Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

For many French citizens, Marine Le Pen is no longer viewed as a danger to the historical values of an egalitarian France

For many French citizens, Marine Le Pen is no longer viewed as a danger to the historical values of an egalitarian France

The political confrontation between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election in France is far from being a done deal. Many political figures on the Left and the Right, such as the socialist, Anne Hidalgo, the communist, Fabien Roussel, the candidate of the Republicans, Valrie Pcresse, and the environmentalist, Yannick Jadot, on the side of the French ecologists, have called to vote for the outgoing President.

Yet, the right-wing candidate, ric Zemmour, despite his disagreements with Marine Le Pen, called for a vote for her. However, let us not forget that according to the calculation of the votes in the first round (in this election, it was on April 10), French voters seem to generally lean towards the anti-establishment sentiments represented by political leaders such as Jean-Luc Mlenchon and Marine Le Pen. A number of commentators and journalists believe that a large proportion of French voters will end up voting for Mr. Macron in the second round (on April 24), for the same reason as in the French presidential elections of 2017 because for them the victory of the far right is unbearable. But one also needs to take into consideration all those who will abstain, vote blank, or vote for Ms. Le Pen.

The truth is that the forces of the extreme are getting stronger with each presidential election in France. Jean-Luc Mlenchon obtained more than twice as many votes as Yannick Jadot, Fabien Roussel and Anne Hidalgo. As for Ms. Le Pen, the weaknesses of the traditional Right in France lifted her vote from 21% in 2017 to 23.15% now. Therefore, while the French political parties are not totally dead, traditional politics in France, either on the Left or on the Right, has taken a severe blow.

Consequently, what attracts the French to Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Mlenchon is not always their programmes, but their populist way of presenting them. Both Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mlenchon play in different ways on the register of the French identity. In fact, they both invite the French to rethink the identity of France beyond the fixed frameworks they are used to seeing it. It leads them to understand that the French identity is always a work of transformation.

If they are present more and more in the hearts and the minds of the French voters, it is because they each claim another form of republican universalism, different from the traditional Right and the traditional Left in France. Mr. Mlenchon does not deny the radical equality of all French citizens or the secularity of the French State, but he criticises the hegemonic vocabulary of the French political culture by placing accent on the dangers of structural racism in France.

In other words, according to Mr. Melenchon and his party, the La France Insoumise, though France is a country where democratic procedures do exist, it is a national entity where political participation is not sufficiently diversified. It is interesting to see that with Marine Le Pen also, the populist speech becomes the main vehicle of communication. However, she uses French white catholicity as an identity marker, beyond a claimed anti-hijab secularism. Her use of a hidden non-inclusive vocabulary veils a hierarchical vision of French society, which is not pronounced explicitly.

Editorial | A new cocktail: On French Presidential elections

However, the populist discourse of Marine Le Pen has found more echoes among the French population than five years ago. This is certainly a big change in the French political mentality, which was always alert and alarmed by nuanced forms of fascism, racism and anti-Semitism. The surprising gains for Marine Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential election this time shows once again that France is losing its fierce Dreyfusard syndrome.

What the Dreyfus case showed us for more than a century was that the doctrine of equality before the law was still so firmly implanted in the political conscience of the French that a single miscarriage of justice, like that of the Jewish Alfred Dreyfus, could provoke public indignation. It goes without saying that Georges Clemenceau, mile Zola, Marcel Proust, Anatole France and many other writers, journalists and advocates of human rights who defended the wrongfully imprisoned Dreyfus were not seeking a contextual truth, but embraced a universal notion of truth. That is why the French noun, intellectuel, was coined and gained sociological prominence beyond the Dreyfus affair.

It should be noted that Zola is never mentioned by Marine Le Pen, as she considers him to be too far left and pro-Dreyfus. Also, Marine Le Pen usually values herself as a populist against what she calls the system that is evil and represents evil for the French people. Immigration is obviously another favourite theme for Ms. Le Pen, which is often described as the result of globalism. Also, against President Macron and his idea of European unity, Marine Le Pen and her party, the National Rally, present a defiance towards the European Union, in the name of a national sovereignty whose contours are never clearly defined.

Even if Marine Le Pen does not win the second round of the French elections and Emmanuel Macron remains President of France for five more years, the main question which remains would be about the political mentality of French society. We are morally and politically entitled to ask if the dream of Marine Le Pen has become that of a significant portion of the French population?

Certainly, for many French citizens today, the name of Marine Le Pen is no longer viewed as a danger against the historical values of an egalitarian France, in love with liberty and fraternity. For many French citizens, Marine Le Pens political promise to reserve the priority of employment, social aid and social housing for French people does not call into question the great principles of equality and fraternity of the Republican contract.

Also, in the current Ukrainian crisis and the political proximity of Marine Le Pen to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, her arrival at the Elyse Palace would mark an even more serious break with the political architecture of the European Union. The radical Right in France has never been so close to victory, but French politics has also never had such an uncertain future. If it ends in the victory of Marine Le Pen, almost 130 years after the victory of the Dreyfusards at the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, the anti-Dreyfusards will be in power again.

Ramin Jahanbegloo is Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Non-violence and Peace Studies at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana

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The return of the anti-Dreyfusards is possible - The Hindu

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Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

As part of the Shoah Songbook series, the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company and the Likht Ensemble will present the third work that focuses on the music of Polish composers and music from Polish ghettos.

