Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

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Njaimeh Njie will speak at the Repair the World Pittsburgh panel on Thu., Jan. 13.

Program organizers hope that by understanding the historic collaborations and tensions between Black and Jewish communities in the Hill District, Pittsburghers today can gain insight into the citys current social and political dynamics.

Although most Pittsburghers probably know the Hill District as a grouping of historically Black neighborhoods in the city, the neighborhood has a racially and ethnically diverse history and has been, at various points in the 20th century, home to many different immigrant groups. According to materials from the Heinz Center archives, by 1929 the Hill District was populated by a diverse number of ethnic groups Some of these areas were called Little Italy, Polish Hill, Athens, Little Syria, Jewish Ghetto, and the Black Belt. The Hill District is an especially significant place in both Black and Jewish histories of Pittsburgh.

Mutli-media producer Njaimeh Njie plans to speak during the panel on her research into the history of the neighborhoods Black communities, the role of the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House, and the history of development in the Lower and Upper Hill.

The panel will also include Pittsburgh artist Shelly Blumenfeld, whose art reflects her memories of growing up Jewish in the Hill District in the 1930s and 1940s.

The event, described as a conversation about the distinct and overlapping histories of Black and Jewish communities in Pittsburgh's historic Hill District neighborhood, will feature panelists ACH Clear Pathways Director Tyian Battle, Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives Director Eric Lidji, Hill District community leader Terri Baltimore, and local artist Rochelle Blumenfeld. The panel will be moderated by BOOM Conceptsco-founder D.S. Kinsel.

According to Repair the World Pittsburghs Program Manager Jess Gold, this virtual panel is part of a years-long partnership between Repair the World, historian Eric Lidji, and Terri Baltimore, who has been doing community work in the Hill District for more than 20 years, to take Repair the World staff and fellows on historical tours of the Hill District.

Repair the World is a Jewish community service organization with a presence in many North American cities. In Pittsburgh, the organization works out of an office in East Liberty and runs a fellowship program for young people of any background to undertake a year of service.

You can RSVP for the virtual panel at rpr.world/hilldistrictpanel.

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Panel to spotlight Black and Jewish community relations of Hill District's history - PGH City Paper

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

Peter Fogel wants to give Phoenicians a laugh heading into 2022.

The pandemic has made it feel like two years that everyone lost their lives, he said. People are looking to laugh. They got to get back to their lives.

Fogel is the star of My Mothers Italian, My Fathers Jewish & The Therapy Continues, which began a four-week run at the Herberger Theater Center Dec. 29. The final show will be Jan. 30.

The one-man comedy is a sequel to My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish & I'm in Therapy, which was staged last in Phoenix in 2018. Fogel plays 25 different characters in each show.

Steve Solomon wrote the play based on his experience, and hand-picked Fogel to play him and his family members.

This is a hysterical piece of comedy, in which the audience feels my chaos. The audience gets my frustration, Solomon said. Ninety-nine percent of the people just walk out of there wiping tears from their eyes. They love it.

Solomon was born in a Jewish-Italian household. The premise is that his parents are getting older, theyre hard of hearing, they bicker, and generally drive him crazy, Fogel said, as do his ex-wife and his kids. The comedy of the play builds from that foundation.

The original production featured Fogel, as Solomon, going in for a therapy session. The therapist is late so he ends up talking to the audience as if theyre his therapist.

In the sequel, Fogel, as Solomon, is stuck at the airport in Atlanta in the middle of a snow storm. He wasnt able to make Chanukah, Christmas or New Years Eve celebrations with his family, and hes trying to get back to Miami for a family birthday, but all the flights are canceled. We keep it updated with whats going on with Covid, Fogel said.

He cant get home and the same problematic, yet amusing, family showcased in the first play makes him feel guilty. Speaking with his parents on the phone turns into a frustrating yet funny exercise in repetition and correction, as he says one thing but his parents hear something else.

The audience is laughing at the human condition of having aging parents, which every Baby Boomer can relate to, Fogel said.

And, Solomon said, audiences can relate to many of the characters in the play. People recognize old, grumpy people whether theyre Jewish or Italian, Solomon said. My shows are not politically correct, but they're a hit. After 9,000 performances, we must be doing something right.

The original show launched in 2002, while the sequel hit theaters around 2010, Solomon said. Its current run at the Herberger Theater is only its second time in Phoenix in nine years.

Philip Roger Roy, the shows producer, said the sequel has been scheduled to run in the winter since 2020, but got postponed when the great plague descended upon us.

Roy, producer and president of LeRoy Associates, Inc., said Phoenix is one of his best markets.

Solomon and Fogel said the show changes with the times and has been updated to reflect the current realities of COVID and technology. But the soul of the show has stayed the same.

My parents are my parents. My family is my family. Twenty years ago and today its the same thing, Solomon said.

Solomon said he, too, hopes the play gives audiences a good laugh and a mental escape from the pandemic.

The Herberger Theater requires all guests, staff and volunteers to wear a mask or face covering at all times while indoors regardless of vaccination.

Sometimes I look down and I see a sea of masks and I think Im in an ICU, Fogel joked, also noting that he appreciates the masking policy. When he talks to audience members after the show he, too, wears a mask.

