Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 17, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Most American Jews, like most Americans, view the war in Ukraine as a horrific human catastrophe that demands political support, philanthropic dollars, and fervent prayers. We are entreated to attend rallies, assist refugees, and raise funds; some are participating in humanitarian missions to the neighboring countries that are reeling from waves of desperate Ukrainians fleeing to safety, as many of our relatives were forced to flee from the Nazis decades ago.

There is also an unexpected surge of pride. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the global hero of the moment, is a Jew, and for now, his identity is not a liability and often an asset.

Across the usually fractious American Jewish spectrum, from the Orthodox to the most liberal, Zelensky has been embraced with a kind of familial hug as a charismatic symbol of resolve and courage. As Rob Eshman wrote in The Forward, this is not simply one-directional hero worship, but a deeper mutual admiration.

Not only did we embrace Zelenskyy, he embraced us back. On two occasions since the invasion began, he has spoken directly to American Jews, asking them to speak out as Jews on behalf of Ukraine, Eshman wrote.

In this, Jews are largely aligned with other Americans, a majority of whom approve of the Biden administrations approach of working with European allies and tightening economic sanctions against Russia (even if Republicans still dont approve of President Biden himself). Zelenskys address to the U.S. Congress on March 16 drew a sustained standing ovation. And polling shows that U.S. hatred of Zelenskys nemesis, Russian President Vladimir Putin, is at an all-time high.

But this seemingly straightforward picture of unanimity and support across the religious landscape is laced with anxiety. For while it appears as if American Jews are firmly on the side of the good guys in this brutal conflict, the global reality is fuzzier. And the eagerness to rally and raise funds cloaks a gut-wrenching worry: that the moment wont last. Zelensky could be knocked off his pedestal in a flash, his global goodwill dissipated if he makes a misstep, or the war drags on at great cost, or he is deposed or worse, murdered.

Theres a good reason for this anxiety. Historically, Ukraine has been a graveyard for Jews, a minority targeted by all sides of its politics. The wave of toleranceand pluralism that enabled Zelensky to become president in 2019, after an election campaign during which his religion was never instrumentalized by his opponents, is a relatively recent phenomenon.

The 2014 Maidan uprising, when the pro-Russian Ukrainian government was overthrown, ushered in this period of Western-leaning liberalism, in which a vibrant nationalism seemed to override ethnic and religious divisions. The worry is that it will be short-lived.

When things go wrong, it would not surprise me if one or another group starts to blame the Jews,Jeffrey Veidlinger, professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan, told me in an interview.

Complicating the religious landscape is the role of Israel, which is treading a narrow middle groundas the government joins the West to welcome refugees and condemn Russia, it also hesitates to sanction Jewish oligarchs and tries to pursue a role as mediator with Putin to end the conflict.

In the first weeks of the war, more than a dozen private planes from Moscow reportedly landed at Israels Ben Gurion airport; some Russian billionaires also have Israeli passports, and their vast wealth and real estate holdings have granted them social and political power in the country. The avoidance of fully sanctioning the many oligarchs who claim Jewish heritage has particularly rankled some American officials. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs, told an Israeli television news channel that you dont want to become the last haven for dirty money thats fueling Putins wars.

In a caustic address to Israeli leaders on Sunday evoking the Holocaust, Zelensky himself criticized the Jewish state for failing to arm his country. As the journalist and historian Gershom Gorenberg warned in The Washington Post, Israel will eventually have to decide where it stands. In our dark new world, half-neutrality is impossible, he wrote.

Jewish identity in these complicated situations is, in and of itself, complex. Decades of Soviet rule forced a strange contradiction: Jewish life was suppressed at the same time that Jews were targeted for persecution, and many found safety in thinking of themselves as Soviet rather than Ukrainian. As Stanford University history professor Steven Zipperstein told me, Part of this story is a reminder of how identity is not made out of one thing.

Indeed, like so many more well-known American Jewsincluding Leonard Bernstein, Bob Dylan, and Jon StewartI can trace my ancestry back to Ukraine, in my case Kolomyia, a city that was variously ruled by Moldavia and Poland, and now is in western Ukraine. While for centuries Jews lived in thriving communities in these contested areas, there were also long periods of extreme and violent antisemitism, which is why my family emigrated to America in stages, before and after World War I.

In his recent book, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust, Veidlinger argues that the presence of Jews on all sides of the conflict that enveloped Ukraine during the revolutionary era following the First World War meant that whichever side you were on, there was always a Jew to blame. As a result, about 100,000 Jews were killed in more than 1,000 pogroms that took place in 500 locations. And this was before an estimated 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, among them Zelenskys family members.

Only in the last few years, and particularly since Zelenskys unexpected election as president, has Ukraine begun to reckon with its bloody past. When I visited what was known as Babi Yar outside Kyiv in the early 1980s, the site of one of the worst massacres during World War II was still under Soviet rule and was left forlorn and neglected. The fact that 34,000 Jews were murdered there was not even mentioned. Last year, Zelensky presided over the commemoration of a planned new $100 million memorial for what is now known in local parlance as Babyn Yar. (In the early days of this latest war, Russian military bombed a nearby radio tower, killing five people and damaging the existing memorial.)

The recent flourishing of Jewish religious and cultural life in Ukraine has come to an abrupt halt with the war, as thousands of Jews flee death and destruction, leaving those who remain a smaller minority, even if their co-religionist is president. Things have changed dramatically in Ukraine in the last five years, said Veidlinger. Its hard to know how much the old patterns can be revived even if someone tried to revive them.

And so the anxiety continues. Veidlinger said he would not be surprised if Putin started to employ coded antisemitic tropes to characterize Zelenskyas a tool of western cosmopolitans, or George Soros, or Israeland try to discredit the Ukrainian leader in the eyes of his citizens.

As Veidlinger wrote in a recent forum for the University of Pennsylvania: The presence of Jews today on all sides of the current conflict is a testament to the ease with which Jews, after decades of repression in the Soviet Union, have been able to succeed in the modern states of Russia and Ukraine. But as rockets fall on Babyn Yar and synagogues turn into bomb shelters, it is worth remembering how Jews have fared when wars have ravaged the region in the past.

Jane Eisner is director of academic affairs at the Columbia School of Journalism.

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Zelensky Is a Jewish Hero. Some Jews Worry the Acclaim Won't Last. - Religion & Politics

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

Through her organization Jew in the City (JITC), Allison Josephs has been advocating for accurate representations of the Jewish community in the media since 2007. Shes now opening an official Hollywood bureau to elevate JITCs efforts, something Josephs said she would have done earlier, but she had no idea such a thing even existed until last year.

We had been using social media, op-eds and relationships with reporters, Josephs said, until she learned about other minority Hollywood bureaus created by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), NAACP and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE). The bureau celebrated its launch on Monday, and Josephs said the scope of its efforts will go beyond just Orthodox stories, although those are often the most egregious.

We started off really with the idea that this would be about Orthodox depictions, so we could get a seat at the table when our stories are being told, said Josephs, who is an Orthodox Jew herself. As we started talking about this, all of these non-Orthodox Hollywood writers and producers started contacting us secretly and saying, Were also not happy with our depictions. Were also not happy how fellow Jews are depicting us, how some non-Jews are depicting us.

Currently, the bureau is still in its early stages, with no official Hollywood office or full-time staff yet. Josephs said JITC is currently in the process of organizing an official academic study to track Jewish representation, meeting with network executives at NBC and CBS and has plans to form writers labs and establish a network of creatives who will further the cause.

