Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 27, 2021

Abortion is a Jewish value, and the US House of Representatives' vote to pass the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA) is a crucial step in protecting abortion rights across the US, National Council of Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz said on Friday.

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The law on medications prohibits mail-order abortion-inducing drugs and says doctors in the state are only allowed to prescribe them up to seven weeks after conception. Previously that restriction was set at 10 weeks.

"Texas continues to lead the way in protecting unborn children and fostering a culture of life," Abbott said in a written statement. "We have taken monumental steps to save babies from the ravages of abortion."

"As Jews, we recognize abortion as essential health care, that is not only permitted but in some cases, required by our tradition," Katz said in a statement. "We celebrate the House of Representatives passage of WHPA which moves us closer to ensuring that all people have access to the full range of reproductive options, including abortion, in line with their values and faith tradition," she said.

"Since 2011, anti-abortion lawmakers have passed more than 500 restrictive abortion laws through state legislatures and already 2021 is the worst legislative year ever for abortion rights. The people most impacted are Black, indigenous, people of color, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and those working to make ends meet who already face obstacles to health care," Katz continued.

"Equal access to abortion care is essential for social and economic equity, reproductive autonomy, and to our futures," Katz said.

THE DEMOCRATIC-controlled House voted 218-211 largely along party lines to pass the WHPA. Just one Democrat voted against the proposal.

The bill would protect abortion services and preempt many of the restrictions that Republicans have passed at the state level, such as those that require ultrasounds or other tests. However, it is expected to fail in the evenly divided Senate, where Democrats would need at least 10 Republicans to support it.

Every day, across the country, National Council of Jewish Women advocates work to ensure we can all make our own moral and faith-informed decisions about our bodies, health, and future. This effort will continue with pressure on the Senate to now pass WHPA without delay to guarantee equitable access to abortion in every corner of the United States, Katz concluded.

National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) is a grassroots organization of 200,000 volunteers and advocates, who are inspired by Jewish values to strive for social justice by improving the quality of life for women, children, and families and by safeguarding individual rights and freedoms.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2021

LOS ANGELES (AP) Two suspects in an attack on Jewish men outside a Los Angeles restaurant last spring were charged Tuesday with a hate crime, prosecutors said.

The suspects were part of a pro-Palestinian caravan that stopped near Sushi Fumi on the citys west side where diners were eating at outdoor tables on May 18, police said.

Witnesses told news media that people in the caravan threw bottles and chanted death to Jews and free Palestine, and men got out of the vehicles and began asking who was Jewish. A brawl erupted when two diners said they were Jewish.

Xavier Pabon, 30, of Banning, and Samer Jayylusi, 36, of Anaheim, were each charged Tuesday with two felony counts of assault by means of force likely to cause great bodily injury, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office. The charges also include a hate crime allegation.

Jayylusi was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, while Pabon will make his next court appearance Thursday, CBS 2 reported. It wasnt immediately known if the men have attorneys.

The attack came shortly after Israels bombing of Gaza that killed at least 200 Palestinians, the news station said. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators had been rallying throughout west Los Angeles that week.

Civic and faith leaders condemned the incident.

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2021

As he lists the names of his many grandchildren, Joop van Ooijen recites what sounds like a roll call at a typical Israeli classroom.

Yair, Yael, Lael, Odelia, Netanya, Yoaz and Shilon are some of his grandkids with modern names, favored by the Israeli middle class. Baruch, Moshe, Elisheva and Yehuda are among the classics, popular with religious Jewish parents all over the world.

But neither the Van Ooijens nor their 16 children are Jewish.

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They are a Protestant Christian family in a small town in the Netherlands, which is among a handful of places in Europe where its common for non-Jews to have names that are widely perceived as being distinctly Jewish.

Were a devout family and the Bible is always present in our lives, which means Judaism is always present in our lives and we named our children to reflect that, said Joop van Ooijen, a 69-year-old chemicals retailer.

In addition to universally-popular biblical names like Simon, David, Ruth and Esther, distinctly-Jewish biblical names seem to be particularly common in devout Christian circles in the Netherlands.

But many Dutch parents who arent religious also give their children Jewish-sounding names because they perceive the Bible as part of Dutch heritage and are drawn to the short, decisive sounds of Hebrew names. Some parents say those sounds resemble to Dutch ones.

We didnt want something foreign and English-sounding, but we also wanted a serious name that carries a certain weight for when the child grows up, said Jantine Vonk, a 35-year-old mother of two, Aron and Thirza, from the south of the Netherlands.

Vonk added that she believes that many Jewish and non-Jewish Dutch parents share, for various cultural reasons, a preference for short, powerful names with a distinct ring like Boaz and Thirza as opposed to more rounded names such as Ryan and Olivia.

Hagar Jobse, a 34-year-old journalist from Amsterdam who grew up in a secular family, got her name because her parents just found it pretty, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In Dutch, it is pronounced Hakhar, using a palatal consonant that exists in Hebrew (though not in the name Hagar) and in Dutch.

