Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on October 11, 2021

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has often proved to be a gift that keeps giving for Democrats and a thorn in the side of fellow Republicans.

The stubbornly independent Pauls dogmatic advocacy of libertarian ideas about governance has often thrown a monkey wrench into the plans of the Senate leadership. That proved again the case this past week.

After all the drama about U.S. funding for the Iron Dome missile defense system had already played out in the House, and both Democrats and Republicans were eager to pass the measure and then move on to other issues on which they could resume tearing each other apart. But Paul decided the issue was far from settled.

Exercising his prerogative to overturn a call for unanimous consent which would streamline the legislative process, he objected and placed a hold on the legislation to the frustration of just about everyone else on Capitol Hill.

That earned Paul a condemnatory tweet from AIPAC.

Shots from the lobby at Paul are nothing new.

Of greater interest to the Kentucky politician, who, like most GOP office-holders depends on the backing of evangelicals to stay in office, was the way the Christians United for Israel group, and its leader Pastor John Hagee, went ballistic over the issue.

Hagee, who heads the group that claims to be the nations largest pro-Israel organization said, "Senator Paul needs to stop playing games with the safety of the Israeli people."

But that anger was matched by the barely-concealed mirth of Jewish Democrats whose interest in making a meal of Pauls grandstanding had as much to do with re-establishing a moral equivalence between the parties on Middle East issues as it did with any actual impatience with his stunt.

Democrats have been taking a beating from pro-Israel activists ever since the May conflict with Hamas, which prompted a series of exchanges on the floor of the House of Representatives in which progressives made their distaste for Israel and its policies known.

That was compounded by the embarrassment suffered by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was outwitted by members of her own caucus last month when she tried to slip Iron Dome funding into a House budget bill that raised the national debt limit. But since a considerable number of left-wing Democrats refused to vote for it because they oppose Israel, she had to withdraw it.

Two days later and after a torrent of criticism for being outmaneuvered by members of the so-called "Squad," the House leadership submitted Iron Dome as a separate measure.

Determined to both answer the claims that their party had turned on Israel and to reassert control of their caucus on a budget issue on which freelancing is considered highly dangerous, Pelosi and her team struck back. Using all the considerable leverage and powers of intimidation at their disposal, the whip was cracked and even most progressives fell in line.

In the end, only nine House members voted against Iron Dome, a total that included eight left-wingers and one Republican, fellow Kentucky libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie.

Even the ringleader of the Squad, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) felt the pressure and, at the last minute, tearfully changed her vote from "no" to "present." Though AOC subsequently apologized for a decision for what she described as insufficiently supportive of the Palestinians and critical of Israel, the lesson was learned.

Further burnishing the honor of House Democrats was the speech of Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) who accused another Squad member Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) of antisemitism for spreading the "apartheid state" lie about Israel.

So when Sen. Paul stopped the Senates approval of Iron Dome in its tracks, Democrats felt vindicated. It's not surprising that Halie Soifer, the head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, swiftly claimed in a tweet that Pauls actions were actually more damaging to Iron Dome funding than what House progressives had done.

Some went further than that and argued that the fact that the Democrats who tried to stop Iron Dome were criticized with greater heat and with charges of antisemitism while Paul was, at least by comparison, let off with a slap on the wrist. They said that showed how distorted the debate about Israel has become.

Despite the attention given the Squad and its allies, some liberals contended that these events proved that not only was the bipartisan consensus on Israel holding but that any arguments that aimed at showing a real difference between the parties on the Jewish state was misinformation.

But while the Democrats had a point about the damage Paul was doing, the attempt to assert a moral equivalence on Israel inside the two parties is simply untrue. If pro-Israel activists are more upset at left-wing Democrats than they are at the GOPs libertarian outliers, they have good reason for thinking that way.

Though its easy to lose perspective in the heat of political debate, the truth remains that the two parties have largely swapped identities over the last 60 years.

Where once the GOP was split between those who were sympathetic to the Jewish state and a much larger faction that was indifferent or hostile to it, today it is a virtually lockstep pro-Israel party. Most have views on the conflict with the Palestinians that fit in somewhere between the Likud and even more right-wing Israelis like Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Even dissenters like Paul and Massie, who oppose aid to Israel, do so on the basis of their opposition to all foreign aid and, will, if asked, speak of their admiration for Israel.

By contrast, the Democrats, who could a generation or two ago, claim to be the home of pro-Israel opinion, are badly split on the issue. A significant portion of its left-wing base looks at Israel through the prism of intersectionality and critical race theory and believe it to be a manifestation of white privilege whose stance toward the Palestinians is no different from that of racists in the Jim Crow south in the pre-Civil Rights era.

Their dissent against the Iron Dome was merely the tip of an iceberg that betrays a growing hostility toward Israel that even some who claim to be Israels supporters like the left-wing J Street lobby are quick to note when they claim that right-wing Israeli policies are alienating Americans.

Among the grassroots activists on the left there is considerable sympathy for the BDS movement as well as for views such as that of Tlaib, who views Israels existence as illegitimate. Though many Democrats disagree and are enthusiastic backers of a two-state solution that now seems more utopian than practical, there is no disguising the fact that, thanks to the increased support for intersectionality on the left, there is a real divide in the party between its establishment members and the Squad as well as many of the members of the 100-strong Progressive Caucus in the House on Zionism.

Even more troublesome is the fact that this divide seems to be largely generational, both among the activists and in the House, where the contrast between AOC and her allies and the octogenarians who still run the House leadership is too obvious to miss.

Given the popularity of the former among both the Democrats cheering section in the mainstream press, and, more crucially, the late night comedy shows, where people like Ilhan Omar, Tlaib and AOC are treated like rock stars, its not irrational to worry that, the recent vote notwithstanding, the left represents the partys future.