Recent TV shows like Unorthodox, My Unorthodox Life and Shtisel have brought Jewish stories into the spotlight, but Josephs said those shows either overplay the dysfunctionality of Orthodox families or are simply inaccurate, which can fuel real-life antisemitic biases and hate crimes, which are currently on the rise. For these stories, one of the questions she asks as part of her Josephs test is whether a character can self-actualize without leaving their Judaism behind.

What that makes it seem like is that leaving is the way that an Orthodox Jew sort of completes him or herself, Josephs said. Its not to say that a story like that cant be examined but we want to be able to be proud and happy, and so many of us are.

As Hollywood reckons with its depictions of numerous minority groups from people of color to the LGBTQ community and disabled people Jews, who make up about 0.2% of the global population, are still struggling to make their voices heard beyond stereotypical depictions and traumatic retellings of the Holocaust.

Jews played a major role in the founding of the Hollywood studio system, as documented in Neil Gablers 1988 book An Empire of Their Own. But that history is often erased, and it doesnt mean the film industry has wholeheartedly welcomed Jewish stories. Indeed, many writers rooms and networks include Jews among their ranks, but not all are religiously observant. Much of the Jewish representation on screen is either depicted by gentiles (see: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), or is one-dimensional, self-hating or, even worse, outright antisemitic, with offensive tropes at the forefront.

Jonathan Prince, a Jewish producer and screenwriter who is collaborating with JITC on a documentary about the history of Jewish depictions in media, said he hopes the new bureau will be a step towards including a wider range of Jewish identities in writers rooms and allowing Jews to tell their stories without fear of retaliation.

I remember coming of age as a writer, one older Jewish writer said to me jokingly, Write Yiddish, cast British, and it stuck with me, Prince said. There is an assumption among non-Jews that somehow were in charge or were in control, and nothing could be further from the truth. We operate from the same fears of prejudice and fear of being targeted as any other minority.

At the event, JITC premiered a 12-minute clip of the documentary, which features Josephs, People Love Dead Jews author Dana Horn, writer-producer Rob Kurtz and other Jewish industry players and experts. The clip lays out the groundwork of JITCs current efforts, and examines some of the most problematic depictions of Jews on screen, including many from Jews themselves, like Max Greenfield as his character Schmidt on New Girl joking that everybody hates the Jews in 2011.

We are a community that loves to laugh at ourselves, which is great, Kurtz says in the doc. But theres a big difference between laughing and ridicule.

Josephs said she has found solidarity among the other existing minority bureaus, which have helped her build a framework for JITCs current efforts. Her goals for the new bureau are vast, and she hopes it will allow JITC to address more nuanced issues, like problematic depictions that come from within her own community and the absence of representation for Jews of color, in addition to being an educational resource for networks and studios.

At the end of the day, we want to be seen as individuals and not as stereotypes, Josephs said. We want to be able to feel proud of what we see on the screen.

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Jew in the City Launches Hollywood Bureau for Jewish Representation: We Want to Be Seen as Individuals - Variety

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

The broad wooden trunk with floral engravings looks impossibly heavy. But in the early 1900s, Rachmiel Robert Shapiro carried it with him as he sneaked out of Russia and made his way to the United States. He was one of thousands of Jews who arrived here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The familiar Jewish American story is a journey from Central or Eastern Europe to Ellis Island, then onward to New York or a large urban center in the North. But Shapiros journey was different: he landed in Texas, foreshadowing a journey thousands more would make as part of the Galveston Movement or Galveston Plan, meant to draw Jewish immigrants to Texas and the interior of the country.

Shapiros trunk, which today greets visitors at the recently opened Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans, is part of a lesser-known history of Jews in America, one in which Texas plays a central role. Despite its lower visibility, the story of how Texas became a destination for Jewish immigrantsand, more important, how those immigrants navigated the society around themis one laden with the politics of immigration, religion, and race. Its a trunk that needs unpacking, and the museum and the Texan historical scholarship that inform it are useful guides for parsing its contents.

Many Jews today in Texas and the South can trace their family stories journey through Galveston in the early twentieth century, but there were Jews in Texas even before it was Texas. Many rose to prominent positions: Nicholas Adolphus Sterne, a German Jewish immigrant, was a close friend of Sam Houstons and a key financial supporter of Texas independence; Henri Castro, of Portuguese Jewish descent, recruited European colonists to settle Texas and founded Castroville, a town about thirty miles west of San Antonio, in 1844. And theres Jacob de Cordova, a British Jew of Spanish descent, who at one point in the mid-1800s held some one million acres of Texas land, which he promoted and sold to settlers. Hes also credited with planning the city of Waco, and he served as a representative in the Texas Legislature.

Between 1880 and 1924, roughly 2.5 million Jews came to the United States. Most of them came from Eastern Europe; in many cases, they were fleeing pogroms and escalating regional conflict. Ellis Island was the primary port of entry, and most who entered there settled in New York City. But as their numbers grew, so too did anti-immigrant sentiment. Jewish aid organizations became overwhelmed. Established Jewish families on the East Coast who claimed German heritage saw the Eastern European newcomers as a threat to their social position. The more assimilated leaders of the Jewish American community worried that [New Yorks] Lower East Side, with its poverty and overcrowding and sweatshops, was feeding into the xenophobic narrative, explains Josh Furman, associate director of Jewish Studies at Rice University and a key researcher for the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience.

Leaders of Jewish community and aid organizations were caught between keeping Americas doors open to refugees and keeping nativist resentments at bay. Leaders like New Yorks Jacob Schiff, a banker and philanthropist, devised a plan to redirect the flow of Jewish immigrants to a different part of the country, both to ease overburdened receiving communities and to subtly force new arrivals to assimilate instead of crowd themselves into impoverished enclaves. Several ports were considered, but ultimately Schiff and others selected Galveston, in part because of its small size and limited resources. There was a Jewish community there that was established enough to welcome and assist arrivals, but small enough to encourage them to move on to other towns to find housing and work.

Between 1907 and 1914, some ten thousand Jewish immigrants, following the example of Rachmiel Shapiro and his heavy wooden trunk, came to Galveston. Many were personally greeted by local rabbi Henry Cohen, whose compassion and tireless advocacy is [perhaps] the reason [that] thousands of Jews live today in the South, Southwest and Midwest rather than [in] New York City and the East, writes the Texan Jewish historian Natalie Ornish in her 1989 book Pioneer Jewish Texans. In a black-and-white photograph reproduced in the museum, Cohen is seen standing among a group of recently arrived immigrants, luggage at their feet, gazes directed firmly at the camera. According to lore, he translated the mayors words of welcome into Yiddish for the new arrivals.

Texas [was] sold as the next New York, says Furman. Texas was the next frontier for opportunity; lots of big open land, the people are friendly, no one is going to harass you. Few stayed long, just as the organizers had hoped, opting instead for the rails or waterways to find their new home. Shapiro, for example, quickly made his way to Kansas City by rail and found work in the meatpacking industry there.

The financiers and community members behind the Galveston Plan had envisioned something far grander. A number of factors limited the quantity of Jewish immigrants coming to Galveston, including stricter screenings, World War I, and increasingly restrictive federal immigration laws. Still, their presence was felt across the South and Midwest, and many Jewish families in Texas trace their journeys back to the port. Today, annual kosher chili cook-offs speak to the ways those Jewish families made a new community and home here in Texas.

The Jews who arrived in Galveston would experience different trajectories from their Northern counterparts. Many made homes in small towns and forged identities that blended their heritage with that of their new social environs. In the post-Reconstruction era, Texas was also the land of Jim Crow, and newly arrived Jews had to find their place amid increasing racial and social regulation.