Jobse says her name elicits mostly curious and positive reactions because its exotic in the Netherlands. Arabs recognize it from Hajar, the Arabic-language pronunciation of the name of that biblical figure. And Spanish speakers have some difficulties with it, she observed.

Shes never experienced a negative reaction to her name, Jobse said.

But the Van Ooijens have, Joop said.

Theres a lot of antisemitism in the school system, unfortunately, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Our children with Jewish names got pestered, some even bullied for it. Moshe Van Ooijen especially experienced that, his father said, but Arie, Boaz and Sifra also encountered some, he added.

Contacted by JTA, Moshe, who is in his thirties, initially agreed to be interviewed for this article but attempts to reach him have been unsuccessful.

Thirza, for example, was virtually nonexistent in the 1950s. But from 1990 onwards, at least 20 babies were named Thirza, with the peak occurring in 2000 with about 120 Thirzas. There were about 100 in 2014 named Thirza, a figure from the Book of Numbers from a passage dealing with when daughters inherit the possessions of their late father. (Thirza is also the name of a Canaanite city.)

With boys, the same trend is visible in Levi, a name that almost no one received in 1980. In 2014, there were at least 8,000 Levis in the Netherlands, with hundreds receiving it each year (2016 had about 700 Levis, most of them men but also a few women.)

One of them is Levi Verschoof, a 26-year-old man from Noordwijk, a coastal city situated about 30 miles southwest of Amsterdam. Verschoof, who works for a church group, says he likes his name partly because of its affinity to Judaism.

When I think of Judaism and Jewish people, I get a positive feeling, so it feels good to have a name connected to that. I feel proud when Jewish people hear my name and react positively to it, he said, recalling a meeting in 2010 with a rabbi in The Hague who discussed the names biblical meanings with Verschoof.

Verschoof and his wife named their son Ezra another name that many abroad view as distinctly Jewish but in the Netherlands is common among non-Jews.

In Belgium, where about 11 million people live, only a few dozen babies are named Levi each year, compared to hundreds in the Netherlands, whose population is 17 million. (Almost all the Belgian Levis come from areas with a Flemish population, whose size is about 7 million.)

Both countries have about 30,000 Jews each, a figure that, in the Netherlands at least, likely does not account for any significant portion of the thousands of distinctly-Jewish names being given to newborns each year.

Coincidentally, attempts to measure the prevalence of antisemitic sentiment have consistently shown it is far more common in Belgium, which according to those surveys has a relatively severe antisemitic problem, than in the Netherlands, where expressions of Jew hatred are among the lowest in Europe.

Gerrit Bloothooft, an Utrecht University sociologist who specializes in the study of names and works with the Meertens institute, says he possesses no data on why distinctly Jewish names are relatively popular in the Netherlands, but he believes that Christian religious sentiment accounts only for some of those names.

I suspect (and its only a suspicion) that parents dont think too much about the Jewish origins of these names (or the potential consequences), said Bloothooft, who is quoted often in the Dutch media as an expert on names. Not more than in names like David, Sarah or Judith. People simply think these are pretty names.

Chris Vonk, the father of Aron and Thirza, says he indeed wanted those names because they sound pretty to him, but he and his wife, Jantine, did consider the consequences.

Frankly, its something we thought about, yeah. We considered the possibility that our children might be teased or pestered because they have Jewish-sounding names, Chris told JTA. But we decided to give them those names anyway. Kids will always find something to tease with. So let it be with those names.

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Why are non-Jewish Dutch parents giving their children Jewish names? - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2021

A number of American Jewish organizations slammed a resolution adopted on Wednesday at a high-level meeting at the U.N. General Assembly that commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) stemming from a notoriously anti-Semitic World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

The resolution predictably claimed that the DDPA offered a comprehensive United Nations framework and solid foundation for combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and reaffirmed commitment to its full and effective implementation, stated Bnai Brith International in a news release on Friday.

The original Durban declaration was censured by Jewish groups and nations such as the United States for allowing the presence of overt anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate, as well as including Palestinians as the only group named as victims of racism.

Bnai Brith wrote that it has worked over the past few weeks in partnership with the Jewish Broadcasting Service on Durban, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The organization featured luminaries such as Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, intellectual Bernard-Henri Lvi, former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton and others, culminating in an hour-long interview with Bnai Brith honorary president Richard Heideman, who led the Jewish delegation at the Durban conference and his wife, Phyllis Heideman, president of the International March of the Living.

In the past year, Bnai Brith also lobbied other nations to join the United States and Israel in boycotting the anniversary conference, also known as Durban IV, leading to a total of 35 countries that declined to participate in the commemoration.

This public disassociation by a substantial moral minority at the U.N. represents a meaningful victory against efforts to hijack the world body and the critical fight against racismspecifically, racism against people of African descentfor the purposes of delegitimizing Israel by obscenely equating only it and Jews national liberation movement, Zionism, with racism, Bnai Brith wrote in the statement.

