about globalization and demographic changes should actually care a lot about racial differences in intelligence. But this subject doesnt interest you because its not convenient for your trojan horse brand of kosher nationalism.

Recently, Fuentes used the aftermath of the Derek Chauvin verdict as proof that minorities are being put at the top of a racial caste system. During the 2021 AFPAC, Fuentes remarked further on the rising civil rights movement championed by Black Lives Matter, stating White people founded this country. This country wouldnt exist without white peoplepeople are done being bullied. Fuentes has also made racist comments asserting that segregation and policies in the pre-civil rights-era American South was better for them, its better for us, its better in general.

Fuentes has repeatedly been suspended from a number of social media and video and audio sharing platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, Spotify, Venmo, Stripe, Clubhouse as well as numerous others, for violating terms of policy with his hateful, bigoted rhetoric and imagery. Most recently, he was banned from his podcast streaming service, DLive, following his attendance at the pro-Trump rally on January 6, and now hosts his show on Alex Jones platform, Banned.Video. This move to a more fringe platform service may prompt Fuentes to produce even more extreme content.

4) Fuentes promoted election fraud narratives and encouraged his adherents to participate in nationwide Stop the Steal protests.

Fuentes served as an organizer and speaker at many Stop the Steal protests leading up to the January 6 attack on the Capitol including protests in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Washington, DC. Fuentes attended the Million MAGA March in November alongside fellow Groypers, where he addressed a crowd of American Firsters, stating, We are not going to live as captives. This is our Republican Party. This is our country. USA! In the days leading up to January 6, Fuentes continued to promote the myth of election fraud. On January 4, Fuentes posted a video on DLive tacitly urging followers to kill state legislators, before he seemed to backpedal: What can you and I do to state legislators besides kill them? Although, Im not advising that, but I mean, what else are you going to do? In the lead up to January 6, Fuentes received an estimated $250,000 (13.5 bitcoins) in donations, supporting his attendance at the rally in Washington, DC.

Fuentes and other members of America First were present at the Capitol on January 6, about which Fuentes said, This is awesome...we have been beat up and betrayed and spit on and stepped on for decades. And to see the tables turned for once was a little bit refreshing. Fuentes was seen that day giving a speech near the Capitol encouraging his followers to keep moving towards the Capitol it appears we are taking the Capitol back! While Fuentes does not appear to have physically entered the Capitol building, individuals wearing America First merchandise appeared in videos and images inside the building.

America First flag inside the U.S. Capitol

On January 6, 2021 America First supporters illegally climbed up a podium that had been set up for the 2021 Presidential Inauguration. There they raised an America First flag.

Since the attack on the Capitol, Fuentes claims that his bank account has been frozen, he has been placed on the federal no-fly list, and has been banned from Airbnb, Facebook and Instagram. Fuentes described these actions as overt political persecution. Due to this alleged ban, Fuentes was unable to attend the Big Tech Press Conference in Florida, an event he organized with a variety of right-wing pundit speakers including Michele Malkin and Laura Loomer. Although Fuentes links his no-fly status to the Capitol riot, Fuentes reportedly had an altercation on a December flight over the issue of mask mandates.

5) Fuentes has been embraced and praised by a spectrum of far right-wing fringe conservatives, providing him a larger platform for elevating the America First movement.

Fuentes has been embraced by a variety of figures on the far-right, from fringe GOP figures to dedicated white supremacists. His success in attracting a sizeable attendanceas well as right wing-influencers and elected officialsto his events, like AFPAC and the Big Tech Conference in Florida, show the rallying effect of Fuentes and the America First movement. Right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin, who has recently embraced white supremacist rhetoric, has aligned herself with the America First movement, praising their shared mission to end mass migration, restore law and order, and conserve and uphold actual conservative values.

Fuentes has attracted the attention of elected officials, including U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizonas 4th congressional district. Fuentes claimed to be hosting a fundraiser and roundtable event in honor of Rep. Paul Gosar on July 2nd in Phoenix, Arizona. While Gosar has in the past participated in America First events, including the 2021 AFPAC, Gosar at this time claims to have had no prior knowledge of this fundraiser. Gosar has routinely appealed to the America First movement, tweeting in response to the outrage regarding his own appearance at the 2021 AFPAC, Not sure why anyone is freaking out. Ill say this: there are millions of Gen Z, Y and X conservatives. They believe in America First. They will not agree 100% on every issue. No group does. We will not let the left dictate our strategy, alliances and efforts. Ignore the left. The upcoming event between Fuentes and Paul Gosar is part of Fuentes White Boy Summer road trip.

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Nicholas J. Fuentes: Five Things to Know | Anti-Defamation League

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Posted By admin on May 16, 2022

Since 2015, Jonathan Greenblatt has served as the director of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization devoted to chronicling and fighting anti-Semitism in American society. Amid a rise in anti-Semitic incidents documented by his group, and with hate crimes in general on the upswing, Greenblatt, a former special assistant to Barack Obama, has been speaking harshly about the tendencies he believes exacerbate anti-Semitism. One of those tendencies is anti-Zionism, which, in a recent speech, he referred to as an ideology rooted in rage, comparing it to white supremacy, and adding, Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. This comes at a time when a vocal minority of young American Jews has called for one secular, democratic state across Israel and the Palestinian territories.

I recently spoke by phone with Greenblatt. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why hate crimes are increasing, the historical roots of anti-Zionism, and whether its bigoted to oppose a Jewish state.

