Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

This week, Jews in Israel and around the world will commemorate Yom HaShoah, a Holocaust Remembrance Day that marks a somber time for remembrance and reflection. On Thursday, thousands of Israeli and diaspora Jews and supporters will walk silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau in Poland in a procession called the March of the Living, designed to highlight Jewish resilience and survival along the path where thousands of Jews were killed during Nazi death marches in the 1940s.

Progressive Jewish activists such as ourselves have long expressed discomfort over the nationalist, militarist version of Holocaust memory on display at the March of the Living. This year, however, we were doubly concerned when headlines briefly declared that prominent Christian Zionist leader and antisemite Mike Evans would be leading the march.

Within hours, March organizers clarified that although Evans would be attending, he has no official role in the planned events. But why would Evans have the chutzpah to jubilantly make such a patently false declaration to the press? And what does this tell us about the contemporary Christian Zionist movement? Among other things it tells us that in spite of (or rather, in line with) the movements support for an expansionist, reactionary, and exclusively Jewish Israel, Christian Zionism is one of the largest antisemitic movements in the world today.

The soul snatcher of Long Island

Mike Evans is a prominent U.S. evangelical leader, prolific author, and head of influential Christian Zionist institutions like the Jerusalem-based Friends of Zion Museum and the Jerusalem Prayer Team, a global outreach network with 30 million followers on Facebook. Evans has maintained close relationships with generations of Israeli heads of state from Menachem Begin to Benjamin Netanyahu, and exerts influence within GOP circles in the U.S., recently serving as an Evangelical Advisor to former President Donald Trump.

Yet despite these lofty credentials, Evans professed love for Israel is laced with antisemitism. In June 2021 Evans, enraged at Israeli leadership after Netanyahus electoral defeat, published an op-ed in the Times of Israel which drew upon a wellspring of implicit medieval and modern antisemitic tropes, slandering Israeli leaders as sinful Christ-killers, crass and materialistic, sexually licentious, power-obsessed and more.

At the end of his op-ed, Evans careened into full-on Holocaust revisionism. I understand how the Holocaust happened, he wrote, claiming that German Jews, whom he made into a metaphor for todays Israeli leaders, were busy insulting each other, drunk on the wine of pride. They did not see the smoke of Auschwitz rising because they were more German than they were Jews.

This perverse victim-blaming inverts the historical reality that, in fact, fascist Germany violently denied its Jews first their national identity, then their livesbut this didnt stop far-right Israeli outlets like Israel Hayom from celebrating Evans bid to lead the event commemorating these Jewish victims of German fascism, over seven decades later.

Before he embraced Christian Zionism in the 1980s, Mike Evans led missionaries to convert Jews to Christianity. In the 1970s, Evans was the leader of Bnai Yeshua, an organization of Jewish Christians that rivaled Jews for Jesus in its aggressive attempts to see every Jewish person in the world, as Evans put it, come to a greater relationship with the God of Israel through the acceptance of Jesus as the messiah. In 1976, Evans, with the support of Christian Right leaders like Pat Robertson and David Wilkerson, moved Bnai Yeshua from Texas to Long Island in order to target one of the nations largest Jewish communities with his proselytizing.

The move led one writer to give Evans the nickname soul-snatcher of Long Island, and prompted Jewish leaders and mainline Christian partners to form an emergency counter-missionary task force to block his efforts. In another outrageous Holocaust inversion, Evans at one point responded to this pushback by suggesting Bnai Yeshua members would wear yellow stars symbolizing their persecution by the Jewish community. Evans name remained on missionary alert bulletins released regularly by Jewish community organizations until at least 1985.

Evans now avoids explicitly calling for the proselytizing of Jews, but a closer look suggests another story. In 2017 Shannon Nuszen, a former missionary who today works to counter Christian missionary activity in Israel, described the gut wrenching feeling she experienced at Evans Friends of Zion Museum. Geared towards a Christian Zionist audience, the museums exhibits featured coded appeals to missionary activity and celebrations of deathbed evangelism, where missionaries target lonely, vulnerable and impoverished Holocaust survivors in order, as Nuszen put it, to convert them to Christianity in their dying days or even last moments.

Christian Zionist antisemitism

Evans brand of antisemitism, masked as philosemitism and enthusiastic support for Israel, is common amongst Christian Zionist leaders. These leaders tend to believe Jewish ingathering in Israel is key to hastening the End Times, in which Jesus will return to Earth to bring salvation to Christians while non-Christians, including Muslims and Jews, will either accept Jesus as their Savior or face eternal damnation and physical annihilation.

Even while professing deep remorse and guilt over past centuries of European Christian antisemitism, and vocal opposition to contemporary antisemitism (usually conflated with any critique of Israel and its policies), many Christian Zionist leaders view the existence of past and present antisemitism as a necessary and cosmically ordained stimulus to Jews retaking the land of Israel.

John Hagee, founder and CEO of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which boasts millions of members, stated in a 2006 sermon that the Holocaust happened because God said, my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel. Although Hagee has since backtracked on this position, in 2015, Hagee again tapped into classical Christian antisemitism and Holocaust revisionism, stating that a half-breed Jew committed the Holocaustreferring to a debunked myth of Hitlers Jewish ancestryand that the Antichrist will also be a half-breed Jew.

Today, a slew of influential Christian Zionist organizations similarly attribute Russias invasion of Ukraine as part of Gods plan to induce Ukrainian Jews to return home to Israel. The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ) has repeatedly appealed to its global following to support efforts to relocate Ukrainian Jews to Israel by exclaiming this is their chance to be part of an urgent, historic and even prophetic wave of Aliyah, as so many other divine promises are being fulfilled before our eyes through Israels restoration to her ancient homeland.

Evans used most of Sundays press release announcing his leadership of the March of the Living to boast of his recent efforts to rescue Ukrainian Holocaust survivors in particular, a narrative enthusiastically repeated across right-wing Christian and Israeli Jewish media.

In the Christian Zionist instrumentalization of Jewish suffering, the Jewish people and the state of Israel function as vehicles for the revelation of Christian truth claims. Scholar of the religious Right S. Jonathan ODonnell calls these characterizations of Jews and Jewish life overdeterminedfetish objects invested with supernatural power. In the view of Evans and those with similar beliefs, its impossible to respect Jews as Jews and as human beings. This worldview also draws upon the antisemitic assumption that diaspora Jews are inherent outsiders in their respective countries, which Evans echoed in last years broadside against German Jewish victims of Nazism.