Countries that boycotted the proceedings included Albania, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldova, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay.

A vicious slander against the Jewish state

AIPAC also strongly condemned Durban IV on its Twitter account, while individually tweeting appreciation for countries that joined the boycott.

The UN #DurbanIV conference is a cesspool of discriminatory, anti-Israel propaganda, AIPAC tweeted on Tuesday. Zionism=Racism is a vicious slander against the Jewish state and its supporters. America and many allies stand proudly with Israel in boycotting this despicable conference.

Alex Safian, associate director at CAMERA, which monitors bias in reporting on Israel and the Middle East, noted that there was no improvement in Durban IV and the passed resolution than in the previous three conferences.

The original Durban Conference in 2001 created the firestorm of renewed and growing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and the statements yesterday from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and her radical colleagues are just an example of this in our own Congress, he said in an email. The United Nations was founded as a reaction to Nazism and the Holocaust, but the Durban process proves that fascists and bigots are still much more comfortable in the U.N. than Jews.

Anti-Israel members of the Democratic Party also motivated Zionist Organization of America national president Mort Klein to make a few phone calls to U.N. offices he had connections with to urge them not to attend Durban IV. His organization put out a news release lauding nations that announced they would not participate, though after that acknowledged following the proceedings only a little bit.

Klein said during one of his calls, one official him that anti-Semites in Congress had inspired a number of countries that were thinking of not participating in Durban IV to join.

This one guy told me, you should know that inadvertently or directly, theyve had an impact on several countries that participated, figuring they have to cover it because there are a dozen anti-Semites in Congress, said Klein, adding that the official also told him that he believed Jew-hatred will continue to grow in the United Nations.

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'A cesspool of anti-Israel propaganda:' Jewish groups blast new resolution put forth at Durban IV - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2021

Seven centuries after it was created, a priceless Sephardic Jewish book whose wine-stained pages have somehow survived exile, the Inquisition, the rise and fall of an empire, two world wars and the Bosnian conflict, is making a homecoming. Of sorts.

The codex, known as the Sarajevo Haggadah after the city where it has been kept since at least 1894, is thought to have been made in north-east Spain in about 1350, possibly as a wedding present to mark the union of two prominent Jewish families.

Like all haggadahs, it contains the stories, prayers, rules and rituals of the Passover feast. But unlike most of them, and in contravention of the prohibition on graven images, many of its 142 bleached calf-skin pages are decorated with vibrant illustrations of the creation of a resolutely round Earth, of slavery in Egypt, and of Moses leading the Jewish people towards the promised land. Elsewhere, an enormous serpent talks Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, Noah sails forth in his ark and Sodom and Gomorrah are consumed by fire.

The pictures, last glimpsed in Spain before the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, can now be seen in Madrid at an exhibition organised by the Spanish governments Sefarad-Israel Centre and the embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

While the show does not feature the actual Sarajevo Haggadah the original, kept in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is too valuable to travel its 52 facsimile images offer an eloquent summary of the skill, effort and devotion that went into making the book.

But, as one of the exhibitions curators points out, this particular haggadah is as famous for its peripatetic existence and preternatural powers of endurance as for its religious and cultural content.

This exhibition is about sharing this remarkable story and showing people the beauty of the book and how it survived, says Jakob Finci, a retired lawyer and diplomat who serves as president of the Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Its an important book for Jews all over the world, but most of all for the Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

After leaving Spain during the expulsion, the haggadah turned up in Italy in 1609 when a priest working for the Roman Inquisition read through it and added a note confirming it contained nothing to offend the Roman Catholic churchs sensibilities.

From there it eventually made its way to Sarajevo, where in 1894 it was sold to the national museum by a local Sephardic family for 150 crowns. Museum staff hid it from the Germans when the Nazi occupation of Sarajevo began in 1941, stashing it in a mosque in the mountains. Just over half a century later, the haggadah survived the heavy shelling inflicted on the museum during the siege of Sarajevo.

Little wonder, then, that the book has come to be seen as something of a talisman by the countrys Jews and its wider population.

It was always saved by people who werent Jewish, and it became a kind of symbol of Sarajevo, says Finci. Its liked a phoenix that rises again after each catastrophe. The history of the Sarajevo Haggadah has become a kind of legend in Bosnia and all over the world.

Miguel de Lucas, the president of the Sefarad-Israel Centre, hopes the exhibition will help bring modern Spain a little closer to its past, and to the culture of the men, women and children who were thrown out of their homeland by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

The Sarajevo Haggadah isnt very well known in Spain at all, he says. I think that a lot of Spaniards think of Sephardic Jews as characters from literature, and we love showing people that they still exist in the 21st century and that they have a deep love and nostalgia for the country that actually expelled them.