On April 27 (Holocaust Remembrance Day) the Lihkt Ensembles recorded concert will be made available showcasing a variety of Polish music including classical art song, Yiddish folk music, and dances for violin and piano.

They will premiere the first recordings of Szymon Laks Three Warsaw Polonaises, Ben-Horins original arrangements of Yiddish and Polish folk songs by Miriam Harel and other composers from the Polish ghettos. Listeners will also have the opportunity to hear the ensembles take on Mordechai Gebirtigs Es brent (It Burns).

The Likht Ensemble features soprano Jaclyn Grossman, pianist and composer Nate Ben-Horin, and Jewish/Canadian violinist Aaron Schwebel.

Grossman gave a statement saying As we witness a rise in global anti-Semitism and see war raging in Europe, the relevance of this repertoire in the modern landscape cannot be underestimated. As an artist, I feel called to action. This music gives voice to the victims of war. The composers of these works felt an urgency to put out the fires around them and to avoid the inevitable destruction that accompanies hate and prejudice. This message is as relevant in our time, as it was in theirs.

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The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company to Present 'The Shoah Songbook Part Three: Poland' - OperaWire

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Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

Who has heard of Yiddish writer Sholem Asch (18801957) or his masterpiece The Nazarene, published in 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War? The novel's vision of Jewish-Christian harmony endeared him briefly to Christians, as did the sequels The Apostle and Mary, but it lost him some of his Yiddish readers. Some didnt care for a Yiddish Gospel, more were murdered by the Nazis, and the rest had little taste for interfaith reconciliation after the Shoah. Asch, once the enfant terrible of Polands Yiddish writers, and before The Nazarene a plausible contender for the Nobel Prize, fell out of the canon. But The Nazarene, Aschs life of Yeshua ben Joseph, Jesus the Jew, deserves new readers.

Aschs Yeshua is a Hasidic wonder-working rebbe translated from Tsarist Poland to first-century Galilee, a charismatic object of popular adoration who wears his tallit and daily recites the Shema Yisrael. He is a poor scholar from an out-of-the-way small town, a carpenter who worked in Nazareth by the great road to repair carriages. And he is given to parablesa penchant entirely consistent with the Jewish tradition that seeks to inspire thoughtful meditation on the word of God.

Yeshuas concern for the poorthe unlearned, the tax-collectors, the lepers, the untouchablesand his alienation from both the Sadducees and the Pharisees echo the alienation of the radical young Jews of industrializing Tsarist Poland, Aschs contemporaries who turned to Marxism as they felt the old tradition inadequate to new miseries. It is Yeshuas love of the poor that leads him to break the rigors of the lawand to speak so frequently in parables suited to the understanding of laborers who love Torah, but whose toils leave them no time to learn it.

Asch interpolates a trip by Yeshua and his disciples to Tyre and Sidon, to see the misery of the world of the Gentiles: And when our Rabbi saw the slavery of the weavers his countenance changed, being cut as with pain...And I heard the groaning that came from within him, and the cry that broke forth with it: Lord of the world, have compassion on thy creatures.

In this scene, Asch evokes a Christianity formed in part by the Diaspora. These Jews live among Gentiles, see their suffering, and with Jewish compassion wish to aid them in their misery. Yet Asch also evokes a Christianity beyond the law of the rabbis, something necessarily new, fit to give solace and salvation to the Gentiles marooned in Tyre and Sidon.

Something old, something new. Does Yeshua preach a Jewish Christianity? Asch focuses The Nazarene on that question. His Yeshua is neither a Zealot who pursues revolt, nor an Essene ascetic. He is rooted in the Pharisaic tradition rather than the Sadducean, but he revolts against the rabbinical elaboration of the law. When Yeshua says he comes to fulfill the Law and the prophets, there is a significant silencehe is not committed to their rabbinic exegesis. Yeshua dances on a knifes edge, supporting the rabbis against Sadducees and Zealots and Essenes, but simultaneously abrogating the entire rabbinic weave of precedent and interpretation.

And is Yeshua the Messiah? The Nazarenes brilliance lies not least in how Asch weaves this debate into his narrative. Asch presents event after event from the Gospels, but immediately subjects each to a debate about its significance. Yeshuas disciples, invited to his mothers home, hear Marys account of her sons birth:

Who knoweth? The miraculous is always imminent in the prosaic, the possibility of a Messiah sparkles in every newborn boy. Mary herself raised Yeshua in this Messianic tradition. Yeshua, his family, his disciplesthey all ask themselves, Does this latest deed fit the prophecies of the Messiah? Asch roots the Christian exegesis of Yeshuas deeds in these pre-existing Messianic traditions. He allows for an alternate exegesis, but never by explaining away the Christian one as a retroactive confection.

Yeshua does in time proclaim himself the Messiah to his disciples. But he proclaims it to no one else. He hints and he hints, but he will not say. His refusal to confirm or deny that he is the Messiah drives many Jews madabove all, Judah Ish-Kiriot: Judas.

The Nazarenes central portion is the gospel according to Judasa man forever yearning for the Messiah, daily sure he has found him at last, but then testing, realizing again that he was mistaken. Judah constantly pushes Yeshua to proclaim himself the Messiah. And he feels the agony Yeshua inflicts by not saying outright whether he is or not:

When the Sadducees and the Pharisees agree to Yeshuas arrest, when the Jewish crowd chooses Bar Abba rather than Yeshua to be released, they all do so in hope that in his time of trial, he will reveal himself to be the Messiah. Judah, too, betrays Yeshua to bring on that final revelation.Rabbi, Rabbi, see, I go! down into the nethermost pit, in order that you may rise in the highest to God!