Given Christian Zionist tendencies to appropriate Jewish narratives for their own gains, its little surprise that Christian Zionist leaders are shaping Holocaust education in states like Florida, and comprise the largest lobby pushing for the IHRA definition which categorically conflates critique of Israel with antisemitism.

By misdefining antisemitism to serve their own purposes, Christian Zionistsalongside a sturdy bloc of largely conservative Jewish alliesreinforce a feedback cycle whereby antisemitism is rarely meaningfully addressed, but is allowed to flourish within a white Christian nationalist Right bent upon using Jews for its own agenda.

Moreover, Evans is hardly the only Christian Zionist with a penchant for attempting to convert Jews. Growing trends in Christian Zionism, as researcher Rachel Tabachnick noted in 2015, are no longer content simply to instrumentalize Jews as vehicles for End Times revelation, but are eager to awaken Jews in Israel to Jesus as Messiah as well. To the ascendant New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) concentrated mainly in Charismatic and Pentecostal churches, proselytization of Jews becomes, alongside the liquidation of the diaspora, a key part of the End Times process that must occur before the return of Jesus to Earth.

Apart from the obvious harm to Jews, all of this is disastrous, of course, for indigenous Palestinians who continue to call for freedom, justice and equality in the Holy Land. Like many Israeli nationalists, Christian Zionist leaders view Palestinians as little more than a foreign, expendable population whose very existence threatens the ethnonationalist agenda of the Israeli Right.

To encourage the divinely-mandated ingathering of all of world Jewry to Israel, Christian Zionist organizations funnel millions of dollars every year to support Jewish emigration efforts as well as illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and elsewhere, supporting and often encouraging Israeli Jewish attacks and takeovers of Palestinian land, as is happening in Jerusalem and Gaza today.

As shocking as it would have been, then, for an antisemite like Evans to lead the March of the Living, in one sense he would have felt right at home amidst the Israeli warplanes, soldiers, and evocations of nationalism and military might that unfortunately characterize the ceremony today.

Many right-wing Israeli outlets celebrated the false news that Evans would lead the march, reinforcing the close relationship between Christian Zionist leaders and the Israeli Right in the post-Trump era. As Yom HaShoah moves us to recommit to the fight against antisemitism, we must recommit to oppose Christian Zionism and to fight for a world in which Jews, Palestinians and all people can live in safety, dignity and freedom wherever they are.

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Why Did an Antisemitic Christian Zionist Have the Chutzpah to Declare That He'd Be Leading a Holocaust March? - Religion Dispatches

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

(April 28, 2022, New York, JNS Wire)

Two of New Yorks legal luminaries, Robert B. Fiske, Jr.,Senior Counsel, Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Stephanie Goldstein, Global Co-Head of Litigation and Regulatory Proceedings, Goldman Sachs, will be honored recipients of the annual George A. Katz Torch of Learning Award, presented by American Friends of the Hebrew University (AFHU) at Cipriani 42nd St. on Tuesday, May 10 at 12 p.m.

Celebrating its 52nd year, the Award has an illustrious history and raises awareness and important support for the HU Faculty of Law and the mission of its American Friends.Presented annually to distinguished members of the New York legal community, the TOL Award recognizes an honorees leadership, scholarship, and dedication to the betterment of humanity which was embodied in the high ideals and philanthropic commitment of the late George A. Katz (zl), co-founder of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and dear friend of AFHU.

Fiske is widely credited for pioneering white collar defense as a big-law practice area. He is currently Senior Counsel at Davis Polk after having served as a partner in the firms Litigation practice over 46 years. In 1994, he was Independent Counsel in the Whitewater investigation. He served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1976 to 1980 and as Chairman of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys. Fiske is a Fellow and former President of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

Among his numerous accolades, Fiske received the Federal Bar Councils Emory Buckner Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the New York City Bar Association Medal and the Fordham-Stein Prize, The American Lawyer Lifetime Achievement Award, Michigan Law School Inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award, American Inns of Court Lewis Powell Award for Professionalism and Ethics, James Duane Award for exemplary service to the Southern District of New York.

Fiske received an LL.D. from the University of Michigan, J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School Order of the Coif, Associate Editor Michigan Law Review, and a B.A. from Yale University.

His fellow Torch of Learning honoree, Stephanie Goldstein, is currently Global Co-Head of Litigation and Regulatory Proceedings at Goldman Sachs. She joined Goldman Sachs as a managing director in 2013 from Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP in New York, where she had been a partner since 2000. Goldstein graduated summa cum laude from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University in 1992 and magna cum laude from Brandeis University in 1989.

Torch of Learning Event Co-Chairs are:

Charles A. Stillman, Ballard Spahr LLP; Alan Levine, Cooley LLP; James P. Rouhandeh, Davis, Polk & Wardwell LLP; Jonathan L. Mechanic, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, and Jacobson LLP; Robert J. Jossen, Robert Jossen, P.C.; John S. Siffert, Lankler, Siffert & Wohl LLP; Ira Lee Sorkin, Mintz & Gold LLP; Brad S. Karp, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP; Stephen M. Cutler, Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP; H. Rodgin Cohen, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP; Adam O. Emmerich and Martin A. Lipton, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and Staci Yablon, Winston & Strawn LLP.

The Award Luncheon is supported by all the major law firms in New York City as well as representative corporations and financial institutions.

Proceeds from the event will benefit the Hebrew University Faculty of Law and the mission of its American Friends. For more information, to register for the event, or to make a tax-deductible contribution click here, or contact Maura Milles at 212 607-8510, or by email: northeast@afhu.org.

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Two of New York's legal luminaries will receive American Friends of the Hebrew University's George A. Katz Torch of Learning Award, May 10 - JNS.org

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

GERMAINE

By RABBI JOSEF GERMAINE

The 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, same month as Passover, has been established by the Government of Israel as the day to remember the Holocaust. This year it comes on, coincidentally, April 28. It generally includes all regardless of faith, religion or national orientation. The Holocaust affected not only the Jewish people, but also many others who were persecuted by the Nazis. What is really important about this event is it reminds us and everyone throughout the world of the heinous atrocities and shameful period in the history of "human civilization."

Yes, recorded history is there to remind us of what "man" is capable of committing. As people, we need to make certain it never happens again. Our primary mission is to be vigilant about the slightest seed planted in people's minds that could germinate a cancer capable of infecting otherwise innocent minds. But, unfortunately, as previously stated, we fail to learn from history. What is happening today on a continent that suffered the ravages of war of previous generations is now another genocide, another Holocaust.

