Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 3, 2022

LINCOLN, Neb. -- The University of Nebraska has made a change to its cartoon mascot Herbie Husker to eliminate confusion about the meaning of a hand gesture he makes that some people connect with white supremacy.

In the original depiction of the mascot, which debuted in the early 1970s, Herbie's left hand made the "OK" sign with the index finger and thumb forming a closed circle. In recent years, some hate groups have come to use the gesture as a sign for white power -- three straight fingers make a W and the circle formed next to an extended finger makes a P.

Herbie's left hand now makes the well-known "We're No. 1" sign with his index finger raised.

"The concern about the hand gesture was brought to our attention by our apparel provider and others, and we decided to move forward with a revised Herbie Husker logo," Nebraska Athletics said in a statement to The Associated Press. "The process of changing the logo began in 2020, and we updated our brand guidelines in July of 2021. The revised logo is now the only Herbie Husker mark available to licensees."

The change was first reported by the online news site Flatwater Free Press.

The Anti-Defamation League lists the OK hand gesture in its Hate Symbols Database and explains how the altered meaning originated on an internet bulletin board five years ago.

The ADL description: "A common hand gesture that a 4chan trolling campaign claimed in 2017 had been appropriated as a symbol meaning 'white power.' Used by many on the right -- not just extremists -- for the purpose of trolling liberals, the symbol eventually came to be used by actual white supremacists as well. Caution must be used in evaluating instances of this symbol's use."

The revision to Herbie was so subtle that Scott Strunc of Omaha, owner of one of the largest Huskers merchandise stores, said he didn't notice it until it was shown to him by a reporter.

Strunc said he had no idea the OK sign could have a different meaning. He said he understands why the university made the change.

"It's just the world we live in," Strunc said.

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2022

On Saturday Jan. 22, about two dozen white nationalists dressed in identical beige khaki pants and dark hoodies protested in front of Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston holding a bedsheet with black lettering reading B and W Hospital Kills Whites.

They passed out flyers condemning by name two doctors associated with the hospital and Harvard Medical School who have been working with Mass General Brigham to establish greater equity in health care for non-white communities.

One of the doctors, Dr. Michelle Morse, teaches at Harvard Medical School and is chief medical officer for the New York City Health Department. She was formerly on staff at Brigham and Women's.

The other, Dr. Bram Wispelwey, is an internal medicine and public health doctor at Brigham and Women's and also teaches at Harvard Medical School.

Photographs of Morse and Wispelwey a Black woman and a white man were featured in the leaflets that were passed out at the Brigham demonstration, condemning what the far right-wing protestors called preferential health care policies for non-white patients.

What they and other conservative activists describe as anti-white, Morse and Wispelwey say is simply a new approach to medicine that addresses the health concerns of those who have consistently been left behind as modern medicine advanced.

BRINGING EQUITY TO MEDICINE

What I'm trying to do is hold the medical industrial complex accountable for the harms that it's caused to communities of color and to other communities and push for racial justice and health equity in all of the institutions that I'm involved in and in partnership with the many communities that I serve, Morse told GBH News. And I think ultimately in the COVID era, part of what that means is a real serious push to make inequities more visible.

Wispelwey said his team found it was hard to address institutional racism in medicine such as disparities in how patients are admitted for heart surgery using racially blind methods. And so we wanted to take a race-explicit approach, Wispelwey told GBH News. We can't wait until these predominantly white institutions sort of come around ... we want to actually make sure our patients are taken care of in the best way possible right now.

Wispelwey and Morse were among a group of doctors at the Brigham in 2015 who questioned why data showed Black and Latinx patients with heart failure were more likely than white patients to end up in general medicine rather than the cardiology unit, where patients have better outcomes. That led to a study that showed a probable link between institutional racism and heart failure; consequently a program was established at Mass General Brigham that aims to improve access for Black and Latinx patients who historically have not had equitable access to specialized cardiology care.

That program is one of many initiatives developed by Mass General Brigham under the heading United Against Racism that serve as roadmaps for delivering services to underserved communities.

Morse and Wispelwey published an article in the March 2021 Boston Review, titled An Anti-racist Agenda for Medicine that laid out their approach to health care based on a medical model of critical race theory, and calling for "medical restitution" for Black people, who have long been excluded from first rate care. The doctors were promptly denounced by a guest on Tucker Carlsons Fox News program, who derided their advocacy for prioritizing non-white patients for certain procedures as political eugenics.

A reader posted The Boston Review article on Twitter where it received hundreds of retweets, including, Morse said, by some right wing person, basically describing Brams and my work as racist or as somehow unfair to white people.

This is what triggered this whole backlash, Wispelwey said. He said the intimidation began in the spring of last year with really extensive threats, not just to us personally, but to our hospital. And then most recently last week when a white nationalist and neo-Nazi group showed up at our hospital.

Morse and Wispelwey are part of a growing number of doctors nationwide leading programs to make the medical profession more inclusive and to improve health outcomes for communities of color.

Anonymous

They are also among a cadre of doctors across the country who are confronting mounting intimidation on social media, and threats of violence.

Theres little data documenting the number of social media and death threats directed at doctors engaged in anti-racism work in medicine, but Dr. Manisha Sharma, a California based family medicine physician, keeps a running tally of colleagues who are active in the social justice movement and have received hate mail and worse, and says it is widespread.

In recent years, I definitely had an uptick in friends who have, like, literally received death threats, she said. Sharma, who is of South-Asian descent, said American medicine is already a lonely place for Black and brown doctors, but added when you're Black and brown, doing justice, anti-racist work, you're even more so alone.