The experience of being Jewish in the SouthI think it is distinctive, says Furman. Because of the racial dynamic, because of the pervasiveness of a certain flavor of Christianity, and because Jews were more of a minority here [than in northern cities], he says.

Part of making a home in Texas and the South, then, meant finding a place within a punishing racial hierarchy. Most Jews in Texas were of white European descent, though historians point out that societal conceptions of race evolve over time. While scholars debate the extent to which white Jews may have been white on arrival, to borrow a phrase from historian Thomas Guglielmo, there is no doubt that they benefited from that status, whether it was imposed, constructed, or embraced. Nonetheless, their religion marked them as different. For some white Christian communities, Jews were a threat. Other Christians conferred a begrudging respect on their Jewish neighbors because of the belief among literalist Christians that Jews are necessary and chosen, per biblical prophecies. In response, some white Jewish communities played up this narrative, according to Collin College professor Michael Phillips, who argues in White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas that some Jews accentuated the good version of their religion by using Hebrew in their organizational titles and using minister to refer to rabbis.

[S]ocial acceptability, writes Phillips, depended on moving closer to the white ideal. This sometimes resulted in dissonant decisions, as when three prominent Jewish Texans, including businessman Charles Sanger, one of the brothers behind Sanger Brothers department stores, sat on the board of a bank in Dallas that advertised itself as a KKK Business Firm 100%. But Phillips notes that moves like these were often still interpreted through an anti-Jewish lens. In this case, Jews positions on the board of a white supremacist bank were still read as evidence of a broader Jewish business conspiracy.

Despite this vulnerability, some white Jewish people were also involved in the fights for labor rights, civil rights, prison reforms, and more. As Furman helped research the museums exhibits, he wanted to reflect this full spectrum.

Many of them were outspoken, says Tucker of Jews in the civil rights era in particular. Far more were silent for a variety of reasons. Part of the hesitation may have been that challenging the racial hierarchy carried social, and often physical, risks. Even as Jewish people made their way into nearly every corner of society, the ever-present threat of violence reminded white Jews that their social position was a tenuous one. The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the twenties found sympathy among the Dallas and Houston elites, according to Phillips. The Klan even had its own day at the state fair. Boycotts, cross burnings, and beatings were part of Jewish life in Texas, extensions of the violence used against Black and Hispanic Texans.

Still, the Jewish community in Texas grew, doubling from roughly 50,000 to about 100,000 between 1945 and 1989, according to Ruthe Winegarten and Cathy Schechter, authors of Deep in the Heart: The Lives and Legends of Texas Jews, with the vast majority of Texas Jews settling in the Houston and Dallas areas. And while the smaller towns that characterized early Southern Jewish life may have experienced a twilight, other cities are in the midst of a renaissance, according to Furman. Places like Houston and Dallas and Atlanta are booming, absolutely booming, he says. A 2016 report from the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston estimated that Dallas had some 71,000 Jews while the Houston area had 51,000. That same report found that 90 percent of Houston-area Jewish households were active in some way, whether through home observances, synagogue memberships, or some other form of involvement.

Shapiro arrived in Galveston two years before the start of the Galveston Plan. No one greeted him and he spent only a few hours there, waiting for a train north to stay with family who had already made the journey. Had the Galveston Plan come to full fruition, the number of Texas Jews could be many multiples of what it is today. Its possible that such numbers would have engendered an entirely different set of cultural negotiations. What the history of white Texas Jews makes clear is that these identities are social processes.

Beyond Shapiros trunk, in the far corner of the first room of the museum, there is a map of the South, covered in stars. Each star represents a town or city that elected a Jewish mayor sometime from the mid-nineteenth century onward, with more than two dozen stars across Texas alone. To its right is another display with a black-and-white photograph showing an effigy of a Jew. With each new anti-Jewish incident here in Texas, the Jewish community finds itself between these two symbols. For white Jews in particular, the options that confronted our ancestors remain: do we uphold the status quo, seeking an acceptance we may never fully have, while also supporting a system that oppresses so many of our communitiesor do we challenge it?

For Furman, these questions inevitably lead back to the histories of Texas Jews themselves, including those who challenged the way things are. You cant change the past, he says, but you can start by learning about it.

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The Surprising, Fraught History of the Texan Jewish Experience - Texas Monthly

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

(JTA) A new museum about the history of Hollywood will have a permanent exhibition devoted to the contributions of Jews after early criticism that Jews were omitted.

The change was announced this week in the lead-up to this years Academy Awards, which features a slate of nominees more diverse than in the past. It caps a period of intense discussion about how Hollywood includes Jews and how it does not.

Whether in their depictions on screen, the actors cast to play them or acknowledgement of their historic role building up the film industry, Jews over the last few months have been vocal about their impressions of being left out of the current Hollywood conversation.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which opened last fall in Los Angeles, is exhibit A in this purported oversight. Overseen by the Oscars governing body, which described its mission as radically inclusive, the museums announcement of its new permanent exhibition focused on Jews came only after the academy admitted it had initially sidelined or ignored Hollywoods prominent Jewish founders.

Jewish visitors to its unveiling, including prominent donors to the museum, such as Haim Saban, publicly voiced their concerns that Jewish stories were being overlooked in the industrys historical narrative.

Among the figures who had little or no prominence in the museums storytelling were Jewish studio heads like Louis B. Mayer and the Warner brothers; prominent directors like Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch; stars like Hedy Lamarr; and screenwriters like Herman Mankiewicz (subject of the recent biopic Mank, which starred non-Jew Gary Oldman).

Figures such as these molded the early years of Hollywood, even while all but hiding their Jewishness from the general public, according to historians of the era such as Neal Gabler, whose book An Empire Of Their Own explores the central Jewish role in the creation of Hollywood.

Gary Oldman on the set of Mank, a 2021 biopic about Jewish screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. (Nikolai Loveikis/Netflix)

These early Jews films rarely, if ever, dealt with Jewish characters and themes. Gentlemans Agreement, a landmark 1947 film about antisemitism, neither starred nor was directed or produced by Jews (though co-writer Moss Hart and Laura Z. Hobson, whose novel the film was based on, were Jewish). Some of these showbiz legends were refugees from Europe, and their backgrounds of escaping (and continuing to operate under) extreme antisemitism informed their desire to keep their Judaism under wraps.

The Academys initial omission of such Jewish figures, and their self-imposed cultural erasure, stood out in stark contrast to the museums emphasis on people of color and women in early Hollywood. One anonymous insider told The Hollywood Reporter the exclusion was a symptom of overcorrection due to wokeness.

Criticism of the museum arrived in the middle of other ongoing conversations about Jewish representation in modern Hollywood. Jewish actress Sarah Silverman recently popularized the controversial term Jewface, previously used by academics to describe secular Jews dressing up like Hasidic ones in Yiddish theater, to describe a different phenomenon: non-Jewish actors playing Jewish roles, in popular works such as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On The Basis of Sex. An upcoming biopic of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, scheduled for release this year, casts non-Jew Helen Mirren in the role.

Just this week, an anonymous Oscar voter interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter questioned whether Rachel Zegler, the Colombian-Polish star of Steven Spielbergs West Side Story remake, is diverse enough for the role she played, based solely on her name.

I know theyre emphasizing that they cast Latino and Latina actors this time, but the actress who plays Maria is named Rachel Zegler, so I think thats a little overstated, the Academy member said, as their justification for not voting for the film in what could be interpreted as an insinuation that Zegler is Jewish and therefore does not count as diverse. Zegler is Latina and not Jewish.