What is the mission of the A.D.L. and how do you see it specifically since you took over?

The A.D.L. is interesting. Its one of the oldest civil-rights organizations in the country. Its mission has not changed since our original charter was written in 1913: to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all. It always had this mission, which is both particular and universal. The founders believed in this idea that you might call intersectional, that the Jewish people could only be safe when all people were safe, and only when all minorities were free would the Jewish people truly be free. So the organization has had this integrated approachparticularist and universalist at the same timefor more than a century.

What is the challenge for an organization whose mission is both particularist and universalist? Is there tension there?

I think it is a creative tension or a healthy tension, but there certainly does exist the necessity of finding how those things interoperate. So, for example, in 1952, the A.D.L. wrote an amicus brief in the Brown v. Board of Education case and did so because our leadership in the nineteen-fifties, long before it was fashionable to fight for civil-rights issues, had come out strongly in favor of them, in favor of integration, in favor of desegregation. There were some among our volunteer base who said, Why is the A.D.L. getting involved? Thats not a Jewish issue. But our management in the nineteen-fifties said, Actually, this is our issue. Its essential to who we are. Then later that same decade the A.D.L. came out in favor of immigration reform and did a lot of work in civil society in support of what became known as the 1965 Immigration Act. There were some among A.D.L. who said, Why is this our issue? The A.D.L. leadership said, No, it actually is our issue.

When I stood up against the proposed Muslim registry, in 2016, or when I went to the border and I was a very loud opponent of the way they were detaining undocumented children and separating them from their parents, some people have said, These things arent Jewish issues. Again, I think the way we treat people of different faiths, the way we treat people who immigrate to this country or come as refugees, speaks entirely to who we are. So I think this is exactly what the A.D.L. is all about and always has been.

Your group has released statistics indicating that anti-Semitism is on the rise in America. Why do you think that is?

The F.B.I. tracks hate crimes, meaning felonies and misdemeanors, reported through local law-enforcement agencies, that are crimes against an individual or an institution because of an immutable characteristic like faith, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin. The A.D.L. also tracks anti-Semitic incidents. So lets say acts of harassment, or bullyingthat might not rise to the level of a hate crime. Law enforcement doesnt care if a kid gets bullied at school, but we do. We collect this information through our twenty-five offices across the country, as well as through lots of individuals and organizations. The F.B.I. 2020 statswe dont have 2021 yetsuggested hate crimes are up six per cent over all. We calculated in our most recent audit a thirty-four-per-cent increase in anti-Semitic incidents. That is consistent with an unfortunate pattern thats emerged since 2016, where instances have been on the rise pretty much every year.

So whats the cause of that? Political polarization and the coarsening of the public conversation has taken a lid off of politeness and people are now saying things in public spaces they just never did before. People are more vituperative with one another and going after each other. So I think thats No. 1. I think No. 2 is the penetration of conspiracy theories: making wild claims about individuals such as George Soros or Sheldon Adelson or the Zionists or whatever. Now conspiracy theories are everywhere, and Jews are often at the center of them. No. 3, I think extremists are emboldened in this environment and you see them literally running for school boards, running for Congress. The last thing is that almost seventy-five years since the Holocaust, the collective shame that was there fifteen, twenty, thirty years ago has somewhat receded.

Recently, you a gave a speech where you said, Against the backdrop of rising anti-Semitic incidents, we will thank the G.O.P. leadership for their statements of supportand demand that they call out the bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracies of their candidates and elected officials. Against this same backdrop, we will applaud Democratic leadership for their statements of supportand demand that they call out the statements of those in their party who knowingly traffic in anti-Zionist tropes and make malicious claims against the Jewish state. You tagged this rise to 2016, and most of the examples you listed were things I would associate with Republicans and especially Donald Trump. Is the major issue here Donald Trump and the course the G.O.P. is on? And is that course broadly not conducive to Jews thriving?

America has been not only the most vibrant democracy in memory but the open, liberal-minded society that we have here has been the best for the Jews. And historically you can see that the Jews tend to thrive in these open, democratic environments, where people are judged on the content of their character. We tend not to do very well in authoritarian societies. We tend not to do very well in the places where civil rights are diminished or squelched. All these freedoms have a lot to do with Jews prospering.

I worry a great deal about the diminishment of civil rights and the diminishment of these values and privileges that we really cherish. We have politicians or public figures who liken COVID precautions to Nuremberg laws. I think thats frightening. Holocaust distortionism, which is what I would describe that as, is a slippery slope that tends not to end very well for Jewish people. So, to answer your question, that does worry me a great deal because I do think its a slippery slope toward more illiberal policies.

I was asking whether partisanship and extremism more broadly were the problem, or whether it was the G.O.P. becoming a party that goes whole hog for many of these things.

I think when either party starts adopting conspiracies as if they were facts, that worries me. Youve got people like Marjorie Taylor Greene in the Republican Party who say things that cant be believed.