And although few pro-Israel activists are willing to say so publicly, most will admit in private that Rand Paul had a point. Israel is strong and rich enough that it ought to begin to wean itself from the constraints of American military aid, even if most of the money is spent in the United States.

While his proposal that Iron Dome be funded out of the allocation of foreign aid to Afghanistan now that it has fallen to the Taliban is a non-starter in legislative terms, its easy to sympathize with it and hardly equivalent to the kind of vicious libels being put about by the left about Israels efforts to silence Hamas terrorist missile and rocket fire.

While the Kentucky senator gave Jewish Democrats a good talking point, that doesnt make up for the fact that a lot of liberals now buy into the arguments that falsely characterize Zionism as a form of racism.

Rather than seeking to pretend that the actions of two neo-isolationist libertarians who are allergic to spending taxpayer money on anything are just as bad as the anti-Zionism and antisemitism that has found a home on the left, Jewish Democrats need to follow Deutchs example and concentrate their efforts on winning back their party from an increasingly influential faction that makes no secret about its disdain for Israel.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of the Jewish News Syndicate and a columnist for the New York Post.Twitter:@jonathans_tobin

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Comparing Rand Paul to the Squad is unfair. He doesn't hate Israel - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on October 11, 2021

In 1912, the renowned creator of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, wrote a series of stories about another mind-bending setting. He replaced the jungles of Africa with the wasteland of Mars, to which a Southern gentleman by the name of John Carter had been mysteriously transported. More than a century later, the red planet is still a destination that sets our imagination on fire.

If nothing goes wrong, in a little more than a decade NASAs first manned mission will set off for Mars, with a budget of more than $100 billion. Moreover, the Russians are also planning to send a team to the fourth planet from the sun and the Chinese are showing an interest in doing something similar, as are private entities like Elon Musks SpaceX, which might beat everyone else and accomplish the mission in five years. A round trip to Mars apparently takes more than two years, and will require unprecedented technological and psychological prowess. One small step on the way is being taken as of this week in Makhtesh Ramon, a massive crater located in the Negev, in southern Israel.

Any actual mission to the second-smallest planet in the solar system, a tremendous distance from Earth, must of course be pulled off without a hitch. To get to that point, Mars simulations have been attempted in various places around the world. The most advanced of these undertakings was launched Sunday in Makhtesh Ramon, under the auspices of the Austrian Space Forum and the Israel Space Agency.

During their three-week mission, six astronauts from Austria, Germany, Holland, Israel, Portugal and Spain will remain in complete isolation in a unique structure meant to simulate a space station. The astronauts will undertake a variety of experiments that have been selected for the project, in which more than 200 scientists from 25 countries are involved.

Makhtesh Ramon is one of the few places in the world that resemble the conditions on Mars in terms of its soil structure, minerals, remoteness and otherwise extreme conditions. This is not the first Mars simulation that has taken place there three years ago a similar undertaking took place over a period of four days.

Decked out in a cumbersome spacesuit, astrophysicist Gernot Grmer, director of the Austrian Space Forum, looks like a real-life version of Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. Dr. Grmer tells Haaretz that his team has been working on the Mars-Israel (AMADEE-20) project for four years, and adds excitedly that it is a small miracle that it is actually happening.

Speaking on his first night at the Negev station, Grmer says the simulation is the most advanced in the world in terms of its structure and the research being carried out there. Makhtesh Ramon is one of the only places in the world that resembles Mars so closely with twin sites on the planet, he says, adding that the fact that one can walk 200 meters and come across completely different geological formations, is a real plus. In any real mission, astronauts will be required to bring back a variety of special rocks and other findings something that can easily be practiced here. Indeed, the astronauts primary goal, Grmer says, it to simulate the search for life on Mars by first seeking evidence of water and then by collecting rock samples that can hopefully help in identifying life forms.

With perfect timing, the journal Science published an analysis last Thursday of images taken by the Mars rover Perseverance, which confirms the theory that 3.7 billion years ago, the completely arid Jezero Crater on the planet was actually a quiet lake fed by a few rivers. This discovery has led scientists to believe that sediments in the crater might contain evidence of early marine life forms.

The search for evidence of life on the huge expanses of a planet like Mars requires a very high level of precision. Decisions have to be made as to where to dispatch the exploratory vehicle, and where to send the team to dig and take samples. When there are a few rovers and robots and also team members, and not just one rover as at present, the possibilities and decisions are many, Grmer explains. Time is an extremely precious resource and astronauts must know how best to take advantage of it. The current mission in Makhtesh Ramon will help scientists prioritize what needs to be done, and how and when to do it.

The information collected in the coming weeks in Israel by the analog astronauts as team members involved in Mars simulations and other technical space-related experiments are called will be broadcast to a monitoring station in Austria. Some finds may be sent there physically, exactly as would happen on a real mission to Mars. Communication with the monitoring station involves a brief delay of 10 minutes. You say hello and wait 10 minutes for a reply. Not quite an easily flowing conversation, says Itai Levy, director of the project on behalf of the Israel Space Agency in the Science, Technology and Space Ministry.

The project is backed by the European Space Agency, which is also considering launching a mission to Mars, and NASA will also be following developments at the Makhtesh Ramon station and using the data it produces. For example, Grmer says, the team will conduct an experiment to determine the bandwidth required to transmit data from Mars to Earth, and the findings will impact decisions made in 10 or 20 years.

Another direction of research being undertaken involves the astronauts spacesuits. They weigh 50 kilograms and it takes three hours to put one on. The spacesuits were under development for 10 years and include sensors that check various parameters and transmit the information to the monitoring station with a delay of 10 minutes, of course. The astronauts can eat, drink and eliminate waste while wearing the suits, which will be tested in the current mission to ensure that they can withstand solar radiation.