Yeshua dies without the reveal the Jews had been waiting for. But Yeshua came not to liberate Israel from Edom and Rome. Judah commits suicide after realizing that Yeshua was the Messiah in unexpected form.

And after? The rabbis grieved for the death of Yeshua. There were Jews and there were Christians, but they were not so very different. The youth Jochanan, who narrates the end of The Nazarene, says:

Everyone was waiting, together. That is Aschs conclusion: a heartfelt description of an irenic world shared by Jews and Christians, long lost but not beyond the power of man to recreate.

Asch did not time his publication well. He wrote remembering a Poland where many Christians hated Jews, and Jews had no great cause to love Christiansbut a land where one could dream that hatred could be laid aside. That Poland disappeared with the Nazi invasion. Ahead lay Auschwitz, which shattered any faith that old hatreds could be set aside. But there were years after Auschwitz, when old hopes found new life. Asch, the boy of Kutno and young man of Warsaw, must have imagined Polish Catholics among his readers, young priests whom his words could reconcile with their Jewish brethren. I do not know whether Karol Wojtya read The Nazarene, but his pontificate brought to the waking world some of Aschs dreams.

Some. Asch blinks at the irreconcilable claims of Judaism and Christianitysome irate Jewish readers accused him of apostasy, and surely his ecumenicism would satisfy neither a precise priest nor a rigorous rabbi. To say that all the history of the two faiths sundering was a misunderstanding does not suffice. Christians and Jews have not perfectly reconciled and, while the Messiah tarries, I doubt they ever will.

Yet Asch wrote a novel of extraordinary style, wonderfully convincing in its evocation of the Jewish Yeshua and the rabbis who mourned him, gripping as it recounts the worlds best-known tale, and heartbreaking in its sadness that the followers of the rabbis and the followers of Yeshua parted ways. Asch does not quite persuade that these parted kindred can reunite, but he preaches a sweet sermon in that endeavor.

David Randall is Director of Research at the National Association of Scholars.

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The Dreams of Sholem Asch | David Randall - First Things

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Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

Haute Residence and acclaimed real estate professional Myra Nourmand continue their successful partnership. As a Haute Residence partner for seven years now, Nourmand represents the upscale Los Angeles Market to the publication's thousands of readers and social media followers.

LOS ANGELES, April 18, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Myra Nourmand specializes in marketing and selling luxury properties from Beverly Hills to Malibu. Myra is the role model for success-oriented women. Known as the First Lady of Real estate in Beverly Hills, she is a high-end producer having successfully listed and sold properties ranging from $1 million to $60 million. The vast majority of her clients are in the entertainment industry and she has earned the trust and respect of some of the most high-profile clients. Her level of expertise in the luxury home market comes from the ability to match her client's needs with her knowledge of the inventory.

With regard to exposing the spectacular variety of homes that Myra has represented, she has appeared on ABC's The View, Home of the Rich and Famous, HGTV's Fantasy Open House and Dream Estates, Discovery's Hollywood Real Estate Homes, House & Garden, NBC, FOX and Fox Business News television shows. Myra has done numerous radio talk shows across the United States including ABC Radio Network, ABC The Morning Show, and The Financial Lifeline Radio Station.

Unique homes, Haute Living, LA Business Journal, Hollywood Reporter, Wall Street Journal, Variety, Angeleno, and LA Confidential have all named her as one of the top luxury real estate professionals in the country. She is listed in "Who's Who in Luxury Real Estate" touted as "Best of the Best" by Forbes Magazine. Myra is the author of "From Homemaker to Breadwinner" part memoir and part real estate handbook for professionals. Myra is a Real Estate Specialist with a reputation for excellence in Listing, Marketing, and Selling high-end properties. She is an active supporter of the Jewish National Fund, West Hollywood Food Coalition, IDF, HADASSAH, Aviva, Shoah, Jewish Vocational Services, Rett Syndrome Research Trust, Los Angeles Holocaust Museum, and most recently Israel Cancer Research Fund.

A member of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, "We Market Your Home to the World" and RELO, the premier Real Estate Network of leading independent real estate brokers, Nourmand & Associates helps clients find homes anywhere in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Visit Myra Nourmand 's Haute Residence Profile: https://www.hauteresidence.com/member/myra-nourmand/

About Haute Residence:

Designed as a partnership-driven luxury real estate portal, Haute Residence connects its affluent readers with top real estate professionals, while offering the latest in real estate news, showcasing the world's most extraordinary residences on the market and sharing expert advice from its knowledgeable and experienced real estate partners.

The invitation-only luxury real estate network, which partners with just one agent in every market, unites a distinguished collective of leading real estate agents and brokers and highlights the most extravagant properties in leading markets around the globe for affluent buyers, sellers, and real estate enthusiasts.

HauteResidence.com has grown to be the number one news source for million-dollar listings, high-end residential developments, celebrity real estate, and more.

Access all of this information and more by visiting: http://www.hauteresidence.com

Media Contact

Mary Gibson, Haute Residence, 8635990020, mary@hauteliving.com

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Haute Residence and Acclaimed Real Estate Broker Myra Nourmand Continue Their Partnership Into Its Seventh Year - 69News WFMZ-TV

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Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

Ramadan Mubarak. Chag Pesach sameach (happy Passover). Happy Easter.

It's a rare convergence that occurs every 33 years or so when the major religious observances of the world's three Abrahamic faiths align as they have this spring.