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Is Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism? - The New Yorker

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Posted By admin on May 16, 2022

Saturday's massacre in Buffalo, New York, is the latest mass shooting in which authorities say the suspect was motivated by hate.The suspected shooter, an 18-year-old white man, shot and killed 10 people and injured three others at a supermarket in a predominantly Black area, authorities said. Eleven of the victims are Black."We'll be aggressive in our pursuit of anyone who subscribes to the ideals professed by other white supremacists and how there's a feeding frenzy on social media platforms where hate festers more hate," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Saturday.Investigators in the case have found evidence indicating "racial animosity," Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn said during a Saturday news conference. The FBI says it is investigating the incident as a hate crime and a case of racially motivated violent extremism.The attack comes amid surging levels of hate crimes across the country. An FBI report published last year found U.S. hate crime reports in 2020 rose to the highest level in 12 years. Also in 2020, the Department of Homeland Security warned white supremacists were likely to remain the most "persistent and lethal threat" in the country.Here are other high-profile massacres in recent years that authorities have said were fueled by hate.A shooter 'hated the Jewish community and Muslim community'John T. Earnest admitted to a shooting at a San Diego area synagogue that left one person dead and three others injured in 2019. In December, Earnest was sentenced to a second life sentence after pleading guilty to a 113-count indictment that included hate crime and weapons violations.He was armed with an AR-15 style rifle when he entered the crowded Chabad of Poway synagogue and began shooting. He also admitted to setting fire to a mosque in nearby Escondido several weeks before the shooting."The defendant targeted his victims because he hated the Jewish community and Muslim community," Randy Grossman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, previously said."The defendant and his hatred have been silenced. He will spend the rest of his days and die in prison, while he languishes behind bars," Grossman said.The deadliest attack on Latinos in modern US historyPatrick Crusius, the man accused of killing 23 people and injuring nearly two dozen others in a 2019 mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart store, was indicted on dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes resulting in death and hate crimes involving an attempt to kill.The rampage was the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern U.S. history.Crusius was accused of killing and harming the victims "because of the actual and perceived national origin of any person," the indictment said. An earlier arrest affidavit said he told police his targets were Mexicans.He has pleaded not guilty and is yet to stand trial. Lawyers for Crusius have said he was in a psychotic state after the shooting and suffers from mental disabilities.11 worshippers killed in a Pittsburgh synagogueIn October 2018, a gunman killed 11 worshippers in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue, in what is believed to be the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the U.S., according to the Anti-Defamation League.Authorities said Robert Bowers targeted Jews online and made anti-Semitic comments during the shooting. Later, while receiving medical care, he told a SWAT officer that he wanted all Jews to die, according to a criminal complaint.Federal prosecutors filed hate crime charges against Bowers, claiming he used anti-Semitic slurs and criticized a Jewish group on a social media site in the days leading up to the shooting.Tree of Life synagogue: Remembering the lives lostFederal prosecutors said in 2019 they would seek the death penalty on charges that include obstruction of free exercise on religious beliefs resulting in death, use and discharge of a firearm to commit murder and possession of a firearm during a violent crime.They said they are justified to seek the death penalty because of the role that Bowers' anti-Semitic views played in the shooting.He has pleaded not guilty and is yet to be tried.A Charleston church becomes a targetIn June 2015, avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof gunned down nine African American worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church -- a historic Black church -- in Charleston, South Carolina.Roof was convicted of federal charges and sentenced to death in January 2017. He was the first federal hate-crime defendant to be sentenced to death, a Justice Department spokesman said."Mother Emanuel was his destination specifically because it was an historically African American church of significance to the people of Charleston, of South Carolina and to the nation," then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in 2015. "On that summer evening, Dylann Roof found his targets, African-Americans engaged in worship."Roof spent months plotting the attack, Lynch said."He was looking for the type of church and the type of parishioners whose death would, in fact, draw great notoriety for...his racist views," she said.Attacker who had talked about a 'racial holy war'Another place of worship -- meant to be a refuge -- was the scene of mass shooting in August 2012.An Army veteran opened fire in a gurdwara -- or Sikh house of worship -- in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six people and wounding four others.Wade Michael Page died of a self-inflicted wound after being shot by a police officer, the FBI said. The shooting came as violent attacks on Sikhs were spiking following September 11, 2001.Then-Attorney General Eric Holder called the attack "an act of terrorism, an act of hatred, a hate crime."According to a man who described himself as an old Army buddy of Page's, the attacker talked about "racial holy war" when they served together in the 1990s.Christopher Robillard, of Oregon, who said he had lost contact with Page, added in 2012 that when Page would rant, "it would be about mostly any non-white person.

Saturday's massacre in Buffalo, New York, is the latest mass shooting in which authorities say the suspect was motivated by hate.

The suspected shooter, an 18-year-old white man, shot and killed 10 people and injured three others at a supermarket in a predominantly Black area, authorities said. Eleven of the victims are Black.

"We'll be aggressive in our pursuit of anyone who subscribes to the ideals professed by other white supremacists and how there's a feeding frenzy on social media platforms where hate festers more hate," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Saturday.

Investigators in the case have found evidence indicating "racial animosity," Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn said during a Saturday news conference. The FBI says it is investigating the incident as a hate crime and a case of racially motivated violent extremism.

The attack comes amid surging levels of hate crimes across the country. An FBI report published last year found U.S. hate crime reports in 2020 rose to the highest level in 12 years. Also in 2020, the Department of Homeland Security warned white supremacists were likely to remain the most "persistent and lethal threat" in the country.

Here are other high-profile massacres in recent years that authorities have said were fueled by hate.

John T. Earnest admitted to a shooting at a San Diego area synagogue that left one person dead and three others injured in 2019. In December, Earnest was sentenced to a second life sentence after pleading guilty to a 113-count indictment that included hate crime and weapons violations.

