Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 6, 2022

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Soon after, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Last week, I asked, What should be forbidden on Twitter? You responded with many recommendations for the social-media platform as Elon Musk attempts to purchase it and take it private.x

Michael sympathizes with the status quo:

I am married to someone who reviewed graphic / violent posts at Twitter. Our discussions changed my mind on the topic. Social media is not analogous to regular speech. If Musk wants to make a genuine town hall, with no moderation, he should do away with retweets, likes, and other elements that create mob effects. Twitter has spent the last seven-ish years working on content moderation, a major focus for a lot of bright people, and the outcome is highly specific. My suggestion: run with the existing rules, butI say this to satisfy Muskbreak ties in the direction of leaving posts up.

R.C. has mixed feelings:

If you are asking me as a customer what they should ban: I go to Twitter for entertainment and information, but also to be able to interact with others. If there were content I found odious and grotesque and couldnt block I would stop using the site. Whereas I as a citizen of this country would tolerate and defend peoples rights to use hate speech or even speech that advocates violent revolution, unmolested by any arm of the state. But Twitter just isnt on that level for me. So, with those caveats, heres what I would consider a dealbreaker for my Twitter habit: Child Pornography. Snuff videos. Rape videos. Nazi / White Supremacist / Neo-Nazi / Skinhead propaganda videos or messages. Videos or messages that explicitly call on people to commit violent crimes.

M. argues for a First Amendment standard:

My impression is that people arguing for content moderation (AKA censorship) arent making a case about why Twitter, specifically, warrants its own unique standard of speech. Instead the arguments I see are (sometimes) veiled arguments that the free speech standard of our society as a whole should be altered. For example, the statement you provided from the NCAA, doesnt identify anything unique about Twitter that warrants different rulesyou could swap Twitter out of their statement and replace it with any other platform and the argument would be the same.

If anyone believes that Twitter should have its own unique standard that is different from the First Amendment, the onus is on them to explain why Twitter warrants a unique solution. Twitter certainly has some distinguishing characteristics such as the number of people it reaches, the ease of searching its content, and the speed that a message can spread. But being the most (or one of the most) popular and accessible forums for speech is a poor reason to restrict speech.

Twitter does have at least one somewhat unique characteristic: an algorithm(s) that amplifies certain messages over others. I do believe those algorithms need to be carefully considered so as not to reward hucksters and trolls. Focusing the discussion thereon what that algorithm should be (if there should be amplifying at all)is more appropriate than debating a new standard of free speech.

Thats a long way of saying that I support the First Amendment standard of free speech for Twitter. This would mean all sorts of abhorrent content (racial slurs, Holocaust denial, etc.) and/or misinformation (masks might suffocate you, Russia is the aggrieved party, etc.) would be allowed. While I think those ideas are horrible, allowing people to express them is a good thing. I want to know who holds racist views so that I wont vote for them or patronize their businesses. I gain confidence in good ideassuch as covid vaccines or the qualifications of Ketanji Jacksonwhen I know I can access the arguments against them and see that those arguments are nuts. I also believe censoring ideas often makes them edgier and more appealing. If [the ideas are] left to fester in the open, honorable people will expose how rotten those ideas are with their own free speech. Finally, given who is buying Twitter, I think its important to say that the First Amendment standard would also protect criticism of Elon Musk, his companies, or the markets he wants to sell his products in (China). People should be free to criticize Musk or promote competitors.

D. wants to give people a choice of how to experience the site.

This debate brings to mind Henry Fords famous quote about the Model T, when he said, any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black. How can we possibly have one choice in content moderation that works for everyone?

Lets allow each user to decide what content moderation they want. Allow competing standards with their own AIs, and force the user to pick one when joining (including a free speech absolutist standard). Of course, allow them to change their selection at any time. Give the user a user-friendly interface allowing them to choose, from the outset, whether only people they are following can reply to their tweets. This would fix a lot of problems. Also give users an option for an old-fashioned chronological feed from those they follow.

Martin agrees. The goal is not to stop dumb people from saying dumb things, but to make sure they are not heard by broad swaths of people who have no interest in listening, he writes.

Says Cole:

I am a 23 year-old Twitter addict who is three months off the site, with no plans to return. I cannot recommend leaving strongly enough. There is a big gap in the free speech crowd. On one side are the 4chan freaks who want to post cartoons of graphic sexual deviancy combined with swastikas and other truly bone-chilling racist language. The other side just wants to spout off socially-conservative takes from 1972 without anyone bothering them.

My proposed path forward would involve users getting a pop-up screen, similar to the sliders in a video game, asking them how free they would like the speech they take in to be. Anyone should be able to say anything that is legal, but the scope of what people choose to see will vary. It would function a lot like muting words on Twitter, but as preset options, with capabilities to customize further. For example, I dont want to see violence or slurs or sexual content, but political disinformation does not bother me. I expect the majority of people will choose settings similar to whats already the code of conduct; the people who run Twitter are not morons, and Jack Dorsey was pretty good on free speech. Under this approach, many will realize they arent the free speech purists they thought they were. Everyone talks a big game about their takes on Democrats being censored, but I suspect not many of them want to see compilation videos of people getting hit by trains or ugly men getting naked and shouting the n-word.

Whereas Bob would, I suspect, shift the locus of social-media polarization from ideology to pet preference: Its pretty simple, he writes. The content moderation rule for Twitter should be: the only posts allowed are pictures of dogs. Careful, sir, cat people are a powerful faction online.

Isaac argues that fighting over content moderation misses the point because the costs that social media imposes on society are mostly due to the deliberately addictive designs of the platforms:

Any algorithmic policy that attempts to truly eliminate all problematic speech will doubtless end up banning tons of accepted speech (however this is decided). Any algorithm that is permissive will let all kinds of toxicity through. I dont think it is actually possible to make a policy that is totally acceptable to everyone. What deeply saddens me is that these companies are incentivized to promote social media addiction. People destroy their lives gambling because casino companies have figured out how to hack the human brains reward system. It doesnt work on everyone, but some people are absolutely sucked in by the flashing lights and the chance to win big. Social media companies have used the exact same strategies to create addiction, its just that instead of using money as the reward they use social validation. Humans are a deeply social species and I think many people fail to appreciate what a powerful motivator this can be.

From the perspective of society, less engagement means less social media addiction, less online toxicity, less misinformation, and a social order that has a chance of getting things done. Instead we get a race to the bottom of the brain stem. It has been fairly disheartening to see this media cycle so focused on pointless content moderation policies, and to see so many well intentioned people miss the forest for the trees so badly. We need to stop focusing on these granular policies and start focusing on the design of these platforms in general. The upshot of all of this is that we could probably fix the design without instituting some capricious regime of censorship by mega corporations.

Chris wants to protect the ability to lie but opposes ease of spreading lies:

Ive grown up with the American faith that free speech is a universal force for good, because it allows people to respond to bad ideas with good ideas, and the best ideas will rise to the top. But why should we think that rising to the top will always happen, regardless of the particulars of evolving media? If we want a forum where discussion of ideas actually helps us find consensus and discover truth, we have to pay attention to the rules of the medium. This is why, for example, the legislatures use systems like Roberts Rules of Order: collective intelligence arises from not just the intelligence of the individual members of a group, but from the way that the members interact with one another.

I dont like banning lies; but maybe if Twitter changes the underlying rules, the lies wont be very harmful. I think the apparent need to ban some speech on Twitter stems from a flaw in the way Twitter works that causes engagingly irritating ideas to spread more widely and faster than good ideas, due to what the user interface makes easy and what it makes hard: e.g. its easy to make an anonymous account and reply with dumb one-line retorts to lots of people, but hard to say something longer and more thoughtful with an account you can prove is your own. With different rules in place, liars, trolls and assholes would not have nearly as much influence, and might not need to be banned.