People are coming out. They're laughing it's a challenge when they're wearing masks, but I still hear them. JN

My Mothers Italian, My Fathers Jewish & The Therapy Continues, runs from December 29 to January 30. Show times are Wednesday at 7 p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Ticket prices range from $56.50 to $68.50. Tickets are available at the Herberger Theater Box Office, (602) 252-8497 or herbergertheater.org.

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'My Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish & The Therapy Continues' at Herberger Theater seeks to amuse and uplift audiences - Jewish News of...

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

It is somewhat difficult to assess a foreign country or community from afar, but it has certain advantages. In particular, distance tends to give one perspective, an objective view that does not miss the forest for the trees. One can see the whole picture, rather than a morass of infinite nuance that leads nowhere.

From my vantage point as an American-born Jew who has lived in Israel for 20 years, it looks to me as if the American Jewish community is at an impasse. With the rise of pernicious and violent antisemitism on both the right and the left, as well as in the Muslim community, American Jews appear embattled but terribly confused. In particular, their communal leadership seems completely flummoxed by this renewal of the old hatred, and utterly impotent in their anemic response.

At the same time, even more deep-seated problems are obvious: demographic collapse; alienation from Jewish identity; a level of assimilation that has become a serious threat to Jewish continuity; lack of a communal capacity for self-defense; and immersion in a middle-class pursuit of material comfort, undertaken in a fit of absence of mind, that has rendered the community mired in self-destructive decadence.

Two answers to these challenges appear to be on offer. One is Orthodoxy, which does indeed preserve and foster a strong Jewish identity. But while it is true that the Orthodox are the only sector of the Jewish community that is growing, they remain a small minority of American Jews, and their conservative religiosity is not a realistic option for the majority that remains liberal and secular.

The other is a slightly Judaized version of progressive politics, encapsulated in the slogan tikkun olam. This form of overt political messianism is popular, but there is no sign that it has reversed the systemic decline of the American Jewish community. In fact, it may have exacerbated it by denuding Judaism of any non-political sense of identity.

It appears, then, that neither of these answers is sufficient. If there is to be a renewal of the American Jewish community, something else is necessary.

It should not be a surprise that, as an Israeli, I believe that a strong connection to the Jewish state could be an important factor in such a renewal. But Israel has made its own mistakes. For the most part, it has offered two options to Diaspora Jews: either support us politically and financially, or make Aliyah. The first is hugely important but also banal, of little direct relevance to American Jewish life. The second is simply unrealistic. The vast majority of American Jews barring some terrible and unwanted catastrophe are very unlikely to move to Israel.

Instead, I believe a possible answer may be a kind of Zionism of the spirit, to be found in a largely lost tradition that of Diaspora Zionism itself. Zionism, of course, began in the Diaspora in response to Diaspora concerns. Faced with a precipitous rise of antisemitism at the end of the 19th century, thinkers and activists like Theodor Herzl, Haim Nahman Bialik, Moses Hess, Ehad Haam, Nahman Syrkin, Zeev Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann, and numerous others from both the left and the right formulated a fractious but comprehensive ideology and political movement. It was dedicated to the formation of the Jewish state, yes, but also a great deal more than that.

The early Zionists had as much to say to the Diaspora as they did to the redeemers of the Land of Israel who actually undertook the labor of Aliyah. They urged the Diaspora to adopt a veritable encyclopedia of principles and values, all based around the unthinkably radical idea that the Jews are a people with the same rights as any other people. These included pan-Jewish solidarity; political and social empowerment; active self-defense; the revival of the Hebrew language; secular knowledge of Jewish history, culture, and thought; the creation of new and uniquely Jewish works of art; and the integrity of the Jewish body itself. They believed that, as Jabotinsky put it, We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybodys examination, and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change and we do not want to.

It seems to me that these are the principles and values that the American Jewish community now requires, perhaps more than ever. And they can be fostered through a Zionism of the spirit, in which the basic tenets of Zionism are given a Diaspora context. It would be something like what my friend, the writer David Hazony, has called an Aliyah of the mind, but less specifically Israel-centric. It would accept that Aliyah is desired and commendable, but that a strong Diaspora is essential. After all, the Jews are one people, and have the same rights wherever we are.

This moral imperative is the foundation of Zionism. It is as relevant to the Diaspora as it is to the Land of Israel perhaps more so and the American Jewish community should begin the process of reasserting it. The time to do so is now.

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American Jews Need a 'Zionism of the Spirit' - Algemeiner

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

A clock that is the sole surviving object from a second world war Jewish hideout will go on display at Amsterdams Dutch Resistance Museum this year.

The round mantelpiece clock may have been one of the last things people saw as they were seized by the Nazis and sent to death camps.

Along with scores of family photographs, documents and a book of poetry, the clock belonged to the family of Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, a Holocaust survivor and resistance fighter.

The family artefacts help tell the story of Dutch Jewish resistance to the Nazis, so often overshadowed by the horrific history of the large numbers sent to their death.

About three-quarters of Dutch Jews were murdered during the second world war, the highest death rate in western Europe. That is a factor why people thought that the Jewish resistance was next to non-existent, said Filip Bloem, collection manager at the museum. But if you look more precisely you see there were many Jews, thousands and thousands of Jews, in hiding.