He was armed with an AR-15 style rifle when he entered the crowded Chabad of Poway synagogue and began shooting. He also admitted to setting fire to a mosque in nearby Escondido several weeks before the shooting.

"The defendant targeted his victims because he hated the Jewish community and Muslim community," Randy Grossman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, previously said.

"The defendant and his hatred have been silenced. He will spend the rest of his days and die in prison, while he languishes behind bars," Grossman said.

Patrick Crusius, the man accused of killing 23 people and injuring nearly two dozen others in a 2019 mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart store, was indicted on dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes resulting in death and hate crimes involving an attempt to kill.

The rampage was the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern U.S. history.

Crusius was accused of killing and harming the victims "because of the actual and perceived national origin of any person," the indictment said. An earlier arrest affidavit said he told police his targets were Mexicans.

He has pleaded not guilty and is yet to stand trial. Lawyers for Crusius have said he was in a psychotic state after the shooting and suffers from mental disabilities.

In October 2018, a gunman killed 11 worshippers in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue, in what is believed to be the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the U.S., according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Authorities said Robert Bowers targeted Jews online and made anti-Semitic comments during the shooting. Later, while receiving medical care, he told a SWAT officer that he wanted all Jews to die, according to a criminal complaint.

Federal prosecutors filed hate crime charges against Bowers, claiming he used anti-Semitic slurs and criticized a Jewish group on a social media site in the days leading up to the shooting.

Tree of Life synagogue: Remembering the lives lost

Federal prosecutors said in 2019 they would seek the death penalty on charges that include obstruction of free exercise on religious beliefs resulting in death, use and discharge of a firearm to commit murder and possession of a firearm during a violent crime.

They said they are justified to seek the death penalty because of the role that Bowers' anti-Semitic views played in the shooting.

He has pleaded not guilty and is yet to be tried.

In June 2015, avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof gunned down nine African American worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church -- a historic Black church -- in Charleston, South Carolina.

Roof was convicted of federal charges and sentenced to death in January 2017. He was the first federal hate-crime defendant to be sentenced to death, a Justice Department spokesman said.

"Mother Emanuel was his destination specifically because it was an historically African American church of significance to the people of Charleston, of South Carolina and to the nation," then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in 2015. "On that summer evening, Dylann Roof found his targets, African-Americans engaged in worship."

Roof spent months plotting the attack, Lynch said.

"He was looking for the type of church and the type of parishioners whose death would, in fact, draw great notoriety for...his racist views," she said.

Another place of worship -- meant to be a refuge -- was the scene of mass shooting in August 2012.

An Army veteran opened fire in a gurdwara -- or Sikh house of worship -- in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six people and wounding four others.

Wade Michael Page died of a self-inflicted wound after being shot by a police officer, the FBI said. The shooting came as violent attacks on Sikhs were spiking following September 11, 2001.

Then-Attorney General Eric Holder called the attack "an act of terrorism, an act of hatred, a hate crime."

According to a man who described himself as an old Army buddy of Page's, the attacker talked about "racial holy war" when they served together in the 1990s.

Christopher Robillard, of Oregon, who said he had lost contact with Page, added in 2012 that when Page would rant, "it would be about mostly any non-white person.

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The Buffalo supermarket massacre is the latest mass shooting authorities say was motivated by hate - WMTW Portland

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Posted By admin on May 16, 2022

How the oldest, most complete and most accurate text of the Hebrew Bible founds its way back to Jerusalem.

I am not sure what Socrates would have made of the internet and social media, but in one of the dialogues recorded by Plato, Socrates criticizes the art of writing as something that would destroy memory. This invention of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember by themselves.1

To some extent Jewish tradition agrees and this is one reason that for over 1,500 years most of Judaism was transmitted in an oral format, known as the Oral Torah.2 Eventually it became clear that due to the circumstances of exile, unless this information was committed to writing it would be lost completely. In about 170 CE Judah the Prince, a Rabbi and leader of the Jewish people, decided to write down the oral information in the form of a six-volume work known as the Mishnah.3

A Torah scroll

There is, however, one text that the Jewish people have preserved, copied and transmitted for over 3300 years in a format unchanged since antiquity the Torah scroll. The scroll, written on parchment in an ancient script, does not contain vowel sounds or punctuation, has variations in the spelling of words as either plene or defective, and has words that are pronounced differently than they are written. All this information is part of the Oral Torah. As the Talmud puts it, Rabbi Yitzak said: The vocalization of the scribes, and the ornamentation of the scribes, and the verses with words that are read but not written, and those that are written but not read are all laws transmitted to Moses from Sinai.4

Concerned that this information would be lost, a group of scholars, known as the Masoretes, decided to write down everything in the Oral Law regarding the text of the Torah scroll. They vowelized the text (nekudot), recorded the cantillation notes which provide punctuation (taamei hamikra or tropp), listed every possible textual variation, and indicated every form of spelling and pronunciation of the sacred text. Because of our veneration for the Torah scroll none of this information may be recorded in the scroll itself the scroll is pure, unadulterated, pristine, ancient Torah nothing else.5

The Masoretes were at the right time and place to engage in the monumental task of preserving the text of the Bible and its Oral traditions.