Sharma said the hate mail shes received included misogynistic and racist comments. After appearing on a Fox News broadcast she said she received a letter from an anesthesiologist in Texas to tell me he wished that slavery was still there because I needed to find my place.

Doctors leading anti-racism efforts within their institutions say they have had their personal information made public, been screamed at and even followed home.

A NATIONAL PROBLEM

In May 2021 almost a year after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis the American Medical Association announced a strategic plan to dismantle structural racism starting from within the organization, acknowledging that equity work requires recognition of past harms and critical examination of institutional roles upholding these structures. The plan was met with overwhelming support by AMA members but some doctors balked at the notion that American medicine was influenced by structural racism. In the fall, the AMA released a follow up Health Equity Guide, to help physicians dismantle racist practices.

The dissenting viewpoints within the medical community were amplified by right-wing media, which reduced the plans focus on past and present injustices to a catchphrase: critical race theory, which conservatives have falsely described as anti-white pedagogy.

The target of the ensuing vitriol was an author of the guide, Dr. Aletha Maybank, the AMAs chief health equity officer and senior vice president. The death threats started coming in almost immediately, she said.

When you start to challenge narratives, such as the myth of meritocracy or the hierarchy of human value based on skin color, that really gets to the truth, that really instills fear in people, she told GBH News. There were messages on social media. You know, things about people should they organize and get their guns. Most unnerving, said Maybank, was finding graffiti written on the door of her home.

The AMA hired a security firm to scrub her social media accounts and assigned a professional security detail to protect her during speaking engagements.

Maybank said doctors and other health care specialists in her anti-racism medical network have also been targeted. She cites a collegue, Monica McLemore, who has a doctorate in nursing and teaches at the Center for Vulnarable Populations at the University of California SF School of Medicine who made light of harrowing experiences in a recent tweet .

Dr. Camara Jones is long accustomed to receiving hate mail. She is a family physician, epidemiologist and past president of the American Public Health Association, and much as Derrick Bell is regarded as the originator of critical race theory in the teaching of law, Jones is viewed as one of the authors of a critical race framework for medicine focused on equity, inclusion and diversity.

My core philosophy with regard to medicine and health equity is that, first of all, that health equity is a process. So it's not some magical outcome that we're just all of a sudden going to find ourselves in," she said. "Achieving health equity requires three things: Valuing all individuals and populations equally, recognizing and rectifying historical injustices, and providing resources according to need.

For three decades, as she focused on ending what author Harriet A. Washington termed Medical Apartheid, she was flooded with unsigned profane letters, and, in more recent times, digital attacks. But Jones, speaking to GBH News from her home in Atlanta, says the racial backlash has never been as severe and potentially violent as it is now.

She attributes the backlash to Donald Trump. The rightness of even talking about these issues came under assault with the 45th president, she said. Jones says Trump has falsely and cynically preyed on the fears of white Americans. "That stoking of fear has made those who value social justice targets, because we are upsetting peoples comfort.

NEO-NAZI PROTEST IN BOSTON

There was not a swastika in sight at the demonstration outside the Brigham. But the GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting traced an email address on the flyer to a fascist group that was founded in Worcester in 2019. The men behind the banner and ski masks standing on the sidewalk were members of the Nationalist Social Club described by the Anti-Defamation League as a neo-Nazi group with small, autonomous regional chapters in the United States and abroad."

The group has enjoyed little success, said Robert Trestan, director of the Anti-Defamation League New England, until recently. They've drawn more racists and white supremacists and antisemites into their ranks, Trestan said. And we know this because their most recent demonstration in front of the Brigham and Women's Hospital actually drew more people than we've seen at previous protests that they've organized.

A 2021 ADL Report said incidents of white supremacist propoganda surged across the U.S. the previous year to "alarming levels," and concluded that NSC is one of three groups responsible for 92% of the activity.

The doctors targeted by the group said they remain undeterred by the threats and hate mail.

The fact that you have an avowed white nationalist neo-Nazi group show up at a hospital really speaks to the work that still remains to be done. And it's just so important that the work continue, Wispelwey said.

Morse agreed. We should be doing a bajillion times more than this, even more actively and more directly and with bigger and more resources.

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Neo-Nazis target anti-racist doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital, calling them 'anti-white' - wgbh.org

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Posted By admin on February 3, 2022

Breadcrumb Trail Links

Sure, titling your book People Love Dead Jews is going to get attention. It should.

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When: Feb. 6-10, various times

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Where: Online

Tickets and info: jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival

You dont title your book People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present without expecting reaction. Award-winning American author Dara Horn says more than a few have offered opinions on the name; some pro, some con. Surprisingly, fewer in either camp than she expected.

Horn joins U.K. humorist and author David Baddiel whose latest book is titled Jews Dont Count in a Feb. 6, 1 p.m. opening event at this years Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival titled Investigating the New Antisemitism with moderation by Globe and Mail reporter Marsha Lederman. Sponsored by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the talk will tackle the global resurgence of antisemitic actions.

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A doctorate in Yiddish and Hebrew literature, Horn says stories about Jews are her jam, and that she has always pushed back against the idea that Jewish history is far too often defined from the outside-in. The author of five books that tackled issues around literature, language and custom figures she spent 20 years trying not to write her latest work. But there were always flags that a serious dive into the whole fascination with Jewish death versus existence was needed.