Among Perrys picks for what to prohibit: No bomb-building instructions or poison gas recipes. And anyone who posts about causing harm to someone should go to jail if it happens.

Sebastian takes a page from the gun-control debate:

What if Twitter et al. institute a cooling-off period? You submit your tweet as usual but it would not be immediately published. Rather, an hour later (or even just 5-10 minutes!), Twitter sends you a notification asking if you would like to publish the tweet. I suspect it would materially cut down on inflammatory speech. The added friction would simply require that we abide by the age-old wisdom: take a deep breath and count to ten before you say something you might regret. It might render Twitter more humane, measured, and productive.

Matt would offer the least protection to possessors of the blue check that Twitter bestows on verified users like me:

There should be a line drawn between Blue Check people and normal users. It should be forbidden to doxx a private person for some social infraction, but to speak all manner of profane things about an elected official or celebrity should be allowed. I only draw the line at threats of violence or incitement for the blue check world. What about misinformation? For the truly nefarious actors, we can be aggressive. My own parents were scammed after buying survival supplies from an Anti-Biden ad on Facebook. Would I gladly ban those actors, absolutely! But should my mother get banished for posting that Kamala Harris is a member of the Illuminati? Probably not. If anything, Twitter is a wild west library and is better for it. You can find facts, entertainments, and fictions. Caveat emptor.

And Benjamin would kick me off Twitter entirely.

I would ban all journalists, he writes. They enjoy it too much and it is disconcerting to find out that the people who are delivering the news to the American people are really dumb. #Notalljournalists, Benjamin! I would ban me, Benjamin goes on, because I am afraid that one day in a drunken stupor, I might use the damn thing. You see, he is not a fan of Twitter:

Free speech is not intelligent speech. Choosing who can say what on Twitter is like picking a poison to murder someone with. Any poison will do. The worlds self-destruct button has already been pressed. So, I would censor nothing. Twitter is a garbage dump, a toxic wasteland. It is a place where the self-righteous thunder self-righteously and pat each other on the back for being good. It is a place where people go to say things they cant say in any other social setting without starting a brawl. It is a place where using words, people take the equivalent of a bowel movement. Twitter is America, the freaks, phonies and fools, hypocrites, pinheads, and puke brained imbeciles. Allowing a free for all of free speech on Twitter wont make it any worse than it already is. It will make it sillier and more fun. The unintelligentsia will have more to get hysterical over.

So let it fly, let it hit the fan and lets see what sticks. Most people, the ones who never use Twitter and never listen to the journalists who love it so much, know it doesnt matter.

Twitter is us, and we scare the hell out of each other. So, what.

Strong Holden Caulfield vibes with this one!

Starla believes we should focus on amplification:

What we have now is a problem with everyone believing their message should have access to the same amplification as the President, despite the fact that they may be simply an uncredentialed dude with an ax to grind. Anyone should be free to say anything within the confines of their spacebut how and when that is shared to other networks and spaces is the real question. Solving the problems related to amplification of misinformation requires the business models of social media companies to be drastically re-ordered. A useful model would provide safer, smaller spaces, like living rooms or soap boxes, for each persons right to free speech. Amplification or sharing out to the public sphere, however, must require some kind of credentialed gate-keeping if we intend to live in a factual world with some sense of shared reality and values.

Ive yet to live through a presidential administration that didnt lie to me, reaching me through media gatekeepers to do so. Did the credentialed press of the War on Terror period, to cite one example, result in the dissemination of reliable facts and a shared sense of reality and values? And thats to say nothing of the era when the president was Donald Trump, a man who spread far more disinformation and misinformation than the typical uncredentialed dude.

Luciano wants a diptych-based social-media platform:

For me, the underlying problem with the unfettered Twitter (like the unfettered internet, or unfettered democracy, for that matter) is that the debate that is supposed to happen never does. Instead, the shouts become louder until the voices of many are really just the loudest voices of a few. Instead of creating an open popularity contest, where clicks and likes drive the debate, have the platform built to foster debate, where a tweet is always shown with an equally popular or compelling counter-idea SIDE BY SIDE. This way, instead of seeing just a Trump or AOC tweet, the user will always see a counterargument. The more popular or influential the user, the more the algorithm would find plausible and direct counterargument tweets. Youd never see just a single argument.

Peter wants to criminalize group libel:

Against slander, false accusations and libel the only remedy that is available is civil law. Going that route can be a very long and costly process that minorities and poor people cant afford. Members of the majority can raise the same accusations over and over again, making it impossible for the minorities to keep arguing against the repeated false accusations. These false accusations can give rise to real violent and harmful consequences as in the case of Antisemitic statements and Holocaust denials, to give one common example. That is the reason why certain false accusations have to be addressed by criminal law, rather than by civil law which puts the burden of proof on the injured party.

Jack takes his argument in a direction I did not expect:

Twitter is not the government. It is more powerful than the government when it comes to facilitating or denying ordinary voices and opinions. To me, this suggests it has the duty to be as protective of free expression as the comparatively inconsequential government is.

And Jonathan says we should sort onto different platforms by ideology:

Any notion of content moderation imports a system of values that is to be forcefully imposed by some authority upon subject peoples. As a society, we collectively lack anything approaching a consensus on either the things we value or what constitutes a valid authority. Consequently, it is impossible for anyone to impose a universal program of content moderation that will come anywhere close to appeasing an overwhelming majority of people. There can be no Universal Twitter except to the extent that people can either accept being deeply dissatisfied with the way things work or converge on an accepted system of values. As neither of these options seems particularly likely, the best path forward is for different groups with sufficiently aligned values to agree upon some system of authority that will moderate content on its own platform.

For my part, I would urge tolerance and forbearance, this moments most underrated virtues, so we can stay on the same platform together. Thank you all for your various perspectives, and Ill see you Wednesday.

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What Do Twitter's Users Actually Want? - The Atlantic

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Posted By admin on May 6, 2022

Why people try to pin the Nazi genocide on the Jews, and why its so dangerous.

By Yair Rosenberg

Deep Shtetl demystifies how politics, culture, and religion shape society. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spends most of his time these days obfuscating the reality of his countrys assault on Ukraine. But this past week, he took a momentary break from this work to distort the history of a different war: World War II and the Jewish genocide that accompanied it. Asked on Italian television how Russia could claim to be denazifying Ukraine when the country is led by a Jewish president, Lavrov retorted, I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood. He later added, Some of the worst anti-Semites are Jews.

Lavrov has one job: to sell Russias unprovoked war on Ukraine in the public square. Unsurprisingly, his Holocaust revisionismrooted in a long-standing conspiracy theoryhasnt helped. The Israeli government publicly rebuked Russia over the comments, summoning its ambassador and demanding an apology. As Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid pointedly put it: Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. (Lapids grandfather was murdered by the Nazis, while his grandmother and father ultimately made their way to Israel.)

In a rare joint statement, Jewish members of the U.S. House of Representatives similarly condemned Lavrovs claims, saying: Defaulting to antisemitic tropes, including blaming the Jews for the Holocaust and using the Holocaust to cover their own war crimes, reflects the gutless depravity of the Russian regime. In response to this outcry, the Russian foreign ministry doubled down, accusing Lapid and Israel of supporting a neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine. As this goes to press, Israeli sources are reporting that Putin has apologized for his foreign ministers remarks, but this has not been confirmed by Russia.