Ramadan, Passover and Easter generally don't overlap because they are based on different calendars (lunar and solar) and calculations. But this month, the Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy days coincided just days apart.

The monthlong Ramadan fast began April 2. Passover started Friday evening. And Easter, marking the end of Holy Week, fell on Sunday for most Christians -- or April 24 for the Eastern Orthodox church.

Writing stories about all three traditions, it was clear there are several unifying themes and commonalities in messaging: healing, hope, self reflection and service.

At the beginning of the month, I reported how Muslim communities have stepped up this Ramadan to help care for recently arrived Afghan refugees fleeing chaos in the aftermath of U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. And last week I wrote how Jewish and Christian communities have come together with other faith groups to support Ukrainian refugees displaced by war.

Fighting darkness with light was a common mantra. It shows how, at their core, sacrifice and service to one another are inherent to all three traditions.

To those observing these holidays, salaam, shalom and peace.

Three suburban students were among 300 scholars named in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation's oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors.

They are: Pratiksha Bhattacharyya, 18, senior at Maine West High School in Des Plaines; Siddharth Tiwari, 16, senior at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora; and Jui Khankari, 17, a senior at Hinsdale Central High School.

The contest provides students with a national stage to present original research and recognizes the novel discoveries of young scientists who bring a fresh perspective to global challenges.

Each scholar, selected from 1,804 entrants, receives a $2,000 award, with an additional $2,000 going to their respective schools.

Pratiksha Bhattacharyya's project involved researching the "Molecular Mechanisms of Momordin in the Regulation of Glucose Homeostasis." Simply put, she analyzed the active ingredient momordin in bitter melon juice to determine if it can help with diabetes, as claimed by several natural supplements available at most Indian grocers.

"There wasn't exactly scientific backing" to those claims, said Bhattacharyya of Des Plaines.

Bhattacharyya conducted an in vitro study to see the effects of momordin on liver, muscle and intestinal cells of diabetics and pre-diabetics. After six months, she saw promising results, with a decrease in fasting blood glucose levels, hemoglobin levels and glucose tolerance tests. Bhattacharyya is in the process of publishing her study.

"I wanted to find something that's an aid that is sustainable for a lot of people," she said. "One of my driving factors with this was I wanted to teach my community about diabetes. I want to create a meaningful impact through my research."

Siddharth Tiwari's project focused on the relationship between pain variability and relief in randomized clinical trials. In simple terms, he studied the placebo effect and the efficacy of pain medications using data from two clinical trials.

"Essentially, it was a reevaluation of what has been held as true in this field for the past few decades," said Tiwari of Long Grove.

Tiwari's fascination with the brain and a family history of chronic pain prompted his research. He found no real, consistent or strong relationship between pain variability and placebo response.

"In the future, I'd like to study perception, consciousness and cognitive science," Tiwari said. "My research ... impacts the common person. Pain is the largest medical condition (affecting) most people in the U.S."

The Cook County Board of Commissioners recently passed a resolution against the rise in anti-Semitic hate and in support of the county's Jewish population.

Illinois saw a 350% increase in anti-Semitic incidents between 2016 and 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League's annual audit. There's been a surge of anti-Jewish incidents nationwide, including in Highland Park and Glenview in March.

Cook County Commissioner Scott Britton reported receiving a package of fliers containing anti-Semitic messages at his Glenview home. Throughout March, similar packages containing rocks, beans, or rice were found in Cook County residents' front yards and in public parks in Niles, Park Ridge, Glenview, Skokie, and Arlington Heights.

Britton, who represents the 14th District, is partnering with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Action Ridge and Niles Coalition for a Spring of Action against anti-Semitic hate. Events include a rally at 5:30 p.m. April 24, at Gallery Park in Glenview; a May 15 teach-in in Niles; and a June 12 celebration at the Greater Chicago Jewish Festival.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy will speak Monday with students at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville about youth mental health.- Associated Press

Congresswoman Lauren Underwood of Naperville and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy will discuss youth mental health Monday with students at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville.

Murthy will speak at the school from 9 to 10 a.m. about how the U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health addresses the challenges faced by young people.

Students will share their experiences with mental health, the advocacy work they have done in their school and community to improve resources, and insights into what the government and communities can do to better support struggling youth.

Among Illinois young adults ages 18-25, the annual average percentages of those with serious mental illness and those with serious thoughts of suicide increased between 2008-2010 and 2017-2019. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-24.

Stephen Smith, an international speaker and oral historian, will present this year's Holocaust Lecture at Elmhurst University on April 24.

Smith is executive director emeritus of the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation, the archive founded by filmmaker Steven Spielberg to document the Holocaust and genocide, and to develop empathy, understanding and respect through testimony.

A theologian, Smith is the USC visiting professor of religion, where he researches genocide-related testimony. He also founded the U.K. Holocaust Centre in England, and cofounded the Aegis Trust for the prevention of crimes against humanity and genocide.

The Holocaust Service of Remembrance and Lecture will begin at 7 p.m. in the Frick Center, Founders Lounge, 190 Prospect Ave., Elmhurst.

The lecture is part of the university's Religious Literacy Project.

Admission is free but reservations are encouraged at elmhurst.edu/cultural.

Share stories, news and happenings from the suburban mosaic at mkrishnamurthy@dailyherald.com.

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A confluence of faiths: Ramadan, Passover and Easter come together this month sharing unifying message - Daily Herald

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Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

(RNS) File this one under First World problems.