I would frequently ask people at my public reading events if they could name three concentrations camps, which many could easily do, said Horn. But when I asked those same readers how many could name three Yiddish writers, there was nowhere the same response. The intention behind this was because the 80 per cent of the people murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers and part of a famously literary culture, the content of which nobody seemed to care about. Why do we care so much about how these people died if we dont about how they lived?

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As she came to greater understanding of the role that dead Jewish people play in a non-Jewish societys imagination, the book began to take shape. A call from Smithsonian Magazine to write a story on Anne Frank sealed the deal. She didnt want to do it and was uncomfortable with the story, but continued due to the belief that the best stories are found in those uncomfortable places.

I remembered a 2018 news report about a young Jewish man who worked at the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam, a blockbuster tourist draw in the house where Annes family and others had hidden from the Nazis, asking to wear his yarmulke to work and have to hide it under a baseball cap, she said. He later appealed the ruling to the board and they eventually recanted after a four-month deliberation. Thats a very long time for the Anne Frank Museum to ponder whether or not it was a great idea to force a Jew into hiding, a sad parody in itself.

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The resulting essay for the Smithsonian eventually became the opening chapter of her new book. The opening sentence of her book: People love dead Jews. Living Jews, not so much.

Only a few days after the publication of the piece, the Oct. 27, 2018, domestic terrorist attack on the Tree of Life Or L Simcha Congregation synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood in Pittsburgh took place. Horn received a call to write an opinion piece for The New York Times.

I realized that the only thing editors at mainstream publications wanted me to do was write about dead Jews and to say something particular about it that was sad, inspiring and flattering to all involved, she said. So I took that topic Id avoided and dove into it looking at literature, travelling the world and consistently discovering this relentless, repetitive exploitation of Jewish history. The two underlying principles across time appeared to be that people told stories about dead Jews to feel better about themselves and that those stories require an erasure of actual Jews who should erase themselves to gain public respect.

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Given that cheerful jump-off, its testament to Horns delivery that People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Past manages to be so entertaining. Some of this appeal arises from seeing the record set straight on everything from the myth of customs officers misspelling the names of refugees arriving at Ellis Island in New York to the popularity of Jewish Heritage Sites in places where a population all but doesnt exist. In a world so devoted to denying facts these days, Horns straight-up analysis is refreshing.

The term Jewish Heritage Sites is such a bit of marketing genius, because it sounds so much more appealing than property seized or expropriated from murdered or expelled Jews, she said. These places often werent so sad to see that population go. But they pine for the dead Jews, and the magic Jewish money that Jewish tourists bring.

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Throughout all of her research, the one repeating reveal was constant reinvention, creative renewal and the resilience of the Jewish civilization. Its not the litany of horrors, but rather the spectacular adaptability of the people and culture that needs to be celebrated. Those stories are being told in a continuing spinoff podcast series called Adventures with Dead Jews.

If further proof was needed that this narrative is continuing, the fact that a Tennessee school board voted on Jan. 26 to ban author Art Spiegelmans landmark graphic novel Maus, about Nazi persecution of Jews, should serve as a warning. Some would seem to favour even erasing dead Jews from history.

Dana Camil Hewitt is the director of the 2022 Cherie Smith Jewish Book Festival, which enters its 37th year.

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When this years event moved from in-person to online due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, she felt challenged with how to keep the intimacy of those in-room author and audience experiences online. Thanks to experience gained with last years entirely online event, the unwelcome shift to that format this year wont be too disruptive.

We have learned how to get the best out of such situations, such as this year with an opening event with a writer in England and another in New Jersey needing to take place at a time that suits both, said Hewitt. That happened to land on a Sunday afternoon, which has always been a good time for literary events. Its always a challenge to shift, but its gone well.

Encompassing everything from childrens literature to unknown Second World War history, pure fantasy fiction and more, the annual event has long been a go-to for lovers of literature of all sorts. Hewitt says that, first and foremost, the event celebrates uniquely creative communities and culture, but has always been an event for all. With antisemitism and acts against all ethnicities and minorities on the rise, it seems more important than ever to keep the festival focus.

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Someone once told me to take the Jewish name out of the festival, but you cant separate the culture and people who are making this art from that, she said. You need only go to the synagogue in Texas a few days ago to find an example of the return of polarization and hate speech to places we thought had moved away from that. I think at a time like that, an event like this is more important.

A writer herself, Hewitt trained as a classical pianist and holds a PhD in musicology. She penned the program notes for the Israel Philharmonics season for many years. Arriving in Vancouver, she found her way to the book festival through her role as director of the Jewish Community Centres performing arts program. She loves putting together the very big puzzle of the event.

One of the highlights for her is author Riva Lehrer in conversation with Leamore Cohen discussing her book Golem Girl: A Memoir that celebrates Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion Month. Born with spina bifida, Lehrers cinematic text is tied in with her visual art, which will make for a unique presentation on Feb. 7 at 4 p.m. Tickets: $12 at jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival .

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Posted By admin on February 2, 2022

Human settlement in England

Stamford Hill is an area in Inner London, England, about 5.5 miles north-east of Charing Cross. The neighbourhood is a sub-district of Hackney, the major component of the London Borough of Hackney, and is known for its Hasidic community, the largest concentration of Hasidic Jews in Europe.

The district takes its name from the eponymous hill, which reaches a height of 33m AOD,[2] and the originally Roman A10 also takes the name "Stamford Hill", as it makes its way through the area.

The hill is believed[3] to be named after the ford where the A10 crossed the Hackney Brook on the southern edge of the hill. Sanford and Saundfordhill are referred to in documents from the 1200s, and mean "sand Ford".[4] Roque's map of 1745 shows a bridge, which replaced the ford, referred to as "Stamford Bridge".[5]

The hill rises gently from the former course of the Hackney Brook to the south, and its steeper northern slope provided a natural boundary for the traditional (parish and borough) extent of Hackney, and now does so for the wider modern borough.