News reaches us, with undisputed evidence of random killing, faster than previous generations. There are members of society who deny the Holocaust of the Nazi era; I wonder if these same people can deny the genocide of innocent men, women and children in the Ukraine - Russian conflict. Is it truly a conflict, or more accurately "terrorism" in the extreme.

It is extremely difficult to think that modern civilization is still living in the dark ages. Nothing has really changed, except having more efficient means to eradicate greater numbers in record time. We should be thankful living in a country where no individual can rule for an indefinite period of time. And yet, even here, wrong decisions can create irreparable damage. Total disarmament may be a solution, but are we all capable of ultimate trust? In the final analysis, all governments must be held accountable to international courts, and those who refuse to submit to international law must be severed from the international community.

Unfortunately, it is political leadership that creates havoc. The average person in every country seeks peace and security. Change has to come from within. Let us pray that populations throughout the world can have the power and the will to control their governments.

Temple Sinai Jewish History Center invites you to light a candle on Thursday, April 28, 2022, between 1 and 4 p.m. in memory of these victims.

Rabbi Josef Germaine is a professional lyric tenor who has been a concert recitalist, cantor, vocal coach and rabbi. He received his bachelor's in music and masters degree in Hebrew education. He lives in Sumter and is a member of Temple Sinai. Reach him at tenore39@aol.com.

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Sumter Rabbi Josef Germaine: Yom HaShoah - Day of remembrance of the Holocaust - The Sumter Item

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

Our brain is attuned to noticing new things in the busy environment around us. This alertness to novelty means we are apt to overemphasize what holds our attention. When people stand out as different, they stick in our mind because of how much we initially notice their presenceand by how vividly we later recall them.

Our recollection of the unusual carries over into how we think about social groups. A recent survey by YouGov America illustrates the real-life tendency to overrepresent the size of minority populations. Residents of New York City, for example, are a tiny minority of Americans, only 3 percent of the population. But adult respondents to this nationwide survey thought that a whopping 30 percent of Americans live in the Big Apple. The survey also found a consistent overestimation of the size of ethnic and racial minority groups. Respondents on average figured that 41 percent of Americans are Black when the actual proportion is 12 percent.

A study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA demonstrates that extra attention to the uncommon around us may partly explain the bad mental math that contributes to misperceptions about other groups. When people make these overestimates, the study authors found, the result can be an illusion of diversity about the presence of minority groups in our social environment. That faulty perception, in turn, can have the paradoxical effect of decreasing support for measures to increase diversity.

Previous research has suggested that negative attitudes toward diversity and inclusion efforts are motivated when a majority group perceives a threat by overestimating minority group size, says Maureen Craig, a social psychologist and an assistant professor at New York University, who was not involved in the new study. Its findings, she says, highlight a cognitive response that comes before the overestimation. People latch onto the unusual before making other judgments about it, such as the size of purportedly competing groups. Taking notice of what is uncommon to someone is a basic cognitive phenomenon in which rare things stand out, Craig says.

The new studys first author, Rasha Kardosh, a social psychologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her colleagues ran 12 experiments with 942 participants in both the U.S. and Israel. Across all of these studies, 82.6 percent of the participants overestimated the proportion of minority group members.

Some experiments took place at the Hebrew University, where most students speak Hebrew, a minority speak Arabic and culturally based visual signals can sometimes distinguish group members. Student participants were asked to estimate the percentage of Arab students they thought were on campus. At the Hebrew University, 9.28 percent of students were Palestinian Israeli at the time of the study, but the Jewish Israeli students gave their estimate for the group as 31.56 percent, and the Palestinian Israeli students gave an estimate of 35.81 percent. Other students were tested for how quickly they detected images of women wearing either a Muslim or Jewish religious headscarf. They did so more quickly for images of women wearing scarves in the Muslim style.

In the U.S., the researchers had participants look at a screen showing a grid of 100 photographs with faces of Black people and white people in different proportions. Viewers had to estimate the overall percentages of Black and white people present after seeing a set of 20 such grids, each viewed for two seconds.

When 25 percent of the images in the grids were of Black people, white participants estimated the proportion of Black faces to be 43.22 percent, and Black participants put it at 43.36 percent. When 45 percent of the images were of Black faces, white participants estimated the proportion of Black people at 58.85 percent, and Black participants thought it was 56.18 percent.

In other experiments, participants were asked to estimate the proportions of Black and white faces directly after seeing each of a series of grids and to then make the same calculation after having gone through the entire set of 20 grids. In both cases, they overestimated the proportion of Black faces and underestimated the percentage of white faces.

The researchers also wanted to know whether preexisting expectations about which group should be in the minority would affect the outcome. They showed 100 white participants grids in which 25 percent of the photographed faces were white, making them the minority, and another set in which 25 percent were Black. In both cases, the presence of faces from less common groups was judged to be higher than it really was. Overestimates were higher, though, when images of Black people were in the minority, illustrating the impact of social expectations. That was a really nice demonstration that you can flip it, says Craig, referring to the overestimation when white faces were in the minority. That overestimation is a lot smaller effect, but it is newIve not seen that before. This finding suggests that everyone has some cognitive bias that leads to overestimations of a numerical minority, she says, going beyond earlier work focused largely on how perceived growth of minority groups affects racial attitudes.

A final set of experiments examined how psychological bias affects support for academic diversity efforts. Participants were shown information about two college programs. In what the researchers called the experiential condition, participants viewed 20 grids of 100 photographs, with Black faces making up 5 percent. In what they called the descriptive condition, the group simply watched a video that informed viewers that 5 percent of a different college programs students were Black. After both exercises, participants were asked whether more should be done to increase diversity, rating their opinion on a scale from 0 (for not at all) to 100 (a great extent).

After viewing the photographic grids in the experiential condition, participants estimated the proportion of Black faces to be 14.75 percent, not 5 percent, while simultaneously underestimating the proportion of white faces as 83.26 percent, not 95 percent. Support for a diversity-improvement program was lower in the experiential condition, with an average score of 71.07, compared with 74.5 in the descriptive condition.

The researchers also assessed whether existing attitudes among the participants affected their estimates and found no such associations.

If people go with what their intuition tells them about minority representation rather than using actual numbers, doing so could be costly, says Ran Hassin, a cognitive scientist at the Hebrew University and senior author of the study. Relying on impressions instead of evidence, he says, might lead people to be less supportive of policies to enhance minority presence on a campus or in a workplace. The results show that this is something we all share, Kardosh adds. If you think youre immune, youre probably not.