Whenever he visits as Sephardic community, whether in Sarajevo, zmir, Thessaloniki or Plovdiv, De Lucas says he is struck by that fondness.

The Haggadah is a kind of symbol of that and a symbol that can help Spanish people today understand that Sephardic Jews arent characters from 16th- and 17th-century literature, but people who still exist and often live in communities that are maintaining their traditions under difficult circumstances in the 21st century.

When the exhibition finishes in Madrid in mid-December, it will move to Seville and then, with luck, to Barcelona, close to the region where it probably originated.

Finci, who was born in a concentration camp on the then Italian-occupied Croatian island of Rab in 1943, oversees a community that lost 85% of its members to the Holocaust. Today there are around 1,000 Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than three-quarters of them Sephardic.

In the small, phoenix-like book, in the distance it has travelled and in the wars it has survived, Finci sees an old but enduring message.

I hope this exhibition in Spain will remind them what they lost in 1492 when they lost the Jews and everything the Jews made, including the haggadah, he says.

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My son Ariel called me from Jerusalem this week. He told me that he and his wife Rachel had booked a Sukkot meal at the Sephardic House Hotel. The memories came flooding back. Memories of the luncheon celebrating his bar mitzvah after the Torah reading at the Kotel HaMaaravi, the Western Wall. Memories of my brother and sister-in-laws gorgeous sunset wedding reception in the exquisitely tiled Spanish Courtyard. And memories of the sumptuous Israeli style breakfasts and lunches enjoyed in the Sukkah there.

Stepping into the Jerusalem stone of the Sephardic Educational Center Campus in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is like stepping back into history. The vaulted ceilings, the Persian rugs, the Spanish tile, the stone courtyards and the views of the Old City evoke the mood of a bygone era.

The original section of the building was built in the early years of the 19th century and it served the Spanioli Jews as a place of study, with hundreds of students at the Sephardic Talmud Torah and the prestigious Yeshiva Tiferet Yerushalayim. And reflective of the harsh conditions of life in the Old City, the courtyard level was a place of refuge for widows and orphans. Towards the end of the 19th century, one wing of the building served as the official residence of the Rishon LeZion, the Chief Rabbi of Israel.

Nowadays, the place bustles with Rabbinical Programs, teens from the Hamsa Israel Trip, people coming for Sephardic lectures and it is the official Old City residence for the soldiers of the IDF and the Israeli Police.

Best of all, are the luxurious guest rooms of the Sephardic House Hotel. For me, the vaulted ceilinged rooms with their tiled floors and plush Persian rugs, Persimmon colored cushions and Arabesque furnishings evoke a peaceful, serene feeling of coming home. Its the closest Ill ever get to my inherited Levantine dreams.

Sukkot is our favorite time of the year to be in Israel. We love the joyful, festive feeling in the streets.

Sukkot is our favorite time of the year to be in Israel. We love the joyful, festive feeling in the streets. We love running into friends on Ben Yehuda Street. We love the serendipity of sitting for breakfast in a Sukkah on Jaffa Street and seeing our table expand as my cousins who just happen to be walking by decide to join us. We love the Machne Yehuda Shuk and all the eclectic stands filled with ruby red pomegranates, abundant produce, salty herring, creamy cheeses, fresh baked bread, burekas and rugelach, halvah and tehina, barrels overflowing with intense, earthy spices.

This year we will celebrate Sukkot with our wonderful friends and family here in Los Angeles. We will bring the flavors of the Shuk into the kitchen. My daughter Alexandra will bake fresh challah and my daughters Gabriella and Elisheva will be chopping fresh salads with me. We will indulge with fresh baked apple cake and pavlova drizzled with Silan and topped with halvah and glistening pomegranate.

We will make Stuffed Artichokes, a very middle eastern dish for dinner in the Sukkah. An ode to the all the Jewish women who cooked in the Old City for centuries and a labor of love for my family, especially my Dad and my brothers father in law Elie, both lovers of anything with ground beef and tomatoes.

Moroccan Stuffed Artichokes are traditionally served for Passover and other festive meals. First they are fried and then simmered in a lemony, saffron sauce. Rachel makes them like that and they are absolutely incredibly delicious. But here we have modified the recipe, to make it simpler and healthier. We took out the frying step. We replaced the traditional matzo meal with potato starch in the meat stuffing. We added lots of garlic and onion and an Iraqi twist to the spice profile. We simmered our stuffed artichokes in a flavorful sweet and sour lemony tomato broth.

We hope you give our recipe a try for one of your Sukkot meals!

Chag Sameach! Moadim lSimchah!

2 14ounce bags of artichoke hearts

Meatball stuffing

2 pounds ground beef1/2 cup parsley, finely chopped2 large eggs1/2 cup potato starch1/2 teaspoon coriander1/2 teaspoon cumin1/2 teaspoon nutmeg1/2 teaspoon allspiceSalt and pepper

Tomato Broth

1/3 cup avocado oil1 large onion, diced3 stalks celery, finely chopped8 cloves garlic1 lemon, washed and quartered1 cup water1 14.5 ounce can of chopped tomatoes1 tablespoon sugar1 teaspoon turmeric1 teaspoon paprika1 teaspoon kosher salt1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Makes approximately 18-20 artichoke hearts. Suitable for freezing.