For those familiar with the history of the Holocaust, Lavrovs stance might seem utterly unhinged. But equating Jews with Nazis has long been a staple of Soviet and Russian rhetoric. And beliefs like Lavrovs are far more common than most realize. Over the decades, many people from the Soviet Union to America to the Middle East have blamed the Jews for their own genocide, often for political and ideological purposes. Its important to understand why they do this, because these efforts are not merely intended to obscure depraved acts of the past, but to enable them in the future.

One of the more chilling polls in U.S. history was taken by Gallup in 1938, on the eve of the Holocaust. As Hitler rose to power and enacted a host of anti-Semitic laws, the survey firm asked Americans for their opinions on the Jewish victims of European anti-Semitism. The results? 54 percent said that the persecution of Jews in Europe has been partly their own fault. 11 percent said it was entirely their fault. In other words, 65 percent of Americans adhered to the soft-core version of Lavrovs position, blaming Europes Jews for their own abuse. (Even today, many continue to insist that Jews cause anti-Semitism.)

The hard-core version of this worldview, on the other hand, contends that Jews actively collaborated with the Nazis to perpetrate the Holocaust. This is Lavrovs position, but hes not alone. Take David Icke, one of the worlds most prominent conspiracy theorists, who claims that wealthy Jews funded the Holocaust, writing, The Warburgs, part of the Rothschild empire, helped finance Adolf Hitler. (Icke has also claimed elsewhere that Hitler was a Rothschild.) Like Lavrovs remarks, Ickes claims may seem fringe. But the deeply anti-Semitic book that these words appeared in was fulsomely recommended by author Alice Walker in the pages of the New York Times.

Back in 1984, Mahmoud Abbasnow the president of the Palestinian Authoritypublished a book based on his doctoral dissertation. The name? The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism. The tract, which is still featured today on Abbass official government website, alleges that the Zionists were the Third Reichs basic partner in crime. The Zionist movement, it falsely claims, led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the governments hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination. The purpose of this conspiracy, Abbas contends, was to spur more Jewish immigration to Palestine. Among other assertions, Abbas also writes that no Jews were murdered in the Nazi gas chambers, citing noted Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, and argues that the figure of 6 million Jewish dead is exaggerated many times over.

One might reasonably wonder: Where did Abbas manage to successfully submit this Ph.D. in Holocaust denial? The answer: Lumumba University, in Moscow.

Why are people so drawn to explanations that pin the Holocaust on its Jewish victims? To understand the allure of accusing the Jews of genocidewhether their own or of othersone has to understand what the claim accomplishes for those who level it. As Ive written previously:

First, they weaponize the greatest Jewish trauma against Jewish people. As the Marxist political theorist Norm Geras put it, To say to Jews that what they are doing is just like what the Nazis did to them is to appeal to the comparison that is most hateful. There is no better way to hurt someone than to fashion their most painful experience into a club with which to beat them. Its not hard to imagine how turning the Holocaust on Jewish people, like turning slavery on Black people, provides a delicious transgressive thrill.

This helps explain the immediate appeal for Lavrov in invoking the Holocaust against both Ukraines Volodymyr Zelensky and Israels Lapid, both of whom lost family in it.

In a masterful maneuver of moral jujitsu, pinning genocide on the Jews allows the bigot to swipe the Holocaust card and play it against them. The victims are transformed into perpetrators, and their judgment is called into question.

For Lavrov, a man tasked with defending a regime that stands accused of crimes against humanity, inverting the Holocaust is simply another iteration of what he has already been doing for his own government: recasting its victims as aggressors and using this to justify further victimization. In other words, Lavrovs comments dont simply distort the past, but attempt to justify similar acts in the future. Seen in this light, its less surprising that the Russian foreign minister resorted to inverted Holocaust argumentsand more surprising that it took him this long.

Thank you for reading this free edition of Deep Shtetl. As always, you can send me comments and/or accuse me of genocide at deepshtetl@theatlantic.com. Sign up here to get future free editions of the newsletter in your inbox. But to get access to paid editions, and support journalism like this, please subscribe to The Atlantic.

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Russia Is Not the First to Blame Jews for Their Own Holocaust - The Atlantic

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Posted By admin on May 4, 2022

By Liam Reilly, CNN

A 16-year-old was arrested in an alleged group assault of a Hasidic man in Brooklyn Friday, police said.

Police did not release the name of the teen who was arrested Saturday on charges of gang assault and assault as a hate crime.

The assault is currently being treated as a hate crime and is being investigated by the departments hate crimes task force, according to the NYPD.

A victim, 21, was allegedly approached by a group of six individuals all unknown to him at 58 Gerry Street, according to police.

Without exchanging words and any prior provocation, police said the group allegedly proceeded to punch and kick the young man, and then allegedly forced him to the ground before fleeing the scene.

The victim sustained minor injuries to his mouth, police said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul tweeted she is directing the State Polices hate crime task force to help with the investigation in any way possible.

Im outraged by this act of violence against a Jewish New Yorker, Hochul tweeted. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

There was a $3,500 reward offered for any information on the incident, according to a post tweeted Saturday by NYPD Crime Stoppers.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is also offering a reward of up to $10,000 for anyone with any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individuals involved in the assault, according to a tweet from an ADL official.

Nobody should be subjected to hateful violence on the streets of New York, Scott Richman, ADLs regional director for New York and New Jersey, said in a statement.

We must do everything in our power to help authorities identify and apprehend those responsible, and we must also work together in order to prevent these incidents from occurring in the first place, Richman said. We deserve a safer and more accepting city for all New Yorkers.

In 2021, there were 198 incidents and 58 arrests in New York City where victims of hate crimes were of Jewish background, according to the NYPDs hate crimes task forces dashboard. Thats up from 121 incidents and 25 arrests in 2020.

The-CNN-Wire & 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

CNNs Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.

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Posted By admin on May 4, 2022

Jamie Lee Curtis at SXSW: Texas order on trans youth 'outrageous and terrifying'

Asked about Gov. Greg Abbott's order to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse, "Everything Everywhere All At Once" star Jamie Lee Curtis pledges her support for transgender Texans during SXSW on March 11, 2022. Curtis' daughter is transgender.

Sara Diggins and Eric Webb, Austin 360

Celebrated author Abby Stein will share her inspiring personal voyage from life in a secluded Hasidic Jewish community to the trans educator and activist she is today at Congregation B'Nai Harim on Thursday evening.

Stein will lead a Zoominar hosted by the congregation discussing her transitions both leaving the world of the Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community, and her journey to become the woman she is today in her presentation, "How Far Will You Go To Become the Person You Were Meant to Be?"

Through sharing her own personal history, Stein hopes that she can reach a broad audience and show them that those in the LGBTQ world are unique individuals, all deserving of the love and respect that any one else receives.

"It has shown that the easiest way to get people to change their minds and to open up is by (sharing) personal stories," Stein said. "It's not by trying to argue religious and political points, frankly, it is by sharing personal stories, about people getting to see the humanity in the LGBTQ community and the trans community."

While either one of her voyages was monumental on its own, leaving the Hasidic community and transitioning was practically inconceivable at the time for Stein. Born as the first son of a dynastic rabbinic family she is a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism and expected to become a religious leader, Stein knew early on that this was not the life for her.

"Literally every day of my life, from the second I was born, to supposedly the second I would die, was set out for me with a path to follow," Stein said. "(But) at the end of the day, we all try to find our own path."

According to Stein, Thursday's event will focus largely upon her early years, exploring life within her remote world and how she made the bold decision to move upward and onward.

"It's more focused on my childhood and my background," Stein said. "It's up to my teenage years, and then getting married at 18 and then later divorced."

As Stein depicts it, the life she once knew was worlds apart from where she would eventually find herself, with fundamental differences in just about every aspect of culture and society.