People talk about being sensitive to the optics when it comes to diversity efforts in workplaces, says Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, who was not involved in the study but edited it for PNAS. This focus on awareness of optics is saying that optics are really important, she says, which is why these results showing that the optics can be wrong deserve our attention.

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People Think Minority Groups Are Bigger Than They Really Are - Scientific American

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

In todays Finding Faith with Randy Ollis, its a special but somber day for people of the Jewish faith.

Yom HaShoah is also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, and you can take part in the recognition of this day on Friday, April 29 at noon at the Tarkington Theater at the Center for the Performing Arts.

Cantor Aviva Marer of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregationjoined us Thursday on Life.Style.Live! to share whats important to know about the day commemorating the historic event, the current state of anti-Semitism in the U.S., what keeps Jewish people inspired and more. Heres more from her:

When I was growing up, survivors would come and speak to us. Now, there are very few left so we hear second hand accounts from second and third generation survivors

According to ADL, there were more anti-Semitic attacks in the US in 2021 than ever before since they started counting in the 1970s.

We say never again, but remembrance only goes so far. We must educate about the ideologies that lead to these atrocities.

Now more than ever, we must stand against bigotry and hatred of all kinds.

For more information visit:

Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis Facebook

Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation website

Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation Facebook

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Finding Faith with Randy Ollis: Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony to take place at Tarkington Theater tomorrow - WISH TV Indianapolis, IN

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

This piece first appeared in Haaretz and is reprinted with permission.

Donald Heller and Anne Simon had been talking for years about taking a trip to Israel together. An invitation to attend a wedding in the Holy Land provided the couple from San Francisco with the perfect excuse and so, when Israel finally reopened its borders to tourism on March 1 nearly two years after the first coronavirus lockdown they quickly booked their fights.

The plan was to spend the first few days of their 10-day trip in Jerusalem and the rest of the time in Tel Aviv.

What hadnt been planned was that Anne would test positive for Covid the day before they were scheduled to fly back home and that Donald would catch it a few days later.

The United States is among the few countries in the world that still requires passengers to provide a negative Covid test result before boarding their flight. But since about 20 percent of all international visitors to Israel come from the United States, making it the single largest source of incoming tourism to the country, a disproportionately large share of those traveling to Israel these days are affected by this rule.

And because the United States requires that Covid tests be taken within 24 hours of flying, that doesnt give those testing positive much time to prepare for the unfortunate scenario of being stuck in a foreign country for an indefinite amount of time, as this California couple was.

And their case is not that unusual.

According to the Israeli Health Ministry, since Israel reopened its borders, more than 3,800 tourists have tested positive for Covid while in the country. Assuming that around one in five are Americans, it can also be assumed that many hundreds of tourists have been forced to delay their return trips home because of the virus.

That should come as no surprise given that versions of the highly contagious omicron variant are still spreading through Israel. Indeed, according to the head of one of Israels largest incoming tourism companies, who asked that their firms name not be published, as many as 20 percent of his clients have had to extend their stays in the country after testing positive for the virus.

What are American tourists who suddenly discover they have Covid supposed to do? Where do they need to isolate? For how long? And what documents do they need to obtain so they can eventually fly home, and how do they get them?

Not speaking or reading Hebrew, there is no way we could have done this on our own.

Based on the experiences of Donald and Anne, getting answers to these questions is almost impossible if you dont have Hebrew-speaking friends in Israel willing to help you navigate the bureaucracy. Not speaking or reading Hebrew, there is no way we could have done this on our own, said Donald, who retired in February after a career in academics that finished with 6 years at University of San Francisco (where he was an education professor, a provost and vice president of academic affairs and a vice president of operations).

Fortunately for him and his partner, both in their early 60s, their symptoms were relatively mild and they did not need any medical intervention.

A day after Anne received her test results, she was contacted by a representative of the Israeli Health Ministry. That person told her that she would receive a phone call within the next 24 hours from a doctor at Bikur Rofeh, a private clinic that services patients who have no Israeli health insurance. But no phone call was received in that time, as promised.

During their initial exchange with the Health Ministry representative, the couple did not receive any information whatsoever about where they should isolate, or for how long. Seeing that little help was forthcoming, Donald used his phone to find a short-term rental on his own. They spent half a day resting at a hotel while waiting for the rental to become available, and only later learned that tourists with Covid are not allowed to stay at hotels. The Health Ministry representative had never informed them of that, they said.

During their period in isolation, Donald and Anne would receive several emails from the Health Ministry and Bikur Rofeh informing them of their diagnosis and eventually letting them know after seven days had passed for each of them that they no longer needed to isolate.

However, all of these emails were in Hebrew and none contained any information about what, if any, documents they would need to present at the airport in order to board their flight back to San Francisco.

The Health Ministrys English-language website also turned out to be of little help. A section titled Leaving Israel offered the following information about what people in their situation needed to do: Confirmed Covid-19 cases or individuals who are required to stay in isolation at the time of arrival at the airport or border crossing will not be allowed to leave Israel and will be subject to penalty according to law.

It referred travelers with further questions to the website of the Population and Immigration Authority, which is all in Hebrew.

And what about the Tourism Ministry website? A link at the top does direct tourists to a page dedicated to coronavirus regulations in Israel. But they need to scroll all the way down to the bottom to obtain the number of an emergency call center for tourists who test positive for Covid.

When contacted, a call center representative was unable to answer a few basic questions about where tourists should isolate and suggested contacting the Health Ministry.

With the help of their Israeli friends, Donald and Anne would eventually learn that once they completed their isolation, they would receive official recovery certificates that would allow them to return home. Those certificates, however, would only be issued once they had spoken on the phone to a doctor who had determined they were indeed fully recovered.

Getting a doctor to call them proved to be yet another major challenge. Trying to find out why Donald and Anne hadnt been called after they each completed their isolation period, their Israeli friends discovered that the Bikur Rofeh doctors will only call an Israeli phone number which the couple did not have. Like many tourists, they used WhatsApp for phone calls while in the country. The Bikur Rofeh doctors said they could not put calls through on WhatsApp.

So in order for a doctor to be able to speak with and issue their recovery certificates, they had to devise an alternative form of communication.

Heres what they did: Their Israeli friends used two cellphones one on a call with the Bikur Rofeh doctor and the other on a WhatsApp call to Donald and Anne and placed those phones side-by-side on speaker mode. This is how they were eventually pronounced free to return home.