Rachel Sheff and Sharon Gomperts have been friends since high school. They love cooking and sharing recipes. They have collaborated on Sephardic Educational Center projects and community cooking classes. Follow them on Instagram @sephardicspicegirls and on Facebook at Sephardic Spice SEC Food.

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Stuffed Artichokes for Sukkot The Sephardic Spice Girls Way - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2021

Good hummus doesnt need many ingredients: chickpeas, fresh lemon juice, tahini, some garlic and salt.

But that doesnt mean its easy to make. Washingtonians would know: Until a few years ago, it was nearly impossible for residents of the nations capital to find a restaurant serving the fresh dip like those that line the streets of some Middle Eastern cities. So, when the Israeli-inspired restaurant, Little Sesame, first showed up in downtown Washington as a basement pop-up in 2015, it quickly became a local favorite.

After the coronavirus pandemic sent sales at Little Sesames two downtown locations into a tailspin, the companys chefs figured it would be easy to create a packaged version of its popular hummus to sell in local grocery stores. Its just a few ingredients, they thought. Right?

Its a whole new business. Theres a lot of learning we had to do, Little Sesame co-founder Nick Wiseman told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. After nearly a year of experimenting with acidity levels and pasteurization, Little Sesames hummus hit shelves at 13 Whole Foods locations in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia over the summer.

Little Sesames two storefronts are in Chinatown and Farragut Square, two business districts that have yet to see a mass return of office workers. But, Wiseman said, the team couldnt be happier with sales at Whole Foods.

We wanted to launch something thats very authentic to us and our family, honoring those traditions, said Wiseman, a third-generation Washingtonian.

Wiseman created Little Sesame with his cousin, Dave Wiseman a lawyer, not a chef and Ronen Tenne, an Israeli chef with whom Wiseman worked as a line cook at a restaurant run by Michelin-starred chef Michael White in New York. We always dreamed of opening our own place one day, said Wiseman.

Little Sesame wasnt the trios first project. Washington foodies will recall their previous restaurant, DGS Delicatessen, a Jewish-style deli that paid homage to the regions Jewish food heritage. It was named for District Grocery Stores, a 20th-century grocery cooperative that at its peak comprised 300 stores, most of which were owned by Jewish immigrants from Europe.

We wanted to launch something thats very authentic to us and our family, honoring those traditions, said Wiseman, a third-generation Washingtonian. Dave and I grew up eating Sunday brunch with smoked fish and bagels together. And so our first project was the Jewish deli. And the antidote to the deli was the vegetable-centric food that became Little Sesame.

When the Little Sesame pop-up first appeared in 2015, it did not have much Israeli hummus competition in Washington. That has since changed. In 2016, the kosher-certified and vegan Shouk a fast-casual Israeli street food restaurant opened in Mount Vernon Square. Taim, a popular New York hummus and falafel chain from chef Einat Admony, opened in Georgetown in 2019. And Sababa, a sit-down Israeli restaurant that has earned a Bib Gourmand distinction from Michelin, opened in Cleveland Park in early 2018.

Wisemans DGS Delicatessen shuttered in 2018, but it was in DGSs basement that Little Sesame debuted in 2015. The restaurants brand of Israeli-tinged Middle Eastern cuisine was in growing demand at the time, but that food also offered a better business model than DGS. Sourcing the quality of beef we wanted and serving it at that price point thats demanded in a Jewish deli, the economics just didnt pencil, Wiseman reflected. The delicatessen is a hard model, and thats why I think youve seen it wane over time. (Wiseman also owns Hill Prince, a cocktail bar in D.C.s H Street neighborhood.)

Little Sesame storefront (Courtesy)

The high-quality beef that DGS served had become cost-prohibitive, while most of Little Sesames products are plant-based, and the only meat served at the restaurants is chicken. (The restaurants are not kosher, and Little Sesames grocery-brand hummus while vegan is also not certified kosher.)

The partners journey from a deli to an Israeli hummus restaurant could be seen as a broader trend in American Jewish food culture playing out in miniature: a move beyond Ashkenazi foods like smoked salmon and bagels to include Sephardic and Mizrahi cuisines. But Wiseman is quick to note that Little Sesames influences go beyond Israel. It is inspired by Israel, but its reflective of the food of the entire region, he said.

From the beginning, the goal of Little Sesame was to shift American perception on hummus a bit and move it into the center of the table, Wiseman explained. The first Little Sesame brick-and-mortar restaurant opened in 2018.

