Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

Clashes between Israelis and Palestinians are nothing new. These episodes have been happening since the Zionist militias started the Nakba in 1948 with the violent expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians and the destruction of more than 140 towns and villages. This ethnic cleansing campaign made way for the Ashkenazi, Khazar and Sephardi Jews, displaced from Europe, to settle in historical Palestine.

The episodes of direct confrontations in May 2021 between Palestinian resistance forces and Israel reignited the debate on the legitimacy of each and the effectiveness of a lasting peace agreement between the two parties. As usual, the mainstream media lavishly trumpeted the chant about "Israel's right to defend itself", while continuing to treat resistance forces, especially the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, as responsible for aggression and "terrorism".

In January 2020, former US President Donald Trump, without the participation of Palestinians, announced an arrangement termed the "deal of the century". Trump's proposition was a unilateral initiative arising from pressure from the US Jewish lobby aimed at continuing the annexations of Palestinian territories and recognising and legalising the crimes that the Jewish state has been committing since 1948. What appeared to be an alternative to "lasting peace" was, in fact, a macabre plan to end Palestine as a nation.

The colonialist plan did not end after the self-proclamation of the Jewish state nor with the massacre perpetrated during the so-called Six-Day War, or with the occupation of the Gaza Strip, Sinai (Egypt) and the Golan Heights (Syria). Israel continues to carry out the process of complete Judaisation of Palestine in all fields, adopting legislation such as the Basic Law of the Nation-State passed by the Knesset on 19 July, 2018, through which it legally became an exclusive state for Jews.

As can be seen, the goal of the Israeli occupation is the complete destruction of Palestine so that there is finally the establishment of a state of Jewish supremacy in the occupied territories, without defined borders and in permanent expansion. The intention is to transform what is left of Palestine into small islands of land as if it were a mini-state pulverised, surrounded and suffocated by the occupier on all sides.

A new Hamas programme was approved in 2017 and called the General Document of Principles and Policies. It asserts that the establishment of the so-called "State of Israel" based on unilateral decisions is completely "illegal, infringes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and goes against their will and the will of the Nation,"[1] as it is a violation of human rights and the right to self-determination.

Hamas has declared that it will not recognise Israel or anything that happened in Palestine in terms of occupation. This includes the construction of colonial settlements, the Judaisation of historical and sacred places and the change in characteristics or falsification of historical and cultural facts. It understands that Palestinian rights over their land and places will never lapse.

The Hamas programme rejects a lasting solution other than the liberation of Palestine "from the river to the sea", without compromising its rejection of Israel and without abandoning any rights of the Palestinians. It agrees with the establishment of a Palestinian state along the borders of 4 June, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital and the return of refugees and displaced people from their homes, from which they have been expelled since 1948.

The leadership of Hamas has declared that it is committed to the re-establishment of relations and joint actions by Palestinian organisations based on pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and the adoption of dialogue. The aim is to strengthen the unity to meet the aspirational needs of the Palestinian people, as occurred in the historic meeting of 5 September, 2020, when the main Palestinian forces came together for a joint initiative to contest the Israeli occupation.

Some insist on the thesis of the alleged attempt by Hamas to delegitimise the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). However, the movement shows the recognition of the organisation in its programme, stating that it is a reference for the Palestinian people that needs to be preserved, developed and rebuilt on a democratic basis, inside and outside Palestine, to ensure the participation of all forces fighting to protect the rights of Palestinians.

While Palestinians seek solutions to end the colonial apartheid of the "Jewish state", Zionist leaders deny, by all means, the most elementary rights of Palestinians. This can be seen in the statements of the current premier, Naftali Bennett, who said in 2018 that he "wouldn't give an inch of land to the Arabs" and told US magazine The New Yorker in 2013: "I will do everything in my power so that they never have their own state."

For these and other reasons, Palestinians do not trust the Zionists. They do not comply with agreements, such as the Oslo Accords, which have become a dead letter without recognising the right of existence of the Palestinian state. After Oslo, Israel accelerated the expansion of the occupation, the creation of Jewish colonial settlements, the confiscation of land, the creation of quotas for exports to the Israeli market and control on the import of agricultural machinery and tools, which ended up ruining Palestinian agriculture.

Despite this, there are still those who advocate the recognition of Israel by the Palestinian resistance as a pre-condition for the existence of "lasting peace agreements". There are also those who support normalisation to take effect when it is known that this arrangement is ineffective for the simple realisation that Israel will not stop the occupation at a negotiating table. Such rhetoric serves the interests of the Israeli occupation, which is aware of its inability to win new battles against the Palestinian resistance.

