Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 26, 2021

Rising antisemitism, Germanys relationship with Israel, pensions for aging Soviet immigrants these are just some of the issues Jewish voters across Germany are considering before casting their vote in Sundays federal election.

The nation is replacing the retiring Chancellor Angela Merkel aftera monumental 16 years in the position. Thelatest polls suggesta change in power is at hand, as the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) has pulled ahead with 25-27 percent of the vote, which would put current Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz in charge of building a parliamentary coalition. Merkels center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and her successor Armin Laschet lag just behind at 20-23 percent, while Anna Baerbock and the progressive Greens are hovering around 15-17 percent.

Jews make up far less than 1 percent of Germanys population of 83 million, and for many, Jewish issues pale in comparison to some that the entire country is wrestling with, such as climate change and growing social inequalities.

But in some cases, Jewish issues have become national ones, and vice versa.

We spoke to a range of Jewish voters about what they are thinking about as they head to the ballot box.

Differences in nuance only

IT consultant Herbert Lappe, 75, has been a member of Dresdens local Jewish community since his parents immigrated to Germany in 1949. He doesnt believe the main issues of this election differ for Jews and non-Jews in Germany. He is specifically focused on climate change and social justice, and on those issues, there are clear differences among the parties vying for the chancellery and seats in the Bundestag.

But on particularly Jewish issues, such asrising antisemitismand Germanys relationship with Israel, Lappe doesnt see much of a difference between parties (excluding theright-wing Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which he does not consider to be a democratic party).

All of the other parties differentiate themselves in nuance only, Lappe said. Theres no preference from a Jewish point of view.

Valentina Marcenaro, the 48-year-old director of Dresdens Youth and Art School, agreed.

Im not sure if theres such a stratospheric distinction between Jews and non-Jews in voting, she said.

But for her, being Jewish in Germany means supporting tolerance, supporting diversity and being aware of the needs of minorities.

That sentiment rings true for Henrike Vogels, a 22-year-old student enrolled at two Berlin universities. Born and raised just outside of Hanover in central Germany, Vogels and her family didnt engage much with their Jewishness growing up. But in Berlin, Vogels has found a home with Base Hillel Deutschland, a pluralistic organization aimed at engaging young Jews. She says that more publicly identifying as Jewish and queer, combined with studying Torah, has influenced her political perspective specifically, how politics and elections can impact minorities. For these reasons and more, Vogels has a clear preference in Sundays vote.

I wish for a coalition that is between the Green Party, the Left Party, and the Social Democratic Party because I think they are the most progressive, she said, noting that she will cast her vote for the Greens. We need this progressive voice and I hope that they adhere to their promises of more social justice and climate justice.

Vogels will also be eagerly anticipating the results ofa referendum to expropriate up to 243,000 apartments in Berlin from corporate landlords, an initiative that has picked up steam as the citys housing prices have increased.

However the election turns out, Vogels said she will continue to deepen her connection to her Jewish identity through German politics.

Theres a sense, especially in my generation, that we need to be more involved, she said. The perspectives of minorities are overlooked more often than they are not so we need to raise our voices.

Jews and the AfD

Not every party with members in parliament is running a candidate for chancellor. Smaller parties such the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), The Left (Die Linke), and AfD are fighting for votes that will give them a possible role in a ruling coalition in the Bundestag though all of the other small parties have vowed not to govern with AfD.

Jewish support for AfD is rare, but it exists.

A group for Jews in AfD launched in October 2018, nearly a year after the previous federal election, in which the party picked up 12.6 percent of the vote the third-largest share in the country. Most polls currently have them at 11 percent, fourth overall.

Many dismiss the group, pointing out that itlaunched with just 24 members. Artur Abramovych, the groups 25-year-old chairman, admitted in an email that he has not been able to recruit any new full members since 2018. He blames the news in early 2019 that Germanys domestic intelligence agency was considering placing AfD under surveillance and giving the government more power to monitor the partys communications. The discussion alone scared away potential members, Abramovych said. (In March 2021,German courts suspended the surveillancefollowing a court challenge from the party.)

But not everyone. Kazakhstan-born Oleg Bam, 53, voices his support for the AfD without hesitation. In a phone conversation, Bam, a software developer in Frankfurt, said he blames immigrants for the rise in antisemitism. He dismissed the right-wing extremist who attacked the Halle synagogue on Yom Kippur two years ago as an isolated incident.

The Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS), which monitors the countrys antisemitic incidents, disagrees with that characterization of the Halle attack. It primarily blames right-wing extremism, populism and the rise of conspiracy theories some of them related to the COVID-19 pandemic for the rise in antisemitic incidents in Germany in recent years. However, RIAS also firmly believes that antisemitism is a society-wide phenomenon.

There have been numerous reports of antisemitic incidents leading up to the election, said Alexander Rasumny, a spokesperson for RIAS. In many cases, its someone smearing a campaign poster of a candidate from the Greens, SPD, The Left, or CDU and marking them as Jewish and/or trivializing the Shoah by comparing it to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite being a refugee himself as one of the more than 200,000 Kontigentsflchtlinge, or contingent refugees who immigrated to Germany from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s Bam sees no connection between historical Jewish persecution and the situation of the hundreds of thousands who ended up in Germany after fleeing Syrias civil war.

Theyre economic immigrants, not refugees, he said. They want a better life, I understand that, but Germany is not aSozialamt[social services office].

While Bam insists that every Jew he knows among his family and friends supports AfD, broader support for the party among Jews appears to be minimal. The Central Council of Jews in Germany and dozens of other Jewish organizationshave issued a statement discouraging Jews from voting for the AfD, alleging that antisemitism and right-wing extremism have found a home in the party.

In a follow-up email, Bam claimed that German media is censored by globalist American leftists.

The lasting impact of the 2015 refugee crisis

We can do this! Merkelfamously exclaimed in 2015, as she declared that Germany would take in hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. The decision would sharply split German society, and according to many observers, leave a political opening for the AfD and galvanize far-right extremists.