After the Nazis invaded, Marianne Brandes-Brilleslijper, known to everyone as Janny, refused to get a Jewish ID card and started working for the resistance, stencilling messages on pillars and posts, moving illegal parcels and documents, often hidden under the mattress of her pram carrying one of her children.

When the net began to tighten, she and her husband Bob, and their two children, Robbie and Liselotte, moved to a villa in the woods outside Amsterdam.

She lived there with her parents, her sister Liens family, other Jewish people and resistance fighters. At its peak, 17 permanent residents lived at t Hooge Nest (the High Nest), a tale recounted by Roxane van Iperen in her bestselling book of the same name, published in English as The Sisters of Auschwitz.

Hidden away from the main road, the villa became an unlikely haven for culture, as the residents put on concerts, wrote music and distributed resistance papers. Yiddish culture and other arts flourish at the High Nest. There is dance, music, song and recitation. Simon drums, Puck plays the violin and Jaap builds Kathinka a little piano, wrote van Iperen.

It did not last. The group was betrayed in the summer of 1944. Janny had been out shopping when the Nazis arrived. Laden with heavy bags of wheat, she asked four-year-old Robbie to run ahead for help with the shopping. It was only when she got to the door that she saw the big Chinese vase in the window was gone the warning signal.

She knew it was wrong, but I was already running into the house, said Robert Brandes, now 82, recounting one of his few memories of life in the High Nest. She couldnt call me back and I was already in the house and she knew it was lost. They hit my mother. I can still remember.

Janny, her family and the other Jewish occupants were sent to the Dutch transit camp of Westerbork. (Robbie and Liselotte were spared as Jannys husband was not Jewish).

At Westerbork, they met another Amsterdam family who had been discovered, after two years hiding in the secret annexe: Anne Frank, her sister Margot and their parents. The Brilleslijpers and the Franks were put on the last transport to leave the Netherlands for Auschwitz.

As the war entered its final stages, Janny, Lien and the Frank sisters were sent by train, then forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. At this overcrowded, disease-ridden camp a runaway fair of insane, sick and dying people wrote van Iperen Janny worked as a nurse, although there were no medicines. She urged friends, family acquaintances to live, pre-chewing stale bread for the weakest, scavenging tiny scraps of food, closing eyes. She was one of the last to see the Frank sisters alive.

Janny and Lien survived the war. Robert remembers the day his mother came to the familys rented house on the Amstel in Amsterdam. I cried out to the whole street, look My mother is back, come see everyone my mother is back.

One of the exhibits donated to the museum is a letter from Roberts father to Janny, telling of his joy that she survived. Darling, I thought I would sink through the floor for joy. I just didnt know what to say or to do. Robby is still the sweet boy you knew. Our darling Liselotte resembles my sweet wife more and more.

Jannys fathers identity card, with a large J stamped on it, is also on display. Joseph Brilleslijper, his wife Fietje and their son Jaap, died at Auschwitz. Janny devoted her life to the recognition of war victims. She died in 2003.

The collection also includes a poetry album belonging to Lien Brilleslijper, a booklet where family and friends would write life lessons in verse. When you read it now with the knowledge that many of them didnt survive the war, that is bittersweet, Bloem said.

The documents and photos will be available on digital display on the museums website in the spring, while the clock is due to join the permanent collection from October.

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Frozen in time: clock that tells tale of Jewish resistance in wartime Amsterdam - The Guardian

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

Lets start 2022 off with some good culture news: Most venues that were closed this time last year are now open, and big shows and acts are coming to town once again. The bad news, as we all know, is that omicron is spreading among the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, leading to low ticket sales and possible cancellations.

At press time, the following performances by Jewish entertainers were still on the calendar. Lets hope they stay there.

For more than a dozen years, Ava Brand has been buying and reselling tickets to BroadwaySF theatrical shows as a fundraiser for youth programs at Congregation Adath Israel, an Orthodox shul in San Francisco. (She claims she gets the next-best seats after BroadwaySF season subscribers.)

The program has been on hiatus since early 2020 due to the pandemic, and Brand said she was looking forward to a triumphant comeback this month when The Bands Visit, a musical set in Israel, comes to the Golden Gate Theatre starting Jan. 11. People were saying they cant wait to go back to the theater, and now this, she said, referring to the spread of omicron. Its very iffy.

Based on a 2007 Israeli film, The Bands Visit won 10 Tony awards, including best musical and best book. (The book was written by playwright Itamar Moses, who was born and raised in Berkeley.) In the national tour coming to the Golden Gate, Israeli actor Sasson Gabai reprises the role he originated in the movie. As Tewfiq, he leads an Egyptian police orchestra that has traveled to Israel to perform at an Arab culture center in Petah Tikvah. Due to a miscommunication, the orchestra gets lost in the Negev desert and must depend on the assistance and hospitality of local Israeli Jews, including caf owner Dina (Janet Dacal in the role originated by Ronit Elkabetz).

Among the 20 or so people who have reserved tickets through Brand, San Francisco resident Seth Skootsky will be in the audience on opening night as long as the show is not canceled. He told J. he has seen both the movie and the original Broadway show, which starred Tony Shalhoub (Monk and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel).

Its beautiful music, Skootsky said, and I love the fact that the musicians are actually in costume and on the stage. Of the story, he noted, It doesnt get political. It kind of just takes for granted the idea that people should treat each other like human beings.