The outside world was shunned by her family and neighbors, who instead followed the practices of 18th century Eastern Europe. As a child, Stein's world was limited to her Hasidic community in Brooklyn, and while she spoke both Yiddish and Hebrew, she knew no English. She had no access to television, newspapers and magazines from the outside world, and had never even used the internet by the time she had reached adulthood.

"The basic idea is a community that believes in extreme segregation from the outside world. They are trying to create what I called 'a world apart,' kind of like a perfect image based on a utopia, or as I like to call it, a dystopia," Stein said.

Of interest Community debates book bans at school meeting in Pike County

While she knew in her heart that she was female as long as she could remember, making sense of that idea was even more incredibly difficult.

"I didn't even speak my native language; there was no word (for transgender). I didn't know a single other person (who was trans)," Stein said.

But even before she could begin her journey to become a woman, Stein had to overcome the strictly set path made by her family.

Just walking a few blocks outside of her community, it became "a very different country," Stein said, and if she was going to make her way in that world, she would have to leave behind her family, her home and her religion essentially everything she had known. While she had a high school education and a rabbinical degree from a yeshiva a Jewish school that focuses on traditional religious texts, including the Talmud, the Torah, and halacha in upstate New York, Stein found herself lacking in what many would perceive as everyday knowledge in the outside world.

"Frankly, I would say, in some ways, at least in a cultural way, the transition out of the Hasidic community was harder than the transition in terms of gender," Stein said. "And I'm not saying this to say that the gender transition wasn't hard. I'm saying this to say how hard the religious transition was."

With help from Footsteps, a nonprofit group that assists people who wish to leave the Hasidic and Haredi Jewish communities by offering numerous resources and support, Stein was able to accomplish her goal, and later attend Columbia University to expand her education.

Stein said she will also engage with the audience during Thursday's presentation to explore methods that can help foster a more tolerant and broad-minded mentality, both within and outside the Jewish community, to address ways to support and raise awareness for trans rights and those leaving Ultra-Orthodoxy.

'People just want to connect' Women of B'Nai Harim build virtual community during pandemic

"I think the same goes for every community, religious or not, (regarding) how to create a world, how to create a community, an environment that is what I call not just accepting, but celebrating of LGBTQ people as a whole, specifically for trans people," Stein said.

Since her transition in 2015, Stein estimates that about 10 individuals from the Hasidic community have followed suit, a trek that was absolutely unheard of just a few years ago.

In 2019, Stein released her book "Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman." She has since written and spoken about her life hundreds of times, co-founded Sacred Space, a project focused upon assisting women and non-binary people of all faith traditions, and continues to function in many capacities as a rabbi.

Nevertheless, there are still plenty of roadblocks and hurdles for those who share similar, or even completely different, stories to truly become who they really are. Segregation, prejudice, misconceptions and other issues still prevent many people from achieving that lofty goal.

But Stein continues to hope that with her writing and speaking engagements, more people and not just those that share her background will find inspiration in her story, and understand that there are others just like them out in the world.

"I know it's very like almost wishy-washy, or a very cheesy statement: 'know that you're not alone.' But at least for me, and I think many, many people, for millions of people around the world, the most important thing is to know that you're not alone," Stein said.

Those interested in listening to Stein's Zoom presentation can reach out to Jonathan Spinner of Congregation B'Nai Harim at spinnerjh@yahoo.com.

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Posted By admin on May 4, 2022

On Sunday, as I made my way home from our Passover vacation, I received a troubling notification on Instagram. One of our readers tipped us off that a Jewish comedian named Judy Gold had posted a video of a very distasteful joke she made about a Hasidic woman not only being physically assaulted, but how Gold fantasized about doing it herself. To complicate matters, Gold is generally considered to be a proud Jew, who frequently speaks out against antisemitism.

The joke began by Gold noting that this Hasidic woman in Brooklyn, who was all of 25 years old, had nine kids and was pregnant with her tenth. These details were totally fabricated, but the audience found them to be hilarious, because you know those Orthodox Jews, popping out all of those awful babies to add morebackwards and extreme Jews to the world. Yuck!

But then the joke got worse. Gold referenced a series of actual events that occurred in fall of 2018 where an antisemitic man in Los Angeles was pulling wigs off of Orthodox Jewish women on the street. He began these assaults on Yom Kippur with his first victim an 80 year old woman and targeted numerous Jewish women after that, until he was finally arrested in November of that year. The police reported that these incidents were considered hate crimes.

In Golds joke, there is just one Orthodox woman, who is 25 and Hasidic and her wig is pulled off. But instead of the punchline being something about how bad antisemites are or how troubling it is for a woman to be undressed without her consent, Gold notes that the wig removal of a Hasidic woman is something she always wished she could do. She then goes on to imagine what exactly Hasidic women have under their wigs to make their heads so off limits to the public and something only their hot Hasidic husbands can see. Gold uses vulgar language to describe what might be under the wig.

Celebrities with large followings, like Cree Summers and Pamela Adlon commented with laughing emojis and This is genius, respectively on Golds Instagram Reel. The joke was neither hilarious nor genius. It was nasty and dehumanizing. But Orthodox Jews are likely not real to either of them, and no one cares when we actually get hurt, let alone merely get harassed online, so they commented without fear of any consequences.

I asked Cree on Instagram if the joke would have been funny if a Black womans wig was snatched off her head without her consent or if a Jew specifically has to be assaulted in order for the humor to work. She removed her comment after that. I asked Pamela if shed find a joke about a hijab being removed to be funny or if its only GENIUS when a religious Jewish woman is attacked.

Some of our fans didnt understand what I meant by dehumanizing. So Ill explain. In the joke, the Hasidic woman has no agency or emotions. She exists first as a baby-making machine and then to not just be undressed by the actual assailant but to be fantasized about being undressed by Gold as well. The humanity of the actual women who were violated in these attacks doesnt exist. They are simply objects for other peoples amusement. And for those of us who wear wigs, we are walking around with literal targets on our heads. That Gold is not just publicizing this sick type of attack, but bringing positive attention to it makes those of us who actually wear wigs feel a little less safe. Could we be next?

After sharing the joke with our followers on Instagram and Twitter, and my noting that apparently Gold thinks its hilarious for Orthodox Jewish women to be assaulted, Gold doubled down and Tweeted that while I may not like the joke, she speaks about antisemitism regularly and discusses that we are only 2% of the population but receive 60% of the religious hate crimes. At that point I Tweeted back that I too used to look down on Orthodox Jews and that if shes committed to fighting antisemitism Id love the chance to educate her because we need to stick together. Gold responded to that Tweet, saying shed love to speak with me. She removed the video after that, which was a great development. Though as of the writing of this article, she has yet to respond to my messages to her to speak. I hope we will connect.

Today is Yom Hashoah 77 years since the Holocaust ended and countless times since we vowed Never Again, yet as attacks on Jews around the world are up everywhere, that sentiment is getting harder to utter in earnest. Antisemitic incidents increased 167% in 2021, according to new statistics published by the ADL. 2021 was the highest year of Jew-hating events that occurred in the U.S. since the organization began tracking such numbers in 1979. Those attacks are primarily targeted against the very Jews Gold joked about. And any Jew who cares about rising antisemitism needs to understand about the precarious place that visible Jews are finding ourselves in.

In only the last few weeks alone, Orthodox Jews in the New York area have been ganged attacked, kids have been jumped and threatened with machetes and crowbars, theyve had to endure an attempting killing spree with a stabbing and car-ramming. And just this past Sunday, a 6 year old boy had his yarmulke snatched by a sick antisemite, an incident not too far removed from the wig-snatching joke Gold still had on her Instagram page on that very same day.