Stamford Hill lies on the old Roman road of Ermine Street, on the high ground where it meets the Clapton Road, which runs from central Hackney. By the 18th century, the Roman road (now numbered as the A10) was subject to heavy traffic, including goods wagons pulled by six or more horses, and this caused the surface of the road to deteriorate. The local parishes appealed to Parliament in 1713 for the right to set up a Turnpike Trust, to pay for repairs and maintenance. Gates were installed at Kingsland and Stamford Hill, to collect the tolls.[6]

Roque's map of 1745 shows a handful of buildings around the Turnpike, and by 1795, the A10 was lined with the large homes and extensive grounds of wealthy financiers and merchants attracted, in part, by the elevated position.[7]

Stamford Hill had a gibbet, that was used to display the remains of criminals, executed at Tyburn in the 1740s. In 1765, a map of the area showed the Gibbet Field south of the road from Clapton Common, behind Cedar House.[8]

The area remained essentially rural in character, and little more was built until the arrival of the railway in 1872,[7] and the tram system at about the same time. Stamford Hill was the point where the tram line coming north from the City[9] met the Hackney tram line,[10] and so, it became a busy interchange, with a depot opening in 1873.[11] Electrification commenced in 1902 and by 1924 a service was commenced between Stamford Hill and Camden Town along Amhurst Park.[citation needed]

Stamford Hill had many eminent Jewish residents, including the Montefiore family. Italian-born Moses Vita Montefiore (died 1789) was living there in 1763. His son Joseph (died 1804) married Rachel Mocatta, and his grandson Abraham Montefiore (died 1824) married Henrietta, whose father, the financier Nathan Meyer Rothschild, lived near the modern Colberg Place from 1818 to 1835. The Montefiores' property a little further south was to be transformed by Abraham's grandson, Claude Montefiore, into Montefiore House school. With the increased development of the area, many distinguished families moved away: In 1842, there were few remaining of the wealthy Jews who had once settled in Hackney.[12] The philanthropist and abolitionist MP Samuel Morley had a residence here from about 1860. The gardening writer and cottage gardener Margery Fish was born Margery Townshend in Stamford Hill in 1892.[13]

From the 1880s, a new influx of Jews arrived from Stepney in the East End,[14] and, in 1915, the New Synagogue was transferred to Stamford Hill to serve this growing population. In 1926, the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations was established in Stamford Hill, and this became a magnet for other strictly observant Jews, many fleeing Nazi persecution in the years before the Second World War.[12] Also, many Jewish families came to the area from other areas of London, refugees in their own way from bombing and post-war clearances for new housing. One of the early Hasidic leaders in Stamford Hill was the Shotzer Rebbe. The Hungarian uprising also led to an influx of Haredi Jews fleeing hardship under Soviet rule. Another notable Jewish resident, from 1955 until his death in 2000, was the spiritual head of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, Rabbi Chanoch Dov Padwa.[citation needed]

Stamford Hill has never been an administrative area in its own right; it has always been an area of Hackney. Hackney was an administrative unit with consistent boundaries from the early Middle Ages to the creation of the larger modern borough in 1965. Hackney was based for many centuries on the Ancient Parish of Hackney.

Parishes in Middlesex were grouped into Hundreds, with Hackney part of Ossulstone Hundred. Rapid Population growth around London saw the Hundred split into several "Divisions" during the 1600s, with Hackney part of the Tower Division (aka Tower Hamlets). The Tower Division was noteworthy in that the men of the area owed military service to the Tower of London - and had done even before the creation of the Division.[15]

The Ancient Parishes provided a framework for both civil (administrative) and ecclesiastical (church) functions, but during the nineteenth century, there was a divergence into distinct civil and ecclesiastical parish systems. In London, the Ecclesiastical Parishes sub-divided to better serve the needs of a growing population, while the Civil Parishes continued to be based on the same Ancient Parish areas.

The London Government Act 1899 converted the parishes into Metropolitan Boroughs based on the same boundaries, sometimes with minor rationalisations.In 1965, Hackney merged with Shoreditch and Stoke Newington to form the new London Borough of Hackney.

The area's usual definition is based on the physical feature of the hill and the neighbourhood's location within the Ancient Parish and subsequent (with almost identical boundaries) Metropolitan Borough of Hackney.[3] Reflecting that the originally Roman A10 also takes the name Stamford Hill as goes over the hill between the brook and the borough boundary.

Northern boundary with Tottenham: Takes the northern boundary of the APMB of Hackney. This corresponds to the current boundary between the modern borough of Hackney and Haringey.

Western boundary with Stoke Newington: Takes part of the APMB of Hackney's boundary with the APMB of Stoke Newington along Bethune Road and down to the A10.[16]

Southern Boundary with West Hackney: The eastwest course of the Hackney Brook, which may have been as wide as 22m at this point,[17] provided a natural southern boundary for the district, however the river was culverted and it is now difficult to discern its former course on the ground. This has led to very ambiguous boundary, along its former course, in the CazenoveNorthwold Road area.

East and south-east boundary with Upper Clapton: Upper Clapton is also part of Hackney and shares much of the eastern side of the hill. There is little tradition of a particular border. The post code boundary is sometimes used but this is arbitrary: post code areas are not intended to define districts.