The move was a sticking point for Eli Maetzschker, a Jewish student at Touro College Berlin, a Jewish university affiliated with the American Touro college network. He plans to immigrate to Israel next year and serve in the countrys military. Though he insists his primary motivation to make aliyah is his connection to Israel as the Jewish homeland, he also says that 2015 played a role in his decision.

I suffered, said the 22-year-old from Berlin. When I was in high school, I got attacked not just verbally but also physically by Muslims.

Maetzschker said that some of those who attacked him were refugees. Others were born and raised in Berlin.

According to government statistics, relatively few antisemitic incidents have been perpetrated by people who came to Germany during the immigration crisis that began in 2011. But one such asylum seeker was involved in the deadliest Islamist terror attack on German soil,a car ramming at a Christmas market in 2016that killed 12 people. A 16-year-old Syrian refugee was arrested recently on suspicion thathe planned to attack a synagogue near Dsseldorfon Yom Kippur.

Maetzschker believes that 2015 marked the start of a leftward political shift among most of the leading German parties. He argued that the CDU shifted extremely into leftist positions under those 16 years of Merkel. That said, he is still a supporter of Armin Laschet, CDUs chancellor candidate, and is hoping for a coalition of CDU and FDP, another center-right party.

If we lose the center completely, he said. I dont even want to imagine this situation, because in the end, the Jews are always the losers. So it doesnt matter. If they are leftist or extreme right-wing, we will lose.

Jewish life in politics

Jewish voters are German voters, said Jerusalem-born Daniel Navon, a 22-year-old student active with the Green Youth in Hamburg, a youth organization connected with the Greens. In that vein, he sees some Jewish issues as national ones.

Many of the Soviet Jews who immigrated to Germany in the early 1990s who make up the overwhelming majority of Jews in the country today are still in poverty. The Greens prioritizestabilizing and protecting the countrys pension system.

Many descendants of the Kontigentflchtlinge have parents and family with a low pension, he said. So this is a big topic for Jewish voters.

Navon also mentioned Germanys relationship with Israel something Merkel prioritized as an important issue Jews will continue to watch. And he referred specifically to the recentattempted Yom Kippur synagogue attackin talking about the rising antisemitic atmosphere on the ground.

Things like that compel the Jewish community to advocate for specific policies, said Navon. And not just to respond to extreme examples of antisemitism, but to everyday antisemitism and discrimination as well.

Its not only the big attacks, though, that Navon is worried about he points to the fact that German students are forced to take school exams during Jewish holidays as an example of everyday antisemitism.

Institutional structures in Germany must improve in including Jewish life, he said.

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What Jews are voting for in Germanys national elections - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on September 26, 2021

The Doll, published in 1890 (republished with NYRB, trans. David J. Welsh, 1996), is Polish master writer Bolesaw Pruss long, sweeping, fin-de-sicle work that collects all the shiny literary objects of the 19th century, in good magpie style, and displays them between its pages. We have the Dickensian court cases, full of humorous asides, and slapstick pranks. There is the ill-used lover lying down, in despair, on the train tracks, along with the battles of the Napoleonic wars, both in the tradition of Tolstoy. We encounter the Woman Question as debated in the oeuvres of Eliot and the Bronts, Turgenev, and Tolstoy again; the imagining of a future world, full of flying machines, as in Vernes science fiction; and the class system and attendant figure of the upstart, or as it was called, the parvenu (a topic still popular decades laterthink of Gatsby!). But for our purposes, I want to highlight one of Pruss strongest preoccupationsnot only his, but so many of his generation: the Jewish problem.

On the surface, Jews have no meaningful role in The Doll, which recounts, primarily, the story of Stanisaw Wokulski, a generous and ambitious man who, from his early days as a server in a restaurant, makes his way up the ranks to become a great entrepreneur, a millionaire who entertains duchesses and countesses but can never convince the love of his life that he is worthy of her. The titular doll is the love interest of Wokulski; Izabela is beautiful, shallow, impoverished, and haughty, a picture of the dying aristocracy. Although Izabela is not in any way stupidin fact, the back-cover blurbs are misleading, with Phillip Lopates description of Izabela as an airhead saying more about Lopates gender politics than Prussshe, like the class she represents, would rather disappear into oubliettes of history than wed with the humble working man. Below a tradesman like Wokulski there is only one creature more base, more feared, more reviled: the Jew.

Below a tradesman like Wokulski there is only one creature more base, more feared, more reviled: the Jew.

We must then ask the question: Is The Doll a work of antisemitism? Surprisingly, the answer is no, not really, despite the ungenerous portrayal of Jews throughout. After all, there is a distinction between antisemitic writing and writing about antisemitism. From the second page of The Doll on, we hear Warsaw residents grumbling that only the Germans and the Jews get rich from Army trade. The working class wonder which is worsethe Jews or the nobility? A new employee at Wokulskis store is instantly liked when his colleagues see how fervent an antisemite he is. Repeatedly, we read complaints about the pungent, garlicky odor of Jews, their greasiness, their ability to attract fleas. They are accused of being money-hungry, which is a great irony in a novel full of money-obsessed characters (only the Jews are disdained for their materialism).

RzeckiWokulskis employee and friend, whose diary entries are interspersed in the narrativedoes his best to be fair-minded. He observes that the dislike of the Hebrews is increasing; even people who, a few years ago, called them Poles of the Mosaic persuasion, now call them Jews. And those who recently admired their hard work, their persistence, and their talents, today only see their exploitation and deceit. Rzecki writes about Warsaws blood libels; a one-time fighter in the Napoleonic wars for libert, egalit, fraternit, Rzecki, hearing these rumors, stops to wonder whether my youth was a dream.