I am in the Krakow, Poland, airport. My flight back to the United States has been canceled. For a while, I think that I might be stranded here all weekend, meaning that I would miss the first two seders.

This is annoying and frustrating.

But over the past few days, I have encountered hundreds of people who would envy this relatively minor life hiccup, and would gladly offer to trade their plight for mine.

Let me put it to you this way.

So, yes: I can take a cab back to Krakow, and stay in a hotel for two more nights.

The last few days have been the most intense days of my career, and I have not yet begun to process them.

The rabbinical delegation that visited Poland in mid-April brought 2 tons of supplies for Ukrainian refugees crossing the border into Poland. Photo courtesy of Rabbi Steve Engel

This past week, I accompanied 30 Reform rabbinical and cantorial colleagues, from the United States, Europe and Israel. It was the Hineini trip a journey to Krakow to help Ukrainian refugees. The trip was a major success, thanks to the organization and planning by J2 Adventures. We broughtmore than 2 tons of supplies for refugees. We brought donations and pledges of close to a million dollars.

But, most of all, we brought our selves, our souls, our willingness to say Hinein. I am here. We are here to bear witness.

We Jews like to say God has called on the Jewish people to be a light to the nations. I never understood that phrase until this week.

Refugee women with children walk to board transport at the central train station in Warsaw, Poland, April 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

We came to Krakow under the aegis of the Jewish Community Centre of Krakow and its indefatigable executive director, Jonathan Ornstein.

To coin a phrase from this season: How is this JCC different from every other JCC in the world?

Because it is a cultural center, and an educational center and a social center. Every JCC has non-Jewish members, whose lives it has enriched.

The JCC in Krakow is the only JCC that not only enriches non-Jewish lives, it saves them. Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, the Krakow JCC has been a refugee center with no fewer than 14 different programs for refugees.

There is that line in the Passover Haggadah All who are hungry, come and eat.

That is what the JCC is saying. All who are hungry. All as in: There will be no distinctions between Jewish refugees and non-Jewish refugees.

The Krakow JCC has a sweet and unexpected story. Its founder was none other than Prince Charles. He had been visiting Krakow, and he arranged to meet with some Holocaust survivors in a cafe. They told him that Krakow had seven synagogues but that it lacked a senior center.

Perhaps His Royal Highness remembered that his grandmother, Princess Alice, saved the lives of Jewish children in Greece which earned her the designation of righteous among the nations. Perhaps that memory caused a spark.

Prince Charles returned to the U.K., and he connected with World Jewish Relief, for which he has served as royal patron. They had been involved with the Kindertransport. They decided to build the JCC in Krakow which Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, formally dedicated in 2008.

You want more of that light to the nations thing? By one estimate, no less than a third of all NGOs at the border were Israeli. The vast majority of religious organizations providing aid to refugees are Jewish.

But, hardly just Jews. My colleagues and I ran a mini-Seder at the border with Israelis, evangelical Christians and Ukrainian refugees in traditional costume. My young colleague Miriam Klimova, born in Ukraine, now in Israel, led us in a rousing rendition of Echad Mi Yodea, reminding us all there is one God in heavens and earth.

Aid workers and refugees attend a multifaith Passover Seder dinner in Przemysl, Poland, on April 12, 2022. Two hundred people attended the celebration organized by the Natan Worldwide Disaster Relief aid organization, which includes volunteer doctors, nurses, social workers and health care experts who are trained to mobilize for human-made and natural disasters worldwide. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

It is that one God of our traditions that brought us together, and united us. It was the stubborn sense that the divine presence is uniquely revealed in the face of the Other.

An Hugh Hewitt wrote in The Washington Post:

The vast majority of Americans loathe the tyrant Putin and his savage war of unprovoked aggression against a neighbor. It turns out that the American public still broadly, if not entirely, views the slaughter of innocents with a revulsion that is ancient and storied among a free and, in the main, religious people. A fierce opposition to tyranny remains at the core of Americas civic religion.

Or, let me put it this way. Weeks ago, when President Joe Biden declared that for Gods sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power, he was not blurting out mere words, out of the depth of his frustration. The Exodus from Egypt teaches us that there can be God, and there can be Pharaoh but never in the same spiritual space. For Gods sake, this man cannot remain in power.

Because the Pharaohs of history never win.

There is a charming medieval legend about how the Crusaders swept through Germany and drove the Jews eastward in search of refuge. As they headed ever farther east, they heard birds singing Po-lin! Po-lin! Hebrew for Poland, and a Hebrew pun: You will lodge here.

That is the story of Polish Jewry. For a thousand years, we lodged there so much so, that the Polish Jewish story and legacy came to define Eastern European Jewry.

So it was with my colleagues as well. For the last several days, we lodged here.

But the memories and experiences will not merely lodge in our minds and our souls. They will become concrete commitments to action and testimony that we will bring back to our communities.

So, yes, Hineini. The best word in the Hebrew Bible, IMHO.

We said it, over and over again: to history, to the future, to ourselves, and to God.

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What I learned at the Ukraine-Poland border - Religion News Service

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Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

In his book, Churchill: Walking With Destiny, Andrew Roberts quotes Winston Churchill in 1945, after the war had ended, as saying, From what Ive seen of our Russian friends, there is nothing I saw that they admire as much as strength and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. Churchill urged the U.S. and Britain to join in a fraternal association to defend freedom, not only for us and not only for our time, but for a century to come.