Dusty counterparts

Grmer explains that on bodies like the moon or Mars, dust is almost in a liquid state because the grains are so fine. It can be poisonous, and so a method has to be developed so that the tiny particles do not pollute the space station when the astronauts return to it. Thus, the question of how to properly clean the spacesuits will also be studied in the current simulation, with the powdery Negev soil playing the part of its Mars counterpart. Following conclusion of the project, the durability of the astronauts suits will actually be tested in a space mission.

A total of 24 research projects will be carried out in the Negev station. One will be conducted by Reut Sorek Abramovich, chairwoman of the Israel Mars Society, and a researcher at the Dead Sea-Arava Science Center, under the auspices of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Experiments to be carried out in the simulation

Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

1. Assessment of the impact of astronauts microbiological contamination on the Mars environment

2. Gauging the impact of nutritional and environmental conditions on astronauts intestinal activity

3. Checking levels of anxiety and depression before, during and after the mission

4. Determining the bandwidth required to transmit information from Mars to Earth

5. Checking spacesuits' ability to withstand solar radiation on Mars

6. Testing the rover, Exoscot, which will prepare detailed mapping of astro-nauts' activities

I usually study extreme life environments, typically associated with astrobiology, Dr. Sorek Abramovich says. For example, if on Earth they find something living at minus-40 degrees, 11,000 meters below the sea, then maybe theres a chance of finding life in such extreme environments on other planets.

For more than two years she and Prof. Ziv Reich of the Weizmann Institute have been studying how microbiological pollution can spread through an arid area and an environment that is devoid of human influences such as the environment on Mars, she adds: You cant achieve complete sterility, and if I as a scientist want to find life on Mars, or any other plant, to ensure that Ive actually found endemic life I have to know what Ive brought there.

Sorek Abramovichs research has major implications for a Mars mission. Its very important to know whether the astronauts are polluting the environment with bacteria they brought with them, among other things because in the transition to extreme environments, when they are exposed to different gravitational conditions, or to cosmic radiation, the genes of the bacteria undergo change, and they become pathogenic, she says.

A trip to Mars, which would be planned when it and Earth are as close as possible to each other, will take approximately 200 days, which poses a dilemma to scientists who plan it. So that the entire voyage wont take too long, the astronauts could remain for a relatively brief time on Mars and then be sent quickly back to Earth, taking maximum advantage of the proximity of the planets. Another possibility is to leave the team there for a year until the planetary alignment once again allows a return trip with a reasonable amount of fuel. For his part, Grmer says he believes that after such a lengthy trip, it would be better to spend a longer time on Mars. It sounds challenging, he admits, but the time will pass quickly and it wont be boring.

In such a scenario, the astronauts would spend the year in a small structure called a habitat, aka space station. In the Makhtesh Ramon simulation, the analog astronauts will remain in their habitat, in total isolation, for three weeks. Gal Yoffe, director of the project in Israel, says that the station has been planned to be totally off-grid that is, completely disconnected from any existing infrastructure and must provide for all the needs of the team. The habitat has been equipped with the capacity, for example, to produce 15,000 kilowatts of electricity per day by means of solar energy, slightly less than an average household. The teams nutrition will also be studied in an effort to come up with the nutritional components best suited for a prolonged period.

For example, two experiments to be carried out will check the influence of nutrition on microbes in the astronauts bodies and on their elimination of waste. The latter is a critical issue, because if waste is not dealt with properly the space station will severely contaminate the environment its residents have come to study. In the present simulation, use will be made of HomeBiogas, an Israeli household biogas digester system.

The prospect of remaining for a year under extreme conditions with a small number of people, after 200 days in very close quarters during the actual trip to Mars, will no doubt involve complex psychological issues. A research project carried out by French scientists during the Makhtesh Ramon simulation will study the levels of the astronauts anxiety and depression before, during and after their mission, to understand the mental impact of living in a confined and unfamiliar environment.

More than 600 physical and mental parameters were examined when selecting the six crew members of the Negev mission, Grmer says. As in a good marriage, he says, smiling, it is important to choose people who will not miss the opportunity to remain silent at the right moment. Other characteristics that were examined included cooking skills, sense of humor and whether the individual in question would be interesting enough to spend time with at a bar. Such traits are important among a group of people who will have to spend a long time together.

The only female astronaut in the Makhtesh Ramon experiment is Anika Mehlis from Germany, a graduate in microbiology and environmental engineering, who is doing her doctorate in public health. Mehlis tells Haaretz that she came to the project completely by accident, after reading in a local newspaper about the Austrian Space Forum. Always interested in space, she filled out an application with no expectations, passed all the tests and was selected.

Mehlis expertise in microbiology will help her in some of the studies to be carried out in the next three weeks, but she explains that the mission will also check whether people can conduct experiments in fields other than their own. Each member of the team will be able to do all 24 of the experiments, she says for example, the six will all have to perform ultrasounds on each other, with the aim of reaching the proficiency of a doctor so that if an astronaut on an actual Mars mission is in need of such treatment, the others will know what to do.

The basic training for the mission, Mehlis continues, included lectures, mainly about geology, survival techniques and preparations for conducting each experiment until the methods were known by heart. There was also physical training in preparation for donning the spacesuit, which has to be worn for several hours at a time while venturing out into the Negevs expanses.

Mehlis says that the fact that she is the only woman on the team whose members have known each other for some years has no significance for her, although people always ask her about it. She describes it as something like going camping with friends.

During the conversation with Mehlis, which took place just after she arrived at the Makhtesh Ramon site, she describes her amazement at leaving the habitat and looking up at the star-filled sky. Its an amazing personal experience, she says, but its also something that she believes she is doing for the generations to come.