The high fertility of the Haredi community contributes to the area having one of highest birthrates in the UK, with a crude birth rate of more than 25 per 1,000 of the population, twice the UK average.[18]

The data table shows ONS Census data[19] for the wards around Stamford Hill, where respondents indicated a religion:[20]

Stamford Hill is at the centre of an Ashkenazi strictly-Orthodox Jewish, and predominantly Hasidic, community estimated to be some 15,000 strong, and growing at a rate of around 5% each year.[22][23] It is the largest Hasidic community in Europe, and referred to as a square mile of piety,[12] reflecting the many Jewish men seen walking in their distinctive clothes on their way to and from worship. The congregations often represent historical links with particular areas of Eastern Europe in their dress and their worship. Many also retain links with congregations around the world. The largest of these congregations is the Satmar dynasty, which has five directly associated synagogues; Belz is another large community, with several synagogues. As well as Stamford Hill's own Jewish population, there are also many observant Jews in neighbouring Upper Clapton, West Hackney, Stoke Newington, and Tottenham; there may be as many as 50 synagogues in this wider area.[citation needed]

A volunteer emergency response first-aid service called Hatzola (the Hebrew word for rescue) and a volunteer community watch group called Shomrim[24] (the Hebrew word for watchmen) are run by, and largely for, the Jewish community.[25]

The strictly Orthodox Jewish community relies mostly on private education for schooling, with almost all Jewish children attending private, single-sex Jewish schools.[26] In 2005, the Stamford Hill Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' School achieved voluntary-aided status.[27] In 2014, the Oxford, Cambridge, and RSA (OCR) Exam board, having conducted an investigation into alleged exam malpractice, concluded that the school had redacted questions involving the evolution of species on GCSE science exam questions.[28][29] Ofqual subsequently ruled that blocking out exam questions is malpractice, and, accordingly, not permissible.[30] The same year, it was reported by the BBC that many of the yeshivas in the area "usually don't provide any maths, English or science" classes and were operating "without the most basic health, safety, and child welfare checks".[31] In an article on Stamford Hill yeshivas, The Telegraph cited government documents obtained by Channel 4's Dispatches and the Jewish Chronicle as saying that between 800 and 1000 boys aged between 13 and 16 are missing from the school system in the borough of Hackney alone.[32][33]

Haredi families, on average, have 5.9 children, almost 2.5 times the average for England and Wales, and many families live in over-crowded flats.[34] National planning regulations are applied by the local council, prohibiting development of family housing. This has led to conflict between the council and the Jewish population, represented by the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. Agudas Israel Housing Association is active in developing housing for the Jewish community in Stamford Hill.[26]

There is also a notable population of Yemenite Jews, especially Adeni Jews who originated in the port city of Aden in Yemen. They settled in Stamford Hill, after fleeing the inter-community violence at the end of the Aden Protectorate. The Adeni Congregation synagogue, Nahalat Yosef, is named after the original Adeni synagogue in Yemen.[35]

In 2014, the community met with controversy after a sign was spotted in the location reading, "Women should please walk along this side of the road only".[36] The sign was reportedly put up for a Torah Procession parade, and was meant to provide directions for members who wished to avoid contact with the opposite sex.[36] After complaints about the sign were raised, a group of Shomrim who regularly police the area contacted the organisers to tell them that the posters "lacked explanation". The posters were removed, and the organisers agreed to take the signs down more quickly the following year.[37]

Since the 2011 census, there has been a migration of Stamford Hill Hasidic Jews to Canvey Island, in Essex. Canvey Island has a fairly homogenous ethnic make-up, and did not previously have a significant Jewish presence, but community relations appear to be good, and were the subject of a TV documentary.[38]

The Jesuit order founded St Ignatius' College on 10 September 1894, in two houses called Morecombe Lodge and Burleigh House, near Tottenham High Road. In 1907, the College was recognised by the Board of Education, and began to receive public money. Notable former pupils of St Ignatius include Alfred Hitchcock and Cardinal Heenan. It remained at Stamford Hill as a grammar school until 1968, and then became a two-form entry comprehensive school, the Lower School being located at the old Cardinal Allen School in Enfield, and the Upper School in new premises at Turkey Street, Enfield.

Today, Lubavitch Senior Girls' School, Our Lady's RC High School, Skinners' Academy, and Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' School are secondary schools located in the area.

There are also many independent or Haredi schools in the area.

Nearby areas

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Posted By admin on February 2, 2022

In the sixth installment of a series exploring new and upcoming books, the team at Jewish Insider previews top titles coming out in February:

The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk (Feb. 1): In her latest book, acclaimed Polish author Tokarczuk, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018, tells the story of a self-proclaimed Jewish messiah in the 18th century who converts to Islam and then Catholicism, before becoming a proto-Zionist.

Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us, by Rep. Ro Khanna (Feb. 1): A decade after his debut book focused on manufacturing in America, Khanna, a three-term congressman who represents Silicon Valley, takes on Big Tech and provides ideas for how government can work with tech firms to improve American lives.

American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York, by Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers (Feb. 8): Stolzenberg and Myers look into the history, internecine rivalries and constitutional court battles of the Orange County enclave founded a half-century ago and named for the late Satmar Grand Rabbe Joel Teitelbaum.

Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, by David Friedman (Feb. 8): Friedman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Trump administration, takes readers behind the scenes of the formation of the historic Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations.

Death Tango: Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and Three Fateful Days in March, by Yossi Alpher (Feb. 15): Alpher, who served as special advisor to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the 2000 Camp David Summit, recounts three of the most consequential days of the Second Intifada, which included the deadliest attack during that conflict, as well as Israels invasion of the West Bank and the adoption of the Arab Peace Initiative.