Of his colleague Szlangbaum, Rzecki has sympathy, admitting Szlangbaum is a decent citizen in the fullest sense, yet no one likes him since he has the misfortune to be a Hebrew. Ultimately, however, Rzecki also turns against Szlangbaum, who buys the store from Wokulski and hires fellow Jews to run it. The ending of the novel (spoiler alert), in which the aristocracy, failing to give Wokulski his due, realizes they have traded the devil they know (the Christian parvenu) for the devil they dont (the Jew), suggests that at heart The Doll is a cautionary tale. Watch out, or the Jews will rule the world. And yet.

Of his colleague Szlangbaum, Rzecki has sympathy, admitting Szlangbaum is a decent citizen in the fullest sense, yet no one likes him since he has the misfortune to be a Hebrew.

Still, Wokulski, the hero, appears to be devoid of antisemitism. His retorts to anti-Jewish sentiment are sharp and consistent. And importantly, so too, it seems, is the omniscient narratorwhich tells us that Pruss novel is more engaged with chronicling rising antisemitism than (re)producing it (indeed the narrative ends just before the wave of pogroms that swept through Poland in the early 1880s, instigating large-scale immigration to the U.S.). Moreover, if Jews worm (to use a verb favored by Rzecki) their way into every plotline and nearly every page of the novel, it is mainly because they offer such a good metaphor for the primary focus of the novelthe parvenu. This is perhaps not surprising. The figure of the parvenu was, in the nineteenth century, tinged with Jewishness; one might even say Jews were the parvenus of parvenus.

Over a hundred and thirty years after its initial publication, The Doll remains an interesting artefact of life in the late-nineteenth century. Ironically, the self-made millionaire is now almost entirely without controversy (if anything, more people admire Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk than, say, the British royals). The figure of the Jew, however, remains an ideological battlefield.

Karen E. H. Skinazi, PhD, is a senior lecturer and the director of Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol (UK) and the author of Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture.

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The Parvenu and the JewObjects of Scorn in Bolesaw Prus's Classic Polish Novel, The Doll - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on September 26, 2021

Before last summer, I could have readily given you the names of three death camps. I could not, however, have given you the names of three Yiddish authors, masters of the Yiddish language, speakers of which constituted more than 80 percent of those who perished in said death camps. Dara Horn ponders this discrepancy of knowledge in her latest book People Love Dead Jews, asking What was the point of caring so much about how people died, if one cared so little about how they lived?

Horns point is an uncomfortable one, as its an indictment of the Jewish institutions and organizations that seek to serve as the glue of our community. In the reform Jewish world in which I grew up, many young Jews are secularizing, and by recognizing how many of them know the words Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor, instead of, rather than in addition to, Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, and Mokher Seforim, clearly the ways in which our Jewish education has been constructed to emphasize victimhood over peoplehood have not been productive.

To illustrate this problem, this summer I picked up a copy of Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, a 1934 novel that tells the story of David, an eight-year-old Jewish boy living in the immigrant slums of the Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. Throughout the novel, David is forced to contend with a variety of challenges: an abusive father, a secretive mother, a strict rabbi at his local cheder, and the general rough and tumble of early Jewish life in New York tenements. And yet still, I put down Roths book unsatisfied, a tad disappointed that this particular work of fiction did not bring the bravado and profound meaning that the Jewish books Im comfortable with are notorious for providing. The book has anything but a Hollywood style beginning, middle, and endDavids life is told more in the form of episodes or snapshots, without any clear universalist message to offer readers. Little did I know, this was far from abnormal in Jewish literature.

One of the sections of Horns book that struck me as most interesting is her analysis of the separation of norms between Jewish authors and Christian authors. Whereas writers in the Christian world are more focused on crafting their tales with coherence and meaning, Jewish authors have often tended away from providing fully-realized endings or redemptive storylines, opting instead to paint the world as it truly is: nuanced and complex. Much of Jewish literature, including works such as Sholom Aleichems Tevye and the Dairy Man stories, have to be dramatized into separate scripts such as Fiddler on the Roof simply because, for those of used to a more contemporary mode of storytelling, the characters do not offer us satisfying moments of grace and instead live their lives as any normal Jew would: trying to stay out of trouble.

As I read Call it Sleep, I expected David to encounter antisemitism and prejudice in New York, to find a grand connection between Talmud and his family, or for his life to be revealed as a fantastic metaphor. But Roth offers none of this. The novel is less about being a Jewish immigrant than it is about simply being an immigrant: a stranger in a strange land. A New York Times review of Call It Sleep from 1964 notes that the books critics must have felt that the severe detachment with which Roth presented the inner life of a Jewish immigrant boy between the ages of 6 and 8 was an evasion of the social needs of the moment, later adding that the novel ends without any explicit moral statement one has lived through a completeness of rendered life, and all one need do is silently to acknowledge its truth.

Our greatest literary writers, instead of polishing their tales with life lessons and conclusive endings, have historically preserved Jewish life in its truest sense.

Our greatest literary writers, instead of polishing their tales with life lessons and conclusive endings, have historically preserved Jewish life in its truest sense. They offer us a yiddishkeit that portrays Jews, rather than what happened to Jews. A great deal of our understanding of Jewish culture comes from what happened to the Jews, abandoning the most important aspect of our faiththe ritual, day-to-day life of our ancestors who sustained our traditions for millennia.

Many of us have been conditioned to perceive this as boring and meaningless, as I did reading Roth, and many of our teachers have decided that reading Dershowitz and watching Schindlers List is more constructive to forming a Jewish identity than discussing the Mishnah or the meaning of Chagalls paintings. This is a mistake, for a sense of identity solely built upon conflict, tragedy and politics cannot withstand.

Perhaps this is the genesis of the rising anti-Zionist and even anti-Jewish attitudes among young Jews today, a backlash against the lack of cultural literacy that come with the American Diaspora experience. If we perceive ourselves as victims first, Israel as only a resolution to the Holocaust, Shabbat prayers as only an exercise in muscle memory without any historical knowledge of the weight of the words, the once thought to be everlasting light of Jewish life in America will dim.

Blake Flayton is New Media Director and columnist at the Jewish Journal.