Throughout his amazing life, Churchill made some terrible errors in judgment. But he was right about Germanys Adolf Hitler and he was right about the Soviet Unions communist dictator and mass murderer, Joseph Stalin.

Todays Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, is a product of the KGB. The Soviet Unions security agency began a year after Stalins death in 1953, a successor of the dreaded Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKGB and NKVD, who dispatched millions of innocent Soviet citizens to their deaths or banished them to inhumane existence in Siberian gulags.

Since Russia began its war in Ukraine on Feb. 24, more than 10 million Ukrainians reportedly have fled their homes, including more than 4 million who are refugees. Among them, more than 2 million of those displaced are children. The United Nations estimates at least 1,000 civilians have been killed and more than 1,700 wounded as the Russian military pulverizes towns.

As gruesome images from Ukrainian cities make their way around the world such as those of bodies in Bucha or that of a pregnant woman being carried out on a stretcher from a maternity hospital (she and her unborn child reportedly did not survive) President Biden and others have called for holding Putin accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Could it happen? We would have wanted to ask our namesake, Simon Wiesenthal, a man who barely survived the Nazi Holocaust, who, together with his wife, Celia, lost 89 members of their family in the Shoah.

Wiesenthal and a few other survivors of Nazi Germanys Final Solution sought to arrest and try Nazi war criminals who fulfilled Hitlers vision of a Europe Judenrein that is, free of Jews. He sought to restore the basic foundations of justice that Nazism all but obliterated. Wiesenthal wanted accountable, convicted criminals, not martyrs for extremist causes.

Wiesenthal watched in horror as the post-World War II Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal turned out to be not the beginning of Nazi war crimes trials, but the end. Yet he never left the battlefield and helped to bring another 1,100 Nazis to justice.

Wiesenthal died in 2005. Were he alive today, we believe he would make four points regarding Russias brutalities in Ukraine:

Buchachs current inhabitants know what befell their fellow citizens at the hands of Putins forces around 510 kilometers to the east in Bucha. They know that if Ukraine ultimately falls, if the international community fails to act, such a calamity could befall them.

With other tyrants watching how the international community responds to Putins atrocities chief among them, Chinas President Xi Jinping, Irans Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and North Koreas Kim Jong Un the price we would all pay if we allow Putin to get away with his crimes would be devastating.

As the unelected ambassador for 6 million Jewish ghosts, Wiesenthal declared that trials of those who are accused of crimes against humanity must serve as a warning to anyone who contemplates similar acts that they, too, will be held accountable.

Will Putin stand trial? We dont know, but the echoes of history are warning the world: The price of inaction will be catastrophic and global in scope.

Rabbi Marvin Hier is founder and CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the Centers associate dean and global social action director.

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Try Putin? What Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal would advise the world - The Hill

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Posted By admin on April 18, 2022

Amid a blur of hieroglyphs, ankhs and sarcophagi, it was easy to miss a more subtle symbol glinting from Oscar Isaacs neck in last weeks installment of Moon Knight. Unless you happen to be Jewish and watching for signs of Jewish life.

In the final minutes of the episode, Isaacs Marc Spector wakes up in Egypt, booze bottle in hand, bare-chested and wearing a Magen David necklace, finally settling over a year of speculation as to whether the MCU would acknowledge the characters Yiddishkeit. It was a discreet, easy to miss gesture, much like the mezuzah on his apartment door earlier in the series. Somehow it still means the world to me.

For those who dont know, Moon Knight was born Marc Spector, the son of an Orthodox rabbi and renowned Kabbalist from Czechoslovakia. Apart from Magneto who is sometimes a Romani and sometimes a Jewish survivor of the Shoah Spector, who often favors the alias, and, later, dissociative identity, Steven Grant, has perhaps the most Jewish origin story in the mainstream Marvel canon. (Apologies to Sabra.) Hes Jew-ier still than Ben Grimm of Yancy Street and Kitty Pryde, a character better known for sporting a Star of David accessory.

Moon Knights Jewish makeup has waxed and waned for decades, with some comics happy to show him wearing a kippah as a child and sometimes as an adult. But if youve seen any of the show on Disney+, you can see how those roots might get lost in a forest of competing plot points. Moon Knight is also about quarreling Egyptian deities and mental illness, and the show changed the Spector considerably, making his persona of Steven Grant a cockney gift shopist and giving him a completely new romantic partner.

Its perhaps because of all these changes that the man who crafted Moon Knights Jewish backstory, a day school principal turned comic book writer named Alan Zelenetz, told me that he wouldnt be bothered if Moon Knights Jewishness didnt make the cut for the miniseries. And while I was inclined to agree with him, the fact that it did, even in a (so far) tiny way, is huge.

In the ever-bloating Marvel Cinematic Universe, representation is touted by executives, demanded by diverse fans and maligned by a toxic subset of very online nerdom. Missing for the first 14 years of this interconnected story was a visibly Jewish character. This despite the fact that the main architects of this constellation of superheroes were Jewish. The reasons were not so much deliberate as a matter of canon, with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon making most of their main players gentile. (That and the fact that X-Men and The Fantastic Four, properties that boast the most noteworthy Jews, existed outside the MCU due to other studios owning the film rights.)

But, with Marvel doing better by Asian, Black and with the coming of Ms. Marvel South Asian and Muslim fans, Jews of all backgrounds might still feel left out of Marvels push for inclusive stories (a push that still bungles up gay content, by the way). Jews had to settle for a limited, Ashkenazi-coded crumb, like when Tony Starks dad referenced his fruit seller father and garment worker mother on Agent Carter.