How can proud Jews, who are against antisemitism, show such blatant disregard for experiences their Orthodox Jewish brothers and sisters are enduring? While I cant speak to the motivation of others, in my pre-Orthodox days, even as a proud Conservative Jew, I looked down on Orthodox Jews as backwards, extreme, misogynistic, and oppressed. If one of them was attacked, it hurt me, it felt like an attack on all Jews, but I wished they werent so weird, so Jewish, so not with the times. I held all this judgment without personally knowing a single Orthodox Jew.

I didnt understand their motivation for how they lived, dressed or believed. I felt a general unity from afar, knowing wed all be rounded up if another Hitler came around, but I never had the chance or made the effort to understand them up close. So while I didnt want them to be hurt, I thought their lifestyle was fair game for mocking. I dont know if Jews who have the privilege of blending in are quite aware of what it feels like to be so identifiable as crimes on Jews continue to rise and the world yet again stays silent. Its time for their judgment to stop because we need each other more than ever.

There are real people under those wigs, yarmulkes and beards. Many of us are in fact on social media. And we are feeling increasingly vulnerable. Respect is a two way street and secular and religious Jews must both work to see each others humanity and love one another like family.

Sometimes family members say things they shouldnt. If the family is healthy, they will call out the problem, discuss it and make up. So heres to all of that, Judy Gold, and to all of my fellow Jews.

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The Jewish Comedian Who Joked About Hasidic Women Being Physically Assaulted - Jew in the City

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Posted By admin on May 4, 2022

(JTA) Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter was visiting the cemetery for U.S. soldiers in Normandy when something struck the professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University as odd: There seemed to be too few non-Christian graves.

That insight in 2014 resulted in a nonprofit project that tracks down the graves of Jewish U.S. servicemen mistakenly buried under crosses, to give them Star of David headstones.

Operation Benjamin has so far replaced the headstones of 19 U.S. Jewish servicemen, including seven who underwent the ceremony last week in cemeteries in France, Belgium and Luxembourg, the Military Times reported.

The groups first successful identification wasPrivate First Class Benjamin Garadetsky, born Boruch Reigorodeczki in Ukraine, who was killed in 1944 in a Luftwaffe bombing after landing in France during the D-Day offensive. Garadetskys marker in Normandy was changed in 2018, and his name lent itself to the nonprofit, which does not take money from the families of the dead soldiers. It solicits donations through its website.

The group coordinates with the American Battle Monuments Commission, the government agency responsible for overseas graves. The placement of crosses was often the result of administrative error in war times, or of soldiers obscuring their Jewish identities during a war in which Nazis summarily executed Jews.

Operation Benjamin is working on another 22 names. The organization has a single full-time researcher, and it will often contact photographers in countries where there are American gravesites to further their research.

In a 2020 essay for The New York Jewish Week, Schacter explained that mistakes were often madein the chaos of battle, and that Jewish soldiers would often remove from their dog the capital letter H that identified them as Hebrew, in case they fell into enemy hands.

These Jews died so we could remain alive and free. Remembering them for who they were is the least we can do, he wrote. Being involved in this chesed shel emet, a true kindness, is a matter of hakarat hatov recognizing the good they did for us, and being appreciative of their sacrifices.

Scachters co-founder is Shalom Lamm, son of the late Rabbi Norman Lamm, the longtime president of Yeshiva University. The younger Lamm, a real estate developer, made headlines in the middle of the last decade when he battled an upstate New York village over his plans to build housing there for Hasidic Jews. The village paid out $2.9 million in 2016 to settle Lamms claim that its resistance to the project amounted to discrimination against Hasidic Jews, but a year later, Lamm was sentenced to 10 months in prison for voter fraud in a bid to stack the local authority with officials who would be favorable to the development.

Lamm described to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a typical ceremony, in this case, of Second Lieutenant Kenneth Robinson, buried at Ardennes in Belgium. Attending the ceremony last week were members of Robinsons family, including his half-sister Mariellen Miller.

When the headstone is replaced, Rabbi Schacter repeats a line for each soldier which has become iconic, Lamm said. Second Lieutenant Robinson, on behalf of the citizens of America, we thank you for your service, and Kenny, on behalf of the Jewish people, we welcome you home. It just sums it all up perfectly. We are there as a grateful nation, and we are there as a proud people.

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Jewish soldiers are buried under crosses around the world. A rabbis nonprofit is changing that. - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Illustration by Nikki Casey

By David Zvi KalmanMay 02, 2022

The ad is unusual, to say the least.

In the video, posted to YouTube, a group of garbed hasidic men pose in front of a green screen as international Yiddish pop sensation Lipa Schmeltzer, standing behind a camera, tries to paint them into various classic New York locations.

Lipas having a hard time; the paintings arent looking so great. Looking for inspiration, Lipa picks up a blister pack of gum. On the branded package, we see it contains CBD, a chemical extracted from hemp that has been marketed as a panacea for all ailments. Lipa chews, and the creative juices start flowing.

By the end of the video, which is set to Schmeltzers hit Gevaldik, he has produced a beautiful group portrait. The advertisement is entirely in Yiddish, with the exception of three words that describe the gum: calm, focused, and awake. A card at the end reminds us that this is an advertisement for KosherCBD, a Brooklyn-based dispensary.

Schmeltzers advertisement is a testament to the massive growth of the cannabis industry in the United States over the last decade. CBD is now legal nationwide, and 37 states have legalized marijuana in some form. In New York it is now fully legal; New Jersey stores sold their first legal weed on April 21. With observant Jews piling into this market as both consumers and producers, its no surprise that demand for kosher certification has quickly followed.

Coverage of kosher cannabis has mostly gawked at the novelty of the idea; after all, its hard not to be struck by the sheer strangeness of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, one of Israels most important ultra-Orthodox rabbis, saying the blessing on pleasing smells and then taking a big whiff from a bundle of marijuana leaves (Kanievsky passed away on March 18; his funeral was attended by several hundred thousand people).

After speaking with many kosher regulators and Jewish cannabis producers, however, it has become clear to me that certifiers of cannabis products are not fully aware of the regulator mess into which they have stumbled. At the same time, I am convinced that kosher certifiers have a vital role to play in the American cannabis industry, if they expand the scope of their supervision just a little. In an industry that is plagued by quality control problems that the federal government has been slow to solve, kosher certifiers are uniquely positioned to become the nationally recognized mark of high-quality cannabis goods.

Cannabis regulation is a mess. There are a couple of reasons for this, the most obvious being that the 37 states which have legalized marijuana have created a patchwork of rules that the federal government, which still prohibits the plant, cannot unite. But cannabis is also complicated because it is chemically complex, containing dozens of substances that combine to create a wide variety of effects. These substances can be extracted and recombined to create an astonishing variety of products.

The best-known molecule, THC, is responsible for most of marijuanas psychoactive effects. Another molecule, CBD, is frequently marketed for pain and stress relief. Since it is now possible to control the ratio of these substances in extracts, tinctures and other cannabis products, the federal government has latched onto THC as the problem cannabinoid, effectively letting CBD and all the others off the hook.

The concern about THC has led to a complicated division among cannabis products. Since 2018, products containing less than 0.3% THC can be sold anywhere; if they contain more, they become federally illegal and are subject to state regulations instead. THC is also not the only psychoactive cannabis molecule; a synthetic cousin, delta-8 THC (most THC in marijuana is delta-9) derived from hemp produces similar but milder effects and is neither federally regulated nor particularly well studied.