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On Living and Dead Jews - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on September 26, 2021

Bob Braudy wasnt yet 10 years old when somebody painted a swastika on the steps leading up to his familys house in Yonkers, New York.

That stuck with me, he said.

In his teenage years, he recalls overhearing his parents talk in hushed tones in the kitchen about how his dad was being passed over for promotions because he was Jewish.

As an adult, while he was consulting for a trucking company, somebody in leadership referenced a contract and told him, I need you to Jew them down.

He didnt mean it offensively. It was a microaggression. I didnt know how to answer that, he said. Now, at 78, he would know what to say, especially having been involved with the Anti-Defamation League for about three years. Passionate about uplifting the Jewish community and doing what he can to eliminate bias and antisemitism, Braudy recently helped launch a series of interfaith conversations in Flagstaff.

If Jews continue to look inward, were not going to be around, he said. We have to look at how we can participate in and be valued members of the community.

In 2017, Braudy met Pastor Adam Barnhart of Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran church while volunteering with the Coconino County Sheriffs Search and Rescue Unit. Their shared interest in search and rescue and passion for their faith communities brought them together.

In 2019, they were both involved with Violins of Hope, a program involving a traveling private collection of violins, violas and cellos that belonged to Jews before and during World War II.

Working with the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix and the Arizona Community Foundation, Braudy brought the instruments to Flagstaff and created a two-day educational and concert program: one for students and one for adults. The adult program was hosted at Barnharts church. It was a community event about the beauty that man can create with music contrasted with the horrors he can perpetrate, Braudy said.

Braudy and Barnhart were both moved by the experience, and decided to collaborate to make more opportunities for cultural and religious exchanges.

They planned a Ladke and Lefse for their faith communities to talk about the different foods, how theyre prepared and the symbolism behind them.

It was going to bring the communities together around carbs, because carbs unite everybody, Barnhart joked.

COVID has indefinitely delayed that event. Barnhart said a few members of his congregation were especially disappointed and brainstormed some ways the two faith communities could mingle during COVID.

The idea came up of having these studies together of these stories in the Hebrew Scriptures that are part of our scriptures as well, Barnhart said.

Congregation Lev Shalom Rabbi Emerita Nina Perlmutter and Pastor Adam Barnhart of Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran church were in a virtual presentation about Jonah and the Whale in March.

Braudy thought it was a damn good idea and asked Congregation Lev Shalom Rabbi Emerita Nina Perlmutter if she would get involved.

She didnt hesitate. Her father, Nathan Perlmutter, was the executive director of the ADL from 1979 to 1987, so I grew up really valuing interfaith conversations.

Perlmutter and Barnhart got to work choosing from a list of Bible stories selected by the church congregants who first came up with the idea. They held their first virtual presentation in March. Theyve held four more Shared Stories since, with about 40 people attending each time. The next discussion will be about Adam, Eve and the Serpent and is set for Wed., October 13, which Perlmutter noted lines up well with the Jewish calendar.

Braudy feels these events help to build understanding and respect between the two faith communities. Shared Stories is about listening: listening to what others think and why and what they believe. And not critiquing, just accepting thats their view of the world, he said. The effort has brought the community closer and shows people with disparate views can still get together and learn from each other.

Barnhart has enjoyed learning about how the Jewish calendar emphasizes biblical texts at different times. Theyre not just a Sunday school lesson that you did 30 years ago, but theyre really alive and have great import. Its just so cool to see those stories in that completely different light, he said.

Perlmutter has been impressed with how familiar Barnharts congregants are with the stories they are discussing.

Many of the people there probably know a lot more about the stories than many Jews I know, so Ive been impressed with that. Ive also been impressed by their honest curiosity, she said.

Barnhart hopes the relationship building that comes out of Shared Stories will lead to bigger and better things, like doing service projects together.

In the meantime, he said these dialogues are happening in an important time, when the country is so polarized on political, social and moral issues.

Everything seems to be driven to the edges, and radicalized. And these conversations are about meeting in the middle, he said. JN

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Flagstaff's Jewish and Christian communities come together to 'share stories' - Jewish News of Greater Phoenix

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Posted By admin on September 24, 2021

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but the women I work with are reminded about their breast cancer every day.

Im an occupational therapist, breast cancer exercise specialist and exercise instructor. I created Pink Ribbon 360 to help breast cancer survivors recover physically and emotionally through specialized exercise programs.

Every woman with breast cancer has her own journey. Two women may have the same type of breast cancer, the same surgeries, chemotherapies and hormone therapies, but each womans journey how her body responds and the impact it has on her life can be very different. Let me take you through the journey of one woman, who I will call Emily, to make this disease more tangible.

In April 2020, Emily was 41, lived alone, was active in a few community groups and worked in an office. Of late, her job became remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She exercised regularly and ate a healthy diet.

When she went for her usual mammogram, it showed a shadow on her breast. She was devastated, though not surprised, when she was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer. She had inherited the BRCA1 positive gene mutation, which gave her a higher chance of getting breast cancer and/or ovarian cancer.

People of Ashkenazi Jewish descent have a higher likelihood of having a positive BRCA gene mutation. Minkoff Center for Jewish Genetics is a great resource in Greater Phoenix for genetic screening for women of Ashkenazi descent.

Finding out she had breast cancer and that she needed surgery was traumatic enough, however, finding this out during the pandemic made the process lonelier, scarier and riskier.

In June, Emily went through a double mastectomy. She then began five months of chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy and surgery can cause a lot of side effects. Emily experienced numbness in her fingers and toes which caused her balance to be off and she had difficulty holding onto her hot cups of tea, which she enjoyed regularly.

She had lymph nodes removed to make sure the cancer hadnt spread, which caused her to have lymphedema, a build-up of fluid in soft body tissue, in one arm. This came with pain, discomfort and tightness. She worked with a lymphedema therapist for 6 weeks to resolve the swelling.

Emily lost her hair and toenails, which was very painful. She couldnt reach over her head and was extremely tired and fatigued, which prevented her from exercising.