Ive never been one to demand more Jewish content from the Disney corporation (OK, almost never) but now that Ive caught a glimpse, I realize I missed having it.

Spying Oscar Isaac with some Judaic jewelry thrilled me in a way Marvel properties havent been able to in years. I can only imagine how cool it was for Jews of color to see a Latinx actor flaunting a six-pointed star. And who wouldnt kvell knowing that while the nebbishy Steven Grant is bound up in neuroses and slapstick, his Jewish counterpart is a certified badass?

That Spector would still wear his Jewish bling while serving as the avatar of the Egyptian moon god seems complicated, but invites an interesting conversation about culture, faith and identity that the comics have dealt with to varying degrees of success. Director Mohamed Diab teased a Jewish conclusion to the series. I doubt it will be the meditation on Exodus some are hoping for, and frankly thats fine by me.

Right now Im happy for the glimmer of acknowledgment. Its a small token, but hints at bigger things to come.

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Moon Knights Star of David necklace was easy to miss. It was also a watershed moment for Marvel. - Forward

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Posted By admin on April 16, 2022

April is a month of religious observances. Christians celebrate Palm Sunday, Good Friday and finally Easter, when we give thanks for the risen Christ. During Passover, our Jewish friends commemorate the Israelites liberation from slavery and deliverance from Egypt.

But all year long, at different times and in different ways, people of many different traditions celebrate the foundational role of faith in our lives.

Quite apart from the formal festivals and rituals, we Americans practice our faith across every aspect of our lives at home, at school, at work and everywhere we go.

Here in America, we enjoy a rich heritage of religious liberty. We are free to live out our deeply held beliefs in whatever ways we deem appropriate so long as our conduct does not threaten the legitimate rights of others. The government may not establish a state or national church.

This is what the First Amendment promises.

And theres a reason religious liberty is the first freedom mentioned in the Bill of Rights.

As Thomas Jefferson said in 1809, No provision in our constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of civil authority.

But these liberties are constantly under attack. To preserve them, we must be willing to fight for them.

As Indianas attorney general, thats exactly what I have been doing with a great team of talented lawyers who serve with servants hearts.

On April 25, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case pertaining to these very issues.

The case arose in Bremerton, Wash., where Coach Joe Kennedy habitually knelt in quiet prayer for a few moments after each game. Then several players began joining him, huddling at the 50-yard line.

The motivation for his prayer, Kennedy once explained, was: God, Im going to give you the glory after every game, win or lose.

But as more players began kneeling with Kennedy, someone complained and the Bremerton School District asked Kennedy to stop the prayers.

When Kennedy insisted on following his conscience, the district placed him on administrative leave and did not renew his contract.

So far, lower federal courts have rejected Kennedys pleas to affirm his constitutional rights to engage in the on-field prayer.

But now the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

On behalf of Hoosiers, Im standing with 26 likeminded attorneys general imploring the justices in an amicus brief to state loud and clear that in America we have the absolute right to voluntary prayer.

I am also working to protect religious liberty right here in Indiana.

This year, in two separate cases, I am defending the rights of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis to uphold church doctrine on same-sex marriage at Catholic schools.

One case involves an educator dismissed from Cathedral High School after he married another man, and the other involves a guidance counselor fired from Roncalli High School after she married another woman. Many religious schools consider their teachers and counselors to essentially hold ministerial roles.

In the first case, I filed a brief with the Indiana Supreme Court. In the second, I led a 16-state brief filed with a federal appeals court.

The message of each brief is basically the same: It is up to the Catholic Church, not the courts, to determine Catholic doctrine.

As a Catholic myself, I certainly encounter those who disagree with our views on marriage. I have met folks who consider odd, for example, the idea that priests and nuns are expected to be unmarried and celibate. Well, they have the right to their views but we also have the right to ours. And I would fight equally as hard to defend any other faith in the same situation. In fact, the question we should ask is why arent groups like the ACLU also fighting to defend this constitutional right?

We must remember that the framers of the Constitution sought to protect religion from government, not to protect government from religion.

Without exaggeration, we can describe the origins of religious liberty as uniquely American. To again quote Jefferson, it is a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.

During this season of Easter and Passover, may we each commit to doing our part to protect the freedoms we cherish so much.

Todd Rokita is Indianas attorney general.

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An April reflection: We must fight to preserve religious liberty - Shelbynews

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Posted By admin on April 16, 2022

Alla Ilyinichna Sinelnikova (left), 90, and Sonya Leibovna Tartakovskaya, 83, were recently evacuated from Ukraine to Germany. Both are survivors of the Holocaust, and this is the second time they are fleeing war. "I never thought I would live to see such horror for the second time in my life," says Sinelnikova. "I thought it was in my past, all over and done with. And now we're reliving it." Esme Nicholson/NPR hide caption

Alla Ilyinichna Sinelnikova (left), 90, and Sonya Leibovna Tartakovskaya, 83, were recently evacuated from Ukraine to Germany. Both are survivors of the Holocaust, and this is the second time they are fleeing war. "I never thought I would live to see such horror for the second time in my life," says Sinelnikova. "I thought it was in my past, all over and done with. And now we're reliving it."

BERLIN At a retirement home on the eastern edge of Berlin, half a dozen women in their 80s and 90s sit together having lunch. Their chatter is lively in the toasty-warm dining room.

They've just narrowly escaped death for the second time in their lives.