To accept the occupier's reality is to annihilate the dream of freedom and liberation, betraying the martyrs and those who fought long and hard for freedom, self-determination and dignity. This would betray the principles of legitimate resistance to achieve what is enshrined in international law and the Charter of the United Nations.

[1]TENRIO, Sayid Marcos. Palestina: Do mito da terra prometido terra da resistncia. 1st ed. So Paulo: Anita Garibaldi, IBRASPAL, 2019. P. 382.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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Will there be 'lasting peace' between Israel and Palestine? - Middle East Monitor

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

Philip Boor was sworn in last week as the newest member of the New Palestine Police Department. Hell go through several months of training.

NEW PALESTINE Its been several months since Bob Ehle, the New Palestine town marshal, had a full police force to work with. The department took another step toward better protecting the community with the recent swearing in of Philip Boor as the towns newest officer.

Boor wont be the only new hire as the department expands to seven full-time officers with another hire coming.

The growth at the police department comes as the demand for services increases in the growing town.

The force had been down an officer after the deputy town marshal, Greg Evans, stepped down in December. Evans, who had been with the department since 2007, had missed several months of work for medical reasons before officially resigning.

Boor, who will have to go through several months of local and state training, has a degree from Anderson University. Hes also a fitness trainer and a member of the Indiana Army National Guard, where he is trained as a combat medic

Boor was officially sworn in on Jan. 5 during the town councils monthly meeting.

I shall do my utmost to be a credit to the community, Boor said during the ceremony.

Boor is currently going through a 40-hour basic law enforcement course. Hell then go to road school, working with each officer on the department. In May, hell head to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.

Ehle, who has been with the town since 2001, is supposed to be the administrator of the police department, overseeing scheduling, training, the budget and community outreach. But because the department has been short-staffed, he has often gone on patrol as well.

Ehle plans to continue some patrol work until Boor is fully trained. Ehle will then hire one more officer within the next month to bring the force up to seven, the largest its ever been.

That officer is expected to start at the end of the month and has already gone through state training.

Its going to be tough to replace all of that experience that Evans had, but weve got some eager, young officers coming in now, and its going to be good, Ehle said.

With Evans stepping down Ehle moved the next officer with the most seniority, Sgt. Jessy Walley, into second in command. Walley has been with the department since 2015 and has been a steady presence on the force, Ehle said. Theyve also taken officer Wade Whitaker, who was hired as a school resource officer for New Palestine High School in 2019, and made him a full time officer for the department to focus more on town coverage.

Whitaker is still overseeing the resource officers position at NPHS. The towns other officers and deputies from the Hancock County Sheriffs Department also fill in as resource officers.

There is no lax in coverage there, just different coverage, Ehle said.

Ehle would like to see his force grow to at least nine officers within the next year or two and feels it will out of necessity.

Our current council does understand the need, Ehle said. Its always just a matter of money and when that comes in because we are seeing lots of growth, but it takes years for those taxes to filter back in.

Bill Niemier, council president, noted the importance of having a police department large enough to cover the rapidly growing area.

Growth in the police department needs to follow growth in the town, Niemier said. Well add the next officer here in few weeks and hope that is sufficient for a while, but well just have to see.

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New Palestine hires officer; second post to be filled - Greenfield Daily Reporter

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

To the Board of the Sydney Festival,

Each time I sit down ready to write to you, I get back up again.To write this letter means having to negotiate the grief, disappointment, and frustration. But thankfully, reflecting on these last few weeks also offers a reservoir of joy, energy, and gratitude.

Having met you with my colleagues just short of a month ago, you may already know why this is the case. We came to you as an intersectional, intergenerational collective of artists all with histories of deep engagement in creative, activist, academic, and community practice to tell you why it is harmful that one of Australias most iconic, annual cultural events has embraced the Israeli Embassy in Canberra as a Star Partner of its 2022 program. We were informed that the embassys $20,000 sponsorship was going toward a show conceived by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin and produced by the Sydney Dance Company.

We explained to you that the very source of these funds is, in fact, an apartheid regime that is systemically oppressing and dispossessing the Palestinian people. We elaborated, that while the Israeli state purports to promote free artistic and cultural exchange, in the same breath, it persecutes and punishes Palestinian artists and performers like Dareen Tatour and Hafez Omar for daring to speak out against its violence. That this states occupation forces are systematically attacking Palestinian cultural institutions, disrupting their events, destroying historical archives, and denying Palestinians access to their own creative legacies. That the regime you accepted funds from prevents Palestinians from practicing their own art, let alone traveling to perform, participate, or collaborate in artistic opportunities abroad.