Once she finished chemotherapy, she thought shed begin to feel better and recover quickly. But this is where depression, anxiety and fear often increase. This surprised her, as it does many people. Emily was busy during her treatments, so it wasnt until afterward that the feelings of emotional trauma hit her. She also felt guilty because she was depressed while her family and friends were congratulating her on being done.

Her body was free of the cancer, but she didnt feel free. She still had difficulty moving, and experienced pain and weakness throughout her body. She was tired of asking for help. She wanted to be independent. She felt alone and blamed herself for not being better physically and emotionally.

Emily heard of Pink Ribbon 360 through a support group in town called Bosom Buddies. We began to work together virtually in May 2021. Emilys doctors told her she should exercise while going through chemotherapy and afterward. Studies show exercise can decrease cancer recurrence and mortality by 40%. It also can help with the side effects experienced during treatments.

However, the doctors dont realize that their patients need support and guidance to exercise safely, even if they exercised before cancer. Emily was extremely tired; she didnt know safe exercises to do and wasnt comfortable going to a gym.

We began with gentle stretches and exercises in a chair and progressed to core stability exercises on the floor, full body cardio movements and we are moving towards resistance work. Our sessions are private and focus on her goals and needs. Shes been introduced to meditation, breathing and self-massage techniques.

Talking with a specialist allowed her to feel understood. She accepted that she wasnt at the physical strength she was prior to her diagnosis, and she began to appreciate the improvements she is making. Some days are better than others. She continues to have fears of the cancer returning. That fear is coupled with the challenge of staying healthy through a pandemic. But the fear doesnt control her life.

When we first began working together, Emilys goals were to wash her hair on her own, get up from a chair easily and have more energy throughout her day. Today, Emily can do those things. Shes able to work a full day and is stronger throughout her body.

Its important to remember that Emilys story is unique and breast cancer affects people differently. Emilys journey isnt over, but she sees how far shes come and wont stop until shes thriving, not just surviving. JN

Teri Friedland, OTR/L, BCES, is the founder of Pink Ribbon 360. For more information, visit pinkribbon360.com.

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A glimpse into one woman's journey surviving breast cancer - Jewish News of Greater Phoenix

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Posted By admin on September 24, 2021

Thousands gathered at the Western Wall on Wednesday morning for the traditional Sukkot Priestly Blessing.

Present for the ceremony were Israels Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis, David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef, as well as Rabbi of the Western Wall Shmuel Rabinovitch.

Security and religious authorities warned ahead of time that if the Western Wall Plaza became too crowded, entrance to both the Old City and the plaza itself would be barred. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation has appealed to the public not to attend the blessing on both Wednesday and Thursday, to allow as many people as possible to take part in the ceremony.

Jerusalem District Police are on alert for the holiday, with hundreds of police officers, Border Police and police volunteers fanned out across the city. Multiple security checkpoints have been set up at the entrances to the Western Wall area in an attempt to handle the expected crowds.

The public has been asked not to drive their personal vehicles to the Old City during Sukkot. Transportation options include buses, shuttles and the light rail. Visitors are urged to follow police instructions as well as COVID regulations, including wearing masks at gatherings or prayer ceremonies.

This article first appeared inIsrael Hayom.

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Thousands gather at Western Wall for Sukkot Priestly Blessing - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By admin on September 24, 2021

Hundreds of guests came to the Carmel Center last Sunday to take part in the opening events of the 37th Haifa International Film Festival.

While last years festival was held online due to the coronavirus, this years festival has been an in-person event. The opening event included a cocktail party in Hecht Park and a ceremony in the Haifa Auditorium, hosted by actor Lior Ashkenazi and accompanied by the Haifa Big Band Orchestra.

The mayor of Haifa, Einat Klish-Rotem, welcomed attendees, which was followed by the presentation of a lifetime achievement award to producer, entrepreneur, and owner of Cinema City and United King Films, Moshe Edri.

The award was given to Edri for his special and long-standing contribution to Israeli cinema, the local film industry and Israeli culture. Edri, who was greatly moved by the award, expressed his thanks and mentioned his brother and partner, the late Leon Edri, who passed away several years ago.

On the opening night, Stillwater, the film by Oscar-winning director Tom McCarthy was screened, and McCarthy sent a videotaped greeting to the events attendees. The film will be distributed later this year for screening in Lev theatres around the country.

Enjoying the film celebration: Igal Zeevi, CEO of Ethos - the Haifa Municipality Art, Culture and Sports Association Company, Pnina Blair, legendary director of the festival, who currently serves as the festivals honorary president, Artistic Director Yaron Shamir, Pnina Edri, Solange Edri, Avi Edri, Sir Ronald Cohen and Sharon Harel, Muki Gridinger, Dr. Jean-Jacques Pierrat, director of the French Institute in Israel and his wife Sophie Heckel, Stefan Tula, French Consul in Haifa and others.

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Hundreds arrive in style to attend Haifa International Film Festival - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on September 24, 2021

For much of the past decade, the residents of Givat Amal, a small working class Mizrahi neighborhood in wealthy north Tel Aviv, have been anxious about their fate. In 2014, police violently evicted 80 of Givat Amals families to make way for luxury apartment blocks spread across 20 plots of land. Today, 45 of the families who remain in the neighborhood do not know when the authorities will come for them.

The Tel Aviv District Court issued further eviction orders in 2020, ruling that all Givat Amals residents must leave their homes in exchange for a combined payment of NIS 42 million shekels ($13 million) from El-Ad Group, an American real estate company based in Israel (separate from the settler group that operates in East Jerusalem).

But on August 9, just 24 hours before 20 of those eviction orders became valid, the residents received notice from the Israeli authorities that the eviction had been postponed to an unknown date. The delay came after weeks of vocal opposition by activists, as well as a large protest that included blocking main roads in the city and pressure from Knesset members and government ministers.