Allison Josephs, a writer and activist who runs the Orthodox-focused media organization Jew In The City, says how Jews are portrayed onscreen has real implications for how they are treated in real life.

Jews arent considered a minority in Hollywood. Were considered white, Josephs told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, adding that depictions of Orthodox Jews in particular are two-dimensional. Her writing on such negative portrayals has prompted apologies and episode retractions from major producers.

This week, Josephs announced that Jew in the City would be opening a Hollywood bureau, intended to be a Jewish parallel to the NAACP, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment existing organizations that push for positive Black, Muslim and Asian depictions onscreen.

Allison Josephs, founder of the Orthodox media organization Jew In The City, at the launch event for her sites new Hollywood bureau and awards show focusing on Jewish onscreen representation, March 21, 2022. (Courtesy of Allison Josephs)

The bureau would advocate for Jews in Hollywood by helping place observant Jews in entertainment production roles, as well as through representation awards; a minority impact study to determine if negative depictions of Jews onscreen lead to more antisemitic incidents in real life; and a media consultancy. Josephs is also at work on a documentary about Jewish representation in Hollywood.

With screenwriter Yael Levy, Josephs also coined what they call the Josephs test for judging an Orthodox characters onscreen portrayal, in the model of the Bechdel Test, a popular analysis tool for onscreen depictions of women coined by comics artist Allison Bechdel. (Theres also the Kranjec Test, to assess whether Torah study includes women sources.)

The Bechdel Tests criteria calls for a film to feature two named female characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. The Josephs test calls for a film or TV show to feature Orthodox characters who are emotionally and psychologically stable and can self-actualize without leaving their Judaism behind in contrast to popular Netflix shows Unorthodox and My Unorthodox Life, both of which feature protagonists who exit Orthodox Judaism.

Basically every show and movie fails the Josephs test except for [Israeli movies and TV shows] Shtisel, Fill the Void, [and] Ushpizin, because they all were made by or worked with actual Orthodox Jews, Josephs said.

Only one film released this year had a positive enough depiction of Judaism, in Josephs eyes, to be eligible for a Jewish representation award: the music documentary Rock Camp: The Movie, whose central subject is an Orthodox music agent.

Shes not alone in wanting better onscreen depictions of Jews. In an op-ed last year, Malina Saval, Varietys features editor and a former screenwriter, lamented what she saw as the watering-down of Jewish representation in TV and film, criticizing the so-called self-loathing Jews onscreen, like Woody Allen and Larry David, whom she believes help provide a safe psychological distance between the audience and a positive view of Judaism.

But the Academy is committed to a course correction around Jews, the museums director and president, Bill Kramer, wrote in a joint op-ed this week with Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

As a cultural institution that seeks to elevate underrepresented and untold stories of the film industry, the Academy Museum has a responsibility to examine and explore the experiences of oppressed and marginalized groups in cinema, including the Jewish community, Kramer and Greenblatt wrote, adding that the museum and the ADL would be partnering on public programming to educate the public about the role of Jews in Hollywood and in combatting antisemitism.

The Academy museums new permanent exhibit focusing on Jews, with the working title Hollywoodland, will open next year. In the meantime, Jewish Oscar viewers still have a few rooting interests this weekend: director Steven Spielberg, actor Andrew Garfield and screenwriter Maggie Gyllenhaal, among other Jews, are all up for awards.

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Jewish stories were excluded from a new movie museum. Is Hollywoods push for diversity leaving them behind? - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

(JTA) Elliot Steinmetz knows something about firsts: last July, his son Jacob became the first known Orthodox baseball player to get picked in the MLB draft.

The elder Steinmetz is also the head coach of the Yeshiva University mens basketball team, a squad of Modern Orthodox players that shocked the sports world with an unlikely 50-game winning streak that spanned multiple seasons.

The teams leader was Ryan Turell, a 6-foot-7 guard who has entered the NBA draft, hoping to become the leagues first Orthodox player. Steinmetz knows its a lofty ambition but he isnt betting against his former star athlete.

I would never ever doubt anything that kid puts in his mind, in terms of his goals. If he says hes going to be an NBA player, I believe him, Steinmetz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Turell, a lanky 22-year-old Los Angeles native, has a stacked resume: he was named this years Division III player of the year, due to his impressive 59% shooting percentage, including a 47% mark from three-point range (the NBA three-point average usually hovers around 35%). He also helped his team climb to the No. 1 ranking in the country for a time.

But the Y.U. Maccabees play in Division III, the bottom tier of NCAA collegiate athletics, meaning Turell has not been tested against top college competition. Few Division III players ever make the leap to the NBA, let alone get selected in the leagues two-round draft a relatively short affair compared to those in other professional sport leagues (the MLB draft, for example, has 20 rounds, and used to have 40).

In 1980, back when the NBA had a much longer draft, David Kufeld became the only Y.U. player ever selected: He was chosen by the Portland Trailblazers in the 10th round with the 205th overall pick, before getting cut in the preseason.

NBA scouts dont usually pay much attention to DIII games, but Yeshivas special streak drew national attention. The teams games this season attracted overflow crowds and a number of NBA scouts, along with a few NBA executives, including New York Knicks President Leon Rose (a 2011 inductee into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame).

Honestly, its been amazing to have all the support weve had on a Division III level, its just unheard of, Turell told JTA. Its just really inspiring to see that you can inspire so many people through basketball.

Turell, right, celebrates with teammates during the second half of a game at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, March 6, 2020. (Will Newton for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Boris Beric, who is co-owner of BPA Hoops, a scouting service that several NBA teams use, says Turells skills merit a look from scouts, but he does not expect Turell to be one of the 58 players drafted in June.

Hes a really talented player. Guys who are big wings like he is, and can really shoot, that deserves pro scouts attention, but the NBA is really tricky, Beric said. I dont think hes a good enough athlete. He deserves to get pre-draft workouts with teams to see how he compares against Division I talent, the international talent, in that kind of setting.

Beric added that he could see Turell thriving in Israels top league something Turell said is a goal anyway, even if he made it to the NBA.

Its always been a dream of mine to go play in Israel, regardless of the NBA, Turell said. Even if I have a great career in the NBA, Israel is something I definitely want to do afterwards.

In Turells dream NBA scenario, he plans on playing on Shabbat, as long as he can walk from his hotel to the game just as his friend Jacob Steinmetz plans to do. Traveling and using electricity are prohibited on the Jewish Sabbath, but playing sports is not.

I would plan on walking to the gym, staying in my hotel near the gym and just walking over, Turell said.

(An update on how Jacob is doing with his new team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, from his father: Hes throwing hard, 94, 96 miles per hour, curveball looks good. Theyll probably keep him in rookie ball for the first couple months of the season and maybe ship him up to low A [the lowest minor league tier].)

Beric said that even if he isnt drafted, Turell could continue showcasing his talents by getting invited to a teams summer league team or its fall training camp. As NBA teams have looked to increase their three-point percentages over the past decade, sharpshooters stock has risen.

Get to summer league. Show your worth, and fight to get a training camp invite. That should be his main goal. I really think his path is becoming a shooting specialist, Beric said. A challenge for him is, he was the star at Yeshiva, where he got all of the touches, all of the shots. Is that scalable at a higher level when hes only getting three shots a game? Thats really difficult for some players from college to the pros.

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Scouts and teams would like to see how he fares against players with Division I experience and if Turell gets invited to the Portsmouth Invitational amateur tournament next month, which showcases some of the countrys better college seniors, he will get a chance to do that. Turell, who is back in California training, said that he has worked out in summers past with high quality players: UCLA players [including Johnny Juzang, projected to be a second round draft pick], a bunch of overseas guys, and some NBA guys [including Bulls reserve forward Alfonzo McKinnie].