In requesting our meeting with you, we paused our pain and trauma for the sake of due process, to have a good faith discussion about the violent dehumanization of Palestinians. You revealed to us, however, that you had actively pursued thispartnership with Israel in May 2021 when the world watched as Israel bombed the besieged people of Gaza, shot at protesters in the occupied West Bank, threatened Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah with dispossession, and arrested hundreds of Palestinian citizens inside Israel.

Israeli police detain a Palestinian woman in Sheikh Jarrah, May 10, 2021. (Oren Ziv)

We urged you not to be indifferent to Israels atrocities, nor to ignore the violence inflicted upon our families in exile, nor to be dismissive of our liberation struggle spanning decades and continents. We hoped it would be a teachable moment; that you would embody ethical leadership and have the courage to commit Sydney Festival as an anti-racist apartheid-free zone, and reject this partnership with the Israeli Embassy. No logo, no matter how colorful it is, should be allowed to distract from Israels war crimes, nor can Israel be allowed to public relations its way out of apartheid.

As we pointed out to you at our meeting, opposing settler colonialism here in Australia but embracing it elsewhere exposes a shallow understanding of how these systems of subjugation and segregation are interconnected. Paying lip service to those values while failing to put it into practice undermines your credibility as a cultural leader and your relationships with marginalized communities, proving that we are nothing but a box-ticking exercise a diversity quota to fill.

We were honest with you about the consequences of crossing that picket line. Boycotts are a powerful tool in holding cultural institutions accountable to the ethical standards they claim to subscribe to. Artist-led resistance against oppression has a long and important history, from abolishing slavery in the United States to ending apartheid in South Africa. Given your decision to stand with an oppressor that is actively enshrining apartheid in the 21st century, we in turn collectively refused to participate in your festival, and have worked to disrupt the oppressive, racist, and violent systems that you have sided with.

What you may not have expected is the love, dignity, and respect that so many artists have shown for each other in this moment, across communities both in Australia and abroad. We have heard artists across the spectrum express their distress over Israels Star Partnership, and their disappointment that the festival did not disclose this information until too late. We have spent this past month poring over color-coded spreadsheets, juggling over a dozen different group chats, sending countless DMs, and making phone call after phone call with hundreds of artists and arts workers, particularly First Nations and people of color, asking how best to support them.

Supporters of Palestine and Palestinian justice in the streets of Melbourne, Australia (20,000 to 25,000 people) for the second rally in two weeks, May 22, 2021. (Matt Hrkac/CC BY 2.0)

This mutual solidarity is why we have been able to mobilize so many artists, organizations, and community members who are standing with us uncompromisingly and with integrity, despite the hardships they are facing in the midst of a pandemic and with little to no government support. As of today, a thousand people have signed our Artist Statement declaring their solidarity with each other and opposing colonialism from one stolen land to another.

With over 100 artists, creatives, and crew withdrawing, we have disrupted almost 40 percent of the festival events and productions. Artists like First Nations rapper Barkaa, First Nations writer Amy McGuire, comedian Nazeem Hussein, the Dandana Ensemble, and Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani have cancelled their participation, alongside the productions 7 Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner and Michaela Coels Chewing Gum Dreams, who said in their statement: To the Palestinian community: We see you. We hear you. We are with you.

We know that siding with our campaign comes at a material and emotional cost. We know that there will be those who will be more focused on civilizing our modes of resisting apartheid, rather than apartheid itself. And we know that there will be those who will use the language of liberalism to dilute and dictate the terms and parameters of the conversation. But ultimately, we know the real responsibility falls on you, the Sydney Festivals Board, for prioritizing this partnership over principles, and for forcing artists to choose between their moral convictions and a unique opportunity to share their art. It is the Israeli state, rather, that must be forced to make a choice: either dismantle its colonial project, or face repercussions from the international community.

We also know that individuals alone cannot overcome oppressive structures. That can only be achieved through shared struggles grounded in local and transnational relationships, rooted in care, trust, and visions for mutual liberation. We are indebted to First Nations artists and leaders for their counsel and wisdom in this campaign and beyond, and we draw further strength and inspiration from movements like Black Lives Matter and abolitionists for building communities of resistance, including, inextricably, through the arts.

Graffiti artwork, Bethlehem, West Bank, August 18, 2017. (Ahmad Al-Bazz/Activestills)

A century of Palestinian resistance has taught us that our people are steadfast and that, in spite of the violence against us, we will always rise. It is true this campaign will not bring down apartheid walls, but it has brought people together and moved them to action. One of your colleagues, Benjamin Law, resigned from the Festival board this past weekend, acknowledging the arguments that Palestinian, Arab, Jewish, and other Australian artists and activists have raised to you. People of conscience cannot accept that our arts spaces be co-opted, diluted, or used by colonial machinery to distract from and suppress communities in their struggle for self-determination. Solidarity requires praxis. The preservation of each others humanity relies on it.