Asked for comment, the Health Ministry said in a statement that its English-language Ramzor website contains all the necessary information.

The statement continued: According to the website, a person who tests positive and has begun their isolation is required to call the Health Ministry hotline, and the hotline will direct them to a Bikur Rofeh doctor who will speak to them and see to their release, according to the rules, once the isolation period is over.

A thorough search of the website, however, uncovered no such information.

The Tourism Ministry, meanwhile, said in a statement that incoming tourists are invited to a booth located in the baggage hall at Ben Gurion Airport, where information about the rules that apply to tourists who test positive for Covid is available.

It should be noted that all issues related to incoming tourists and the coronavirus are the responsibility of the Health Ministry, the statement added. The Tourism Ministry acts as a conduit, referring tourists to the Health Ministry website and call center for updated information.

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SF couple's nightmare: catching Covid instead of a flight out of Israel J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

For the third time in two years, a seat on the Hewlett-Woodmere Board of Education is open because a trustee is moving out of the school district. Veteran Trustee Mitchell Greebel, 59, who has served for three terms and a total of nine years, is moving out of the district. In 2020, Paul Critti and Daniella Simon stepped down for the same reason.

Two seats are up this year in an at-large election, and five candidates are vying for them. The two candidates with the highest vote totals will win three-year terms. Trustee Debra Sheinin, 47, who currently serves as board president, is running for re-election. The four other candidates are Sara Fried, 46, Chani Jeter, 37, Jack Shafran, 61, and Ella Zalkind, 48.

The vote for trustee, along with the school budget and other propositions, is on May 17.

Sheinin, a Hewlett resident and a former public school educator, has been a trustee since 2018. She was named board president in July 2020. During her tenure, she has received honors including the New York State School Boards Associations Board of Excellence Award and Board Mastery Award.

It was my priority to develop a budget that would continue to put the children of our community first and maintain the excellent programs and services we offer, Sheinin wrote in a text message, while not placing any undue hardship on our community.

For at least a decade prior to serving on the board, Sheinin held leadership positions in theCentral Council and Ogden PTAs and other PTA committees. She also volunteered for CYO, PAL and club sports.

Shafran, a Five Towns resident for 33 years, said he is running to give back to his community. Though his four daughters all graduated from the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaways, in Lawrence, Shafran said he has seen his nieces and nephews who attend Hewlett-Woodmere schools benefit from the amazing amenities and quality education that the district offers.

In light of the upheavals wrought by Covid, changing demographics in the district, and a desire by all residents to maintain our stellar educational standards and ranking, I feel compelled to run for a seat on the District 14 Board of Education, Shafran wrote on the districts Facebook group page, adding that one of his main goals is to keep the education system successful while being fiscally responsible.

Fried, a longtime Five Towns resident and a 1993 graduate of Hewlett High School, is running, she said, to help the district continue to succeed with its programs and educational opportunities. Living in Gibson, Woodmere and now Hewlett, Fried said, has given me a wonderful perspective on the different neighborhoods that make up our district.She has been involved in community activities and the PTA for as long as her two children a daughter, a Hewlett High senior, and a son, a Woodmere Middle Schooler have been in school.

Fried is a member of the task force that will determine whether the district should adopt a nine-period day. She has also sat on hiring and other committees at district schools.Fried said she planned to use her career experience working at corporate banks and insurance companies to help make our district function efficiently and fiscally responsibly.

In addition,she said, I will always have an open ear and mind to any and all stakeholders, with the goal of bridging our community together and working toward continued success of our school district.

Jeter, a Woodmere resident, has lived in the school district with her husband and four children for nearly a decade. One child is a Hewlett High School sophomore, another is in kindergarten at the Franklin Early Childhood Center, and the other two a sixth- and second-grader attend the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaways.

Her goal if she is elected, Jeter said, is to bring a balanced perspective to the community, keeping in mind the concerns of both public and private school parents. She also plans to advocate for students with special needs.

Jeter has held leadership roles in the PTA, and was named a Volunteer of the Year by the HAFTR PTA last year. She described herself, in addition to being open-minded, as a problem solver, a strong communicator, a financial manager and a leader.

As a district, we face great challenges fiscally and academically, she wrote on the Facebook group page. My goal is simple: make Hewlett-Woodmere the leading school district in Long Island. I will continually push for excellence; ask the tough questions and deliver transparent answers.

Zalkind, a Hewlett resident since 2016, has two children at Hewlett High School and one at Woodmere Middle School. She is running at the urging of a few friends and neighbors, she wrote on the Facebook group page.

Zalkind has served on the boards of the Shorefront Y, a Jewish Community Center in Brooklyn, and two Brooklyn charter school boards as a member and president of both.

I am a big proponent of public schools and care very deeply about the community, Zalkind wrote. My platform is very simple: to do what is best for the children, the school, the district, and the community. No politics, no gimmicks and no hidden agenda.

Shafran had not responded to requests for comment before the Herald went to press.

Have an opinion on the candidates or school issues? Send a letter to jbessen@liherald.com.

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Meet the Hewlett-Woodmere Board of Education candidates - liherald.com

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

Newswise The lake level of the Dead Sea is currently dropping by more than one metre every year - mainly because of the heavy water consumption in the catchment area. However, very strong lake level drops due to climate changes are also known from earlier times. At the end of the last ice age, for example, the water level dropped by almost 250 metres within a few millennia. A study published today in the journalScientific Reportsnow provides new insights into the exact course of this process. Daniela Mller and Achim Brauer from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam, together with colleagues from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studied 15,000-year-old sediments from the Dead Sea and the surrounding area using newly developed methods. With unprecedented accuracy, they show that the long period of drought was interrupted by wet periods lasting ten to a hundred years. This also offers new insights into the settlement history of this region, which is significant for human development, and enables better assessments of current and future developments driven by climate change.

The water cycle at the Dead Sea - then and now

In highly sensitive regions such as the Eastern Mediterranean, where water availability is an important factor for socio-economic and political development, it is crucial to understand how the water cycle is changing in response to climate change. Geologists can achieve this by assessing strong hydroclimatic changes that occurred several millennia back in time. For example, during the transition from the last ice age to the Holocene, the water level of Lake Lisan dropped by about 240 metres in the period 24-11 thousand years ago, which eventually led to its transition into today's Dead Sea.