In this thicket of closely related but legally distinct products, the question of how to tell what is safe for use has mostly fallen through the cracks. The FDA has approved CBD for medical use in a few cases, but has not reined in the many companies who market it as a cure for everything from insomnia to COVID-19. Given that the agency already struggles with its food-related responsibilities, according to a recent Politico investigation, its unlikely that CBD regulation will improve anytime soon.

The regulation of THC, on the other hand, has fallen to the states, which are put in the awkward position of mimicking a federal responsibility for a single set of products. As for delta-8 and other synthetic products, there is little federal or state oversight at all.

This legal morass translates into significant quality control issues. Studies have found that CBD products contain far more or less of the substance than advertised, and sometimes also contain mold, insecticide, or even THC. Testing is not carefully monitored; in some cases, manufacturers have passed off another products certificate of analysis as their own instead of paying for new testing.

THC is generally better regulated in states where it is legal, but there is still a great deal of variation; as soon as Arizona stepped up its inspections, it found that some products contained salmonella. All of these issues are magnified for delta-8 THC, which is both complicated to produce and totally unregulated. In January, a study of 27 delta-8 THC products found that not a single one was accurately labeled.

For both legal and cultural reasons, American kosher agencies have followed American government policies. In 1973, shortly after Congress classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug with no accepted medical use, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein issued a letter in which he denounced marijuana as both counter-cultural and disrespectful to ones parents. But as states have legalized and the federal government has relaxed rules for everything but THC, kosher agencies have quickly moved to certify all kinds of cannabis products with an enthusiasm that is directly correlated with federal policy. (Notably, the story in Canada is very different: Despite federal legalization of marijuana in 2018, no major Canadian kashrut organization has certified either CBD or THC.)

The biggest shift has been around CBD products, whose acceptability is no longer even controversial. Today, all of the big five kosher certifiers will certify CBD products, though not all do so in practice. Certification of THC remains rare, but consensus seems to be forming that products designed for medical use can be certified. The Orthodox Union, the worlds largest kosher certifier, certifies a small number of THC products; Whole Kosher Services, an agency based in the southwest that pioneered THC certification, certifies a few non-medical THC products, as well, though it doesnt expect this side of the business to grow.

The medicalization of THC has made kosher certification acceptable, but it also limits the market, since even most kosher consumers dont expect their medicines to be certified. As for delta-8 THC, several agencies that I spoke with were aware of the products, but with the exception of Earth Kosher, a small Colorado-based agency, none have agreed to certify it.

None of the kosher agencies I spoke with thought that CBD supervision was anything special or particularly complex. Producers submit ingredient lists to the agencies, who check that everything is kosher; they also conduct regular, unannounced visits to ensure that the rules are being followed. When asked, no agency seemed particularly concerned about the use of infested hemp. While most agencies will look at lab results to ensure that the THC content is below the threshold, all of the agencies take the manufacturer at their word that the results submitted are accurate. None require third party certification.

When pressed about the need for more supervision, all the agencies gave me the same response: kosher concerns and food safety concerns are not the same, and kosher supervision only monitors exactly those things that matter to Jewish law. The problem is that food safety and kosher are intertwined; if American regulators are not checking that labels and lab tests are accurate, kosher regulators must approach them with a more skeptical eye, as well. When kosher agencies certify a regular chocolate, theyre one of many regulatory groups with overlapping interests. When they check on a CBD chocolate, they might be all alone.

This narrow focus means that kosher CBD products suffer from the same quality control issues as the rest of the industry. Products from two noted CBD manufacturers, for example, have both been tested to contain a level of CBD than is more than 10% off the labeled amount. Both products are also certified by Whole Kosher Services, an agency which has focused on this market. When I asked the agencys director of sales, Shmuel Kronman, whether this presented a problem, he acknowledged the concern but said that from a kosher perspective it was not an issue.

Faced with this reality, kosher certifiers have a choice. They could, if they wanted, maintain an extremely narrow interest in exactly the things that make a food kosher, practicing extreme vigilance about what matters to Jewish law and nothing else. Or, with a little extra work, they could verify that producers are using accurate labels and industry standard food safety practices. Though the second path takes these organizations slightly outside of their comfort zone, agencies that choose this route may find producers and consumers that are ready and waiting for them.

Kosher products have an excellent reputation with both consumers and manufacturers. Despite the fact that kosher food is not necessarily healthier or higher quality, American shoppers regularly purchase kosher products based on the belief that they are better than the alternatives. This is, on occasion, correct. In the early 20th century, some Americans turned to kosher meat out of concern for working conditions in large midwestern slaughterhouses.

The perception of quality leads manufacturers to seek out supervision, too. According to Sue Fishkoffs Kosher Nation, kosher certification at Chinese production facilities only took off after a 2008 scandal in which tens of thousands of infants became sick after eating formula tainted with melamine, which had been added to make the protein content seem higher than it really was.

Production-side demand for supervision is contagious up the supply chain. Unlike organic, fair-trade or non-GMO, which certify products at a particular stage of production, kosher products need to be certified at every single stage. A producer at the end of the supply chain say, someone making CBD gummies needs all-kosher ingredients, so they will exert pressure on their preferred suppliers to go kosher, or they will switch to suppliers who already are. Cannabis producers seeking out certification also discover that its relatively cheap. With the exception of the gelatin in gummies and some oils used in tinctures, nothing in cannabis products is inherently non-kosher, so certification does not typically involve major modifications to the products.

As more suppliers get certified, downstream producers seeking certification may discover that most of the work has been done for them. Curaleaf, for example, has certified its entire New York supply chain through Whole Kosher Services, including the flowers themselves. Because Curaleaf sells its extra flower to other state producers, a significant portion of the states flower is already certified.

In the case of cannabis, kosher supervision has a further advantage. Because kosher agencies are private companies that operate internationally, they can transcend the regulatory patchwork of state-by-state legalization without running afoul of federal law. According to Kronman, some cannabis producers have remarked that kosher supervisors come by their facilities more than any other inspector.

Kosher certification is optimally placed to become the nationally recognized mark of quality for cannabis products. The agencies are well respected, national, and already manage every stage of production. Certification is relatively cheap, and its assumed by consumers to be a mark of quality. With the stars aligned in their favor, what would it take for a kosher agency to adopt this mantle?

An agency that wished to become a certifier of quality cannabis products would need to widen the scope of inspections, but not by much. Rather than trust a manufacturers product analysis, agencies could insist on regular third-party testing for CBD products. They could also test individual ingredients for purity, as some already do. For THC, they might also insist on stricter rules in states without robust inspections.

Using kosher supervisors as multi-purpose inspectors is not a new idea. Star-K, a major Baltimore-based agency, has trained some of its certifiers to check whether foods can be labeled organic; in a 2019 interview, the agencys Rabbi Jonah Gewirtz told me that the agency had been approached about certifying products as halal for Muslim consumption, as well. But whereas organic and halal labeling requires new training and possibly major production changes, regulation of cannabis quality simply requires that the kosher supervisor verify that the producer is doing what they already say theyre doing.

Ironically, kosher regulation in this Wild West environment takes certification back to its roots that is, to those times when kosher supervision alone stood between a food producer and the marketplace. Ever-present FDA regulation has meant that the onus of basic safety and label accuracy has not fallen on kosher certifiers, who are free to narrowly focus on kosher concerns; Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, for example, famously ruled that federal regulations absolve Jews from the need to verify that dairy farmers arent adulterating cow milk with the milk of other animals.

Kosher certification is governed by Jewish law, halakhah, which, like all legal systems, overlaps with ethics but is not synonymous with it. Treating Jewish law as the totality of ethics is dangerous business that can lead to embarrassments such as cigarettes that are kosher for Passover and kosher meat processing facilities with abysmal working conditions. When Jewish law is employed to correct injustice, on the other hand, many Jews rightly feel a sense of pride. This desire to see more overlap between halakhah and ethics has already led to the creation of ethically-minded kosher certifications, like Tav HaYosher, which focus not on food but on how workers are treated.