And so, while silence, dismissal, and deflection has been the only answer from some of you on this board, to invoke the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: our people are dying, we cannot and will not go quiet.

With respect,Sara Saleh

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A letter to the Sydney Festival about Palestine solidarity - +972 Magazine

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

Palestine residents in attendance showed support with signs of love and prayed for the community.

Despite the cold, 75 residents of Palestine gathered for a Community Unity Rally Monday morning in Reagan Park.

The unity rally was hosted in response to a group of masked demonstrators seen spreading hateful messages Saturday at the intersection of Crockett Road and E. Park Ave.

The love we are showing here today will spread through Palestine and Anderson County, said Sister Brandy Dudley.

Hosted by former city councilman Mitchell Jordan, leaders and members of the community were present to show their support for unity, inclusion and love.

Lynn Willhite, WE CARE Palestine founder of the organization encouraged residents to build relationships with their neighbors and other community members.

You cant hate someone you care about, Willhite said.

A group of around 20 individuals waved signs and yelled at traffic mid-day Saturday. Some waved Confederate flags, others held signs, some of which were anti-Semitic. One signed stated, Diversity kills white children.The group also handed out pamphlets for White Lives Matter.

According to Palestine Police Chief Mark Harcrow, his office was notified of a group of demonstrators at Reagan Park around 12:30 p.m.

We do believe that this group is not local and traveled to Palestine, Harcrow said. We do not believe any of the group members were of our community.

Harcrow said officers went to Reagan Park and made contact with the group, informing them that they needed to stay out of the park grounds for their protest.

Officers remained on the scene, monitoring the group, which disbanded around 1 p.m.

Despite their messages of hate, no violence was reported in conjunction with the groups protest.

I am sorry that the good people of Palestine had to witness the display of ignorance and hate that showed up in town today, Mayor Dana Goolsby said. I could hear concern, anger and fear in peoples voices as they called about masked protesters, and I knew I needed to see what was going on for myself. I did not recognize anyone involved in the display.

After receiving reports from community members about the protesters, Goolsby decided to go check out the situation. She said she spoke to the group and asked them to please reconsider what they were doing and leave.

We appreciate our citizens for remaining calm and handling this difficult situation with such professionalism, Harcrow said. Hate has no place in our community.

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Community rallies together against hate | News | palestineherald.com - Palestine Herald Press

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

Judaism can be thought of as being simultaneously a religion, a nationality and a culture.

Throughout the middle ages and into the 20th century, most of the European world agreed that Jews constituted a distinct nation. This concept of nation does not require that a nation have either a territory nor a government, but rather, it identifies, as a nation any distinct group of people with a common language and culture. Only in the 19th century did it become common to assume that each nation should have its own distinct government; this is the political philosophy of nationalism. In fact, Jews had a remarkable degree of self-government until the 19th century. So long as Jews lived in their ghettos, they were allowed to collect their own taxes, run their own courts, and otherwise behave as citizens of a landless and distinctly second-class Jewish nation.

Of course, Judaism is a religion, and it is this religion that forms the central element of the Jewish culture that binds Jews together as a nation. It is the religion that defines foods as being kosher and non-kosher, and this underlies Jewish cuisine. It is the religion that sets the calendar of Jewish feast and fast days, and it is the religion that has preserved the Hebrew language.

Is Judaism an ethnicity? In short, not any more. Although Judaism arose out of a single ethnicity in the Middle East, there have always been conversions into and out of the religion. Thus, there are those who may have been ethnically part of the original group who are no longer part of Judaism, and those of other ethnic groups who have converted into Judaism.

If you are referring to a nation in the sense of race, Judaism is not a nation. People are free to convert into Judaism; once converted, they are considered the same as if they were born Jewish. This is not true for a race.

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Judaism: Are Jews a Nation or a Religion?

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

The Donald R. and Esther Simon Foundation has awarded a grant to the Society for Humanistic Judaism (SHJ) to expand its Jews for a Secular Democracy social justice initiative by piloting a state-specific program in Michigan.

The goal is to build a pluralistic network of partners in the state across Jewish communal institutions and denominations to bring a Jewish perspective to education and advocacy defending the separation of church and state.

SHJ Executive Director Paul Golin explains, The results of this grant will be a Jewish community more aware of how social-justice issues of great concern to Jews, such as reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ equality, tie into First Amendment religious freedom; a greater understanding of how to advocate for positive change on these issues; and a working coalition to learn together and foster that positive change through shared Jewish values.

The grant provides the opportunity to create a state-based model and learning lab for the Jews for a Secular Democracy initiative nationally as it seeks to then expand into other states.