I felt comfortable at that speed. At the end of the day, it doesnt matter where you play at, its just basketball, he argued.

The next few months will see Turell working on at least a few aspects of his game.

You can never be a good enough shooter, obviously I just gotta keep shooting and really perfect the release, getting quicker, and being able to shoot with less space and room, with people contesting at me, he said. Defense is always key. I really want to work on my body and get myself in the best shape of my life, so Im able to hold my own defensively.

A veteran NBA scout who has worked for a number of NBA teams over the last 15 years agreed with Beric on Turells draft chances. But he noted a factor that could work in Turells favor: his narrative.

Theres a little bit of a story element and narrative to it an Orthodox Jewish kid and the fact that theres never been one in the NBA, said the scout, who wished to remain anonymous, as most do.

Jewish players are extremely rare in NBA history since the 1970s. A couple of Israelis, such as current Washington Wizards forward Deni Avdija and former pro Omri Casspi, made the leap and earned relatively significant playing time in recent years. Dolph Schayes was a Jewish standout player in the early days of the modern NBA.

If character counts for an NBA organization, Coach Steinmetz added another layer of endorsement: An absolute gem of a person. Ive never been around a kid whos so good at what he does and at the same time so humble and so in touch with the fact that there are kids, and even adults, who look up at him and want his time. Hes so nice and so uplifting.

And Turell doesnt avoid the talk from those who think he has no shot to ever play in the worlds best league.

They just motivate me to work even harder, he said.

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Could Ryan Turell become the first Orthodox Jew to play in the NBA? Scouts say its a long shot. - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

A Milwaukee Jewish organization has released an annual audit of reported antisemitic incidents in Wisconsin. The overall number of incidents went down slightly last year, compared to 2020. But the Jewish Community Relations Council of Milwaukee Jewish Federation says the acts have increased more than 450% since 2015.

Jill Plavnick heads a task force that compiled this year's audit. She said one of the troubling trends over the last year is an increase in antisemitic incidents in middle and high schools.

"Many of them ranging around Holocaust jokes or direct harassment of Jewish students. There was a group of teens a Snapchat group and the teens in the group sent video to a Jewish teen stating, 'Face the wall, Jew, and congratulations, you finally found your chance to pull your victim card. How does it feel?'" Plavnick reported during a town hall meeting held on Zoom Thursday evening.

Plavnick said other categories seeing large increases were those trying to link Jews to a COVID-19 conspiracy, antisemitic social media activity and minimalization of the Holocaust. There were smaller increases in negative references to Israel in an antisemitic context and in harassment, threats and assaults.

In response to the overarching upward trend in incidents, security efforts have been boosted at Jewish community centers and synagogues. Ari Friedman, director of security and community properties at the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, said the federation is in its third year of giving out synagogue security grants.

"This program has helped synagogues across Wisconsin pay for professional security guards for high holidays, Shabbat, religious schools and other special events," he said.

Friedman said the federation has also helped more than 35 Jewish organizations obtain nonprofit security grants from the federal agency FEMA. He said the government money supplements funds from individual donors and organizations.

Kai Gardner Mishlove, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said there's a variety of programs to help people affected by harassment and other incidents. But she said there are also efforts to prevent violence and promote interfaith and intercultural relations.

"We are all in this together, sharing this planet. Many communities are facing hate. One hate is not worse than the other. We are all facing hate, and it's only in alliances and by building solidarity with each other that we're able to confront hate," Gardner Mishlove said.

The Milwaukee Jewish Federation is asking people to help report antisemitic incidents to them or to the police. Here's how:

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Milwaukee Jewish Federation audit finds a near-record high of antisemitic incidents in Wisconsin - WUWM

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

April 2 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Hermann Rorschach, the Swiss psychoanalyst who propounded the Rorschach inkblot test, still used as a means of evaluating mental conditions. The Rorschach test immediately attracted strong support from Jewish clinicians.

These included Franoise Minkowska-Brokman, of Polish ancestry, who introduced the test in France as well as David Levy, Samuel Jacob Beck, Bruno Klopfer, Renata Calabresi, and Marguerite Hertz, who did the same in the U.S.

Even today, in Israel, as the journalist Holi Glazer has observed, the Rorschach test retains an unsurpassed status as a protected flower in the therapeutic community.

Why Jews should be so drawn to this sometimes controversial, if floral, ink blot test? In The Principles and Nature of Jewish Law (2019) J. David Bleich suggested that varying impressions produced by the Rorschach test follow precisely the many perspectives and potential solutions of Jewish legal thought. In this way, the Rorschach concurred with the Hebrew expression both this and that are the words of the all-powerful God (elu ve-ulu divrei Elohim hayyim).

From the very beginning, the Rorschach test featured occasional allusions to Judaism, because some deluded antisemites tended to see Jews everywhere, even in inkblots.

So Rorschachs work records cite a typical response that some shapes resemble nothing but the eternal Jew in Judea, with the parenthetical note: Gray heads which are frequently interpreted as Jewish profiles.

Later studies have included the Jewish star or Star of David among possible shapes to be identified in the images, and one guidebook suggests that a non-Jewish patient finding a shofar in a blot represents an identification from a culture or historical context different from the examinees current context.

Jews propounding the Rorschach approach in the early years, as Marguerite Hertz recalled in 1986, shared a sense of emotional involvement. Since the 1930s, Hertz averred, she was happily wedded to the Rorschach, although at times I have been forced by circumstances or drawn by other interests into temporary separation.

Beyond symbolic wedlock, attachment to the Rorschach test forged social circles among Jewish therapists. Hertz described the blot-obsessed Kaffeeklatsch atmosphere:

A remarkable group assembled around Klopfer. I vividly remember the excitement in the planning of the exchange and the institute, the merging of ideas and disciplines, the enthusiasms, the stimulating discussions, and yes, the controversies. I enjoyed the impromptu seminars, the unscheduled luncheons, and the small parties.

For these doctors, the Rorschach test was something to schmooze about. These intellectuals, many with experience in Fascist Europe and the U.S. of instantly trying to discern antisemitism in the impassive faces of strangers, might have especially relished revelations hidden in otherwise undefined shapes.

Surprises occasionally backfired. Social historian Stephen Birmingham wrote of how in 1930s New York Jewish high society, the Rorschach was administered as a parlor game with added Yiddishkeit.

At one such get-together, Hattie Lehman Goodhart, a noted hostess, took the test conducted by a young psychologist from California, who concluded that she was an antisemite!

In addition to such unforeseen results, the Rorschach could also produce wayward readings due to varying criteria that were considered vague. Popular with the military as a one-size-fits-all diagnostic, by 1946 the Rorschach had achieved such name recognition that it was featured onscreen in La La Land.

The Dark Mirror, a multiple-personality thriller directed by the German Jewish filmmaker Robert Siodmak was based on a story by Vladimir Pozner, an author of Russian Jewish origin. After the opening credits displayed over a background of different Rorschach tests, identical twin sisters, one normal and the other a murderer, take the test with differing results.

Perhaps because of this iconic pop status, some skepticism about the test grew among Jewish researchers. In 1944, the German Jewish sociologist Max Horkheimer wrote to his colleague Theodor Adorno about formulating research questionnaires: I share your aversion to the much too unspecific Rorschach test.

Yet Horkheimer kept an open mind about the test, adding to Adorno: By chance, however, a young professor who is knowledgeable about things Jewish and who has been working with the Rorschach test has landed here. Hes published a series of articles about the application of the test to specific phenomena. Maybe well be able to use this young man here.