The postponement seemed to mean residents could finally breathe easier. But last month, authorities issued another round of eviction orders for November, when it is widely believed the police will try to evict the remaining residents of Givat Amal.

The story of Givat Amal encapsulates the story of the State of Israel: the flight of Palestinians from their villages and their transformation into perpetual refugees, the racism and structural discrimination faced by Mizrahi immigrants, and Israels turn toward a form of hyper-capitalism that puts the profits of billionaires before the lives of the working and middle class.

Kaduri Halif stands between the rubble of his destroyedhome in Givat Amal, Tel Aviv, September 18, 2014. (Keren Manor/Activestills)

Today, Givat Amal is a Jewish neighborhood located near the wealthy area of Bavli in north Tel Aviv. It was established on the ruins of the Palestinian village of al-Jammasin al-Gharbi, whose Muslim residents had lived there since at least the 18th century; by 1948, it had a population of 1,250 across 337 acres of land. The village children studied at the nearby Sheikh Muwannis school and the residents made their living from tending to water buffaloes (who gave the village its namesake), and growing citrus, bananas, and grain. Half of the villages land was bought by Jews before the establishment of the State of Israel.

By March 1948, while the British Mandate was still in effect, all of al-Jammasin al-Gharbis residents had fled. Like most Palestinians who were either expelled or took flight during the 1948 war, the villages residents were prevented from returning to their homes by the new Israeli authorities following the establishment of the state.

In the first years following Israels founding, 130 mostly Mizrahi (Jews from Arab or Muslim countries) families were brought to al-Jammasin al-Gharbi to replace the Palestinian residents. They have lived there ever since. The authorities promised the residents that they would be able to reside in any future buildings established on the land, yet the state did not supply any basic infrastructure for the neighborhood.

From the beginning, the Mizrahi residents of al-Jammasin al-Gharbi now Givat Amal were seen as invaders by the Ashkenazi elite the European ethnic group that founded the State of Israel and have dominated the political, cultural, and economic elite for much of its history. The first to label them as such was Tel Aviv Mayor Chaim Levanon back in 1953, as the municipality was leading the first of several failed efforts to forcibly expel the residents from the neighborhood.

In 1960, Deputy Mayor Yehoshua Rabinowitz said the residents of Givat Amal were of a different human material than the residents of Nordia, once a mostly middle class Ashkenazi neighborhood in central Tel Aviv. Historical documents revealed that from the time the new residents set foot in the neighborhood, the municipality viewed them as a nuisance that brought down the value of the land.

A man sets fire to tires during the eviction of families in Givat Amal, Tel Aviv, December 29, 2014. (Oren Ziv)

Consequently, while Ashkenazi Jews living in villages neighborhoods near Givat Amal were given the opportunity to resolve their land claims or buy their property at a symbolic price, residents of Givat Amal and other new Mizrahi neighborhoods were not extended the same opportunities. The state neglected these neighborhoods at least until the value of their real estate rose across the country, and particularly in north Tel Aviv, as the area became the one of the citys prime locations for land speculation.

In the 1960s, Givat Amals land was sold by the state to private owners. The rights to the land were passed around by real estate tycoons until they were eventually split up between the Tel Aviv municipality and two private investors: the Kozahinof family and Yitzhak Tshuva, an Israeli billionaire and real estate mogul, who planned to build high-rise luxury condos on the land. Tshuva acquired the rights to the land in 1987 under the condition that the residents be compensated for leaving their homes. Since then, Tshuva has argued that the terms of the agreement should be changed since the residents were never the legal owners of the land.

During the 2014 mass evictions, riot police broke into Givat Amals homes and forcibly removed residents and activists that had barricaded themselves inside, leaving many of them traumatized. Some residents were given little to no financial compensation, forcing them to move in with other family members or rent apartments far away from the place they had lived their entire life. Following the evictions, Tshuvas company, El-Ad Group, began construction of luxury high-rise buildings on the ruins of the homes.

In 2016, Tshuva submitted an eviction request to the court claiming that the remaining residents were squatting on his land. He also demanded NIS 2.5 million in rent per plot. Last year, the Tel Aviv District court ruled that the residents shouldnt be forced to pay rent, and that they are all legally on the land. In addition, the court ruled that the real estate tycoons had breached their agreement with the state and had abdicated their responsibility for the eviction as well as for agreeing on compensation for the residents of Givat Amal over the years.

Despite the ruling, eviction wasnt taken off the table. The court decided that each plot of land, on which an average of three families the children and the grandchildren of the original residents who were brought to live in Givat Amal in the 1950s would be eligible for compensation to the tune of NIS 3 million. This amount is not enough for the families to find alternative housing and certainly not for three families who are forced to split the amount among themselves.

Etty Levy cries as her home is demolished in the Givat Amat neighborhood of north Tel Aviv, March 27, 2014. The Levy family decided to sign an agreement with Yitzhak Tshuvas lawyers and leave after being offered a small sum in compensation on the morning of their expected evacuation. (Keren Manor/Activestills.org)

The residents then appealed to the High Court to try and stop the evictions. The court rejected the request in 2020.

Over the years, members of Knesset from both the left and right from Hadash MKs Ofer Cassif and Dov Khenin to the far-right Ayelet Shaked, who currently serves as Israels Interior Minister have expressed their vocal support for the residents of Givat Amal. In 2018, the Knesset approved in a first reading of the Givat Amal Law, according to which residents of the neighborhood who were never compensated will receive alternative housing. Yet because of the political crisis plaguing Israel at the time, which saw four elections in the span of two years, the legislative process never concluded and the law was never passed.

The residents of Givat Amal dont see the postponement as a victory or the end of their struggle. They are determined to continue fighting until their demands are met: a home in exchange for a home, or compensation for the 70 years they have lived in the neighborhood and to which the authorities transferred them in the early 1950s.