Anyone who is interested in joining Brands theater list can email her at [emailprotected]. Donations made to Adath Israel through ticket purchases are tax deductible.

The Bands Visit. Jan. 11 through Feb. 6 at Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St., S.F. $56 and up. No children under 5 allowed. Proof of vaccination and masks required.

After collaborating on a remix of Adam Sandlers Hanukkah song in late 2021, Jewish rappers Nissim Black and Kosha Dillz are now performing around the country together. Their Brights Lights tour will make a stop at Brick & Mortar Music Hall in San Francisco on Jan. 23.

The two are a Jewish hip hop yin and yang and make for a striking double bill. Black is an African American Orthodox Jew from Seattle who now lives in Israel. He dresses in traditional Hasidic garb, complete with a black shtreimel or fedora, and raps about his identity and spirituality in sleekly produced songs such as Mothaland Bounce and Best Friend.

Kosha Dillz is a white, bald, not-so-religious American Israeli from New Jersey. His aesthetic is more playful than Blacks; he often performs in brightly colored suits and is best known for his stream-of-consciousness freestyle rapping. On TikTok, he recently posted a video of himself rhyming about Jews and Chinese foodinside of a Chinese restaurant in New York City.

The rappers have known each other for years and do share some things in common. In addition to their love of Judaism and hip hop, they both came down with Covid once for Black, twice for Kosha Dillz. (Such are the perils of being artists who rely on income from performing in public.) But they are both healthy and have been drawing diverse crowds to their shows, according to Kosha Dillz. Ive toured with Wu Tang [Clan], so to tour with Nissim is a little bit of a twist, he told J. Theres people that come from every walk of life, everyone from Orthodox Jews to people from Sweden that heard us on the radio, to trans Jews, teens, old people and hip hop heads.

He added, Were real rappers. Were not just banking on being Jewish. Thats just one of the communities that we operate in.

Nissim Black: The Bright Lights Tour with Kosha Dillz. 8:30 p.m. Jan. 23 at Brick & Mortar Music Hall, 1710 Mission St., S.F. $36 general, $108 VIP. Proof of vaccination and masks required.

Professional kvetcher Fran Lebowitz is so closely associated with New York City her home for more than 50 years and her enduring muse that this Californian never paid much attention to her. But then I watched the 2021 Netflix docuseries Pretend Its a City and gained an appreciation for her unique brand of storytelling: social commentary mixed with nostalgia for simpler times, spiced up with literary allusions, celebrity name-dropping and sharp-edged humor.

In the seven-episode series, which was directed by Lebowitzs close friend Martin Scorsese, she holds forth on an array of topics, from her experience working as one of very few female taxi drivers in NYC in the 1970s to the racket of the modern art world to the joys of reading. She also takes a few weak jabs at California, including at wealthy Silicon Valley tech people who have embraced wellness practices such as meditation and special diets in order to live longer. Wellness to me is a greediness, she says, her Jewishness bubbling to the surface. Its not enough for me that Im not sick. I have to be well.

However much she finds California inferior to New York, Lebowitz, 71, will appear at the Berkeley Reps Roda Theatre for six, 90-minute, in-person conversations from Jan. 21 to 26. San Francisco filmmaker Peter Stein will moderate the final conversation on Jan. 26. Stein, who recently appeared on Jeopardy! and whose latest documentary is Moving San Francisco, compared Lebowitz to early 20th-century humorist Will Rogers if Will Rogers were a dyspeptic, chain-smoking, New York Jewish woman with an attitude. He continued in an email to J.: I love how she can, with utter self-assurance, issue a grand condemnation of some execrable aspect of American politics or culture, and then tie it up with such a festive ribbon of verbal wit that, for a moment, you forget just how troubling our world really is.

Fran Lebowitz. Jan. 21 to 26, various times, at Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. $37-$80. Proof of vaccination and masks required.

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Shows featuring Jewish entertainers will go on omicron permitting J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

Chickpeas and cheese. Photo by Keri White

You may remember my New Years food resolution to break culinary boundaries and mix up ingredients and flavors that are a little out of the box.

This recipe fits that bill its a simple, stovetop version of mac and cheese but it uses chickpeas in place of the pasta. I saw it while scrolling online; it was inspired by a Melissa Clark mac and cheese recipe. The version I saw used heavy cream and did not include any seasonings beyond salt and pepper, so I tweaked it to reduce the fat and add some spice. The results were excellent and, best of all, dinner was on the table in less than 10 minutes.

Serves 2

I used half-and-half, which was plenty rich, but you could lighten it up with milk.

1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained1-2 teaspoons canola or vegetable oil cup half-and-half or milk cup grated cheddar cheeseSalt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Take cup of chickpeas and coarsely chop them. Heat the oil in a small skillet and add the chopped chickpeas sprinkled lightly with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika. Cook them over medium heat until crispy.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, heat the milk and add the cheese, stirring constantly to melt. Sprinkle the cheese mixture lightly with spices and add the remaining whole chickpeas. Stir to coat. Pour the cheese mixture into a bowl, and top it with crisped chickpeas and fresh parsley. Enjoy.

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Chickpeas and Cheese - Jewish Exponent

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

Not many people would launch a new theater company in the middle of a pandemic, but Carole Kleinberg was determined to show there is an audience for the revived version of Sarasota Jewish Theatre she is leading.