The Masoretes, primarily the Ben Asher family, lived in the 10th century in Tiberias, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. At that time Tiberias was the scholarly, political, economic and cultural capital of Israel and Muslim conquest had brought with it the import of paper-making technology from China. The Masoretes were at the right time and place to engage in the monumental task of preserving the text of the Bible and its Oral traditions. They paid attention to every single letter, to spaces between paragraphs and chapters, to the texts layout, differences between the written and spoken text and counted the occurrence of words throughout the entire Bible.

The Aleppo Codex

After years of work they produced a codex, a book that contained all the above information both within the text and as marginal notes known as Mesorah.6

Eventually the codex, called the Crown, or Keter, was moved to Jerusalem sometime in the 11th century, but it was apparently stolen by Crusaders at some point. History gets a little murky here, but it seems that the codex was ransomed from the Crusaders at great cost to the Jewish community.

In the 12th century the codex turned up in Fostat, (a city that eventually became Cairo) where there was a large, well-established Jewish community.7 The most famous sage of Fostat was Moses Maimonides, who saw the codex and wrote, The codex on which I relied on for these matters was a codex renowned in Egypt, which includes all the 24 books [of the Bible]. It was kept in Jerusalem for many years so that scrolls could be checked from it. Everyone relies upon it because it was corrected by ben Asher, who spent many years writing it precisely, and checked it many times.8

A page removed from the Codex, where the marginal notes can be clearly seen.

In 1375, Maimonides great-great-great grandson, David. moved to Aleppo in Syria and it is believed that he brought the treasure with him. The codex became known as the Crown of Aleppo, Keter Aram Tzovah, and it was kept by the Syrian Jews in the Great Synagogue of Aleppo, under intense security, brought out only for the occasional consultation or perusal of scholars.

The Crown remained in the synagogue until November 1947. Due to the rise of Arab nationalism, and the pro-Nazi sympathies of the Syrian regime, many believed that the Crown was in danger. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, an historian and Zionist leader, who later became second president of the State of Israel made attempts to bring the codex to Israel but was unsuccessful.

In November 1947 the Syrian government instigated riots against the Jewish population and the Great Synagogue of Aleppo was burnt down. Rumors flew regarding the fate of the codex some said it was destroyed, some said it was saved, some claimed that it was saved by one person, others claim a different savior. Two eminent scholars of the codex, Chaim Tawil and Bernard Schneider, list no less than seven different accounts of the fate of the Crown.9

The Great Synagogue of Aleppo before and after the riots of 1947

After the State of Israel was established and the border with Syria was closed efforts to recover the Crown became much more difficult. Yitzchak Ben-Zvi enlisted the aid of the Israeli security services, and involved diplomats, spies and Rabbis in returning the Crown to Israel. Unit 504, a top-secret section of the Israeli Military Intelligence specializing in infiltration of agents into Arab countries was also involved (my security clearance is not high enough to confirm this). This was the unit that took part in obtaining the Dead Sea Scrolls later.

Here again, there are many different versions of what happened, but eventually the Crown, albeit with missing sections and damaged by fire and fungus, came back to its birthplace, Israel. Now the focus turned to preserving the Crown and researching the surviving parts.

Second president of the State of Israel, Yitzchak Ben-Zvi with a Hebrew manuscript.

A manuscript written in Tiberias, Israel in the 10th century, traveled to Jerusalem, was kidnapped and ransomed, taken to Egypt, from there to Aleppo, Syria and from there back to Jerusalem, Israel. The Crown of Aleppo is a symbol of Jewish continuity, of Jewish devotion to the Torah, and of the return of the Jewish people to its ancient homeland.

For further reading: The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible, by Matti Friedman

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The Scandalous History of the Aleppo Codex - aish.com - Aish

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Posted By admin on May 16, 2022

Title: People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted PresentBy Dara HornW.W. Norton & Company, 272 pages

Dara Horns newest work, People Love Dead Jews, explores a wide array of topics, all centered around one theme: Why do people seem to love dead Jews so much? Under the surface of this question, she explores whether this love for dead Jews in China, in America, in literature, in our own mythologies and histories devalues the vibrant life of Judaism in its living, breathing, adherents today.

Throughout this collection of essays, many of which were previously published and are collected here for the first time, Horn is a highly engaging narrator, equal parts pondering professor, critical commentator and entertaining tour guide. Horns best essays here focus on the histories that might lie unseen alongside the ones we enshrine, attending to the somewhat-less-than-easy narratives of the contemporary memory in which dead Jews live.

In one of her most enduring essays, she points our attention toward the ubiquitous myth around Jewish immigrants having their names changed at Ellis Island. While we often think of these changes occurring without our ancestors volition, Horn determines that these name changes were most likely by their own choice and explores why we might prefer to think of these name changes as coerced or accidental rather than intentional. In this piece, Horn writes with that fine blend of open-eyed criticism and belief in the powerful recesses of strength and hope that live in the making and unmaking of Jewish historical memory that make her so beloved to her readers. After debunking the Ellis Island myth, Horn writes:

For some people its upsetting to learn that the Ellis Island story is only a legend. But I find it empowering, because it reveals the enormous emotional resources available to our ancestors and to us. Our ancestors could have dwelled on the sordid facts and passed down that psychological damage. Instead, they created a story that ennobled us, and made us confident in our role in this great country which means we have that creative power too.

In Horns essays on the frozen Jews of Harbin, China, and the misuse of Jewish life in the past as a money-making tourist gimmick, Horn speaks incisively to the threat of the misuse of the Jewish past posed by those who are least interested in preserving and honoring the Jewish present.