There is happiness diluted by sadness, because the eviction hasnt been cancelled but only postponed, says Yossi Cohen, 67, who was born in Givat Amal and has lived there to this day. In the early days of the state, the Israeli authorities moved Cohens family to Givat Amal from Neve Tzedek, a Mizrahi neighborhood and former slum that over the years has turned into one of Tel Avivs richer neighborhoods. His father is of Syrian origin, and was one of the first Jews to arrive in Givat Amal. He was part of the Haganah [one of the Zionist pre-state paramilitary forces], and he and some other 15 men were placed here to guard the village. My mother came only a few months later as the conditions were hard. When they came they used to live in the Palestinian homes.

Levana Ratzabi (left), Mali Alfasy-Fihamin (center), and Yossi Cohen (right) in Givat Amal. Cohen: If the eviction happens, lives may be lost here. They took this into consideration, but eventually the police will have to carry out the eviction. (Oren Ziv)

Cohen says evictions that were supposed to take place two weeks ago were postponed after the authorities toured the neighborhood in preparation for the forced removal. They came and saw that the eviction will be dangerous and that for now they are not prepared to carry it out, he explains. If the eviction happens, lives may be lost here. They took this into consideration, but eventually the police will have to carry out the eviction. They just gave us time hoping that there will be a solution because of pressure from the police and the Knesset members who support us. The entrepreneurs have money, and they have no problem to compensate us a home in exchange for a home.

Cohen sees no other choice but to continue to fight the evictions. The Tel Aviv municipality and the state are responsible for the situation we are in today, he says. They sold the land on the condition that we will be given housing in the buildings that will be built on this land. Because this was not granted, they can take the land back from the entrepreneurs.

First they should compensate us and then they can do whatever they want with the land, says Levana Ratzabi, 75, who has lived in the neighborhood since she was two years old. Her family was evicted from Neve Tzedek before coming to Givat Amal. They brought my mother here by force and now they want to throw us out. Where should we go?

Ratzabi and the other residents say they were brought to the neighborhood to prevent the Palestinians of al-Jammasin al-Gharbi from returning. We lived in the Palestinian homes with no facilities, water, or electricity. This is land that Ben-Gurion [Israels first prime minister] and the Tel Aviv municipality gave us instead of the Palestinians, Ratzabi explains.

All the years they didnt plant one flower or [install] one bench, not even a street lamp or a road nothing, says Cohen. We paid municipality taxes just like in other neighborhoods in north Tel Aviv, yet there isnt even a sewage system here.

WATCH: Activists try to block police from evicting a home in Givat Amal in 2014

They didnt give the families the option to buy the land over the years, says Ronit Aldouby, a Givat Amal resident who is one of the organizers of the struggle against the evictions.

In the 50s the government put out an order that local residents can buy the land they live in before it is sold to others, but the state did not inform the people here about the order. The people here did ask to buy the land, but it was never sold to them.

According to Aldouby this policy was implemented against Mizrahi Jews in different neighborhoods and villages across the country. They wanted to expropriate the rights of the Mizrahi residents, many abandoned [Palestinian] properties were sold to those in the establishment but not only. [The deals] were based on racism and properties were sold mostly to Ashkenazi Jews, who got keys to empty villas. But in the slums and places where Mizrahi Jews were placed, nobody bothered to regularize the land.

Aldouby adds that in the 1950s, Ashkenazi Jews living just across the road from Givat Amal most of them government or municipality workers were given housing in the Shikun Tzameret neighborhood, also on land that belonged to al-Jammasin al-Gharbi and that was also considered absentee property. (According to a 1950 Israeli law, property whose owners left after November 29, 1947, can be requisitioned by the state, and in effect applies exclusively to Palestinian property.) Today, Shikun Tzameret is considered one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the entire country.

Traces of the Palestinian village were still visible until the 2014 evictions. Today one can find a Palestinian structure that houses a local synagogue, a few renovated Palestinian homes, and a Muslim cemetery.

The families that remained in the neighborhood now live in the middle of a large construction site, surrounded by fences, roadblocks, industrial noise, and dust. One of the 50-story-buildings, where the apartments go for NIS 6 to 8 million, is complete, while two others are under construction. By the time building is complete, El-Ad Group and the Kozahinof family will have built a total of seven high-rise buildings housing more than 1,400 apartments.

Police cordon off Givat Amals residents during the neighborhoods first evacuation on December 29, 2014. (Activestills.org)

According to Cohen, the courts and the authorities are resisting coming to a just compensation agreement for fear of setting a precedent: similar struggles are ongoing in other Tel Aviv neighborhoods, such as Kfar Shalem and Abu Kabir, both Palestinian villages where Mizrahi Jews were placed in the years following Israels founding and are fighting eviction efforts. They prevent justice because of the legal consequences for other struggles, so that other places also wont get what they deserve, says Cohen, who hopes that a potential success in Givat Amal will have a positive effect on the struggles in other neighborhoods.

I met a few of Givat Amals residents in August outside the Alfasy-Fihamin family home at the entrance of the neighborhood. The grandmother, Amalia Fihamin, who was of Iranian origin, passed away this month at the age of 82. Four days before she passed away, Israeli authorities arrived at the family home and handed the family members an eviction order as Fihamin was on her deathbed.

The protest in early August took place during Fihamins shiva, the week-long period of mourning in Judaism. The protesters gathered near the shiva tent that was set up near the house and from there marched and blocked roads in the area.

This is the real hell, said Mali Alfasy-Fihamin, Amalias daughter, as she packed up her mothers belongings. I didnt feel [anything] during the shiva. All day long I had phone calls and was dealing with the police, but I have nowhere to go. I will tell you honestly, after my mothers death I gave up. I told everyone: I dont want anything, but some activists that have stood with us for many years came and told me, We are with you. It makes me stronger; I cannot do anything by myself, but with all the support, this eviction wont go smoothly.

Mali Alfasy-Fihamin leads a demonstration in north Tel Aviv against the eviction and forced displacement of the residents of Givat Amal, August 1, 2021. (Oren Ziv)

In April 2021, the Tel Aviv municipality sold off the remaining rights to 120 apartments in two luxury towers to a trio of real estate companies for NIS 365 million. Despite the change of ownership, the agreements signed between the residents and the city in 2014 obliged El-Ad Group to carry out the evictions.