For its first season, the company presented a series of Zoom presentations of three shows, along with discussions with actors and directors. She was happily surprised to find the company had 300 subscribers for its initial online programs. Aseries of friend events has been helping to build financial support.

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It shows that there is a place for this kind of theater in the community, particularly after the way the world turned over the last year, she said. It seemed more important than ever to have a positive, creative, strong, successful Jewish voice playing in the world.

Kleinberg, who worked as a college theater professor and director in Illinois before moving to Sarasota, served as artistic director of the Banyan Theater Company in Sarasota and associate artistic director of the short-lived PLATO arts company.

She said the feedback from the first season was encouraging.

I think it was a really successful first year and a lot of people were surprised at the quality, and Zoom gave us some unexpected benefits, such as having out-of-town actors more readily available to take part.

For its second season, Kleinberg and her colleagues will be presenting a series of three fully-staged productions at the Players Centres new Studio 1130 in the Crossings at Siesta Key shopping mall.

She had hoped to have a Zoom option for the productions but could not work out agreements with playwrights for two of the works and with the Actors Equity Association. But we will be doing ancillary programs for all the plays.

Surviving another pandemic year: Top 10 arts stories for Sarasota-Manatee in 2021

Also on stage: Florida Studio Theatre challenges political perceptions in world premiere

The season will open Feb. 2-6 with Rose, Martin Shermans one-person play about an 80-year-old woman who talks to the audience from a bench outside her Miami Beach apartment about her childhood in Ukraine, dealing with the Nazi invasion of Poland, and life as an older adult in the United States.

It stars Carolyn Michel, who first performed the play at Florida Studio Theatre in 2003, and has returned to it periodically, including the 2016 SaraSolo Festival. A scene from the play was featured in her one-person Zoom presentation Women I Have Loved, in which she recreated characters she has played over the years. The full production will be directed by her husband, Howard Millman, the former producing artistic director of Asolo Repertory Theatre.

Geraldine Librandi, who has appeared in several productions at Sarasota theaters and was featured in last seasons reading of James Shermans From Door to Door, returns for The Interview by Faye Sholiton. It runs from March 2-6. She plays Bracha Weissman, a Holocaust survivor who reluctantlyagrees to be interviewed about her experiences for a history program similar tothe Shoah Project. Katherine Michelle Tanner and Jeanette Dudash will be featured in the production.

The final production will feature Don Walker as college professor Morrie Schwartz in the stage version of Mitch Alboms best-selling memoir Tuesdays with Morrie. Kleinberg says its a role that Walker was born to play. Derek Brookens plays Albom, a reporter--turned-author who recounts his visits to his aging and dying professor and the wit and wisdom that he shared. It runs April 6-10.

Its contemporary and it's uplifting, and I was looking for something that celebrates positivity and relationships and making the best out of every moment of your life.

And though all theseplays deal with Jewish characters or situations, Its a theater for everybody, Kleinberg said. You dont have to be Jewish to like Jewish theater. Its telling the story of our lives but theres a universality to all of the plays that makes them speak to everyone.

The new SJT has become an official project of the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, which sponsored the initial season. Tickets for the performances are $18-$36 and are available at Jfedsrq.org/events. For more information about the company: sarasotajewistheater.org

Follow Jay Handelman on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Contact him at jay.handelman@heraldtribune.com.And please supportlocal journalism by subscribing to the Herald-Tribune.

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Sarasota Jewish Theatre returns for first season of full productions - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

When reports surfaced a few months ago of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed deploying combat drones in his governments fight against local militant groups, Israel was paying close attention. Sharing the concerns of other nations, including the United States, that the fighting could destabilize Africas second most populous nation, Israelis were also troubled by which countries were among those supplying the East African nation with the latest armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Diplomats and analysts monitoring the 13-month-long civil war in Ethiopia, a fight between government forces and the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), a regional force that once controlled the federal government, have determined that these arms came from three main sources: Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and, particularly concerning for Israel, Iran.

Irans influence on the African continent is not new. The Islamic Republic is known for spreading its extremist ideology, whether via terror proxies or financing mosques and cultural centers, in certain African states. But its appearance in a new conflict, in a country with which Israel has particularly warm relations including providing arms and military assistance in the past as well as a place where an already vulnerable Jewish community resides, has placed Israel in a sensitive and curious position.

It does make for strange bedfellows that Israel and Iran would seemingly be on the same side in a conflict, Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, told Jewish Insider.

However, he added, We dont have full visibility that there is any intelligence or tactical support being offered by Israel, even though those relationships have existed in the past and Israels Foreign Ministry would say Israel is not taking an active role in this conflict.

Hudson said the situation in Ethiopia was proving highly sensitive for the Israeli government. Recent visits to the country by Israeli officials and Jerusalems recent acceptance as an observer in the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa, have been spun by the Ethiopian government as statements of support, he said. Just last week, Israels ambassador to Ethiopia, Aleligne Admasu, posted photos on Twitter of aid Israel donated to the Ethiopian Ministry of Women and Social Affairs, saying it was for the war-displaced people in Ethiopia and a symbol of Israels diplomatic and people-to-people commitment to Ethiopia.