Sarah Levin, program coordinator for the initiative, adds, There are, unfortunately, church-state separation issues in every state that should be of concern for Jews, as a religious minority. We have an obligation to share our diverse perspectives and historical experiences to help more grassroots activists educate decisionmakers to not favor one religions approach over others or none.

Society for Humanistic Judaism (www.shj.org) is the central body for the Humanistic Jewish movement in North America. Founded by Rabbi Sherwin Wine and volunteers in suburban Detroit in the mid-1960s, Humanistic Judaism combines the Jewish values of loving-kindness (gemilut chassadim), charity (tzedakah), and making the world a better place (tikkun olam), with the recognition that the responsibility for putting those ideals into practice lies in human hands. It is a nontheistic movement in which cultural Jews and their families can affirm, celebrate and enrich their Jewish identity and values.

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Society For Humanistic Judaism Receives Grant From the Simon Foundation to Launch Michigan Programming Detroit Jewish News - The Jewish News

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

In a December column published in The Algemeiner, Rabbi Pini Dunner presented a case that Judaism holds people and human nature to be fundamentally good.

While no doubt sincerely held, his argument reflects a dangerous secular notion that has intruded into parts of modern Orthodox life, just as this and other secular ideas have influenced Catholic and Protestant Christian life.

In fact, no Abrahamic religion not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam asserts that people are basically good. This idea is a product of the secular age and a major reason for the moral confusion that characterizes our era.

With regard to Judaism, the Torah completely rejects the notion that man is basically good. God Himself states that the will of mans heart is evil from his youth (Genesis 8:21) and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time (Genesis 6:5).

In addition, the Torah and the rest of the Bible repeatedly warn us not to follow our hearts. In fact, Orthodox Jews cite this admonition from the Torah three times every day: Do not follow your hearts and your eyes after which you prostitute yourselves (Numbers 15:39).

If the human heart is basically good, why does the Bible repeatedly warn us not to follow it?

How can one reconcile an understanding of human history with the contention that people are basically good? Did basically good people murder six million Jews?

But we dont need references to the Holocaust to make our case. In the 20th century alone, more than a hundred million people civilians, not soldiers were murdered by vile regimes and their vile followers. These include the approximately 20 million killed in the Gulag Archipelago; the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda; the genocidal murder of Armenians; the deliberate starvation of about 60 million Chinese; the Japanese mass rape of Korean comfort women and hideous medical experiments on Chinese civilians; and the torture and murder of approximately one out of every four Cambodians.

And that is only a partial list. What about the universality of slavery and the tortures and rapes that accompanied slavery or how men have behaved in wartime throughout history? Were all the people who engaged in these evils aberrations?

In fact, most were quite normal. The aberrations in history have been the truly good individuals. During World War II, the Germans, French, Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians and others who aided the Nazis genocide let alone those who did nothing were normal people. The handful who aided Jews were the aberrations.

And what about childhood bullying? Are fat, or slow, or unattractive boys and girls generally treated with kindness and empathy? Or child sexual abuse? The WHO in 2002 estimated that 73 million boys and 150 million girls under the age of 18 years had experienced various forms of sexual violence. Quite remarkable for a world of basically good people.

The belief that people are basically good is not only not Jewish and foolish, it is dangerous.

One reason is that the most important, and most difficult, task of parents and of society is to raise good human beings. Yet, those who believe we are born good will not concentrate on making good people. Why bother if were already good?

A second reason is that those who believe people are basically good blame the evil that people do on outside forces, not on the individual who committed the evil. Belief in the basic goodness of human nature is the major reason people claim that poverty, or guns, or racism causes crime anything except the perpetrator.

Rabbi Dunner cites a Yale study purporting to show that babies are not only moral agents but are actually moral beings. This study explains why more and more Americans have lost respect for universities. The idea that babies know right and wrong is preposterous; the idea that babies are moral is even more so.

Babies are selfish as they have to be to survive. And babies are innocent; but to be innocent is not the same as being good. The rabbis argument conflates innocent with good.

It also conflates in Gods image with good. He writes: the Torah stating that human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) (is) a statement that underscored humanitys inherent goodness.

Not so. Created in Gods image has never meant man is basically good. Rather, it means that human beings, like God (and unlike animals), know good from evil and have moral free will. In Genesis 1:27, Rashi explains in Gods image as the power to comprehend and to discern.

Second, it means that human life (again, unlike animal life) is infinitely precious.

Finally, if people are basically good, what is the Torah for? What are all the commandments for? Why didnt God just say, Follow your heart? If people are basically good, why would God need to command us not to murder? Dont basically good creatures know this?

It is troubling to see an Orthodox rabbi offer an idea that runs contrary to what the Torah and Judaism teach concerning one of the most fundamental issues of life. As more Orthodox Jews attend college and graduate school, we will probably see this more and more. Thats why it is imperative that Jewish schools teach the distinctiveness of Jewish values.