Hotel in space

Humanity is on the verge of a new era in terms of space exploration. So far, 600 people have flown outside the earths atmosphere, but in the years to come that number is expected to rise dramatically.

Space is becoming much cheaper and accessible and such missions will require quite a lot of new knowledge, beginning with training ahead of the voyage and including research in areas like food engineering, says Itai Levy, of the Israel Space Agency. If theres going to be a hotel in space, for which there is already a concrete business plan, somebody will have to figure out the food, the food packaging, the furniture, and everything else.

Adds Levy, all this will require research that will examine such elements before they are actually put into use, and so analog research will become a very central arena, and we want to establish it in Israel as well.

He notes that there are very few countries that have all the capabilities to simulate space missions, from the stages of planning to designing and manufacturing the requisite equipment, and on to the launch itself: There are five or six countries that meet all these conditions, and Israel is one of them.

The question arises as to whether traveling to outer space is even important, given the huge environmental damage it causes in terms of the energy it requires and the emissions it creates. Would it not be better to concentrate on saving Earth, instead of investing such enormous resources in reaching Mars? In response, Grmer says that Mars is the planet most similar to Earth and therefore a voyage there will lead to a better understanding of the roots of life here. In the more distant future, he predicts, humans will establish colonies on Mars. The moon may be a 1,000 times closer, but it cannot support life. The moon is like a practice field, according to the Austrian astrophysicist, but it is more likely that someday human beings will live on Mars.

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Most advanced simulation of manned Mars mission is happening in Israel - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on October 11, 2021

An Israeli teenager died Saturday of lingering health complications after falling ill with COVID-19.

The 16-year-old was unvaccinated and did not have any existing medical conditions. He had been hospitalized at Schneider Childrens Medical Center in Petah Tikva after being brought there from another hospital two weeks ago.

The hospital had been treating the teenager with an ECMO machine for pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome (PIMS), a rare condition that develops in some children after exposure to the coronavirus.

The boy was identified in media reports as Aden Jamal Fayumi, a resident of the central town of Jaljulia.

The fatality was believed to be the first recorded death from PIMS in Israel. Around 100 cases of PIMS have been recorded in Israel since the syndrome was first reported, according to the Haaretz daily.

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Fayumis death came two days after a 6-month-old baby was hospitalized in serious condition with PIMS symptoms, which include persistent fever and serious inflammation.

There are quite a few children in the country with PIMS and quite a few are on ventilators. This is a serious disease. I think we are seeing a rise in in PIMS in recent weeks, the hospitals Dr. Ofer Schiller told the Ynet news site.

Schiller said the teenagers condition had been volatile and expressed concern about connecting patients to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines for extended periods. The machines do the work of a persons heart and lungs in order to allow them to recover from serious respiratory illness.

Whoever is on ECMO can also suffer from complications of the ECMO itself and not only the disease. The inflammatory response is something difficult to deal with, he said.

The doctor did not say what he believed was behind the rise in PIMS cases.

Israel in recent weeks has seen record numbers of patients on ECMO machines, even as the fourth wave of the pandemic appears to recede.

On Friday, the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized in serious condition dropped to 460, the lowest recorded number in nearly two months.

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16-year-old Israeli dies from post-COVID complications - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on October 11, 2021

(JTA) The Orthodox Union wont certify Impossible Pork as kosher, representing a break from the way that decisions about certifying kosher food are normally made. But as someone who studies Judaisms long relationship with technology, I would argue that it is undoubtedly the right move.

Since the OU first started certifying products a century ago, kosher supervision has always remained doggedly focused on objective fact-finding: Food is kosher because of whats in it and how its made (and, occasionally, who makes it) and thats basically it. To get this information, modern kosher supervision agencies have built out fantastically complex global operations that keep track of complicated and constantly shifting supply chains. These systems are often incurious about almost everything not directly related to the food processing itself, including whether factory working conditions are acceptable, whether the ingredients are sustainably sourced, or whether the certified product will kill you (though politics sometimes leaks in anyway).

So it was unusual when the OU the largest certifier of kosher products in the world denied certification to Impossible Pork, a next-gen meat substitute, despite the fact that every ingredient in the product is kosher.The OU explained that it could not certify a product that described itself as pork.

Despite protestations to the contrary from hungry Jews and my own deep culinary curiosity, I believe that the OU made the right call. Though it seems that the decision was narrowly decided, the move to withhold kosher certification may in fact turn out to be one of the most important Jewish legal decisions of the 21st century. This may seem like a hyperbolic way of talking about soy protein slurry, but I really think it isnt. The OUs move is a first, tentative step towards a stance on technological innovation that desperately needs to become more common.

To understand why, we need to understand the effect of new technologies on legal regimes. Law needs to be specific to be effective, and so well-constructed law is often carefully tailored to the nitty-gritty details of specific objects, systems and ways of behaving. When a new technology comes along and replaces the old even if the new tech does exactly the same thing as the old it can make the old law irrelevant unless lawmakers intervene with an update. Interventions are especially important when the old technology has been around for a long time and law has grown intertwined with it. Regulating cryptocurrency, for example, is crucial precisely because so many financial regulations assume that transactions take place exclusively through state-issued currency that is mostly stored in banks.

But if the job of lawmakers is to create continuities between old and new tech, many modern tech firms, with their move fast and break things culture, often seem hellbent on tearing them apart. The makers of new technology like to call things unprecedented because it generates hype, but disconnecting new technologies from old ones is also a good way of shielding themselves from ethical and legal responsibility for how those technologies behave.