Israels official line is that there is a Jewish community there that requires it to maintain ties with Abiys government, and the idea that any Israeli government could possibly remotely tolerate a government that faces credible accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide goes against the core and founding principles of Israel, added Hudson.

A former director of African affairs at the National Security Council in the Obama administration, Hudson said the civil war in Ethiopia was also proving challenging for other countries with ties to Ethiopia, including the United States, which has been threatening sanctions against Abiys government if a cease-fire is not soon in place.

Ethiopian security forces patrol a street after Ethiopian army took control of Hayk town of Amhara city from the rebel Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) in Ethiopia on December 16, 2021. (Photo by Minasse Wondimu Hailu/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The Biden administration has put itself out there and now is not living up to the arguments that it made early on in pursuing a more values-based, human rights policy, Hudson told JI. Ethiopia is the U.S. gateway to Africa. Its a diplomatic heavyweight on the continent and in the fight against terrorism, Washington is reluctant to weaken a strong, stable and strategic partner to the US.

For Iran, however, the chaos of another African conflict has provided an opportunity. Close observers note a marked increase in air traffic between Tehran and Addis Ababa. They warn that U.S. threats to sanction Ethiopia could end up pushing the African nation even closer to the Islamic Republic and believe that after delivering Abiy certain victory in this conflict, he will owe Iran.

Observers also say that for Tehran, Ethiopia is a strategic asset close to the Arabian Peninsula and Yemen and the ideal location to wield its influence and build political connections, particularly after losing its traditional base in Sudan, which last September seized control of multiple lucrative assets belonging to Hamas, one of Irans main proxies. The move came less than a year after Sudan normalized ties with Israel.

Irans intervention in Ethiopia should be triggering alarm bells in Jerusalem that it will use these drones as an instrument of political influence and terror, Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told JI.

Irans encroachment has already been documented by the U.S., with the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control announcing last October sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and IRGC Quds Force (IRGC-QF) for proliferating lethal UAVs to Ethiopia, among other places.

Last month, the United Nations was also made aware of Irans presence by TPLF leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, who penned an open letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stating, the drones provided by foreign powers were perpetuating the humanitarian crisis in Tigray and prolonging the war. He drew a direct line to the three Middle Eastern countries.

Irans intervention in Ethiopia should be triggering alarm bells in Jerusalem that it will use these drones as an instrument of political influence and terror, Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told JI.

Israel is in an awkward situation because of its ties to Ethiopia, Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told JI, also warning that there has been an uptick in arms exports and terror, especially in recent months with Ethiopia as ground zero for both.

Ethiopia has traditionally trodden carefully even in the terror cases, hesitant to directly blame Iran for the plot, Brodsky continued, highlighting an incident early last year where Ethiopian authorities said they foiled a potential terror attack against the Emirati embassy but stopped short of saying Iran was behind the plot.

However, Brodsky said, the fact the Emiratis are also supplying Ethiopia with drones does open up an opportunity for Israel.

The Emirates have been seeking to limit Iranian influence and ease tensions, meeting recently with officials in Tehran. Brodsky said that the UAEs presence could serve as a check on Irans activities in Ethiopia although some have called for Israel to use its newfound influence with the UAE to halt the sale of such weapons to Ethiopia.

Major (Res.) Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz, a senior analyst at the Maisha Group Ltd, a risk and security consultancy, added that if Israel wanted to effectively counter the threats posed by Iran then it needed to pay closer attention to events in Africa.

Africa is becoming the next playground for Iran and becoming another front for Israel, Citrinowicz, who previously served as head of the Iran branch of Israels military intelligence, told JI.

Ethiopias use of drones last month, he continued, was the first time we are seeing Iranian UAVs operating outside the Middle East, and it has allowed Iran to showcase its military capabilities and try out its hardware.

Ethiopias Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (L) speaks during a meeting with soldiers as he joins the battlefront against rebel groups for the second time in Ethiopia on November 29, 2021. (Photo by Ethiopian Prime Ministers Office/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Strife in Africa is in no shortage and Iran is seeking to take advantage of those conflicts to prove that it can survive without Western partnerships, Citrinowicz added. Abiy used this to preserve his position, and he will always remember how Iran helped him in his time of need.

So far, Israel has downplayed Irans appearance in Ethiopia, hoping the sale was a one-off event for a leader desperate to stay in power and that a cease-fire soon will leave Ethiopia free of sanctions. In the meantime, the Jewish state is trying to balance its concerns with sensitivities amidst a renewed push to bring to Israel up to 5,000 Ethiopian nationals whose relatives have already made aliyah. There are roughly 160,000 Israelis of Ethiopian descent currently living in Israel, including a government minister and a member of Knesset, and many still have relatives in Ethiopia.

Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said, however, that he believed that Israel was paying close attention to all events but opting to stay quiet because of the sensitivities.

It is in Israels interest that Ethiopia remains stable and does not, for example, break up, he said. Specifically due to Jews still being there, but also so that Iran does not enter even more into such a power vacuum.

Freeman said Ethiopias new interaction with Iran was likely just about survival and that the government would not risk harming relations with Israel. What Ethiopia is doing with Iran is about the now and about how to survive. Once the fight is over and they return to the fight for daily life, we will see once again a close relationship with the West rather than with Iran.

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of theIndependent Media Institute.