Increasingly, they do not.

This is a condensed version of anarticlefirst published at Creators.com.

Dennis Prager is the founder of Prager University, one of the largest educational video sites in the world, with a billion views a year. He is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. The third volume of his commentary on the Torah, The Rational Bible Deuteronomy will be published in October 2022. His commentary on the Haggadah, The Rational Passover Haggadah, will be published this March. He may be contacted atdennisprager.com.

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Judaism Rejects the Idea That Human Nature Is Good - Algemeiner

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

Not standing in fear, but instead standing strong that's the response one local rabbi says the Jewish community is taking after a hostage situation at a synagogue in Texas over the weekend.

The FBI is now investigating the standoff as terrorism-related.

Rabbi Moshe Cohen of Chabad in Huntsville told WAAY 31 they don't want this situation to make people feel afraid of coming to synagogues, but rather give more of a reason to stand together and practice their faith loud and proud as they have been.

"We have to obviously take the right measures and the right precautions in order to ensure that everyone's comfortable to participate, but we have to use these events to further our participation," Cohen said.

While officials continue to investigate, they do believe the incident was terrorism-related and targeted the Jewish community. Cohen said as soon as they heard about the hostage situation, they immediately prayed for a safe outcome.

He said he understands a threat like this in their place of worship is terrifying, but he doesn't want the community to respond fearfully. "This is exactly what this individual is trying to accomplish," he said.

Through their acts of hatred and violence, "they want you to shut down, do not come to synagogue, don't practice Judaism, stay in your corner and don't do anything," Cohen said. "So, by you not going to synagogue and by you not participating in Jewish events and Jewish community get-togethers, you're actually falling into their plan."

Huntsville's Jewish community has worked for years to ensure synagogues are as safe as possible, even when they became targets of hate locally, Cohen said.

"We do take the security measures in order to ensure that whoever is there is going to be comfortable in order to practice and celebrate what Judaism calls for us to celebrate," he said.

Cohen said he believes a lack of education about Judaism plays a role in why these attacks happen to the community, and he hopes that will change as the community continues to stand strong in the aftermath of incidents like the one in Texas.

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Jewish community hopes to stand together in strength after Texas synagogue hostage situation - WAAY

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

Poetry and history can seem like perfect foils. History aims toward precision and accuracy; poetry tends to favor ambiguity and subjectivity. If historys staples are dates, borders, and names, poetryespecially contemporary poetrytranscends such details for the sake of the timeless and unnamable. But what happens when the factual history is lost, hidden, or erased. Leaving only whispers and traces? It is then that poetry and history become one, entangled together in a powerful, mythic union.

Rachel Kaufmans debut poetry collection, Many to Remember, published earlier this year by Dos Madres Press, is an example of such entanglement. Kaufman, who is also a doctoral student at UCLA, is a scholar of the Jewish history of Mexico and New Mexico, where she is examining oral testimonies and archival documents of the lost stories of conversosforcibly converted Sephardic Jews from Spain, who attempted to escape the Inquisition by traveling to the New World, so as to sustain their covert practices of Judaism in relative, if short-lived, safety. The tropes permeating the conversos New World history are, broadly speaking, familiar: diasporic wanderings, persecution, resilience, hiddenness, sorrowand yet, few details of these stories are known beyond scholarly circles.

In her introduction, Kaufman writes: In jail, Luis de Carvajal el Mozo, famous crypto-Jew (Spain to Mexico, aboard his uncles conquistador ship), sent letters to his sisters inside peach pits, banana skins. His letters are now a book. The archive remembers and forgetsmyth, history, the weeping of each into the other. Carvajals autobiography is a rare primary source that offers insight into 16th-century Jewish Mexican history. It comprises his letters, which he attempted to smuggle out of his prison cell inside melons. These letters were intercepted by the Mexican Inquisition, which simultaneously preserved these letters with care and murdered their author. Kaufmans writing is an attempt to bring us closer to this history while also depicting what it is like for a scholar-poet to encounter the archive, where deeply personal, precious narratives are buried under layers of violence, repression, and bureaucracy.

Its a hard history to trace because it was a covert religion. It was passed down with fear, it was taught to be a secret observance. Crypto-Jewish observance was mixed with other practices, becoming these entangled observances so it was less clear what you were passing down. And some people say they received these traditions without a name: They werent attached to Judaism or crypto-Judaism, Kaufman explained to me, as we sat in a Los Angeles caf, one late Friday afternoon. There was something otherworldly and surreal about learning history in this manner: Spanish Inquisition, then Mexican Inquisition, Seville, and New Mexico, refugees and colonizers, dangers and hopes, all many centuries old, all unfolding in front of me, as the city traffic continued zooming right by, like time itself. Learning Jewish historyparticularly the parts Id been ignorant ofalways feels like its own kind of ritual, its own kind of obligation, perhaps one that calls for a blessing. So it only seems right that invoking poetry becomes the vehicle for learning these forgotten stories.