This new tech dynamic plays out in Jewish law, too. How should the rule forbidding leather shoes on Yom Kippur because they were considered an indulgence apply in an era of comfortable synthetic shoes? Must one wear tzitzit (ritual fringes) at all when modern shirts dont have the four corners that triggered the Biblical requirement of tzitzit? On a larger scale, the Shabbat elevator, the Kosher Lamp, as well as a host of technologies developed by Israels Tzomet Institute, all employ new technologies to circumvent existing rules while keeping within the letter, if not the spirit, of the law.

Sometimes Jews have allowed these rules to be eroded because the stakes didnt feel high enough, but when a new technology threatens to undermine Jewish tradition, the rabbis have tended to respond appropriately.

The best example of this is the ban on turning electricity on or off on Shabbat. For millennia, the experience of Shabbat was shaped by the Biblical prohibition on lighting fires; with the advent of electricity at the turn of the last century, that ban threatened to become irrelevant. Orthodox rabbis responded by coalescing around the argument that electricity is fire, or was covered by some other well-established prohibition. That electricity is not actually fire didnt matter; the argument carried because it was understood by leadership and laity alike that electricity was coming to replace fire, to do everything fire could do and more. Today, the restrictions on electricity are a cornerstone of the Shabbat experience, so fundamental that it is hard for many observant Jews to imagine Shabbat without it.

Is Impossible Pork the 21st century version of electricity? Theres a good case to be made that it is. The rise of plant-based meat substitutes has been spurred by ethical and environmental concerns around meat production. Their success depends on their being so delicious that they escape from the boutique realm of eco-conscious consumers and take on the same cultural role as meat. That Burger King offers an Impossible Whopper signals that this is already happening, as does the fact that major meat producers have invested heavily in the growth of plant-based alternatives to their own products.

These developments should be celebratedbut rather than diminishing meats special cultural meaning, its substitutes have only served to burnish it.

Meat has a special significance in Judaism, too. God is a big fan of animal sacrifices, and many holidays still involve the ritual or cultural use of meat and inasmuch as meat matters, it matters that the meat isnt pork. Its irrelevant that the Ancient Israelite origins of the ban are obscure; its enough that modern observant Jews (and Muslims) still treat the ban on pig products as a cultural touchstone. We should be glad that technology has created a meaningful difference between veggie beef and veggie pork but if the distinction is there, the ban on the pork must be, too.

The OUs ruling does not yet amount to a full-fledged policy that all fake meat should be treated like real meat; a kosher restaurant can still serve plant-based cheeseburgers without fear that its license will be revoked. But even if it was not intended to be profound, the OUs decision is an example of how all regulators, both religious and governmental, can fight back against the cultural unmooring that the present onslaught of new technology continues to cause. In this unprecedented age, creating continuity between the past and the present serves to ground society in the wisdom and norms of its own past.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

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Judaism often thrives on new technologies. That doesnt mean Impossible Pork should be kosher. - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on October 11, 2021

Growing up, Reena Zuckerman 23 loved to read from the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. She did it the first time at her bat mitzvah and continues still today.

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At Brandeis University, Zuckerman joined Shira Chadasha (new song in Hebrew). The student-led community at Brandeis Universitys Hillelis Orthodox, but unlike standard Orthodox congregations, it permits women to read from the Torah scroll during services and lead parts of religious services.

Im definitely part of a generation of women who are able to do more during davening (praying) than in other generations, Zuckerman said.

Students started Shira Chadasha in partnership with Brandeis Hillel in 2004. They were inspired by two similar congregations founded only a few years before, one in Jerusalem, the other in New York City.

They are all part of a loose network of what are referred to aspartnership minyans, Orthodox worship communities that welcome a more expansive role for women than in standard Orthodox Judaism, which follows the proscriptions against female participation in services laid out in Jewish law.

Today, there are more than80 partnership minyans around the world, including the one Zuckerman attended in Cambridge growing up, Minyan Tehillah.

In addition to hosting Shira Chadasha, Brandeis Hillel alsohosts servicesforReform,ConservativeandReconstructionistJudaism, all of which are egalitarian. There is also astandard Orthodoxservice at Hillel, where Jewish law is followed more strictly and womens roles are more limited.

Shira Chadasha offers Friday night and Shabbat afternoon or evening services once a month.

In addition to reading from the Torah and reciting the mourners prayer (kaddish), women can lead certain parts of the Friday night and Saturday services.

Portions of a service that under Jewish law require a minyan, a quorum of 10 adult men, are still only performed by men at Shira Chadasha.

Men and women are separated using amechitza, or divider, down the middle of the room. Theres no separation of the sexes during social gatherings outside services.

There are also Shira Chadasha-sponsored social gatherings and educational events.

Last year, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the group hosted a Zoom ice-breaker for students of all Jewish denominations to meet and a virtual Hanukkah party featuring an online game of dreidel that raised money for charity.

Zuckerman, who serves on the board of Shira Chadasha as its vice president, is particularly moved by the communitys Kabbalat Shabbat, a service on Friday night that joyfully welcomes in the start of the Sabbath with the singing of psalms.

Among the psalms isLcha Dodi, a hymn that greets the Sabbath queen, a Kabbalistic tradition that dates back to a 16th-century poet.

In fact, the Kabbalat Shabbats are so spirited, they attract non-Orthodox students.

Edward Friedman 22 was raised Conservative but joined Shira Chadasha, he said, because of the openness and passion that came from the members. You could tell people really cared.

Friedman said that at first, he was taken aback by the division of sexes during services. But in time, he said he came to appreciate themechitza, a multicolor cloth of purple, blue and white, as enhancing the spirituality of the service.

The mechitza is really pretty, he said. It does not feel like its meant to isolate.

As a sophomore, Friedman volunteered for the board and helped with marketing to attract more students.