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Five books to read in February - Jewish Insider

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Posted By admin on February 2, 2022

Whoopi Goldbergs Holocaust comments reflect how Jews dont fit into Western boxes

By Yair Rosenberg

This is an edition of Yair Rosenbergs newsletter, Deep Shtetl. Sign up here.

Yesterday, celebrated actor and TV host Whoopi Goldberg caused a minor meltdown on ABCs The View when she asserted that the Holocaust isnt about race. Later that day, she joined The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and expanded on these remarks in an uncomfortable exchange, insisting that the Nazis were white people, and most of the people they were attacking were white people.

As countless commentators pointed out, this line of thinking is profoundly mistaken. The Nazis were obsessed with race and defined the Jews as their racial inferiors, which is how they justified exterminating them. This is why the Nazis targeted anyone with a Jewish grandparent, regardless of whether the person identified as Jewish or not. Nazism was a blood-based doctrine of racial supremacy, and its consequence was the genocide of the Jews. The very term anti-Semitism, which casts Jews in racial terms, was popularized by a German anti-Jewish activist who wanted to give his hatred a scientific sheen. Race is a social construct, and this is how it was constructed in Nazi Germany and much of Europe.

To her credit, Goldberg apologized last night on Twitter, and then again this morning on The View, alongside Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League, who talked through the issue with the panelists.

Goldberg is not an anti-Semite, but she was confusedand understandably so. In my experience, mistakes like hers often happen because well-meaning people have trouble fitting Jews into their usual boxes. They dont know how to define Jews, and so they resort to their own frames of reference, like race or religion, and project them onto the Jewish experience. But Jewish identity doesnt conform to Western categories, despite centuries of attempts by society to shoehorn it in. This makes sense, because Judaism predates Western categories. Its not quite a religion, because one can be Jewish regardless of observance or specific belief. (Einstein, for example, was proudly Jewish but not religiously observant.) But its also not quite a race, because people can convert in! Its not merely a culture or an ethnicity, because that leaves out all the religious components. And its not simply a nationality, because although Jews do have a homeland and many identify as part of a nation, others do not.

Instead, Judaism is an amalgam of all these thingsmore like a family (into which one can be adopted) than a sectarian Western faith traditionand so theres no great way to classify it in English. A lot of confusion results from attempts to reduce this complexity to something more palatable for contemporary conceptions.

This is just my off-the-cuff explanation. One could write a book about this topicscholars haveand still not exhaust its nuances. Over the years, smart people have used terms like civilization or peoplehood or tribe to describe the Jewish collective, but because those words are not as straightforward to the average person, I prefer family. Whichever label one employs, I hope that the above explanation provides a starting point for those trying to understand the nature of Jewish identity, and helps them avoid the trap of imposing outside ideas on it.

Goldberg was right to apologize, and probably wishes she hadnt raised this subject. But Im glad her misstep has provided a public opportunity to address it. We need to have more conversations about these topics going forward, not fewer. Conversation dispels confusion and leads to greater understanding, and given recent events, we need a lot more understanding about Jews in our public discourse.

This is a free edition of Deep Shtetl, a newsletter about the intersection of politics, culture, and religion. You can sign up here to get future free editions in your inbox. But to get access to all editions, including exclusive subscriber posts, and to support this work, please subscribe to The Atlantic here.

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The Misconception Behind Whoopi Goldberg's Holocaust Error - The Atlantic

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Posted By admin on February 2, 2022

By Ron Kampeas

Amnesty International is set to become the latest human rights organization to describe Israels activities in relation to Palestinians as apartheid when it releases a special report on Tuesday, prompting a strong rebuke from major U.S. Jewish groups that argue the report could inflame existing tensions and incite violence.

The report was leaked to NGO Monitor, an Israeli watchdog, whichpublished an extensive critical analysis onlineon Monday.

According to a page posted online by NGO Monitor, the Amnesty report appears to extend the apartheid designation to Israels treatment of its Arab citizens, particularly during clashes inside Israel last May sparked by Israels conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Other leading human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Btselem, have in the pastcompared Israeli policy to Apartheid South Africa. But in its report released last April assessing whether Israels treatment of Palestinians meets apartheid criteria, Human Rights Watchwas at pains to say its designation did not extend to Israeli practices within Israels pre-1967 state lines.

Like that Human Rights Watch report, Amnestys will reportedly offer an assessment on whether they think Israeli officials could be charged with crimes against humanity.

The report presents an unbalanced, inaccurate, and incomplete review and instead inexplicably focuses on one aim: to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish and democratic State of Israel, read a joint statement released on Sunday by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America and Bnai Brith International.

The reports misguided and backward-looking effort to vilify Israel seems to be trying to turn back the peace clock, inflame existing tensions and incite violence, while obstructing the path to peace and the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the groups added.

Israels government also condemned the Amnesty report, calling it antisemitic, and urged Amnesty to withdraw it.

In publishing this false report, Amnesty UK uses double standards and demonization in order to delegitimize Israel. These are the exact components from which modern antisemitism is made, Israels foreign ministry said Monday in a statement.

Amnesty International has been one of Israels most consistent critics in recent decades, and the Jewish community in Britain, where Amnesty is based, has accusedits officials of at times crossing into antisemitism.