Deserved or not, kosher certification is considered to be a sign of quality, and kosher certifiers generally coast on this reputation by maintaining a careful silence. This strategy has worked, but it can also backfire if a certified product is discovered to be dangerous. Kosher CBD products do not seem to be immune from the industrys quality control issues; if certification does not correlate with quality, consumers will start to notice.

The heft of kosher also faces particular challenges in the recreational drug market because the word has long been used in ways that have nothing to do with Jewish law. The marijuana strain Kosher Kush is said to have been blessed by a rabbi; whether this is true or not, the strain is not actively certified. More troubling is Kosher Blends, a California-based CBD producer which, despite the name, does not advertise any sort of certification. Reading the companys website, one gets the impression that kosher just means high quality a good message to cultivate, but one that becomes quickly confusing if the products are not actually kosher, as well

Right now, kosher cannabis products represent a tiny portion of the industry; dispensaries that dont specialize in kosher cannabis are unlikely to stock it, and many Orthodox rabbis are still wary about recreational marijuana use. But as cannabis purchases have moved off the street and into sleek dispensaries, consumers will increasingly demand products that are not just legal, but also safe and accurately labeled. While kosher certifiers are not currently in the cannabis quality control business, it wouldnt take much for them to become the de facto regulator of the entire industry. Consumers already think that kosher kush is better; it would not be hard to make it so.

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Appealing to a higher authority why cannabis provides a unique opportunity for the kosher industry - Forward

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From the local theaters of Fairfield County to performing on Broadway, actress Julie Benko is representing Connecticut in the new production of "Funny Girl." Benko, who is Beanie Feldstein's stanby, made her debut on Friday, April 29 and continued starring in the role until Sunday.

"It was completely thrilling, overwhealming and so much fun," said Benko, who was raised in Fairfield since the age of 3.

While Benko has an impressive theater repertoire under her belt, having starred in Broadway productions such as "Fiddler on the Roof," "Les Miserables" and "Spring Awakening," her love for theater began in Connecticut.

"The score is stunning and classic and it's really fun to sing," said Benko. The role of Fanny Brice allowed her to show many different sides of herself, Benko added.

When she was 14, Benko participated in her first theater production, the "Fiddler on the Roof" which was organized by the Jewish Community Center in Bridgeport. When her family took her to audition, both her parents and sister ended up casted for the community production as well. After she played the role of Hodel, Benko got the "theater bug" and continued doing theater while she attended Fairfield Ludlowe High School.

"I was a little nervous but I was more comfortable once I got on stage because that's where I feel at home, so it was very freeing for me to be on stage," said Benko. The actress attended New York University for her undergraduate and master's degrees.

Julie Benko and her family on Bridgeport's Jewish Community Center production of The Fiddle in the Roof. Benko is Beanie Feldstein's stanby on the Broadway production of Funny Girl.

As a stanby, Benko has to be ready to go on stage for every production in case she is needed if Feldstein cannot perform. However, last weekends performance was scheduled since the beginning because Feldstein had personal engagements. Benko is set to perform again Aug. 26-28.Feldstein is known for her roles in "Booksmart" and "Lady Bird," and is the sister of actor Jonah Hill. While performing in "Funny Girl," Feldstein is also filming "Impeachment: American Crime Story" in which she acts as Monica Lewinsky.

Just likethe character ofFanny Brice, Benko has different sides of herself and of her career.

In 2020, Benko directed the short film "The Newlywed's Guide to Physical Intimacy," which focuses on an Hasidic Jewish couple on their wedding night. The film premiered at New York City's New Faces New Voices Summer Festival in July of 2020 and was also shown at the Online New England Film Festival and the Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival in Minnesota.

During the beginning of the pandemic, Benko and her husband Jason Yeager streamed weekly musical performances from their New York apartment called Quarantunes. Later this year, the couple will release a duo album titled "Hand in Hand" produced by Club44 Records.

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CT actress debuts in Broadway production of 'Funny Girl' as Beanie Feldsteins standby - CT Insider

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Posted By admin on May 4, 2022

By Andrew Esensten

(JTA) A few years ago, Rachel Picado attended a Utah Jazz game in Salt Lake City with Israeli diplomat Eitan Naeh, who was visiting from Los Angeles. During the closing seconds of the game, which the Jazz won, the two heard a familiar song coming from the speakers in Vivint Arena.

We were both looking at each other like, why on earth are they playing Hava Nagila? Picado recalled.

She asked the Jazz employees who were hosting her group about the musical choice, and they were confused that we were confused, Picado said.

They said, Well, isnt it a celebratory song? Were celebrating the win. Isnt that what its for? Picado added.

Many professional sports teams play the same song after each win in their home stadiums. The Yankees use New York, New York by Frank Sinatra. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Lakers serenade fans with Randy Newmans I Love L.A., while the Clippers blast Tupac Shakurs California Love.

And, for more than a decade, the Jazz have celebrated home victories by playing Hava Nagila, the Hebrew staple of Jewish weddings and bar and bat mitzvah parties that seemingly has nothing to do with Utah or jazz, for that matter.

For a team with no Jewish players, in a market with relatively few Jewish residents, the choice has long baffled and amused basketball fans in Utah and beyond. The Jazz organization cites the songs memorable beat in explaining the phenomenon.

The rejoicing of the fans and the memorable beat of the song have proven to be a popular way to commemorate a Jazz win, Madeline Crandall, the teams communications director, said in an email.

While Jazz players dictate the arenas playlist during pregame and halftime warmups, the team has two senior employees who choose the in-game music. Hava Nagila has been used specifically as the victory song as long as they both remember, Crandall said. The consensus is that it feels celebratory and fun and it has just stuck.

Neither Meikle LaHue nor Jeremy Castro, who would appear to be the employees in question, responded to emails. LaHue has worked with the Jazz since 2006, and Castro since 2007, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

DJ Joune, the teams official DJ whose job, as he put it in a recent Instagram video, is curating the vibes at Vivint Arena, said the tradition predates his tenure with the team.

I dont really know how this tradition started, but its a great victory ending song for Jazz fans, he said.

How do Utah Jews feel about the teams embrace of a song with deep Jewish roots?

Its a bit different, Ill say that much, said Rabbi Samuel Spector, who leads Utahs largest synagogue, Congregation Kol Ami in Salt Lake City. Hopefully it gives people a good association with Judaism and the Jewish community, if they associate our music with fun and winning.

There are eight synagogues and approximately 6,500 Jews living in Utah today; about a quarter of them belong to Kol Ami, which is affiliated with both the Conservative and Reform movements. By contrast, more than 2 million residents or two-thirds of the population belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, according to Church statistics. (There are also small numbers of Jewish Mormons, Latter-day Saints who take pride in having Jewish heritage.)

Spector characterized relations between Jews and Latter-day Saints in Utah as close.

They have been very generous to us, are always happy to help and have been great friends, he said. Even when we have differences, those are not great enough to overcome our friendship.

Picado, who works in health insurance and attended the game with the Israeli diplomat, said she feels more welcome as a Jew in Salt Lake City than in Seattle, where she lived previously and encountered a lot of very strong anti-Israel sentiment that definitely spilled over on the Jewish community. She noted that the LDS Church has helped honor Jewish history in the state by, for example, helping to erect a historic marker dedicated to Jewish pioneers who established an agricultural colony in Clarion, central Utah, in 1911.