Other essays speak less directly to the present, but are no less enjoyable for it, such as her essay on Varian Frye, the unappreciated gentile savior of many Jewish intellectuals during the Holocaust. Horn is distinctly skilled at writing with a viral curiosity, pulling readers into her orbit and infecting them with the bug of deep curiosity about the Jewish past and present.

It is here, between the present and the past, that one leaves this book still wondering. In her final chapters, Horn moves from dead Jews to living Jews. In one particularly moving chapter, Horn brings us along for her car-ride conversations with her son in which they tentatively tread into the murky waters of Shylock, antisemitism and elementary-aged children. In this vignette, we peer through the window of the interaction between the abuse of dead, fictional Jews and the identity formation of living Jews, navigating towards what it means to be a Jew in this world.

Horn ends the book with a celebration of the living Judaism of the Talmud, cast through her entry to the world of Daf Yomi, the practice of studying one page of Talmud a day. Horn tells us that turning from doom scrolling to Talmud study was like coming out of a cold, dark night into a warm and lighted room. Six centuries of sages seemed to move over, still talking, and make space for me at the study-hall table strewn with open books. I sat down, exhausted, and listened. This study culminates with a visit to the Siyum HaShas, the once-in-seven-years grand party.

People Love Dead Jews is a compelling read, and curious readers will likely find themselves immersed in exploring their own family stories, wondering which might be holding a deeper truth. Dead Jews are interesting, Horn convinces us, and their legacy often misused. Horn does perhaps too good a job convincing us of the endless interest that dead Jews hold for us. This might be the case with any essay collection pressed into a title, especially one as catchy as this. It is challenging to bind together a collection in any one cogent thesis, and Horn does a powerful job in this, but the whole far exceeds the sum of its parts, and the collection of essays here outlasts and outlearns the title that may lead you to click. As for this reader, I leave this book with a smile for the living Jews and Judaisms of my life, and with a deeper appreciation for the ways we tell, retell, mistell, and untell the stories of our ancestors. Id like to think that our ancestors smile as well, hearing our mistakes, and that they light a candle for us somewhere in the near-distant past of heaven.

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Posted By admin on May 16, 2022

On Saturday, 18-year-old Payton Gendron parked his car in front of the entrance to a Tops Supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. Exiting the car wearing metal armor and holding an assault rifle, he shot and killed a female employee in front of the store, and a man packing groceries into the trunk of his car. After entering the store, he murdered the stores guard, and by the end of his killing spree, he had shot 13 people, killing 10 of them.

Eleven of the people he shot were Black, and two were white. As the manifesto he left behind makes clear, this was fully intentional. The first listed goal in his manifesto was to kill as many blacks as possible.

Gendron was a meticulous planner. He live-streamed his massacre, and the video begins with him following to the letter the beginning of the plan he lays out in the manifesto..

But the manifesto which is meant to inspire and instruct subsequent attacks also outlines the ideology that inspired the murders. Gendron was motivated by a classic version of White Replacement Theory, the view that a cabal of global elites is trying to destroy white nations, via the systematic replacement of white populations. According to White Replacement Theory, the strategies employed by these global elites include the mass immigration of supposedly high fertility non-whites, and encouraging intermingling between members of non-white races and whites. Gendron was deeply influenced by a series of recent mass killers who were animated by white replacement theory including Brenton Tarrant, whom Gendron openly acknowledges as his model. In Christchurch, New Zealand, Tarrant massacred 51 people at a Mosque in the name of White Replacement Theory, also live-streaming his actions.

Gendrons manifesto begins in a similar fashion to Tarrants, by decrying the white genocide that will result from the supposedly low fertility rates of white populations and the high fertility rates of non-white immigrants brought in to replace them. It is more openly anti-Black than Tarrants manifesto it is a deeply American version, with roots in Jim Crow and lynching. It is also vastly more explicitly antisemitic.

Ten pages of Gendrons manifesto are devoted to arguing for a genetic basis for the racial IQ gap, as well as (ironically) a genetic basis for higher rates of violent crime. Its clear that Gendron closely follows various academic debates about race, IQ, and crime.

According to the ideology guiding Gendron, Black people are not intelligent enough to engineer the replacement of whites, and the destruction of their civilization. The real actors behind White Replacement, according to Gendron, are the Jews, a topic which occupies the subsequent 29 pages of his manifesto.

Gendrons lengthy section on Jews purports to document Jewish hatred of non-Jews. It includes a section of Talmud quotes supporting Gendrons thesis that Jews hate Christians, and a section documenting supposed control of academia, media, and industry (focusing on the pharmaceutical industry). Gendron ties Jews to child abuse and pedophilia. The section mocks a supposed Jewish fixation on environmental causes of Black crime. Gendron argues that Jews are behind Black social and political movements and organizations, including the NAACP and Black Lives Matter.

Gendron also argues that Jews are behind the movement for transgender inclusivity, supposedly sponsoring transgender summer camps for Scandinavian style whites.

The section ends by blaming Jews for creating infighting between people and races. The example Gendrons manifesto provides is that Jews are spreading ideas such as Critical Race Theory and white shame/guilt to brainwash Whites into hating themselves and their people.