Wiseman pointed out that Washington, home to many immigrant communities, has always had plenty of food from the Middle East, with Lebanese and Persian restaurants across the District, Maryland and Virginia. And he urged consumers hungry for Israeli food not to compare Washingtons Israeli food scene to anywhere else, and especially not to New York.

It certainly doesnt have the riches of New York, but it doesnt have the number of people of New York, Wiseman explained. Its always a hard comparison to make.

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020, Little Sesame was doing its part in teaching Washingtonians that hummus could be a meal, and not just a dip. They had a host of competitors to help with that education. And after their in-store sales plummeted, Little Sesame is reaching a whole new audience through Whole Foods.

But Little Sesame has one more plan that will cement the lessons of the pandemic and its new remote workforce, a next step for many Washington restaurants growing out of their infancy a new location in suburban Bethesda, set to open early next year.

Its just clear people are working from home a lot more, and a neighborhood like Bethesda is, like, Live, work, play. Its kind of got everything, Wiseman said. Its a more certain bet in this market at this time.But when Little Sesame arrives in Bethesda, itll have competition. Shouk plans to open two Maryland locations, one also in Bethesda and the other in Rockville, this fall.

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Little Sesame offers an education in hummus for the Washington set - Jewish Insider

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Posted By admin on September 27, 2021

A veteran of numerous albums, University of Rhode Island classical guitarist Adam Levin had never seen one of his recordings reach the Billboard charts. Now, in the span of 10 weeks, hes done it twice landing the top spot with two different albums.

In June, Music From the Promised Land, his debut album with the mandolin and guitar chamber group Duo Mantar, reached No. 1 on Billboards Traditional Classical Albums rankings. This time its his solo work, 21st Century Spanish Guitar, Vol. 4, which topped the chart the week of Sept. 4 sharing space on a list with such marqueenames as composer John Williams, violinist Hilary Hahn, cellist Yo-Yo Maand pianist Natalie Zhu.

Im definitely in good company," said Levin, a teacher of classical guitar at URI. "Its humbling to know that Im surrounded by such powerhouse superstars, many of whom have influenced a generation or more of younger musicians.

21st Century Spanish Guitar, Vol.4, released Aug. 20 by Frameworks Records, is the culmination of 15 years of research, with Levin courting composers to write for the guitar, commissioning, and recording a repertoire that spans four generations of new Spanish composers. The four volumes include more than 30 commissioned works, almost all of which have never been previously recorded.

It really answers the critical question: What comes next in the long line of Spanish composition? said Levin. We have a wellspring of original compositions and transcriptions by Joaqun Rodrigo, Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albniz, Enrique Granados, Joaqun Turina, among others pillars of Spanish composition who established the 20th-century classical Spanishsound.

"I grew up studying this music, performing it as a young kid, and then in my mid-20s, I asked myself what does the future hold for Spanish classical music.

Levin, a protg of virtuoso Eliot Fisk at the New England Conservatory, started looking for an answer as a Fulbright Scholar in Madrid, Spain, in 2008, proposing to study and perform Spanish music written from the 20th and 21st centuries. He quickly realized that he had landed upon a new Spanish renaissance in composition, he said. The last four generations of Spanish composers were creating music as unique and vital as their storied ancestors.

The music had an unmistakable Spanish DNA, but composers were no longer only searching for the quintessential Spanish sound, but cross-pollinating with music of other cultures, genresand centuries of themes, forms and compositional styles, he said.

Other than Gabriel Estarellas Levins Fulbright mentor and professor of guitar at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Msica de Madrid no one was championing this music. So, Levin took on the mission himself.

Since 2008, he has commissioned nearly 40 new chamber and solo pieces by four generations of Spanish composers, all of which have appeared in the 21st Century Spanish Guitar series or on other recordings.

The final volume in the series a double CD set recorded in a converted masonic temple in Roslindale, Massachusetts, with engineer John Weston, and in Badajoz, Spain, with engineer Luis del Toro includes pieces from master composer Leonardo Balada, who was born in 1933; his disciple Jorge Muiz, born more than 40 years later;and composers in the years between. The 11 tracks range in style from the avant-gardein Jos Luis Turinas Arboretum, to the American bluegrass-flavor of Muizs three-part Portraits from the Heartland, to Sephardic tradition in Brotons Sonata Sefardita.

Among the highlights is the first recording of Cuban-Spanish composer Eduardo Morales-CasosConcierto de La Herradura, in which Levin is backed by the Orchestra of Extremadura under the baton of lvaro Albiach.

Along with being a touring performer,music advocate andteacher at URI and the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Levinis co-founder of the Kithara Project (kitharaproject.org), whose mission is to improve the lives of children and youth through classical guitar.

Through his now 12 albums, his goal has been to expand in the classical repertoire for future guitarists.

This project is all in vain if I cant make the connection to the next generation of guitarists," he said. "For my students, I aim to bridge the sounds and traditions of old-world Spanish music with the Spanish compositional trends of today.