Some students, like Matt Shapiro 24, move back and forth between standard Orthodox services at Hillel and Shira Chadashas.

I agree with a lot of Shira Chadashas beliefs about having more participation for women, Shapiro said.

But he also grew up practicing standard Orthodox Judaism and likes that style of service as well.

The abundance of options at Hillel lets people find the right fit, Shapiro said. But in the end, he added, we are part of the same community.

This article is reprinted fromThe Jewish Experience, Brandeis Universitys website devoted to Jewish issues.

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Posted By admin on October 11, 2021

(JTA) When the pandemic kept Rabbi Emily Meyer stuck at home last year, she took up a hobby familiar to any elementary school student doodling.

But Meyer, a Jewish educator in the Pittsburgh area, didnt use the margins of a notebook as her canvas. Instead, she started drawing around Hebrew letters, using brightly colored markers to hug the contours of the aleph bet, the Hebrew alphabet, sometimes making detours to doodle images related to each letter. Then she started posting them on Facebook as Doodly Jew.

In the process, she realized that the doodling process could be a tool to teach Hebrew words, Jewish prayers and the names of the weekly Torah portion.

This is not art that you can hang up in a museum, right? These are really doodles, Meyer said. But she stressed that art doesnt have to be professionally produced to be worthwhile, saying, Theres actually a cognitive benefit to drawing shapes and images to represent words.

Over time, Meyer began collaborating with other Jewish educators to produce more involved videos, still based on her drawings. In addition, Jewish educators across the country have used Meyers videos to teach vocabulary a boon at a time when many Hebrew schools have remained virtual and teachers are contending with challenges engaging students.

That for me is definitely the most rewarding element of this, finding a way to reach into the screen of the students and help them engage, Meyer said.

We spoke to Meyer about how she became Doodly Jew, the historical tradition that inspires her and how she hopes Hebrew education can evolve. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

JTA: How did you come up with the idea of doodling as a way to teach Hebrew?

Ive been a teacher for a long time and I am a rabbi. Its hard to find ways to engage students. Teachers are always doing amazing work, and in the pandemic had to step up and figure out how to do their amazing work in a mostly digital realm. So I wanted to help create something to make it easier for teachers to engage students online. I thought about ways to simply, quickly, show something interesting about Hebrew. I know its really hard to teach a second language or a heritage language online.

But actually doodling around the letters of the aleph bet is age-old its part of Jewish tradition to have illuminated manuscripts.

An illustration of the Hebrew alphabet. (Rabbi Emily Meyer)

Tell me more about how you see Doodly Jew as connected to historical examples of art related to the aleph bet.

Art has been a part of Judaism for as long as we understand, and creativity is really valuable in seeing shapes and letters in the aleph bet.

In the story of all the letters coming to God and asking which one can be used first for the creation of the world, theyre making their case to be used first in the creation of the world. It talks about how each letter has words that are connected to it, are integral to it, like the letter took on the personality of the words that they begin. And the shape of the letters is meaningful, what letters make up the shape of other letters, like the heh being made up of that hidden yud in there. And from those ideas we go to the illuminated manuscripts of the 1100s to 1200s and beyond.

Making Hebrew beautiful is a part of the evolving story of Jewish interpretation. Making Hebrew beautiful is valuable.

What do you want your audience, or students who are learning from your videos to get out of your doodles?

I want students to get a deeper appreciation for Hebrew, more familiarity with vocabulary and playfulness, love of learning. Thats part of what Judaism has as a core value. So Im just hoping to enhance that love and that creativity and that excitement for engaging with Hebrew.

We know that children learn best when theyre doing something creative or doing something playful. I also talk about that when I work with teachers, showing them that being creative is part of this tradition and that we shouldnt shy away from playing with the letters.

Do you have a favorite video that youve done so far?

My favorite work that Ive been doing is my collaboration pieces, so I got to collaborate with some amazing artists like Chava Mirel and Eliana Light and Ben Pagliaro on songs and prayers, with the added visual benefit of doodling, and thats been absolutely rewarding.

Hopefully that shows teachers and students that art can be a way to engage with the prayers of our tradition, not being afraid to give students colored pencils or markers to use during tefilah [prayer] time. I hear from a lot of teachers that theyre looking for ways to engage students during tefilah, and hopefully just getting to play with art, getting to play with prayer artistically, is good inspiration.

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Writing Hebrew letters creatively is a Jewish tradition. This rabbi sees sacredness in doodles, too. - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on October 11, 2021

This is Jerusalem. Some people even lose their mind when they come here, says Uri, a guide leading us on a lifetime tour inside the old city.

This is my first time here, and my mind is being blown away by what I am seeing and hearing, as I, along with fellow journalists make our way through the stone walls of the city.

This is the city that is mentioned hundreds of times in the Bible, sung in songs in many places, and written about in books.

Indeed, this is no ordinary place.

The small but famed city is very anomalous as well, since it houses extremely holy places for three different religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

This is where you find the Temple Mount, a very Holy place for the Jewish people since it is where their temple used to be, though the place is now occupied by the Al Aqsa mosque a facility that is considered the third holiest in the Islamic religion, after Mecca and Medina.

The immense religious aura of the city is arguably related to the mental issues that have been experienced by some few visitors in the past.

This is what has come to be termed Jerusalem syndrome.

The condition is a group of mental phenomena that involves delusions, and some psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem.

A research done by Israeli psychiatrist Yair Bar-El in 2000, showcased that most people who experienced mental health issues on their visit to Jerusalem had underlying psychiatric illnesses.

However, he noted that healthy people with no history of mental illness can arrive in Jerusalem and become troubled too.

Such is the place that I have visited.

Physically, old Jerusalem is surrounded by stonewalls, and has four quarters inside: Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim quarters.