The women are Ukrainian Holocaust survivors who fled the Nazis as children. Now, in old age, they had to go on the run again this time from Russians.

A major evacuation effort is underway to bring Ukrainian Holocaust survivors to safety. Dozens have recently arrived in Germany, the country they once feared.

Among the Ukrainians struggling to flee from Russian attacks, housebound senior citizens, often unable to get to shelters, are among the most vulnerable. Last month, Russian shelling killed 96-year-old Boris Romanchenko in his apartment in Kharkiv. In his youth, Romanchenko survived forced labor and four Nazi concentration camps.

One of those who has reached Germany is Sonya Leibovna Tartakovskaya, a retired seamstress from Irpin, near Kyiv. Today happens to be her 83rd birthday.

Tartakovskaya says she's immensely relieved to be in this retirement home, located near a large Russian-speaking community. Ukrainian authorities say they've found evidence in her hometown of Russian atrocities carried out against civilians.

"For 20 days, I was without gas, without water, without light," Tartakovskaya says. "When the war started, I weighed 100 pounds my normal weight. When I arrived here, I weighed almost half that."

She says she's put on 10 pounds since arriving in Berlin.

Sonya Leibovna Tartakovskaya recently celebrated her 83rd birthday, which she feels lucky to be marking. She is a retired seamstress from Irpin, near Kyiv, where Ukrainian authorities have reported evidence of atrocities committed by Russian troops against civilians. Esme Nicholson/NPR hide caption

Sonya Leibovna Tartakovskaya recently celebrated her 83rd birthday, which she feels lucky to be marking. She is a retired seamstress from Irpin, near Kyiv, where Ukrainian authorities have reported evidence of atrocities committed by Russian troops against civilians.

She once had family in this city. An older cousin, a student here in the 1930s, was murdered by the Nazis for being Jewish, as were many of her other relatives.

As the other women leave the lunch table for an afternoon nap, Tartakovskaya stays behind to talk with 90-year-old Alla Ilyinichna Sinelnikova, who has just arrived from Kharkiv.

"This war is a catastrophe. It's truly awful," Sinelnikova says in a whisper. "I never thought I would live to see such horror for the second time in my life. I thought it was in my past, all over and done with. And now we're reliving it."

Sinelnikova was nine when she fled Kharkiv the first time. Fearing Nazi persecution, she and her family were evacuated to Sverdlovsk in west-central Russia, where they saw out the war. She can't believe she had to come to Berlin to escape the Russians now the very people who offered her refuge after the Germans invaded Ukraine in 1941.

"It is a strange paradox. I never believed the Russians would invade us," Sinelnikova says. "Half of my family are from Russia. How can I hate them? I can't, even if wanted to."

Sinelnikova has already forgotten what her journey from Kharkiv to Berlin was like, saying it's probably best that way. She's worried about her children and grandchildren, from whom she's heard nothing in weeks.

Alla Ilyinichna Sinelnikova, 90, recently fled Kharkiv for the second time in her life. She was nine years old the first time. Esme Nicholson/NPR hide caption

Alla Ilyinichna Sinelnikova, 90, recently fled Kharkiv for the second time in her life. She was nine years old the first time.

Rdiger Mahlo, from Germany's Jewish Claims Conference, a nonprofit organization that helps Holocaust survivors, is coordinating the evacuation effort. Mahlo says it takes about 50 different people to evacuate just one older person from Ukraine. They often must be transported by ambulance.

Once they're in Germany, he says, these senior refugees need to be housed in care facilities where the staff speak Russian or Ukrainian. "Like in any war, the most weak people are the most vulnerable and Holocaust survivors belong to the most vulnerable people," he says. "For them, the situation is devastating."

Mahlo says some of Ukraine's Holocaust survivors refuse to set foot in Germany because of the past. He's trying to find alternatives for them, evacuating some to Poland, Romania, even Israel.

"You have the re-traumatization of the survivors," Mahlo says. "But we wanted them to feel safe and not to feel abandoned as they were in the beginning of their lives," when most Germans looked the other way and did nothing to protect Jews and other vulnerable people from Nazism.

Mahlo says his group has been able to bring roughly 50 Ukrainian Holocaust survivors to Germany over the past few weeks, something that would not have been possible without help from the Jewish Distribution Committee, a humanitarian aid organization in Ukraine.

The JDC's Pini Miretski says having an existing network of care providers helped them to identify and evacuate these Holocaust survivors, many of whom are in poor health. "What works as part of a normal routine works well in an emergency," Miretski says.

As for Tartakovskaya, she says that if it weren't for the kindness of her neighbors, she'd be dead. They were the ones who alerted the JDC that she was in need.

"I lived alone, I have nobody. My whole family is long buried in cemeteries in different cities," she says. "But thanks to strangers, I got out of Irpin. My neighbors didn't leave me behind; they took me with them."

Tartakoyskaya's phone rings. Remarkably, it's her old neighbors, calling to wish her a happy birthday something Tartakoyskaya believes she is marking only because of them and the organizations that brought her to Berlin. The neighbors are still in Ukraine, she says, and they insist they're safe for now.

Tartakovskaya says practicing gymnastics in her youth and playing chess her whole life have made her physically and mentally tough. She was just three years old the first time she fled war. As difficult as it is to be a refugee again, especially in old age, she knows she is one of the lucky ones.

Julia Nesterenko contributed to this story from Berlin.

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Ukrainian Holocaust survivors flee war again this time to Germany - NPR

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