By the late 1950s, the Iraqi Jewish journalist Nissim Rejwan resented being subjected to the indignity of a Rorschach test by a visiting sociologist, Samuel Klausner, who was researching the Iraqi community in Israel.

Gradually, in the arts, a growing rejection of the Rorschach test became even more definitive, as literary critics Ruth Wisse and Sanford Pinsker noted. Cynthia Ozicks 1983 novel The Cannibal Galaxy features a five-year-old student misdiagnosed at school:

Shown a Rorschach card expressing ominous darkness, she responded with Storm Cloud. The popular response among children of her age is Bird or Bat. Non-achiever, not recommended for Dual Curriculum.

Despite such letdowns, in recent decades the Rorschach test has received constant mention in the context of Jewish life and cultural expression.

This omnipresence in scholarly books and journalism offers the Rorschach as a metaphor for things Jewish, whenever interpretation is essential for drawing a multiplicity of conclusions.

So, Irving Greenberg has described Hanukkah as a type of holy day Rorschach test. Moshe Rosman termed the Baal Shem Tov, regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism, a Rorschach test for proponents and opponents of modern Jewish cultural movements, among them Hasidism, Haskalah, liberal Judaism, and Jewish nationalism. And philosopher Steven Nadler opined that Baruch Spinoza functions as a kind of intellectual Rorschach test. Spinoza has been a hero or a heretic to a remarkable variety of causes.

Published memoirs like those of Pauline Wengeroff, the 19th century Russian Jewish writer, have been described as functioning like a Rorschach test of anxious projections about Jewish communal prospects in the U.S, and Philip Roths Portnoys Complaint was likened to a giant Rorschach test; it allowed the passionate reading of every mind set about Jewish experience.

In The Americanization of the Jews, Israel itself was referred to as a Rorschach test for American Jewry.

The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times notes that the pictorial representation of the ghetto, Judengasse, Jewish quarter (or, in the case of East Europe, the shtetl) is a veritable Rorschach test of a given artists attitude toward Judaism and modernity.

Many personalities, historical such as Judah P. Benjamin, or modern, from actress Natalie Portman to politician Bernie Sanders have been compared to Rorschach tests of the publics feelings about Jews.

Historian Jack Kugelmass characterizes the 1940s films Crossfire and Gentlemans Agreement as celluloid Rorschach tests that, like the complex dynamic of anti-Semitism itself, reveal more about the projector than the figure projected.

And Michael Barnett, in a history of American Jewish foreign policy, proposes giving [a] Rorschach test to a sample of American and Israeli Jews. This Rorschach would consist of asking subjects to quote Hillel the Elder correctly.

These and other examples prove that trying to analyze Rorschach images, like deciphering the intricacies of Jewish experience, will in all likelihood continue to be seen as parallel occupations.

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The surprisingly Jewish history of the Rorschach inkblot test - Forward

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

Most people can identify the developers of the worlds most important vaccines, including Louis Pasteur (rabies, anthrax), Edward Jenner (smallpox), and Jonas Salk (polio and influenza), but the name Mordechai Wolff (Waldemar) Haffkine, an Orthodox Jew who is credited with the development and use of vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague, has been forgotten, even though he arguably saved far more lives than they did. He was hailed as the Jewish Jenner; he was characterized by Joseph Lister, the pioneer of antiseptic surgery, as a savior of humanity; and, in R. Joseph Hertzs well-known second edition of the Soncino Chumash, the influential chief rabbi of the British Empire noted that he was a famous scientist.

The son of a secular merchant father and a devoutly Orthodox mother born in what is now Ukraine, Haffkine (1860-1930) was raised by his maternal grandmother after his mother died when he was a young child, and it was through her that he developed strong Jewish feelings. A young founder of the Jewish League for Self-Defense in Odessa, he was injured while defending a Jewish home during the Odessa pogrom of 1881.

Haffkine commenced his scientific career as a protozoologist and protistologist at the University of Odessa in 1879 under Elie Mechnikov, one of the fathers of immunology who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Ehrlich. He was expelled from the university in 1882 after protesting Mechnikovs forced resignation for being Jewish but, after waging a difficult battle against the administration, he was granted his Doctor of Science degree in 1884. However, he was barred from a professorship because he refused to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the fact that he had always been openly proud of his Judaism, very rare at that time and in those circles, certainly did not help him. After leaving Odessa in 1888 for a brief teaching job in Geneva, he followed Mechnikov to Paris, where he joined his mentor and Louis Pasteur at the newly established Pasteur Institute.

In the early 1890s, when one of the five great 19th-century cholera pandemics devastated Asia and Europe, Haffkines interest turned to practical bacteriology and he focused his research on developing a cholera vaccine. He produced an attenuated form of the cholera bacterium and risked his life by self-administering the first dose on July 18, 1892. He reported his successful findings to the Biological Society two weeks later, but his discovery was not generally accepted by his senior colleagues.

Determined to prove the efficacy of his vaccine, he decided that the best place to do so was in India, where hundreds of thousands of people were dying from the ongoing cholera epidemic. In early 1893, he finally obtained permission from the British authorities to go to India and test his vaccines at the deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, the primary source for the spread of cholera, but he quickly encountered four daunting problems.

First, the British directed that all participation in his two-shot regimen trials be voluntary, effectively thwarting his ability to select a proper balance of subjects and controls so fundamental to scientific analysis. Second, relentless and vociferous protests by English anti-vaccinationists ultimately took their toll on the British military command and caused a decreased cooperation with and sometimes obstruction of Haffkines efforts. Third, when Haffkine was grudgingly granted permission by the British government to test his vaccine in India, he received no financial support from either the British or Indian government and he had no choice but to fund the entire operation by himself.

But the principal problem proved to be Haffkines own misunderstanding of the geographical unpredictability of cholera. He planned to choose a village with a history of cholera, vaccinate half the people, and wait for the next outbreak to test the results, but he soon discovered that he was unable to find the disease in sufficient concentration to make his testing meaningful. As he documented in his records, although he was able to vaccinate more than about 20,000 people throughout northern India that year, no cholera appeared in their midst to show whether the vaccine was of value or not.

Haffkines big break came in early 1894 when a medical officer in Calcutta invited him to examine cholera bacilli in a water tank in an isolated village where everyone drank from a shared water source. When cholera broke out in the village, the overwhelming majority of the deaths were among the unvaccinated. Calcutta health officials agreed to finance a wider trial, and he became the first person in history to bring laboratory medicine into the slums of a tropical country, as he traveled across India spending entire days vaccinating as many people as possible.

By the time he was forced to return to England in autumn 1875 because he had contracted malaria, he had vaccinated some 42,000 people in the face of monumental hardships, including surviving an assassination attempt by Muslim fanatics. Two years after his return to Calcutta in 1893 to continue his work, cholera cases decreased by 80 percent amongst the vaccinated.

When the bubonic plague hit Bombay in October 1896 with a mortality rate double that of cholera, the Indian government asked Haffkine to assist, and he commenced work in a crude laboratory and assumed the daunting task of developing the worlds first vaccine against plague. Amazingly, working almost entirely by himself, he succeeded in developing a vaccine that was ready for testing only three months later and, again, he first tested it on himself on January 10, 1897. Soon after he announced his successful results to the authorities, plague broke out at Bombays Byculla House of Correction. He conducted a controlled test there, the results of which were that the majority of deaths were among the unvaccinated.