The Christian quarter is a marvel for many, as it houses the highly venerated Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a large cathedral-like building that is believed to host the locations of Jesus crucifixion, burial and resurrection.

The writer touches the place where it is claimed Jesuscross was planted during the crucifixion.

Constructed in the 4th century, the church is of great significance in the history of Christianity, and it is always mobbed by many people who come to look at its wonders.

After you have entered, one of the first things you see is The Stone of Unction also known as The Stone of Anointing, the place where Christ' body was laid after being removed from the cross and prepared for burial.

Here, he was anointed and wrapped in shrouds as the Jews customarily prepared their dead for burial at the time.

A large picture of his body being removed from the cross by sorrowful people is on the wall, and as you stand and watch, it inspires emotion as you think about how sad that particular day must have been for his family and followers.

When I visited, there were not many pilgrims due to the limitations caused by Covid-19, but I read that it is customary for pilgrims to kiss The Stone of Unction or rub it with oil and then wipe it with a cloth.

Near this place, a stairway leads to the Rock of Calvary (Golgotha), where the Crucifixion of Jesus is believed to have occurred.

This location is not as you would expect it to look like, since it is well built and decorated, thus not giving a real picture of the setting of Jesus crucifixion.

However, there is a hole where Jesus cross is believed to have been planted and pilgrims are allowed to reach out their hands and touch the inside of it.

Again, not far from here is the tomb where Jesus was buried.

A respected site in the Christian world, the burial bed has been covered in marble cladding, allegedly to prevent eager pilgrims from removing bits of the original rock as souvenirs.

The tomb is within a small chamber, which is dimly lit and decorated. Entering here is such an experience, looking at the dark place where The Lord is believed to have spent three days dead, before he resurrected.

After going out of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, there are a number of amazing sites in the city of Jerusalem that have some amazing stories too.

Among these is the Mountain of Olives, a hilly place that is very significant in the life of Jesus. It was near here that he prophesied the destruction of the Jewish temple (Luke 19:41-44), which happened years later in AD70.

This particular place is also where Jesus ascended to heaven, and it is believed that it is where He will stand upon His second coming.

I also had opportunity to visit the Western Wall (within the Jewish quarter), a very key place of prayer in Judaism.

Also known as the Wailing Wall, the areas holiness in Judaism is a result of its proximity to the Temple Mount, a place that has been the House for Gods name since the days of King Solomon.

It is also in this place that Jews believe Abraham tried to sacrifice his son Isaac to God, before God stopped him, and provided a lamb instead.

Because of the Temple Mount entry restrictions for the Jews, the Western Wall is the holiest place where they are permitted to pray.

Here, I found many people praying, and it looks like the place is occupied all day for this cause.

Interestingly though, in one of several Muslim traditions, it is argued that it is this site where the Prophet Muhammad tied the al-Buraq, a mysterious winged beast on which he rode during his night journey to Jerusalem, before ascending to paradise to get instructions to take back to the faithful regarding the details of prayer.

Such Islamic traditions are the reason why Muslims consider the Temple Mount as a very holy place for them.

With all of this, the city of Jerusalem is quite fragile and worth lots of caution. In a way, this state of the city can also be looked at as a factor for sparking off the Jerusalem Syndrome among some visitors.

Anyway, it is a city worth visiting.

hkuteesa@newtimesrwanda.com

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Many eyebrows were raised when a small group of leftist anti-Israel congressional representatives successfully torpedoed their own presidents initial supplementary Iron Dome funding proposal. As Iron Dome is a defensive system that protects Israels civilian population from rockets fired by terrorists, the progressive Democrats who quashed the proposal were widely accused of not only being fierce opponents of the Jewish state, but of harboring hostile attitudes toward Jews and their words would seem to attest to such prejudice.

How can the Left, which proudly champions the equality of all, be bigoted against Jews? Hating Jews was often presumed to be the prerogative of the radical Right, while progressives were ostensibly committed to the fight against racism in all its forms.

Yet over the generations, antisemitism has existed and even flourished on the Left. Historic Christian teachings about Jewish money changers defiling the Temple and medieval myths about manipulative Shylock-type money lenders provide fertile soil for modern left-wing antisemitism. It was all too natural to portray the Jews as the evil capitalists living off the sweat and suffering of the poor.

The founding ideologues of French socialism, Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Prudhon, the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and, most important of all, the German-Jewish communist Karl Marx, were all pioneers of modern socialist thought and were all also guilty of expressing antisemitic prejudice in their writings. In his essay On the Jewish Question, Marx equates Judaism to hucksterism and recommends that instead of emancipating the Jews into society, society must emancipate itself from Judaism.

Britains famous post-war Labour government was headed by Prime Minister Clement Atlee and Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, both of whom were not free of anti-Jewish prejudice. Andrew Adonis, in his new and largely complimentary biography of Bevin, reaches the conclusion that there was a significant strand of antisemitism in Bevins and Atlees anti-Zionism and quotes a Labour colleague who worked under the legendary British foreign secretary as saying there is no doubt in my mind that Ernest detests Jews.

By far the most extreme manifestation of antisemitism in the upper echelons of UK Labour was the recent leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who was repeatedly caught up in incidents of anti-Jewish bigotry. Corbyns record includes defending Holocaust deniers, consorting with antisemitic conspiracy theorists, justifying racist anti-Jewish murals, laying a wreath at the graves of the perpetrators of the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and according to a report by the statutory Equalities and Human Rights Commission presiding over a party that at best, did not do enough to prevent antisemitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it.

FOR BRITISH Jews, the Corbyn phenomenon was highly unsettling. The outbreak of antisemitism at the top tier of Her Majestys loyal opposition was a genuine shock, especially as it was centered on the individual who challenged three consecutive Tory prime ministers for the keys of 10 Downing Street.