Sediments as witnesses of time

The sediments at the edge of lake Lisan near the archaeological site of Masada and from the bottom of what is now the Dead Sea are unique witnesses to this development. In their new study, researchers led by Achim Brauer, head of Section 4.3 "Climate Dynamics and Landscape Evolution" at the German Research Centre for Geosciences Potsdam, and doctoral student Daniela Mller together with colleagues from the Geological Survey Israel and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, analysed these sediments with unprecedented precision. The investigations took place within the framework of thePALEX project'Paleohydrology and Extreme Floods from the Dead Sea ICDP Core', which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

New high-resolution methods for sediment analysis

For this study, new high-resolution analytical methods were developed at the GFZ to gain precise information from the stratification of the sediments and their geochemical composition, even about seasonal deposition processes and thus about the type, duration and course of climatic phases.

In particular, the combination of light microscopic methods with so-called 2D element mapping using X-ray fluorescence scanners is new. This enables the precise identification and localisation of elements in the sediments. Important and challenging for this is the preparation of the sediments for this analysis: The moisture must be removed from them by freeze-drying - not easy given the high salt content of the Dead Sea and its affinity for water. Then the sediments are impregnated in synthetic resin and thin sections are made from them. In all this, the microstructure must not be altered.

Pause in climate change: humid phases interrupted long dry periods

The researchers found out that the dramatic long-term drop in the lake level due to increasing dryness was interrupted several times by wetter phases when climate change took breaks. "In this study, we were able for the first time to precisely determine the duration of these phases with several decades and in one case up to centuries by counting annual layers in the sediment," says Daniela Mller, lead author of the study. The exact reason for these pauses in the climate change of this region still remain elusive. Possible links to North Atlantic climate are suspected.

"What was particularly surprising was that during these wetter phases, in some cases over several decades, there we even did not find any traces of extreme floods, which are typical for this region even today and during wetter times in the past," Mller explains.

Consequences for archaeological considerations and future climate scenarios

These results are of further interest for archaeological considerations because they coincide with the time when the Natufian culture settled in this region. Climatically stable phases could have favoured the cultural developments.

"The study shows that strong climatic changes in the past have been very dynamic and included phases of relative stability. We learn from this that climate change is not linear, but that phases of strong changes alternate with calm phases," says Achim Brauer.

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News from the climate history of the Dead Sea - Newswise

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

The only surviving photo of Julia Skodova. Courtesy of Yedioth Publishers

This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretzs free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.

Its impossible to read the first sentences of Julia Skodovas memoir with anything but mounting anxiety. She describes a stark reality, but given everything we know about what is about to happen to her and her companions, she seems almost nave. Through her innocent eyes the horror unravels in real time.

Skodovas memoir, Three Years Without a Name, recounts her life from the moment she boarded the train to Auschwitz. It documents her transfer to Birkenau, her survival, her participation in a death march, and finally, her return to her homeland. Its a fascinating historical document, and much more.

March 1942. At home, signs of spring have already appeared, but today Im looking through the bars of a cattle car at snowy fields, she writes. The lack of air chokes me. For an entire day, weve been here, crammed next to each other. There are so many of us that we cant sit down. Our only wish is to finally arrive at some destination. No place could be worse than here, in this car, where its impossible even to breathe.

Over the years, historians have found several ways of learning about daily life in the camps. Preserved documents contain information about the system, the dates of events, orders that were given and their scope. Survivors have written about their experiences and what happened to them.

But there is almost nothing like Skodovas testimony and her unique perspective. Its no coincidence that she sounds almost nave. Skodova, who was born Julia (Yuci) Foldi, was 28 years old when she boarded the first transport of Jews to Auschwitz. There were 999 women crammed into the suffocating cars, all young, unmarried women from Slovakia aged 15 to 31.

The instructions they received shortly before boarding said they were being taken to a labor camp. They were given a list of equipment to bring along: A hat, clothes, towels, blankets, silverware and dishes. It almost sounded like an adventure.

This is someone who was there, from the moment the industrialized Final Solution begins, and is telling us about it, says Prof. Hanna Yablonka, the Holocaust scholar behind the memoirs recent publication in Hebrew (Yedioth Books and Yad Vashem Publications; translated from Slovakian by Avri Fischer).

She doesnt know that shes in the Final Solution, Yablonka continues. She has no idea that shes in the Holocaust. She only knows that shes in a camp called Oswiecim and she describes what she sees, how she interprets what she sees. The only connection she has to reality is what she sees with her own eyes.

We have never had this information from the perspective of an innocent victim who doesnt know anything about the Holocaust. I read the book and told myself that I dont know anything about Auschwitz. What did I know about Auschwitz? Gas chambers, selection, ramp, transport. Those words. I didnt even fully understand the difference between Birkenau and Auschwitz.

And thanks to Skodova, I have been sitting, day in and day out, studying Auschwitz cross-referencing German information with this memoir and wondering, when did these girls learn that this place essentially means death? When they arrived, when people shouted at them to get off the train, there was no selection, no tattoo, no aktion and no Birkenau.

Read with dread

Well return to Yablonka and her unique connection to Skodovas diary which made the memoirs publication in Hebrew and rescue from oblivion possible. But even if its publication hadnt required so much effort, the document would still be exciting.

Yuci Foldi was born on August 22, 1914 in the beautiful town of Levoca, a UNESCO World Heritage site surrounded by the Tatra Mountains. Her father, a lawyer, had his office on the bottom floor of their house.

Julia, the eldest child, studied languages at the university in Prague. Her brother Gustav was also a lawyer; the youngest brother, Coloman, died while he was still in high school. Levoca was a flourishing, ethnically-mixed city with a tiny Jewish community of just 600 people, around 90 families.

Everything changed after the Nazis rose to power and the Czechoslovakian republic broke apart. Slovakia became an independent fascist state in 1939, a satellite under German protection. The rest of Czechoslovakia became a protectorate under German control.

The 90,000 Slovakian Jews were the first to experience the Judenrat system, which was put into effect across the country. In 1942, a few months after the Judenrat was established, Slovakia was ordered to dispatch the first transport to Auschwitz as part of the Final Solution. This is the transport Skodova boarded.

She wasnt the only person from her town aboard. All the Jewish girls from Levoca within the specified age range, 27 in total, boarded the train and vanished. Only five survived. Its difficult to imagine the terror and distress of those who stayed behind as their daughters disappeared, at a time when nobody yet knew about Auschwitz or the organized machinery of annihilation.

Terror and distress awaited the young women as well. As soon as they got off the train, Skodova writes, they were forced to strip. They were pushed into a small pool where their hair was shaved off and they were ordered to wear old Red Army uniforms and wooden clogs.