The records are the Inquisition records, which are filtered through the Spanish Catholic lens, Kaufman told me. In other words, to study crypto-Jewish history, one has to rely on documents written by the group that sought to erase this very history. Erasure becomes an indelible part of the story, and the experience of gaps in recorded knowledge must be attended to with as much care as any fact one finds. As Kaufman told me, for her, the challenge of the writing was figuring out how to preserve absence while creating presence. Reading the collection, the challenge I found also came in my encounter with the emotional burden of this absence, and what lies beneath it. The poem Trial Number 23 (Translation) is an example of such an encounter:

The poem is built around evasions, which are emphasized through sharp enjambments. Clearly, someone is being questioned here. While the very first lines enjambment he knows seems to momentarily indicate cooperation or assent, on the very next line, the poem veers off, turning the tables around. Instead of answers, those inquiring face a mirror: he knows/the questions asked and those/who ask them. The respondent immediately offers further ambiguity that underlies the complexity of the Mexican/New Mexican converso predicament: running/towards or away. Indeed, running away to find safety, the conversos joined conquistador missions, themselves becoming Spains agents: escaping from the empire, they were further expanding the empires boundaries and possessions. If there is irony in that, it is a very disheartening irony, as is the fact that one may easily surmise the outcome of the trial taking place within these lines. The poem spirals through darkness into dark humor, absurdity and oddity. As Kaufman told me, Inquisition records are laden with violence [The question is] how to translate archival language into poetry and hold on to the elements of history and silence and strangeness of the archivethe way it is reaching me with things Im able to touch and Im not able to touch.

The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

In the first few pages of Many to Remember, we find a visual image of one such archival record from the trial of Leonor de Carvajal. Looking at it, it is impossible not to be struck by the gorgeous handwriting. Who is this scribe, taking the time to seal the verdict of a crypto-Jew while curling his capital letters into pure calligraphic beauty?

All through the collection, Kaufman offers allusions to her own family history, and in particular, her grandfathers escape from Germany as the Holocaust began. There are parallels and resonances there for her, as she writes in the introduction: I am seeing two stories at once, overlaid, overlapping, distinct. Through each, the otherdesert sun reflecting off scrolls. Empathy, rather than comparison. It is as if the two stories, in an empathic relationship, fill each other out, becoming, together, sacred texts, marked by the shared reference to the mythic biblical desert wanderings and revelations the poet invokes. It would seem impossible for stories to be both overlaid and distinct at the same timeand yet, isnt that exactly how history, and our personal perceptions of history, work? As Kaufman said in our interview, analogy is really tricky but with poetry, the distinctiveness can be held more delicately.

Certain poems in the collection, like the title poem below, seem to speak to both of her stories at once, and their entanglement, as well as, perhaps, a more universal story, too:

History is fragile, and to hold it is to risk its breaking, crumpling at the touch. Yet, perhaps, therein one is offered an understanding of the fragility that permeates not only the past but also the presentthe poem, after all, is in the present tense. Here, break becomes a refrain, an implied ritual act, one that subsumes imagery that ranges from mundane to transcendent to personal, an investigation of everything that can be, and has been, broken.

Historys pieces do not arrive to us whole. But in poems, they are set afloat, as the poet puts it in Meam Loez: Were told/our souls will grow/accustomed to hearing echoes/of our customsthese chantings/set apart from myth to keep/some holiness adrift.

To receive these pieces is to experience some of this holiness.

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Poems for the Conversos - Tablet Magazine

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Posted By admin on January 18, 2022

(JTA) Paul Pfeiffers bar mitzvah made Jewish television history when The Wonder Years devoted an episode to it in 1989.

Pfeiffer, played by a Jewish actor named Josh Saviano, was the best friend of the shows main character, Kevin Arnold, also played by a Jewish actor Fred Savage but who was not Jewish on the show. The episode focused on Kevins jealousy as Pauls big day crowds out his own birthday, but for Jewish viewers, the bar mitzvah offered a dose of meaningful representation, including a realistic depiction of a Shabbat service.

Now, 33 years later, a revamped version of The Wonder Years that showcases the contemporaneous experience of a different tween as he comes of age in 1968 Montgomery, Alabama, has served up a new on-screen depiction of Judaisms coming-of-age ritual.