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Amnesty International Set to Accuse Israel of Apartheid; Jewish Groups Worry About Violence - Jewish Exponent

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French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot stands next to Gustav Klimt's oil paintingRosebushes under the Trees (1905), as she announces the return of 15 Nazi-looted artworks to Jewish familiesat an event at Musee d'Orsa in Paris. Alain Jocard / Getty Images

France is set to return 15 works of art sold under duress to or looted by the Nazis to their rightful Jewish owners, reports Tessa Solomon for ARTnews. The French National Assembly unanimously adopted the bill last Tuesday, and the Senate is expected to approve it on February 15.

The Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (CIVS), created in 1999, identified the beneficiaries of the original owners of 13 of the 15 works, according to the Times of Israel.

During a parliament session, French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot described the bill as historic. It's the first time since the post-war period that the government is showing a legal commitment towards the restitution of pieces from public collections, she said, according to CNNs Xiaofei Xu and Camille Knight. In a post-vote statement, Bachelot added that Frances continued retention of the art was the denial of the humanity [of these Jewish families], their memory, their memories.

Since 2019, France has been making a concerted effort to return Nazi-looted artworks to their rightful owners. The state-sponsored CIVS identified 13 of the works involved with the bill, writes Gareth Harris for The Art Newspaper. Last year, the Ministry of Culture announced four works in the Louvre would be returned to the family of Egyptian-Jewish collector Mose Levi de Benzion.

Per CNN, the artworks in the bill include pieces by Gustav Klimt, an Austrian Symbolist painter, and Marc Chagall, a Belarusian-born French modernist. The paintings are currently exhibited at five different locations in France, including Paris Louvre and Muse dOrsay. Chagalls Le Pre (The Father, 1922), currently in the collection of the Centre Pompidou, has been recognized as the property of Polish-Jewish musician and luthier David Cender, who immigrated to France in 1958, according to the Times of Israel. The painting was looted from Cender and entered the national collection in 1988.

Klimts Rosiers sous les arbres (Roses Under the Trees, 1905) has been in the Muse dOrsays collection since 1980 and is the artists only work in Frances national collections, reports CNN. That painting has been identified as the rightful property of the relatives of Austrian-Jew Eleonore Nora Stiasny, who inherited the painting in 1927 upon the death of her uncle, industrialist and art collector Viktor Zuckerkandl, reports ARTnews.

Following the Nazi regimes annexation of Austria, Stiasny was forced to sell the work in 1938 for far less than its value at 400 Reichsmarkroughly $1,000 at the time or around $20,000 todayto Nazi party member Philipp Husler, the short-term director of the Vienna School of Applied Arts. She and her family were deported by the Nazis four years later and killed in Poland, per ARTnews. Husler smuggled the work into Frankfurt where it remained in his private collection for the remainder of his life. The Muse dOrsay acquired the painting in 1980, when it was purchased by the French government from Zurichs Nathan Peter Gallery.

Currently, 12 of the 15 artworks included in the bill are housed in the Armand Dorville Collection at the Louvre. Dorville, a prominent French-Jewish lawyer and collector, had fled Paris during World War II after the city fell to Nazi occupation, as reported by Vincent Noce of The Art Newspaper last July. Upon his death in 1941, his collection of art and literature was put up for auction; the French government purchased those works in 1942 in Nice, France. Since then, an ongoing legal battle has unfolded between the French government and Dorvilles descendants over whether the original sale was forced or not. The family requested the restitution of 21 works.

Bachelot tells CNN that the auction was organized by Dorvilles heirs, but was monitored by the Vichy regime, a French collaboration government set up by the Nazis. Frances advisory body claims the sale wasnt forced, so the works cant be restituted. The state has offered to return the 12 works covered by the bill in exchange for reimbursement of the purchase price; the Dorville family is contesting this decision.

We have made good progress, Bachelot said last year at the Muse dOrsay, per The Art Newspaper, but we still have a lot to learn about the itinerary of the stolen goods, about the origin of the works of our museums or about that of the goods circulating today in the art market.

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Opinion: If an academic group boycotts Israel, it could lead to increased antisemitism on campus. It's good to see that University of Arizona won't stand for that.

Alma Hernandez| opinion contributor

The University of Arizonas Center for Middle Eastern Studies demonstrated real leadershipinprotecting its Jewish community and supporting free academic exchange by ending its membership in the problematic, Tucson-basedMiddle EastStudies Association (MESA).

As an alum and longtime supporter of UA atthe state Capitol, I am proud of the universitys decision to cut ties with MESA. The associations blatant disregard for the truth about Israel and Jews endangers Arizonas Jewish community.

Last month, MESA recklessly advanced a boycott, divestmentand sanctions (BDS) resolution against Israel. Ninety-three percent of MESA members at their annual meeting voted to advance the resolution to a vote among the full membership.

Supporters of the resolution claim that Israel has committed systematic violations of the rights of Palestinian academics, including isolating, undermining or otherwise attacking Palestinian educational institutions andharassing Palestinian professors, teachers, and students.

But this utterly ignores that Israeli colleges and universities are the most diverse in the Middle East. Jews, Muslimsand Christians study and teach together in a collaborative environment that would be unimaginable in most neighboring countries.

MESA, a nonprofit organizationof 53 institutions and 2,800 faculty, is meant to foster collaboration among institutions and scholars in the academic field of Middle East studies. Blacklisting schools and professors from one Middle Eastern country because it disagrees with its government is nonsensical and runs counter to the organizations mission.

UA officials concluded that an association with MESA could violate a statelawrequiring entities conducting business with state government to sign a pledge against BDS. They also worried that continued cooperation with such an organization threatens the universitys commitment to free and open academic exchange.

As a member of the Arizona Legislature, I took an oath to uphold our constitution and protect all Arizonans, regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity. When BDS resolutions pass across the country, antisemitism and violence against Jews often follow.