American Jews also took notice. Prior to COVID-19, delegations to Israel from American Jewish organizations were always looking for something new to attract participants, and years ago started including a stopover of interest in the itinerary a tour of Jewish Prague, a visit with Moroccos Jewish community or even a meeting in Amman with the Jordanian foreign minister. During my tenure as Israels ambassador in Britain, more and more they included a stopover in London.

A UK visit was not just a matter of showing solidarity with a Jewish community undergoing a difficult period. The American Jews I met in London were anxious that Corbyns takeover of Britains Labour could be a sign of things to come in the Democratic Party.

Such fears were exacerbated following the 2019 phone call between Corbyn and US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a conversation that took place after Corbyns antisemitism had already received significant media coverage in the US. Corbyn, who at the time had legitimacy issues with social-democrats across Europe, thoroughly enjoyed his 45-minute discussion with the New York representative, tweeting: Great to speak to @AOC on the phone this evening and hear first-hand how shes challenging the status quo. AOC responded with a warm tweet of her own: It was an honor to share such a lovely and wide-reaching conversation with you, @jeremycorbyn! Consistent with honoring Corbyn, she later pulled out of an event hosted by the dovish American Friends of Peace Now to commemorate assassinated prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yitzhak Rabin.

Does the Iron Dome funding episode indicate that the chickens have come home to roost? Unclear. In Britain, the Jewish community played a decisive role in the effective public campaign against antisemitism in the Labour Party. If American Jews and their allies act with a determination akin to that shown in Britain, the Iron Dome funding affair may turn out to be just a troubling aberration. If not, the incident could very well be a milestone in the growing Corbynization of the Democratic Party. The latter development may have highly problematic implications for the American Jewish community and for the US-Israel partnership.

A discredited Corbyn was ultimately forced to resign his leadership after Labours unprecedented losses in the 2019 national elections, with the partys faithful increasingly convinced that Corbynism was a prescription for keeping Labour out of office in perpetuity. Hopefully, Democrats are closely following developments across the pond.

The writer was ambassador to the United Kingdom and is a visiting fellow at the INSS. Follow him at @MarkRegev on Twitter.

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Tech entrepreneur and author Antonio Garca Martnez made wavesover the weekend with a Substack post about his decision to leave behind "cultural Catholicism" in favor of Judaism. The main reason the post has people talking is Garca Martnez's case for conversion has more to do with his hostility to secular modernity than a positive defense of specifically Jewish scripture or tradition.

That makes his conversion story exceedingly modern.

Garca Martnez is best known online for an episodeearlier this yearin which hewas hired and then quickly fired by Apple after otheremployees objected to passages of his bookChaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley that, they claimed, ran afoul of Apple's policies on diversity and inclusion. In the months since, Garca Martnez has become a prominent anti-progressive gadfly on Twitter, regularly mocking so-called cancel culture and "woke" trends online and in the country more broadly.

His post announcing and explaining his conversion to Judaism is very much of apiece with his anti-woke tweets. Garca Martnez defines modernity as the application of individual choice to an ever-greater portion of the human world, including (via the "liberal project" that is its political corollary) morality and faith. Yet human flourishing depends, he says, on the acceptance of various "unchosen obligations" (to family, to community, to God) that form the backdrop of a morally and spiritually satisfying life. Hence his attraction to Judaism, an ancient, communally based system of laws that seems far more secure than our confusingly fluid world of freely choosing individuals.

Which means that Garca Martnez is converting to Judaism in order to escape secular modernity but isn't his own decision to convert itself an individual choice? And as such, isn't it just as much an expression of the modern mindset as any of the trends he denounces here and in hisbroadersocial media commentary?

Yes, it's a choice to stop choosing, but that still grounds his conversion in an act of the individual mind and will. Garca Martnez will always know that what can be chosen can also be unchosenthat hecan choose to leave Judaism with an ease that would have felt quite foreign to a premodern Jew.

This doesn't mean that Garca Martnez is making a mistake in becoming Jewish. (I have my own complicted history with Judaism, Catholicism, and conversion.)But it does mean that doing so isn't likely to liberate him from modernity, returning him to the premodern world as conservatives like to imagine it a world defined by fated obligations individuals have no choice but to take on and accept with gratitude and fulfillment.

Choosing is the destiny of human beings, from which wewill never be rescued.

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Posted By admin on October 11, 2021

God: An AnatomyFRANCESCA STAVRAKOPOULOU(PICADOR, 608 PP, 25)Tablet bookshop price 22.50 tel 020 7799 4064

This scintillating study sets out to recover the body of the God of Israel, which Francesca Stavrakopoulou argues has been lost in religious transit.

Modern Judaism, Christianity and Islam, according to Stavrakopoulou, think of God as bodiless: formless, imageless, invisible. But Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, is far from bodiless: he is anthropomorphic, handsome and muscular; he walks and talks, laughs and cries, sleeps and eats, and is distinctly male. Stavrakopoulou reveals the corporality of God from the ground up, in chapters on his feet and legs, genitals, torso, arms and hands, and head.

Her investigations range far beyond the Old Testament. We are introduced to the ancient Near Eastern gods to whom Yahweh is related, including his parents (who have left more traces in the Bible than we might think) and his 69 siblings. We discover how God has been represented in post-biblical Judaism and Islam, and the different ways in which the earthly or heavenly body of Jesus Christ is portrayed in Christianity. In the process, Stavrakopoulou compares the significance of various parts of the human body across ancient and modern cultures, reflecting on everything from the importance of foot-washing to our fundamental need for touch.

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Head and shoulders, knees and toes - The Tablet

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