When author and historian James Truslow Adams introduced the American dream into common parlance in his 1931 book The Epic of America, he wasnt suggesting that fulfilling it would require the democratically elected U.S. government to dictate what Americans ought to eat and drink or which industries they ought to fund through their hard-earned tax dollars. But that is what the U.S. government has been doing for decades by subsidizing the dairy industryan industry that popular opinion has already left behind.

The real American dream is at odds with turning taxpayer dollars into wealth for one industry over another. An example of this is the promotion of the American dairy industry by the government. Its the reason why the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been telling people that dairy deserves its own food group and has promoted the idea that most adults and children should eat or drink about three cups of dairy each day, to ensure they are getting the required nutrients to stay healthy. This is, however, contradictory to the facts provided by the National Institutes of Health. According to the agency, between 30 and 50 million Americans are intolerant to lactose (the sugar found in milk), including 95 percent of Asian Americans, 60-80 percent of African Americans and Ashkenazi Jews, 80-100 percent of Native Americans, and 50-80 percent of Hispanics, compared to people of northern European descent who have a high lactose tolerance.

In fact, some studies connect the consumption of dairy products with a higher risk of certain cancers, including prostate cancer in men and endometrial cancer in postmenopausal women. Further, countries that have the highest rates of milk consumption also have the highest rates of osteoporosis. According to a study by Uppsala University in Sweden, the consumption of milk has even been associated with higher mortality in both men and women, according to a 2014 article in the Washington Post.

But these facts havent stopped the USDA in its quest to drive the demand for dairy. According to the Environmental Working Group and USDA data, Americans have spent $6.4 billion between 1995 and 2020 in subsidizing the dairy industry. Included in these subsidies are marketing fees that promote the consumption of milk and several [d]airy-related programs administered by [the] USDA, which are designed to benefit dairy farmers and dairy product consumers. The dairy industry, it turns out, is milking the paychecks of Americans and turning their hard-earned money into cartons of liquid white murkiness.

Even with these steep financial gains afforded to the U.S. dairy industry, Representatives Peter Welch (D-VT), Mike Simpson (R-ID), and Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Jim Risch (R-ID)all representing dairy-rich statesintroduced a piece of legislation in April 2021 (ironically on Earth Day), known as the Dairy Pride Act. The bill, if passed, requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent plant-based product producers from using terms like milk, yogurt or cheese as part of their labeling.

This pushback comes while consumer demand for plant-based milksqueezed from oats, soybeans, almonds and even pistachiosis skyrocketing. Fortunately for consumers who value free choice, and markets that value fair trade, this legislation has little ground to stand on beyond the competitive fear on which it was built.

In May 2021, similar legislationAmendment 171 in the European Unionwas withdrawn by the European Parliament. Like the Dairy Pride Act, it sought to ban terms traditionally used to describe dairy products, such as buttery and creamy, for plant-based products.

Also in 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of Miyokos Kitchen, a brand that specializes in dairy-free products, after the California Department of Food and Agriculture instructed the company to stop using terms like butter and dairy on product marketing and labelingeven when paired with vegan and plant-based vernacular. The court agreed with the plant-based brand, which had argued that censoring product labeling that was an accurate description within the context of common parlance among consumers today violated the First Amendments freedom of expression.

Attempts from Big Dairy to defend their turf come just when an authentic version of the American dream is taking root. James Truslow Adams defined it as a dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. And consumers have never before had so many opportunities to choose how to enrich their lives with healthy alternatives to dairy, whether they define a richer and fuller life as one without harming animals, contributing to the climate crisis, or causing gastrointestinal distress. And from the perspective of the plant-based milk companies, its a dream that is currently worth $2.5 billion in the U.S. alone. From 2019 to 2020, the plant-based milk sector grew by 20 percent, accounting for 15 percent of all retail milk dollar salesall without USDA dollars spent on their marketing. And in May 2021, the plant-based milk market reached a new milestone when oat-milk maker Oatly Group began trading on Wall Street with a valuation of close to $10 billion and billed as an ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) stock to buy, thanks to its climate-curbing benefits.

Oat milk (like other plant-based milks) has a far lighter environmental footprint than milk from cowswith 70 percent less greenhouse gas emissions, while using 93 percent less water from seed to shelf.

Meanwhile, Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II, in a report published in August 2019, noted, Some dietary choices require more land and water, and cause more emissions of heat-trapping gases than others. Balanced diets featuring plant-based foods produced sustainably in low greenhouse gas emission systems, present major opportunities for adaptation to and limiting climate change. If the U.S. is to fulfill its original Paris agreement pledge, it will need to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 25 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025, a goal that the country is not on track to meet, according to an NPR article. Backing industrial agriculture like Big Dairy furthermore runs counter to serious climate change commitments.

If the American dream is to be realized, then its citizens deserve choicereal choice, which allows them to vote with their dollars and knowingly choose what they want to eat and drink. Freedom is not something Americans are afforded when they are brought up to believe that milk is what their bodies and the country need to be strong, simply to pad the pockets of one industry over another. Freedom is having the ability to make the best choice for oneself, and the planet.