In fact, the Anti-Defamation League has found a direct and frightening link between BDS resolutions, like the one MESA is considering, and spikes in antisemitic incidentson college campuses.

Across the country, Jewish students have had mezuzahs ripped from dorm room doors or have seen horrible flyers posted around campus. They have been excluded from on-campus involvement for having Jewish-sounding last names and ridiculed for speaking Hebrew.

While this may seem like something out of a horror movie, it is the reality faced by countless college students. Jewish students yearn for support on campus. Yet as anger toward Israel rages, many exceptional young men and women fall victim.

It goes without saying that universities should take swift action to protect these students, their identitiesand their safety.

Furthermore, when academic organizations like MESA threaten to boycott Israel, not only do they cut an entire nation out of the global academic community, but they also hurt their own members. Israeli academic institutions work with their counterparts worldwide to create groundbreaking technologies, advance the sciences and solve real-world challenges.

Any logical person would want to see college campus environments serve as safe havens for students from all walks of life and for free and open academic exchange.

It is refreshing to see the University of Arizona address MESAsrecklessness by taking a stand for Jewish students.

For far too long, American universities have stayed silent while students are subjected to bullying and intimidation. Many of these incidents are rooted in the BDS movements flawed and antisemitic rhetoric.

UAs Center for Middle Eastern Studies should be commended for taking a stand against antisemitism, standing up for academic independenceand protecting Jewish students.

Eachinstitutional member of MESA should reconsider its membership in an association that toys with Jewish students safety and the truth.

Alma Hernandez is a Democratic member of the Arizona House of Representatives for the 3rd district. On Twitter: @almaforarizona.

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University of Arizona took a meaningful stand for Jewish students. Others should, too - The Arizona Republic

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Imagine you are investigating a mystery, but rather than only looking for clues in the real world, you can also slip into a mystical world of shared dreams to pursue the answer. Its a fantastical place of inspiration oh, and you might have to battle a Jewish demon there, too.

Those are the things that can happen in a new tabletop role-playing game by East Bay native Raphael Falk, one he created while living in Korea. He made Lucid: Sea of Dreams partly as a way to keep in touch with his Jewish roots while so far from home, and now hes raising money to launch it via a Kickstarter campaign.

Ive been looking at Jewish folklore, drawing inspiration and doing some reinterpretation, he said. Thinking, with these elements, what can I do to make something thats reflective of the folklore, something that draws its roots from my Jewish side but also is accessible to people from various backgrounds?

Korea has been home to Falk, 29, for the past seven years. He has lived in the capital of Seoul and now is in the countryside teaching English in a rural school. He also studies Korean and Vietnamese on his own. For much of that time, hes been the only Jewish person many Koreans have encountered.

For a lot of the people I work with or meet here, Im the first and probably last Jew theyll ever meet, he said.

In creating Lucid, hes made a whimsical game that combines folklore, fantasy and mystery.

The setting is that theres the waking world where we live and breathe and work and do all those things, he said. And then when we sleep, our dreams go and live in the sea of dreams.

A tabletop role-playing game like Falks allows players to inhabit characters of their own creation and build a story together as they navigate a fictional world, in this case one that straddles dreams and reality and allows for a big dose of whimsy.

You create a character, or use tools to generate a character, and then you perform the role of that character in a story that you create together with the other players, he explained.

Dungeons & Dragons is the most famous game in the role-playing genre, and Lucid can actually be played in conjunction with that game (players can use the D&D system when their characters are awake and Lucid when they are asleep). Like D&D, Lucid has a rulebook and uses a 10-sided die to add an element of chance. Falk recommends that one to six people play together along with a facilitator, known as a game master. There is one premade adventure that players can follow as a way to get into the world, and Falk said he will be releasing more.

Falks creativity has flourished in the making of the Lucid world. He was inspired by certain demons and tales from Jewish folklore, like the shamir, a worm that could tunnel through stone and helped build the Temple in Jerusalem.

Im like, oh, that sounds really cool, a little worm that can bite through anything. But what if I made a big worm that bites through peoples dreams and releases all their ideas into the shared unconsciousness? he said.

He also included Jewish spirits called shadim, here depicted as humanoid with crows feet, and demons called mazzikim, although in the dream world they are creatures that are attracted to emotions like bees are to flowers.

Some of those emotions could seem positive but could still have an element that could be destructive, he said. So theres a lot of emotional themes, psychological themes.

Falk grew up in Oakland and Berkeley and attended Kehilla Community Synagogue. He started playing games when he was a child. This is the first role-playing game hes designed under the alias Game Gardener (I loved the idea of growing games like nurturing a garden). He never expected to end up in Korea, and said it happened almost by chance when a friend asked if he wanted to join a program to teach English. Without much hesitation, Falk said yes.

One thing led to another, and Im here, he said, though hes moving back to the Bay Area in the spring to be closer to family.

While he is raising money for the game, Falk said Lucid is available to download here. Any funds he raises through Kickstarter will go to printing instruction booklets and paying the artist he commissioned to illustrate them.

He admitted that for newbies, role-playing games can feel a bit like reading a car manual interspersed with poetry, but hes happy to be in touch via email for anyone who needs help. He stressed that, as a teacher, he wanted to make the game easy and enjoyable for those new to role-playing games. Its all about feelings, and everyone has those.

I tried to create a game that will allow people to talk about emotions, and think about emotions in a fun way, he said.

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Enter a 'sea of dreams' in Jewish-themed role-playing game J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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