They were assigned numbers 1,000 through 1,998. Though it would be some time before those numbers were tattooed on their arms, they were no longer treated as human beings with names. Skodovas number was 1,054.

A few days after her arrival, she describes an unusual incident: One day, at around 10 A.M., we heard shooting and then a scream That 18-year-old murderer wanted to see blood, and his hearts desire could be granted here without any danger, she wrote.

The girl was as pale as whitewash. She was bleeding. Still alive. We stood at a distance from her. We were forbidden to go near her, forbidden to help our mortally wounded friend. We were forbidden to comfort her, forbidden to hear her last words. Her pale lips trembled as if they were speaking her final word mother Later, we saw corpses piled up like logs of wood, and we didnt panic over hearing shots.

Skodova wrote her memoir after she was liberated, but at a time when her memories were still fresh. She describes working in the fields, and then receiving a better job under a roof which enabled her to survive the later years. She describes the routine of terrible hunger and thirst, which led many prisoners to drink filthy water.

More and more transports came to Auschwitz from across Europe. She writes about the high suicide rate among Dutch women, the relationships that supported the girls from her city and finally, the transfer to Birkenau a terrible place, even for someone who had spent years in Auschwitz.

She describes how the mood in the camps and among the SS shifted as the war continued and Germany began to lose. She writes about the death march from Poland to Germany, which she endured while burning up with fever, sick with typhus and severe pneumonia. It is a document that is read with genuine dread.

Despair is evident in every sentence. Her legs are heavy as lead, and her thoughts are filled with a longing for death to fall asleep in the snow and never wake up. Its a torture that lasts for months. She survives, with great difficulty, only thanks to a good friend.

Skodova sticks to description; her thoughts dont wander into philosophy or literary flights of fancy. For that very reason, it is hard to put the book down.

We heard one shot, and then a second and third. Do you know what it means? she wrote. During the march, I see bodies thrown on both sides of the road like avenues of chopped-down trees. This avenue of bodies gets more and more crowded. I see faces, but I dont know who lies there. I must go by the body and keep marching. Another girl musters up her courage and stops walking. Really, why shouldnt I do what she did?

Before the death march, which ended with the Russian occupation, Skodova and her friend went from one concentration camp to another, and then to a hospital where she is treated for a short while. After she is liberated, she begins a month-long journey back to Slovakia.

Even her return home is harrowing. After surviving for so long, a genuine miracle, she discovers that her entire family is dead, except for her brother Gustav.

In an effort to rebuild their lives, the two move to the Slovakian capital, Bratislava. Julia is hospitalized for an entire year. After recovering, she meets Julius Skoda and marries him. She teaches French and German at the university and works at writing down her experiences, which were ultimately published under the title Three Years Without a Name. A single edition came out, and then the book disappeared.

Nine years later, on April 23, 1971, Skodova committed suicide. She stipulated that her body be cremated and left nothing behind no explanation, no grave and no offspring.

The archaeology of Auschwitz

Skodovas rare testimony might have been entirely forgotten, had it not been for an unusual combination of circumstances. In 1962, the year her book was published, she made her first and only trip to Israel. Skodova was 48 at the time. Her visit had two aims to reunite with people she had known in her youth and to give them a copy of her book.

The two people she visited were her fathers brother, Martin Foldi (whose testimony during the Eichmann trial about his young daughter wearing a red coat was later incorporated into the film Schindlers List), and Viola Klein, now Viola Torek, who was her neighbor in Levoca. Toreks sister, Lily Klein, was aboard the same transport as Skodova and only survived for a few months in Auschwitz.

Nine years later, Skodova committed suicide. Her uncle took his own life as well. He had no children and his copy of the book disappeared. Viola Toreks copy was dear to her, the last remnant of Skodovas life, and she guarded it zealously.

Torek that is, Dr. Torek, who is now 106 years old not only lived three houses down from Skodovas childhood home, she is also the doctor who founded the public health service in Israels south. Further, she is Hanna Yablonkas mother.

Yablonka, a well-known Holocaust researcher, has explored every aspect of the lives of survivors and their offspring in her work. Her most recent book, Children by the Book, which became a best-seller, is about second-generation survivors. She was ideally situated to get a Hebrew version of Skodovas book published.

Out of 90,000 Jews in Slovakia, 70,000 were murdered, she said. This Jewry didnt survive. Those who did survive and came to Israel knew each other and remained in contact.

Martin Foldi was a friend of my parents, and I knew from my mother that Skodova had been a neighbor, she added. I was familiar with the story of the girls who disappeared, and they remained in regular contact, despite the Iron Curtain, until she killed herself.

What did you know about the book?

For my mother, it was the most valuable thing in the house. But I couldnt read Slovak, so I never read it except for the parts my mother would translate and read to me from time to time. I knew what was in the book, but the years passed. Twenty years ago, I went to Yad Vashem and asked if they would push the book to the front of the line and get it published. I thought we needed to rescue it because it provides testimony that cant be found anywhere else from the first transport, the first moments of Auschwitzs existence to the end of the death marches. It is a witness to it all.

Yad Vashem delayed, and the years passed quickly. About a decade ago, a team came to Dr. Toreks home to copy the book for translation, because she refused to give them the rare copy in her possession, but the delays continued.

Yablonka immersed herself in her academic career and writing, but then I just got this idea in my head. I suddenly remembered how old my mother was and how much I wanted her to live to see the Hebrew translation published, and that I wanted to be able to read it myself.

At the end of 2019, Yablonka approached Dov Eichenwald, the publisher at Yedioth Books, who responded immediately. The book project finally moved forward with joint funding from two bodies. Yablonka provided the scholarly context (explanatory notes, additional information and cross references that appears throughout the text) and an introduction. During the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, the long-awaited translation arrived by email. Yablonka described her excitement: I saw the translation in my email and a tear spilled from my eye. I immersed myself in reading it and experienced an emotional upheaval that I cant describe.

Was that because of your role as a historian looking at testimony of immense importance, or because of your emotional and familial connection to the story?