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

In a recent review of cartoonist Edward Sorels new autobiography, Sadie Steins description of a quintessential New York upbringing is worth quoting in full:

Sorel came into the world as Edward Schwartz in 1929. He adored his smart and beautiful Romanian-born mother; meanwhile his father, whod immigrated from Poland, was stupid, insensitive, grouchy, meanspirited, faultfinding, and a racist. Their working-class Bronx neighborhood was pretty evenly divided between card-carrying Communists, Communist sympathizers and New Deal Democrats; Aunt Jeanette, the self-anointed family intellectual, felt compelled, when there was a band playing at one of her sisters weddings, to use her long scarf to do a solo dance in the manner of Isadora Duncan another fervent supporter of the Communist regime in Russia. His world was shtetl-tiny but filled with opportunity; provincial but progressive; jaundiced, but optimistic a city where being Jewish, far from setting you apart, was a reminder of just how ordinary you were.

I love the efficiency with which Stein, via Sorel, conjures up a familiar 20th-century Jewish New York archetype. The kicker is that last line by Sorel: a city where being Jewish, far from setting you apart, was a reminder of just how ordinary you were. By the middle of the last century, when Sorel came of age, New Yorks Jewish population would peak at about 2 million, meaning Jews were one-quarter of the citys population.

There are still some 1.5 million Jews in the New York metropolitan area nothing to sneeze at, but now only about 12% of the citys residents. The Jewish cultural and civic mark on the city is still outsized, which can be seen in the ways New York is sometimes used as a codeword for Jewish (often by dog-whistling politicians) or shorthand for a distinct way of being Jewish and a New Yorker. Last week, during its fundraising drive, public radio station WNYC offered a New Yorker magazine subscription for gifts of $180. If that is not the most Jewish offer you have ever seen, I dont know what is. (If you have any confusion about the symbolism of a $180 gift, read my colleague Philissa Cramers breakdown of the recent anonymous $180,000 donation to City College.)

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WNYCs offer is packed with New York Jewish markers, of the liberal, Upper West Side, NPR-listening, New Yorker-reading variety. It reminds me of Annie Hall, when Woody Allens character reduces a date to a Jewish stereotype: Youre like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right, and the really, yknow, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself.

I am not sure how any of these cultural stereotypes register with anyone under the age of 40. In 1978, Alfred Kazin could write a memoir called New York Jew, and most readers would know what he meant before opening the book. In 1976, Irving Howe wrote World of Our Fathers about Eastern European Jewish immigrant life in New York City confident it would be read and treasured by Jews whose fathers and mothers may never have set foot in New York, except for a brief touchdown on Ellis Island.

Today? The liberal, Central Park West labels certainly apply to a large percentage of Jewish New Yorkers, in spirit if not in fact, although the fastest growing segment of the citys Jewish population are Orthodox Jews who neither vote Democratic nor live in Manhattan. Russian Jewish immigrants and their children tend to be conservative voters as well they hear socialist and think of Soviet oppression, not striking garment workers or the coperative-housing movement.

Syrian Jews in Flatbush have their own Jewish story to tell, and Democrats cant assume that Jews on Wall Street will vote for them or contribute at least not exclusively to their campaigns.

And yet, the classic idea of a New York Jew hangs on in the widening gap between nostalgia and present-day reality. In an essay for Alma, 19-year-old Hanah Bloom, born and raised in Alabama, writes that shes a southerner who has never been to a Jewish deli, nor did I have the big youth group experience with a large congregation. And yet, thanks to Fran Lebowitz (age 71) and the Netflix series Pretend its a City an ode to the city from perhaps the quintessential New York Jew Bloom feels like I, too, could be a Jewish New Yorker.

In her book Beyond the Synagogue, Rachel B. Gross asserts that nostalgia is a powerful instrument for forming Jewish identity, going so far as describing nostalgia as a central aspect of American Jewish religion. Traditionalists might agree with her when it comes to, say, remembering the Temples or never forgetting the communities destroyed by the Nazis.

But she is also talking about nostalgia for more recent or seemingly ephemeral culture like deli food, the immigrant experience or the artifacts and stories preserved in Jewish museums. Finding meaning in these things can establish really sacred relationships between people, the divine and ancestors, Gross told me last year.

For New York nostalgists, then, World of Our Fathers is a holy text, Zabars is a pilgrimage site, and Fran Lebowitz is Americas rabbi.

Nostalgia ignores the diversity that is fast coming to define not just the citys Jews, but Jewish communities around the world.

I know the temptation. I frequently write or editstories pining for a lost or fast-fading New York. Fetishizing the New York Jew, however, is not without its dangers. It ignores the diversity that is fast coming to define not just the citys Jews, but Jewish communities around the world. It puts the Ashkenazi experience front and center in a way that crowds out Sephardim. It preserves one way of being Jewish in amber. And it reduces proud Jewish communities around the country, with their own stories to tell, to footnotes in a story written by and about people who think you cannot get a decent bagel outside of the five boroughs. (Which is true, but shhh!)

In Steins review of Sorels book, after rhapsodizing about his upbringing in the Bronx, she writes this: This was a depression-era New York of Third Avenue Els, Friday night chicken soup, Saturday matinees and lest we get nostalgic no penicillin. When 7-year-old Edward contracted double pneumonia, it meant an at-home oxygen tent and a years convalescence, during which time he started drawing on shirt cardboards.

In other words, nostalgia aint what it used to be.

Andrew Silow-Carroll is the editor in chief of The New York Jewish Week and senior editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (@SilowCarroll).

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