The ideology that motivated Gendrons mass murder in Buffalo, White Replacement Theory, has a lengthy and blood-soaked 20th century history. Since 2011, it has been the explicit motivation for over 160 murders, including Norways Anders Breiviks slaughter of 77 people, mostly immigrants, in 2011, Dylann Roofs mass murder of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, the Tree of Life Synagogue killings in 2018, and the murder of 23 people, mostly immigrants, in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

Mass atrocities do not occur in a vacuum. They are enabled by a present normalization of a lengthy previous history, a process that the philosopher of mass killing Lynne Tirrell labels the social embeddedness condition. White Replacement Theory was the dominant structuring narrative of Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler also announced his genocidal intent in a lengthy manifesto about the supposed Jewish threat to white civilization, entitled Mein Kampf, which was published in 1924. Hitler also was obsessed by mass immigration, and the threat it posed to white civilization.

Currently, White Replacement Theory has been mass popularized and normalized, perhaps chiefly by the American political commentator Tucker Carlson. It is rapidly moving to the center of the mainstream narrative of Americas Republican party. In this form, it appears stripped of its explicit connection to antisemitism. You will not find Tucker Carlson asserting that the Jews are behind the mass replacement of American whites that he bemoans regularly in what is regularly the most watched cable news show in the United States among adults 25-54.

But what Carlson has been doing is spending an entire year repeating a conspiracy by Christopher Rufo that says that American education has been infected by a pro-Black ideology (CRT) that was created by German Jewish Marxist intellectuals (the Frankfurt School). And that while the CRT version of this conspiracy theory is new, it is a direct descendent of the cultural marxism conspiracy theory, which was a primary topic of Breiviks manifesto.

The fact that Carlson does not mention American Jews as a target by name should be cold comfort to American Jews. Every single right wing anti-Semite in America who watches Tucker Carlsons show hears him as denouncing Jews when he regularly platforms the 20th centurys worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

Some American Jews hope that by identifying as white, and lending their support to racist narratives about IQ and crime, they can diminish rightwing American antisemitism. This is a terrible error. American Ku Klux Klan ideology in the 1920s strongly overlapped with Nazi ideology, placing Jews at the center of a conspiracy fomenting a supposed race war to overthrow white civilization. American Jews who support Tucker Carlson and his ilk, that is, others who repeat the White Replacement narrative, are supporters both of anti-Black racism, and antisemitism in its most violent form.

It is in the tracts of the 20th centurys most explicit antisemites that we find the development of White Replacement Theory, who used it to justify the mass killing of Jews. Gendrons manifesto reveals yet again the unbreakable historical link between anti-Black racism and antisemitism. Any supporter of White Replacement Theory is a clear enemy of the Jewish People.

America has many mass shootings. But this mass killing of Black Americans in a Buffalo supermarket must serve as a wake-up call to our country. White Replacement Theory is deeply ingrained in the worst aspects of American and European history. With its attacks on Critical Race Theory, this is a fact that the American political right is deliberately and knowingly trying to erase from our collective consciousness, so they can appeal to it again as a political weapon against liberal democracy.

As Gendrons manifesto makes clear, White Replacement Theory is not just an attack on minorities. It is a weapon directed by fascists at American democracy itself.

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Posted By admin on May 16, 2022

This article appears in the spring issue of University ofDenver Magazine. Visit themagazine websitefor bonus content and to read this and other articles in their original format.

Fourteen years after meeting ceramicist Trudy Strauss, artist and professor Deborah Howards new portrait of the Holocaust survivor is on display in DUs Anderson Academic Commons.

Accompanying a selection of Strauss ceramic works, Howards portrait is the 26th in her project titled Child Survivors of the Holocaust. The project was inspired by a conversation with a student about depictions of aging in portraiture, Howard says.

Across the works, she sought to capture and portray the lives of child survivors to celebrate their achievements and to ensure that the memory of what they endured is not forgotten.

I wanted people to know that these people somehow made lives for themselves, and how could they do this? How could they get married? How could they have children? How could they do this? But they did, and they all have different stories, Howard says.

The first portrait depicted Harry LopasHowards unclewho was a hidden child in Belgium during the Holocaust. Once I got going, it was a hunt to find the people, she says.

From connections through family and friends to chance encounters at her sons orchestra recital, an antique store and even at the University of Denver, Howard found, met and tracked down child survivors from 2003 until 2008.

The projects intent drove her to choose drawing over photography or painting as the medium for her portraits.

Drawing has a mark and a scribble. My handwriting and my mark making prove that I existed and that I was with that person, Howard says. So in a way, Im a witness that this person really did live. Because I lived, and you know I lived because theres scribbling in there.

Beyond capturing her subjects faces, Howard incorporated historical knowledge and emotion into each portrait, conveying the lives lived and the suffering and success of each person.

The drawings were to be displayed without a biography or story, Howard notes, because she wanted people to just look at them, have their name and know from their face that they were there.

Inclusion in DUs Ira M. and Peryle Hayutin Beck Memorial Archives, which is dedicated to the preservation of Jewish history and heritage in the Rocky Mountain region, inspired Howard to compile her notes, correspondence and the survivors stories so that a written piece could complement each portrait.

More than a decade after her project ended, Howard added the portrait of Trudy Strauss.

As with many of the survivors she drew, Howard met Strauss by chance, when the two were swimming at the Schlessman YMCA more than 20 years ago. In 2009, Strauss learned of the project and asked Howard to draw her. But after meeting with and photographing Strauss, Howard shifted focus to other work without drawing the portrait.

In the summer of 2021, a friend reconnected Howard with Strauss, who was 106 and still living in Denver. Twelve years after initially setting out to draw Strauss, Howard completed the portrait on Jan. 30, 2022.