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No. 1 times 2: URI guitarist has second Billboard hit in 10 weeks - The Providence Journal

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Posted By admin on September 26, 2021

JERUSALEM One night last month, a top Israeli minister traveled the winding roads of the occupied West Bank to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

The meeting between Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Mr. Abbas at the octogenarian Palestinian leaders private residence less than a 10-minute drive from the Israeli militarys regional headquarters lasted only about 90 minutes, but it immediately made waves in Israel and the West Bank.

It was the first time in more than seven years that a senior Israeli minister was known to have met with Mr. Abbas. Israels previous government, led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had denigrated Mr. Abbas as an intransigent inciter of violence and never met with him.

The August meeting is the most prominent piece of evidence of a new, more cooperative approach to dealing with the Palestinian Authority, which senior members of Israels new government see as a bulwark against the Islamist militant group Hamas.

Since the government took office in June, other ministers have met with their Palestinian counterparts and Israeli officials said they were taking an array of concrete steps to benefit Palestinians economically, to increase security cooperation and to change some policies that had been denounced as discriminatory.

The Palestinian Authority is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and we are working to strengthen the P.A., Mr. Gantz told diplomats at a recent briefing.

But the budding entente has clear limits, given that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has ruled out the possibility of peace talks and the creation of a Palestinian state. Those constraints have led some critics to characterize his government as a kind of Netanyahu-lite and to attack the Palestinian Authority for going along with the new measures.

Still, the policy represents a major shift from the recent Netanyahu years, when the government frequently undermined the Palestinian Authority and threatened to annex large parts of the West Bank, leading the authority to break off security cooperation with Israel. And the Biden administration is pressing both governments to improve relations as a step toward peace, even if no peace talks are in the offing.

In addition to the Gantz-Abbas meeting, two government ministers and President Isaac Herzog have spoken to Mr. Abbas by phone and at least five ministers have met with senior Palestinian officials.

The government is also taking a host of practical steps that are likely to improve the lives of many Palestinians.

The government has agreed to grant residency to thousands of undocumented family members of Palestinians in the West Bank who have lived in limbo without any formal legal status, often for years, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

Last month, Israel moved to approve the construction of about 1,000 new Palestinian housing units in an Israeli-controlled section of the occupied West Bank, an area where the government has rarely allowed Palestinians to build.

The government lent the authority $156 million to help it through a financial crunch, Israels regional cooperation minister, Esawi Frej, said. And it has increased by 15,000 the quota of Palestinian laborers allowed to work in Israel, where the minimum wage is about three times as high as it is in Palestinian communities.

The Israeli army has provided Palestinian security forces with more freedom of movement in areas under Israeli security control, according to an Israeli security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Palestinian officers had complained that the need for Israeli permission to enter certain areas had stymied active criminal investigations.

The army is reducing Israeli raids into areas under Palestinian security control, the official said.

Israel and the authority have started high-level discussions about introducing 4G cellphone technology to the occupied territories, officials said. Palestinian telecommunications companies need Israel to release frequencies they can use for the service. The West Bank currently has 3G, while Gaza is still limping along with 2G.

Mr. Frej said Israel was also reviewing potential economic development projects in the West Bank.

Palestinians are largely happy with the new policies, with 56 percent considering them to be positive, according to a poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research on Tuesday.

Haitham al-Natsheh, 34, a Hebron resident who has had no legal status since 1991, said he was overcome with joy when he heard that Israel would provide residency to people like him.

It was a sweet feeling, he said. We have lived through so many problems. Honestly, if there are any measures meant to make our lives easier, we support them.

Nimrod Novik, an analyst for the Israeli Policy Forum, said the new policies marked a dramatic departure from the strategy of Netanyahu, who would weaken the authority to the point of collapse before letting it breathe.

As beneficial as the new approach may be for Palestinians, the Israeli governments blunt rejection of Palestinian statehood has opened it to criticism that it is offering only a gentler version of the Netanyahu vision of the Palestinian conflict as a problem to be managed rather than resolved.

Mr. Bennett has said that he opposes Palestinian statehood, and last week declared that he would not meet with Mr. Abbas.

But even if he changed his mind, any move to start negotiations toward statehood would likely bring down the government, a fragile coalition of diverse parties with mutually exclusive positions on the issue.

That closed door has led to accusations that Mr. Abbas was forsaking Palestinian nationalism to accept what critics call an economic peace.

Islamist groups have lashed out at him for meeting with Mr. Gantz, while secular critics have accused him of collaborating with the Israeli occupation.

Its astonishing, said Nasser al-Qudwa, the former Palestinian envoy to the United Nations and the nephew of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. They are willing to engage in this process which is void of any recognition of Palestinian national rights.

Even as the Israeli government takes steps to improve the Palestinian economy and security, it has pledged to continue expanding settlements in the West Bank. It has also continued to demolish Palestinian homes built without permits in areas where permits are rarely issued, and to use a heavy hand against Palestinians at protests and clashes.