With this astounding success, the Aga Khan provided a building to house Haffkines Plague Research Laboratory where he offered himself and thousands of members of his community for vaccination; within a year, hundreds of thousands of Indians had been successfully inoculated. At her 1897 Diamond Jubilee Honors, he was named by Queen Victoria as an Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) for his bubonic plague vaccine, and the Jewish Chronicle noted with great pride the anomaly of a Ukraine Jew, trained in the schools of European science, saves the lives of Hindus and Mohammedans and is decorated by the descendant of William the Conqueror and Alfred the Great.

Haffkine wanted to test his cholera vaccine in Russia, but the Russian Czarist government refused, preferring that countless thousands of peasants and laborers die rather than be treated by a Jew. Ironically, however, with the 1898 cholera outbreak raging through the Russian Empire, two of his Russian colleagues visited him in Bombay, with the result that the vaccine, called Haffkines lymph, saved many thousands of lives across Russia. By the early 20th century, the vaccine had been administered to over four million Indians.

Haffkine had many enemies, including envious and resentful establishment scientists and the British colonial bureaucracy, particularly the British officers who comprised most of the staff at his laboratory, who were all unhappy about a Russian Jew heading the operation. Sham, but nonetheless damaging, reports began to circulate, including rumors that he was a Russian secret agent and an enemy of the British colonial rule and reports that he had produced the vaccine with pig flesh, an anathema to both Hindus and Muslims.

The haters soon succeeded in finding a way to ruin him when, during a mass outdoor inoculation in the Punjabi village of Malkowal on October 30, 1902, 19 villagers died from tetanus. It was quickly determined that the cause of the deaths was the failure of an Indian assistant to follow Haffkines established sterilization and sanitation procedures after he dropped a forceps that he was using to open the vaccine bottles and that all the deaths were from vaccines administered from this single bottle; all other subjects who had been inoculated that day were thriving.

Nonetheless, a kangaroo Indian Commission of Inquiry was convened to investigate the matter and, in what became known as the Little Dreyfus Affair, he was railroaded by the Commission, which determined that the bottle of vaccine had been contaminated in his lab and that he was responsible. Relieved of his title and position, he was sent back to England in ignominy.

When the Indian government finally released its full inquiry in 1906 four years later much of the scientific community came to his support and, on July 29, 1907, the London Times published a letter signed by ten internationally renowned microbiologists, including Sir Ronald Ross, the winner of the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The letter cited not only the injustice of wrongfully accusing one of mankinds and Indias greatest benefactors, but it also warned about the adverse repercussions that would arise out of false information eroding the public trust in vaccines a warning that has particular resonance today with the misrepresentations and deceit by the Biden administration and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In this regard, it is fascinating to note that once Haffkines vaccine had been broadly administered throughout India, discussions commenced about mandating proof of vaccination in areas of high concern, particularly at Hindu and Muslim pilgrimage sites which, due to population density, were considered the most likely places for plague outbreaks to get out of control. At the annual pilgrimage to Pandharpur in Bombay province, government authorities decided to mandate such proof of vaccination but, unlike the Biden administrations unilateral issuance of vaccine mandates from on high, the government negotiated with religious authorities, the hospitality industry, the railway companies, and pilgrims representatives.

Haffkine was finally exonerated in November 1907, when a Commission of the Lister Institute in Great Britain reversed the Inquiry Commissions miscarriage of justice and the matter was then brought by his supporters to the British parliament. He was given permission to return to Bombay but, eager to reassume his position at the Institute, he found that it had been taken by another scientist, so he accepted a position as director in chief of the Calcutta Biological Institute. However, even after his formal exculpation, his name and reputation remained tainted because the authorities barred him from carrying out any future trials. Even when he commenced research on developing a new devitalized vaccine, the Indian government denied his repeated applications to conduct experimental trials. Limited to conducting theoretical research, he worked for the Institute until 1915, when he reached the age of mandatory retirement and returned to France.

While there is no smoking gun evidence that antisemitic animus played a role in the years-long miscarriage of justice in the Little Dreyfus Affair case, there does not seem to be any other reason to explain the course of events in the matter and why, even when he was officially vindicated, he was prevented from continuing his work the very work that had saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Haffkine was a proud Orthodox Jew with close relationships with many Jewish and Zionist leaders, but it was his friendship with Baron Edmond Rothschild that gave him the idea for a plan to resettle Jews in Eretz Yisrael that involved the purchase of land by wealthy members of the Jewish community. In 1898, he presented his plan to his friend, Aga Khan III, but when the Aga Khan brought the proposal to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, it was summarily rejected.

Although Haffkine personally donated funds to purchase land in Eretz Yisrael, he was not a political Zionist who considered a Jewish state as necessary for Jewish survival; rather, he credited the spiritual leaders produced by the yeshivot with the unlikely Jewish survival through two thousand years of bitter exile and oppression. Accordingly, he devoted massive financial resources to the support of studies at yeshivot and Talmud Torahs; in particular, he established the Haffkine Foundation to foster Jewish education in Eastern Europe with a focus on reaching enlightened secular Jews, which still exists and still supports various religious institutions.

Haffkines wide-ranging Jewish activism included drafting a petition for the civil and religious rights of the Jews of Eastern Europe, which was presented at the Versailles Conference; founding the Society for the Return of the Hebrew Language; supporting the Jewish Free School in Calcutta; pursuing a plan to found a microbiological institute in Eretz Yisrael; working to establish a faculty of Jewish studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and serving on the boards of trustees of both YIVO and the Alliance Israelite.

Haffkine also dedicated himself to helping Jewish refugees immigrate to the U.S. Well aware of the threat of worldwide antisemitism, particularly with the oppression of his fellow Jews in his native Russia, and having personally experienced antisemitism which all but destroyed his career and accomplishments, he was deeply appreciative of the uniqueness of the United States and how his co-religionists were being treated there. In this beautiful and rare May 7, 1907 note, he writes:

I am grateful to the American Nation for their receiving in their midst refugees of my people, the Jews. I hope the settlers will preserve in their new Home an unshaken fidelity to the creed of their ancestors; and that there will arise among them great citizens who will repay by their services the hospitality afforded to them and their kinsmen.

After his retirement in 1915, Haffkine decided to travel to the United States to observe and to personally experience Jewish life there. It was during this trip that he wrote an article for the Menorah Journal called A Plea for Orthodoxy (1916), in which he advocated for traditional religious observance, decried the lack of such observance among enlightened Jews, attributed all of science to Jewish piety and learning, and stressed the importance of the Torahs teachings and Jewish communal life. Topics included A Plea for Old-Fashioned Kashrut; Hebrew as a Vital Bond; The Importance of Distinctive Dress; Youth Owes Deference to the Wisdom of Forefathers; and The Approach of Modern Science to the Adon Olam. Alarmed by much of what he saw across America, he concluded that assimilation was a far greater threat to the survival of the Jewish people than persecution.

In 1925, the Indian government renamed the Parel lab The Haffkine Institute, which today serves as a respected teaching institution in the field of biological sciences, undertakes specialized testing for pharmaceutical and other health-related products, and is a leader in offering basic and applied biomedical science services. Pursuant to his will, the Haffkine Foundation for the Benefit of Yeshivot was established and fully funded and, although he never visited Eretz Yisrael, he bequeathed his extensive personal archive to the National Library of Israel. His memory was later commemorated by the planting of 1,000 trees in the Kennedy Forest near Jerusalem.

Finally, one of the original cholera vaccine glass ampoules from his first batch was found and displayed at the Migdal David Museum. This amazing historical artifact was wrapped in a little package containing a September 1, 1892, note written by Haffkine just a few months after he announced his vaccine and declared that the ampoule contained the antidote for cholera.