Strausss portrait will join 21 of Howards drawings that reside in the Beck Archives. Four other portraits remain in the Holocaust Art Museum at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.

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Posted By admin on May 14, 2022

May 13, 2022 by Jeremy Jones

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Those of us who are loyal to tradition are now into a period of mourning called theOmer. Its a time of mourning. No weddings or parties (and for those decadent ones among us, no public entertainment, opera, concerts, theatre, or cinema).

None of these restrictions are mentioned in the Torah or indeed in the Talmud. All it says in the Torah is that theOmerwas the first sheaf of the new barley harvest. Until it was brought and dedicated at the temple on the morning after the Pascal sacrifice, one was not allowed to eat any of the new agricultural produce of that year.From this moment 49 days were counted until Shavuot and the second harvest festival. And thats all.

If the Torah says quite explicitly Do not add to it (Deut.4:2) when referring to its laws, how come, we have added too much over the past millennia including mourning during the Omer? One answer is the rabbinic aphorism Build a fence around the Torah(Avot.1.1). Which is all well and good and makes sense, but a fence is not Hadrians Wall or an atomic shelter! Have we gone too far, and does it matter? After all, we are autonomous, and we do all choose what and how much to do most of the time. If some of us want to do more why not?

The only clue as to why the Omer is so significant is the Talmud (Yevamot 62b) which says that twelve thousand pairs of R. Akivas pupils died during this period because they did not treat each other with respect.In the post-Talmudic eraLag BaOmer(the thirty-third day of the Omer) is mentioned in Geonic literature (around the ninth century in Babylon) as a happy day, because the plague that was killing off the pupils of R. Akiva stopped. But no one suggested any lengthy period of mourning.

The legal code of theShulchan Aruch(R. Yosef Caro, 1563) over a thousand years after, says that We have the custom not to get married from Pesach until the 33rd day of the Omer because of what befell the pupils of R. Akiva. It then adds that one also does not get ones hair cut until the thirty-third day. However, the Ashkenazi version adds that one does not start the period of mourning until Rosh Chodesh Iyar, a week after Pesach, stops for the thirty-third day, then resuming until three days before Shavuot.

So how and why did we get to our universally observed period of strict public mourning? One theory is that the mainstream rabbis opposed fighting the Romans in 70 CE and that R. Akiva died supporting the failed Bar Kochba revolt (132135 CE). Both rebellions led to massive losses. Was the story about his pupils dying a sort of code? To discourage the idea of rebellion.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Easter time was a period of disaster, murder, and suffering for the Jews. Christian preachers in their Easter sermons called for vengeance for the death of Jesus. Then came the Blood Libel that Jews needed Christian blood for the Passovermatzahs. Which coincided with the Crusades which started up after Easter during the spring, peak marching time for hordes of murderous anti-Jewish fanatics on the rampage through Europe to regain the Holy land. As well as the regular assaults on Jews under Islam even if occasionally, as under the early Ottomans the Jews were welcomed and protected. We had to be on our lookout and defensively prepared. No time for celebrations.

Others suggest this custom did not become universally accepted before the Kabbalists who fled Spain after 1492saw a parallel between the expulsion from Spain and the loss of the Temple and celebratedLag BaOmeras the anniversary of the death of the greatest mystic of the Talmud Rebbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

Can we really argue that the deaths of Rabbi Akivas students were so cataclysmic as to warrant such an extended period of mourning? Why is it still relevant? One answer might be the emphasis on the death of so many Torah students, and it is this academic loss as much as the numbers that matter.But why then is the Holocaust not regarded as a far greater catastrophe and worthy of a specific religious date?

If the argument is that we should respect the tradition, then what about all those other local tragedies over the past two thousand years that for a while were recognized as public fast days but now are forgotten?And contrast them with the positive innovations in Israel where we celebrateYom HaShoah, Memorial DayYom haZikaron,andYom HaAtzmaut, all within this timeframe of the Omer. Does change now only go one way, to increase?

There are two aspects to this legend and why it has become so significant. One historical and the other ethical.We keep mourning today because we Jews are constantly made aware of how much we are still hated by so many people all over the world, and under the constant threat of Palestinian terror attacks on civilians. And the more we remember, the better armed we are and able to cope. And the other ethical reason is that like Rabbi Akivas pupils we are still divided into rival camps and political parties treating each other with disrespect. Both are reasons to remember the past and recognize the faults of the present.

In Israel, the political mess is a disaster that threatens our country. Here in the USA, the Memorial Museum which was once happy to hear Alexandra Occasion Cortez speak on their premises has now banned Florida Governor DeSantis because they do not like his politics. Neither do I (they are trying to weasel out of it of course). But if this egoism, vested interest, and capitulation to political correctness is how we are going to get on with each other, then we have a lot to mourn for.

Logically, observing mourning during the Omer does not make sense! Neither does a lot more in religion. Indeed, the world itself does not seem to make much sense nowadays, institutionally, politically, or morally!But religion and tradition do satisfy the human need for spirit, tradition, and structure.It is a constant reminder of how far we have to go to achieve the human ideals we value.History often betrays us. Our values sustain our humanity.

Rabbi Jeremy Rosen lives in New York. He was born in Manchester. His writings are concerned with religion, culture, history and current affairs anything he finds interesting or relevant. They are designed to entertain and to stimulate. Disagreement is always welcome.

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