The main character of the reboot, Dean Williams, is Black, and much of the show focuses on his experience as one of just a few Black students at his junior high school at a time of great turmoil over integration in the United States. That gives him insight into the psyche of his best friend, a Jewish boy named Brad.

Even though he looked white, people saw him differently, too, Williams says early in the episode that aired Wednesday night, as a classmate throws a penny at Brad in an antisemitic gesture.

At 12 I didnt understand the complexity and hate behind the joke, Williams continues. I just knew they were targeting Brad because he was Jewish.

Later that day, Brad demurs when Dean and their friend invited him to a comic book store: He has to go to Hebrew school, because his bar mitzvah is coming up.

Brad isnt excited. Ive got to learn to sing my whole bar mitzvah parasha, and then write a whole speech about it. And its not one of those cool portions about locusts or boils either. Its about a father giving his son advice from his deathbed, he says. Imagine singing something in a language you barely know in front of people you barely know.

Dean answers, Sounds brutal, before offering to help with the speech. Thanks! Now I can focus on the best part of having a bar mitzvah: throwing the party! Brad responds.

The actor who plays Brad, Julian Lerner, is Jewish, and he told TV Fanatic that he was proud to represent his culture in the show.

I am Jewish, so I am well versed in Judaism, he said. My great-grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and my grandmother was born in the woods during the war. To share Jewish life in this episode means a great deal to my family and me.

Brad Mitzvah, which aired Wednesday night, was directed by Savage. He connected Lerner with his own childrens Hebrew teacher as part of the preparation, while the writer of the episode, Yael Galena, drew on her own bat mitzvah experience in crafting the episode, Lerner and showrunner Saladin Patterson told TV Insider.

The episode delivers an extended reflection on race, religion and inclusion. When Dean and his parents discuss his invitation to the bar mitzvah, his mother emphasizes how welcoming Brad and his family are to invite Dean and his sister.

A bar mitzvah means a lot to a young Jewish boy, and it says a lot about Brad to include everybody, she says.

Deans father is more circumspect, warning that some people who are present may not be happy to see Black guests much the way, he says, that Deans own grandfather sometimes speaks unkindly about white people. Deans sister, on the other hand, is hung up on the fact that she is being made to chaperone her brother.

On the day of, she warns, I dont want you talking to me or looking at me or breathing on me. I dont even want people to know were related.

Her father responds, Uh, Im pretty sure theyre gonna know.

Much of the plot revolves around Deans new girlfriend and how he treats her and his friends as he navigates the terrain of preteen romance. That distracts him from supporting Brad as the big day approaches though he comes through at the last minute, awkwardly making his way to the bimah to give Brad tips about managing his anxiety.

That empowers Brad to deliver a moving speech about a rabbinic teaching about how Jews have three names, the one they are given by their family (for him, Baruch), the one they use with their friends and the one they take on themselves.

It was that third one I was stuck on. I had to really think about who I was separate from who people wanted me to or who people were forcing me to be.

Being Jewish in Montgomery means feeling different all the time. I spend a lot of the time feeling embarrassed about being Jewish.

But I dont want to feel that way anymore. So from now on, Im not just going to stand by while people make fun of me or try to make me feel bad. Instead, Im going to stand up for myself, for my people, and for what I believe is right.

I may not know what my third name is yet, but I do know who I am: a proud Jew from Alabama!

Laughter follows. So does some physical awkwardness for Brad, who had taken Deans advice to picture the congregation in their underwear.

Some elements of the episode strain belief most notably, that a bar mitzvah guest list in 1968 Alabama would be so thoroughly integrated but others ring true. The synagogue lobby, with its wood paneling and tallit rack, would be familiar to anyone who has ever walked into a mid-century synagogue in the United States. So are the tweens shoveling sweets including Israeli flag cookies onto their plates. (One guest can be seen stuffing food into his pockets.) And Brads triumphant, Thank you, and Shabbat shalom! at the end of his speech has been replicated countless times.

For Dean, the whole experience is one that as happened to Kevin in the original episode causes him to reflect on his friendship and his own behavior. He realizes that he and Brad have a great deal in common. He also realizes, sitting alone in the synagogue social hall as the rest of the guests dance a spirited hora, that he hasnt been so kind to his friends.

Luckily, I was able to lean into the part of Judaism that suited me in that moment: the suffering part, Dean says. Hmm. Maybe I had gained a better understanding of Brads cultural history.

Dean goes on: But watching Brad get lifted up on that chair, I realized that standing up for yourself and owning who you are can actually elevate you in the long run. Because even though I had lost so much that day, I gained something else: self-respect. And if that doesnt make you a man, I dont know what does.

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33 years after classic bar mitzvah episode, revamped Wonder Years revisits the ritual - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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