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The Forgotten Jew Who Developed The Cholera And Bubonic Plague Vaccines - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

(New York Jewish Week) Fresh off of a mission on the Ukrainian border, a Messianic group that seeks Jews to accept Jesus is setting its sights on Jewish New Yorkers.

Chosen People Ministries is one two Messianic groups that announced plans this week to visit New York and share their gospel this summer, causing alarm for some Jews in the city who say that their practices are disrespectful.

CPM and the International Board of Jewish Missions both released materials that detailed their plan to visit New York.

I think most Jews are not aware of how aggressive they are in campaigns, said Shannon Nuszen, founder of the anti-missionary group Beyneynu, which first reported the missionary groups plans.

She recalled a recent effort, in which Yiddish copies of the New Testament were sent to homes in the heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of Monsey and Spring Valley, New York.

IBJM is offering a missionary package for over $1,000 that runs from May 30 through June 6, which culminates at the end of Shavuot, the Jewish harvest holiday. The trip focuses on spreading the good news of the gospel of Jesus the Messiah to Gods chosen people.

Our Jewish friends are a special people proud of their religion and heritage, the pamphlet reads. For this reason, IBJM provides specialized training. Experienced workers will instruct you on how to approach and share the gospel with Jewish people.

A member of Chosen People Ministries hands out bibles in New York City. (YouTube)

Chosen People Ministries, which is based out of New York, released a video as part of their Shalom Brooklyn program this summer, highlighting the importance of spreading their message to the Orthodox community.

In the whole United States, the majority of the Jewish people are in Brooklyn, the video said. What a better place to actually come and reach them with the gospel.

Chosen People Ministries President Mitch Glaser, who was born and raised Jewish in Brooklyn, said the group recently dispatched its representatives to the border of Ukraine, where Jews are among the millions of Ukrainians fleeing from the Russian invasion.

Rabbi Tovia Singer, who has studied the Messianic movement for over 40 years, said missionaries at the border are weaponizing humanitarian help in order to evangelize the exploited.

These Jews from the former Soviet Union are very vulnerable, because theyre knowledge base is very limited, Singer told the New York Jewish Week.

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Asked about this charge, Glaser said, Lets just say were handing out way more blankets than Bibles. This whole charge is trumped up. Were just one group, but were sustaining over 500 people in Europe right now.

Although it is difficult to gauge how successful such groups are in winning followers, there are 400 Messianic congregations in North America combining elements of Christian and Jewish worship. In Israel, more than 30,000 people belong to Messianic congregations.

Jewish groups have long resented Messianic groups for trying to blur the lines between Judaism and Christianity. And yet according to a Pew Research Study in 2013, 34% of all Jews in America said that believing in Jesus as the messiah is compatible with Judaism. (This does not mean that most Jews think those things are good, Alan Cooperman, deputy director of Pews Religion and Public Life Project,said at the time. They are saying that those things do not disqualify a person from being Jewish. [But] most Jews think that belief in Jesus is disqualifying by roughly a 2-to-1 margin.)

Nuszen said that while Orthodox Jews are steadfast in their Judaism, Messianic missionaries seek converts who are among the most vulnerable, including widows and children.

They purposely target kids that are away from home, Nuszen said. Some people are often looking for some sort of spiritual and emotional connection, which Christianity fills for them.

Gavriel Sanders, a former Protestant evangelical minister who later converted to Judaism and now teaches Hebrew on Long Island, said Messianic missionaries are committing spiritual genocide.

Every single Jew represents generations, Sanders said. But in their mind, theyre doing the most loving thing they could ever do, which is bringing Jews home, to save them from hell.

Sanders said many missionaries have a well-rehearsed script.

Ive likened it to playing chess, Sanders said. If you dont know the game, theyre going to walk all over you. Its set up to show how ignorant most Jews are.

Singer faulted the groups for misappropriating Jewish symbols, like the Sabbath candles or the ritual bath, or mikveh.

A training manual from a Messianic Jewish group. (Courtesy/Rabbi Tovia Singer)

Although Chosen People Ministries, IBJM and Jews for Jesus all claim Jewish founders, most of their financial support comes from Christian individuals, churches and associations. Jews For Jesus income comes from mostly Christian donors, according to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Members of the current board of directors of the International Board of Jewish Missions, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, are independent Baptist ministers and lay leaders.

Nuszen said that Messianic missionizing, kicked off in the 1970s, is a more recent spin on the historical attempt condemned by some but not all Protestant denominations to convert Jews to Christianity.

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They saw that Jews strongly identify [with] their own culture, Nuszen said. So their new marketing was, you can remain completely Jewish, but accept Jesus as your messiah and completely maintain all of your Jewish traditions.

Glaser said that the accusations that missionaries are targeting Jews are unfair.

Im as Jewish as anybody in Chabad, Glaser said, referring to the Hasidic Orthodox movement. There is a long assumption that when a Jewish person becomes a believer in Jesus, they somehow forfeit their identity. Theyre no longer Jewish. We dont accept that.

He said that CPMs missionaries are no different than the Chabad emissaries who encourage Jews on the street to perform various rituals.

They are actually far more aggressive, Glaser said of Chabad. And I admire them.

Members of Chosen People Ministries in New York City. (YouTube)

And yet, Chabad seeks to talk with people who are already Jewish, not bring them into another faith.

Glaser also said that Messianic Jews are significant players when it comes to building relationships with evangelical Christians, who are a powerful voting bloc in the U.S. (Mainstream Jewish groups also maintain close relations with evangelical Christians, whose followers are some of the most consistently pro-Israel voters in the country.)

Were good friends to have, Glaser said. Because we have influence that your average Hasidic rabbi would never have. Were not working against the survival and well-being of the Jewish community. In fact, were working for it.

Nuszen said that while Messianic groups say they have a love for Judaism and Israel, Jews have to draw a line over this issue.

Targeting vulnerable people at such a vulnerable time is downright offensive, Nuszen said. Theyre supposed to be friends. We appreciate the Christian world, but this is just disrespectful.

IBJM declined to comment for this article.

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These Messianic missionaries were at the Ukraine border, and now theyre coming to New York - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on March 26, 2022

On 12 February 2020, with a four-year delay since the adoption of the mandate in 2016, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) published a database of 112 enterprises[1] doing business in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Why? Because these companies directly and indirectly, enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements in Palestine that are illegal under international law.

Whats the problem? Today, the database is out of date and urgently needs updating to help expose and end corporate complicity in the illegal occupation. Adding and removing companies from the database creates a necessary incentive and deterrent against engaging with Israels illegal settlement industry.

Despite the UNs promise and a resolution that the Human Rights Council establish a group of independent experts, with a time-bound mandate, to report directly to the council on the situation, a group of experts is yet to be appointed.

Add your name to the petition calling on Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to respect UN Human Rights Council resolution 31/36[2] and update the database urgently.

Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:

The International Trade Union Confederation is calling on the UN Human Rights Office to respect UN Human Rights Council resolution 31/36:

An up to date database is not just in the interests of justice for the Palestinian people, but also of the companies on the original database that have since cut ties with illegal Israeli settlements.

The extraction of profits by Israeli companies and multinational corporations impedes Palestinian economic development, as it relies on the annexation of land and the plundering of Palestinian natural resources.

The prospect for a viable two-states solution is being damaged as illegal settlements continue to expand with the support of the businesses the database is designed to expose.

Find out more, read our report, Workers Rights in Crisis, Palestinian workers in Israel and the Settlements.

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Expose the businesses aiding illegal settlements in Palestine

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