A spokesman for Mr. Abbas did not respond to a request for comment, but Sabri Saidam, the deputy secretary general of the Fatah Central Committee, said that Mr. Abbas rejects the criticism that he is selling out the Palestinian dream of statehood for the sake of economic stability.

People who have spoken to Mr. Abbas recently said he understands the political limits of Israels current government and accepts these cooperative measures as a good starting point for engagement.

He is also following the guidance of the Biden administration, which is promoting the measures as part of what it casts as a long-term process to advance efforts to end the conflict and achieve a two-state solution.

In a prerecorded speech to the United Nations on Friday, Mr. Abbas appeared to refer to those steps, saying we will strive to succeed in this endeavor so as to create conditions conducive to moving swiftly towards a final political settlement that ends the Israeli occupation.

But he also set a deadline for that settlement. Calling for an international peace conference to resolve the conflict, he gave Israel an ultimatum of one year to withdraw from the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, or he would seek a ruling from the International Court of Justice on the legality of the occupation.

American officials acknowledge the current limits about what may be viable and what may be on the table, as the State Department spokesman Ned Price put it last week, and are focused on trying to improve conditions for Palestinians and relations between the Israeli and Palestinian governments.

President Biden, speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, reaffirmed his support for a two-state solution, adding, Were a long way from that goal at this moment, but we must never allow ourselves to give up on the possibility of progress.

Some analysts have argued that an approach that begins with a focus on the economy could pave the way for the authority to gain more autonomy.

Small economic initiatives could help build the trust needed to open the door to more consequential changes like Israeli authorities permitting Palestinian tax officials to be present at ports or granting Palestinians greater freedom of movement, said Joel Braunold, the managing director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace in Washington.

This process could allow for the Palestinian Authority to lock in real wins, he said. It could lead to changes that make a real difference in the lives of average Palestinians.

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In Reversal, Israels New Government Engages With Palestinian Authority - The New York Times

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Posted By admin on September 26, 2021

Zebulon Simantov, the famed last Jew of Afghanistan, is getting ready to hit the Big Apple.

I like everything in New York. Everything is exciting, Simantov, 62, told The Post in his first interview since fleeing Afghanistan two weeks ago. I would like to be a US citizen.

The wily former carpet dealer and his backers in New York City are actively trying to secure travel documents for him to come to the US. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been lobbied intensely over the issue.

Schumers office told The Post they were working on the case.

If all goes according to plan, Simantov will stay with relatives in Queens.

I am a businessman, Ill do business there, Simantov said.

He added that hes looking forward to a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch ($225-plus per bottle) when he arrives.

The Afghan native stuck it out in the war-torn country through decades of turmoil, including the Soviet invasion, The Taliban, the US-backed government, and the return of the Taliban last month.

I sensed something terrible was going to happen to Afghanistan, Simantov said. The Taliban is much crueler than ever before. They kill people now like killing small animals.

On Thursday the Taliban announced that executions, hand amputations and other Quran-era punishments would return.

Simantov blamed both US political parties for the countrys descent into chaos.

[Biden] left so fast and he left people behind The terrorist groups were celebrating when the Taliban toppled the Afghan government, Simantov said, while also calling former President Trump a madman.

He added: I request that American citizens not vote for either Trump or President Biden in the next election in 2024.

He urged the American people not to forget about the country, and specifically the millions of vulnerable women now at risk under the Taliban.

Simantovs wife and her family left Afghanistan for Uzbekistan and ultimately Israel in 1995. Simantov said she had been suffering from seizures.

It was impossible for me to follow her. She was ill, he recalled. The two technically remained married under Jewish law and Simantov only signed the papers granting a divorce (known as a get) last week.

He denied reports he had resisted granting his wife the get in the past, saying the complex procedure had been logistically impossible in Afghanistan during his time there.

After initially thinking about trying his luck with the Islamists again, Simantov was persuaded to flee, and set off on a days-long overland journey into a neighboring country.

His departure marks the end of the 1,500-year-old Jewish community in Afghanistan. Simantov became the last Jew in the country after the death of Yitzhak Levy in 2005.

The two famously hated each other and would regularly denounce the other to Taliban authorities. Time had not healed the feelings.

He turned the synagogue of the Jewish community over there to a prostitution house, Simantov snapped when asked about him.

Simantovs rescue was arranged by Israeli-American businessman Moti Kahana, who organized the international effort from his cattle farm in Randolph, N.J. Kahana has also played a role in dozens of other rescues of vulnerable Afghans from the country.

But Kahana said he had become frustrated with the delays in getting Simantov to America and that the issue was distracting him from being able to focus on other cases.

Im not a babysitter, Kahana said, saying he couldnt just keep Simantov in a hotel room forever and that finding kosher food for him to eat was impossible.

He is losing a lot of weight eating vegetables, Kahana said.

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Last Jew of Afghanistan heading to New York City - New York Post

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