Jazz owners Ryan and Ashley Smith are members of the Church, as were the previous owners, Larry and Gail Miller. Like many NBA teams, the Jazz hold a Jewish Heritage Night each season, usually during Hanukkah. Since 2015, the local emissaries from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Rabbi Benny Zippel and his son, Rabbi Avremi Zippel, have led menorah lighting ceremonies during halftime of those games. Avremi sings Maoz Tzur.

First performed in Jerusalem in 1918 to celebrate the Balfour Declaration in support of a future state of Israel, Hava Nagila combines lyrics adapted from the book of Psalms let us rejoice and be glad with a Hasidic niggun, or chanted melody. Over time, it has gone from a Zionist youth group song to a Jewish wedding standard to a generic ode to happiness, according to academics Edwin Seroussi and James Loeffler. So its not so unusual to hear it played or sung at sporting events in the United States and Europe today.

Once upon a time it was viewed as a stirring Zionist anthem, so much so that it was banned in parts of the Arab world, Loeffler, a Jewish history professor at the University of Virginia, told JTA. Now thanks to its ubiquity it has become pareve to the point of post-Jewish kitsch.

Still, some Jewish basketball fans said they feel uneasy about the songs usage to glorify a non-Jewish group.

I find it inappropriate for any NBA team to use any cultural song as a victory song, but even more so for a franchise in a city without any real connection to the culture the song is representative of, said Jon Kaufman, a fan who runs a sports memorabilia store on eBay and follows the Jazz closely from his home in Portland. If they were to celebrate with a Mormon song, that would make some sense. But for the team to take something cultural that is not yours, and to appropriate it for your liking, is just wrong.

Ben Dowsett, a journalist and videographer based in Salt Lake City who covers the NBA, does not take issue with what the Jazz are doing. On the contrary, Dowsett, who is Jewish, said the Jewish community and other minority communities should be open to this sort of thing where appropriate, as long as the cultural elements being referenced are not being taken out of context or used offensively, which I dont believe is the case here.

Led by All-Stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, as the Ledger went to press, the Jazz were getting ready to face off against the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs.

Rabbi Avremi Zippel has been attending Jazz games for 25 years. He hopes to watch his team finally win their first championship.

I look forward to game 7 of the NBA Finals, speedily in our days, he said, with the Jazz playing Hava Nagila as the Larry OBrien [NBA Championship] Trophy is lifted in the air.

Main Photo: Fans watch the Utah Jazz play the Memphis Grizzliesin a 2021 playoff game at Vivint Smart Home Arenain Salt Lake City, May 23, 2021.(Alex Goodlett/Getty Images)

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Why do the Utah Jazz, in the Mormon capital, play 'Hava Nagila' after wins? - Connecticut Jewish Ledger

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Posted By admin on May 4, 2022

By Rav Hazzan Ken RichmondParshat Kedoshim(Leviticus 19:1-20:27)

Last week my consortium of synagogues commemorated Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, gathering in person for the first time in three years to lift up our voices together, light candles, recite prayers, and to have the rare privilege of hearing testimony from a survivor and his family. As with many events these days, we were hybrid, with an option to participate and view the event via live stream.

Many people tuned into the live stream, and one emailed me to note how few people seemed to be there in person. The in-person attendance was well below pre-COVID levels, but much higher than could be sensed in the live stream, due to camera angles and our inclination to spread out near the back of the room. This got me thinking about what it means these days to come together in community, when those in person cant see those at home, and to a large extent, vice versa.

Our Torah portion, Kedoshim, begins with God telling Moses (Leviticus 19:2):

Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, Y-H-V-H your God, am holy.

I want to share with you some wisdom I received from my teachers Rabbi Nehemia Polen and Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, illuminating a dialogue across time between the 11th century French commentator Rashi and the 19th century Hasidic master Kalonymus Kalman Halevi Epstein, known as the Maor Vashemesh.

First of all, Rashi says that the addition of the words the whole community emphasizes that this section of the Torah was so important that all the people had to gather to hear it directly from Moses.

The Maor Vashemesh reinterprets this to mean not that this passage was crucial for all to hear, but that the whole enterprise of striving for holiness needs to be done in community.

Rashi goes on to say something that seems to be contradictory to this sentiment: that be holy means to be aloof, to separate oneself: hevu frushim .

The Maor Vashemesh reads Rashi as saying that one needs to be separate from the community in order to find holiness.(1) Many of us may agree that we can find holiness in private study and prayer, and certainly, during the last two years, we have had plentiful opportunities to seek holiness alone or in smaller groups. But the Maor Vashemesh pushes back on this idea, saying:

Now its true that in order to save oneself from bad habits and a culture of corruption, one must indeed run away to backwoods and to separate from the masses. But [on the other hand], the only way to rise to a state of holiness is to attach oneself to people of spiritual distinction, true servants of God, joining with them in their sacred service of prayer and Torah study. The most important rule about mitzvotis to perform them in community, with other seekers of God. Then you will be able to attain supernal holiness. The more people that gather together to engage in Divine service, the more the supernal holiness comes to rest upon them (translation by Rabbi Nehemia Polen)

What does this mean for our search for holiness as we rebuild our communities in hybrid fashion?

On the one hand, having access to community through the modern miracles of technology has been a godsend, enabling us to learn, connect, and pray in new ways. Those who have been sick with COVID, hesitant to be near other people, or homebound for any number of reasons have been able to participate in communal events, to have a shared experience with their community. And many of our events and services, taking into account those at shul and at home, have had higher attendance than previously. In a way, those participating at home, in being both apart and together with the community, have been able to fulfill another part of the Maor Vashemeshs teaching, that we can be together with other people but focused on holiness in our own thoughts.

And on the other hand, theres something missing when we cant all sense each other, when some cant easily add their singing, their reactions, their comments during and after the event, to the communal experience. When we arent all in the same physical space, its hard to be sure whose regular attendance to appreciate, whose surprise appearance to celebrate, and who is missing. And even for those who share a space, the tendency to sit towards the back and apart from one other is accentuated due to good COVID practice. Instead of the ideal that Joey Weisenberg teaches, of people gathered close together in the middle of the room in harmonizing, were still frushim, still apart.

The Torah portion will go on to detail many ways that we can be holy: showing deference to the elderly, supporting the poor, not taking advantage of those with disabilities basically treating all people with love and respect. And as Rashi and the Maor Shemesh teach, these important mitzvot need to be heard in community and carried out in community, and we have to work harder to carry them out when we cant see everyone at once. The root , fey reysh shin, is interrelated with , fey resh sin, and , fey resh samech, which have the connotation of spreading out, in addition to merely separating. These times of hybrid community call for reaching out and stretching hevu frusim making the effort to return to community if and when we are able to do so, trying to keep our communal policies such that the maximum number of people feel comfortable attending, and reaching out to those who have not returned in person so they dont feel isolated.

Building and forming a holy community is hard work even in normal times, and all the more so during a pandemic. May we come together in person when possible, find holiness when apart, and as were spread out, may we work harder to reach out so that communal holiness can encompass the whole community.

(1) Rashi finishes the thought by saying that being holy means to separate oneself from sin. The Maor Vashemesh may be deliberately misreading Rashi by curtailing the quote mid-phrase, or he may view Rashi as emphasizing the negative, suggesting that one strive for holiness by avoiding certain people and activities instead of positively, through engaging with others.

Ken Richmond has been the cantor of Temple Israel of Natick since 2006, and received smicha from Hebrew Colleges Rabbinical School in 2021.He will become co-senior rabbi at Temple of Israel, in partnership with Rabbi Raysh Weiss, this summer.

Read more from the original source:

Together or Apart? Rebuilding Holy Community Across Space - Patheos

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