I realized what this book was, both in my personal history and as a historian. It contains the archeology of Auschwitz as it has never been told. We know about Auschwitz mainly from German documents and from people who recorded their memories of what they knew. They came at the end of 42 or the middle of 43; the Hungarians came in the middle of 44. They wrote only a fraction [of what was]. Here, we have everything. The book starts in the spring when they arrived at the camp. Years ago, I wrote a book about the Eichman trial, and would sit in front of the computer and look at the testimony. On the second or third transport, one of the witnesses, Vera Alexander, arrived. It was about two weeks after these women arrived. What Skodova describes you also find in Alexanders testimony, which describes women who seem to be crazy, signaling to them with odd motions. On Alexanders transport, they argued about whether these strange people were male or female they had been shaved and were so emaciated. But after the women in the Alexanders transport go through the selection, they understand what the women had been trying to tell them We have ceased to be women.

And through Skodovas eyes, we can also understand something about the inertia of the Final Solution.

She describes how at a certain point, toward June, families start to arrive, and the girls are happy because they havent seen children in a long time. After one of these transports, the following day, they see the mothers and children walking. Theyre well-dressed and with suitcases, happily saying that they are leaving. The next day, one of the laundry workers says that she washed clothes that look just like those worn by the mothers who had left. The women ask her to bring them the clothes, and then someone else says, You dont want to wear those clothes. Here as well, you see this process of gradual understanding that these mothers didnt leave the camp on foot, but skyward.

Through their eyes, you understand that what is going on is so monstrous that even everything they have been through hunger, cold, sickness, violence, disease and deprivation they still cant comprehend it.

Exactly. They cant imagine it. From the moment a person is born and becomes a sentient being, he lives in denial of his finiteness. Everyone denies death and the transience of everything. But these are young girls whose denial is unconscious. But there is a moment when they are forced to register that this place has a meaning, and its not what they thought. What they see on a day-to-day basis, what they interpret and how they behave is archaeology. We have no other book that has survived and provides similar testimony.

Two additional obstacles remained. The first was discovering the date of Skodovas death. The second was the hunt for a photo of her. In both cases, the mission seemed impossible. Slovakian law states that information about a persons life or death may only be divulged to that persons direct descendents. Given that Skodova had no remaining family, Yablonka relied on the cooperation of Skodovas relatives in Israel and in Slovakia and the Slovakian Holocaust Documentation Center, as well as a good deal of cunning and initiative.

Her date of death was found after an urn with her ashes was thrown out of the local crematorium, because no one paid for it to be kept there. A careless clerk let the information slip and quickly ended the conversation, saying, I can not divulge any further information. It was more difficult to get hold of Skodovas photo. Nothing had survived in any of the archives and nobody had one. Salvation came from the Slovak Holocaust Documentation Center, which realized that since Skodova had a passport, a copy of her photo may exist somewhere. An official letter from the State of Israel, signed by the then-Minister of Education Yoav Galant and the Chairman of Yad Vashem opened the door, and they were finally able to get a copy of the priceless photo that appears on the cover of the book and here in this article.

After the war, Skodova returned home. She returned at the end of May 1945. She was very sick, literally on her death bed and in the hospital. She went to Levoca and there she argued with my mothers sister who had survived about whether surviving had been worthwhile. Via the Documentation Center, I have a letter that she wrote to my mother back then. Through the Documentation Center we reached a friend of Skodovas, a 98-year-old lady, who told us that Skodova had hoped that after writing the book she would find some relief, but she never managed to. She is not the only one who wrote in the early wave of testimonies and then committed suicide. There were others.

How do you explain that people who had survived so much and understood the importance of their fresh memories committed suicide?

I think it was a psychological crisis, the collapse of everything they believed in the goodness of man, family, community. That was the great loss. My mother always said that she didnt know what was better, that she survived or that her parents and sisters died there. We will never know what she went through. Skodovas friend, whom we found, told us that she was miserable and that she had a bad marriage, but we can only remember her as she appears in the book and as she is in the photo that we have. Beautiful and smiling.

This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretzs free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.

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She was in Auschwitz, but 'had no idea she is in the Holocaust' - Forward

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Posted By admin on April 29, 2022

West Bloomfields Keter Torah Synagogue is Michigans only Sephardic synagogue. That, in and of itself, lends itself to the uniqueness of what we are, said third-generation president Rick Behar, whose grandparents Jacob and Judith Chicorel founded Keter Torah in 1917 after arriving in Detroit from Turkey.

Behars grandfather, Jacob Chicorel, was a president, the chazzan and spiritual leader for 46 years. Behars mother, Shirley Chicorel Behar, was an influential president who developed an affiliation with Rabbi Solomon Maimon (direct descendent of Maimonides) from Seattle.

Together, they inspired us to finally get the land and prepare the thoughts of a synagogue in the future, Behar said.

In one fundraising evening at Behars cousin Joel and Shelley Taubers home, they raised enough money to build after renting small sanctuaries, schools and social halls for 85 years.

With great energy and coordination by the Ben Ezra brothers, Albert, David and Isaac, along with many others, our synagogue was built, Behar said. We finally opened our first kehila as The Jacob and Judith Chicorel Building in 2002. Behar has been president since 2009.

Behar says Keter Torahs diversity goes hand-in-hand with its uniqueness as well, currently having members from about 20 countries among their 100 or so families. We are as ethnically and culturally diverse as possible yet unified in our beliefs and halachah, Behar said.

Keter Torah has seen a recent influx of Azerbaijani families, which Behar says has been a great benefit and addition to the community and congregation.

Keter Torah has programming later this year in association with the government of Azerbaijan with the ambassador and consul general coming to Detroit for a cultural event after the High Holidays.

Keter Torahs Rabbi Sasson Natan, along with Barbara Moretsky from Stand With Us, envisioned the Different Cultures Different Foods series of events, allowing the synagogue to showcase the diversity of their community. Rabbi Sasson expanded it to include Keter Torah members displaced from various countries throughout the Middle East and Europe.

They were able to share their stories from their countries of origin while a meal indigenous to that country was served and live music from that country was also performed, Behar said. To date, we have covered about 12-15 countries.

The last event before the pandemic was held at Congregation Beth Shalom and around 400500 people attended.

Keter Torahs services are in Hebrew and their prayer books are in Hebrew, English, Russian and Azerbaijani with transliterations. Services are held every day. Members speak many languages including French, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Greek, Russian and Azerbaijani.

Were known for the tremendous ethnic flavor and uniqueness of our daily minyan and Shabbat services, Behar said. If people are interested in the Sephardic melodies and a different sound, if theyre Sephardic and looking for a synagogue thats going to give them the feeling of what their childhood services were like or what it was like when they were in Israel, they should come and check us out.

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Synagogue Spotlight: Keter Torah Currently Has Members From About 20 Countries Among Their 100 or so Families - The Jewish News

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