That same month, in another ruling, the Tel Aviv District Court decided that the state had betrayed its responsibility to the residents of Givat Amal. In the decision, Judge Michal Agmon-Gonen wrote that the compensation offered to the residents was incomplete, disorganized, and granted only in cases in which the investors themselves filed lawsuits against families who demanded to remain in their homes. The residents, their parents and their grandparents were right all along to insist that they were brought to the neighborhood by the authorities of the state-to-be [pre-state Israel] and that the promises that they received were not fulfilled, Agmon-Gonen wrote in her ruling.

Our parents passed away and we have one foot in the grave, says Cohen. The people living here are 70 or 80 years old. When does the state want to grant us our compensation?

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In the heart of Tel Aviv, a working class Mizrahi neighborhood fights its forced displacement - +972 Magazine

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Posted By admin on September 24, 2021

Years ago, I sat on a panel about the 1975 movie, Hester Street. The event was hosted at an Appalachian college where, lets just say, the tribe of Israel is not over-represented. I came out of maternity leave to participate and was still breastfeeding at the time, so I was suffering the sharp pangs that come from being away from home for hours at a time. The other two panelists, both men, started us off by discussing the source novel for the movie and sharing details about the production of this Yiddish/English-language film. I nodded and smiled through the pain, praying for time to move quicker.

Its a film about women! I wanted to shout. Its a film about Jewish women! The movie is called Hester Street, not Schmuel Avenue! Can we just talk about how its about women?

Hester Street covers a lot of ground in its 91-minute run time: marriage and motherhood, Judaism and secularism, and the ways in which womens experiences echo through time. But despite its ambitions, it has failed to receive the widespread attention it merits, falling between the cracks for cinephiles; it is neither the archetypal 1970s Hollywood movie, nor does it belong to the illustrious tradition of the European art film.

Hester Street is an American indie in the most proper sense of the word. As film historian Maya Montanez Smukler has written, writer-director Joan Micklin Silver and her husband, Ray, self-financed Hester Street when the regular boys club channels all passed. The film found audiences and critical praise by taking the movie on the festival circuit, at which time the Silvers received informal mentorship from independent film icon, John Cassavetes.

But now that the Cohen Media Group has restored Hester Street, the film may be finally getting its due. It is funny to talk about restoring Hester Street, since it was made to look like an exhibit of the past: black-and-white film stock, unknown actors, and an opening sequence seemingly ripped from an old silent film.

In Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds, J. Hoberman writes of the rich body of Yiddish cinema that came out of New York in the early 20th century, popularly screened for and beloved by Lower East Side residents. But while Micklin Silver pays homage to this cinematic tradition, she also gives new life to what is, for many Ashkenazi families and American audiences, a familiar story: the Old-World Patriarch, passing through Ellis Island, struggling to remake himself and his family in a new land. Its a tale older than An American Tale and with only a fraction of the number of rodents dotting the cityscape.

When Hester Street was first released, Jay Cocks, writing for Time Magazine, complained that it is in Jakes story that the trials and compromises of assimilation are most easily perceived. But writer-director Silver gives as much attention to Bernstein and Gitl, even to Mamie, and so loses her central conflict.

The writer is only half-correct. On its surface, Hester Street is about Yekl/Jake (Steven Keats), an immigrant torn between his fresh-off-the-boat wife, Gitl (Carol Kane) and his secular-Jewish, American mistress, Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh).

As a Jewish woman who took a class in college called The Jewish Woman (you can check my transcript), I am admittedly biased, but I never imagined the films pivot toward the women of Hester Street could be a mistake. Love may work in mysterious ways, but Micklin Silvers feminist mission is laser-focused, as Hester Street smartly dismantles the long-stale cinematic trope of the Jewish man choosing between tradition and assimilation. In the effort to reinvent himself, Jake turns the two women in his life into symbols of the past and the present, of what he was and what he might become.

It makes for a neat central conflict, sure, but the complex Jewesses of Hester Street refuse to be devices; they hijack the movie as it might be and turn it into something new. Gitl and Mamie are specific and surprising, and by focusing on their lives, Micklin Silver turns her adaptation of the 1896 novel Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, by Forward founder Ab Cahan, into a radical commentary on narrative inheritances, familial, literary and cinematic.

The most acclaimed element of the film has always been Carol Kanes performance as Gitl, which earned the actress an Oscar nomination. American audiences have seen Kane in movies and television shows like Annie Hall, Taxi, The Princess Bride and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. From the sum of these roles and others, she is known as a kooky Muppet of a woman with doe eyes and a baby voice that can turn raspy on a dime. By contrast, Kanes performance here is quietly expressive, revealing steeliness beneath her soft, girlish features. (Its astounding that she was able to achieve this acting mostly in Yiddish, a language she didnt speak.)

When we first meet Gitl, she is wearing a round, unflattering wig, seated next to her son with a tag pinned to her clothes (presumably because she cannot speak English). She is more doll than woman. But when, under pressure from her husband, Gitl goes fixing [herself] up, Jake grows violent, scandalized by her modern attire and Kanes signature luxurious, libidinal curls. Her frumpiness embarrassed him, but her transformation poses a new threat, as Jake is faced with how much he can leave his life as Yekl in the past.

Only Bernstein (Mel Howard), Jakes co-worker and the familys Yeshiva-trained boarder, recognizes Gitls wit, strength and multidimensionality. And while Gitls reverence for the study of Torah marks her as old-fashioned to the men and women around her, it is her love of learning that precipitates a more equal or modern relationship with Bernstein. When Gitl finally permits Jake a divorce, Bernstein is too shy to propose, offering to pack up and end their boarding arrangement. In response, Gitl calmly begins to unpack his things, cutting the strings that hold his books together. When Bernstein asks what she is doing, she replies, simply, I am saying yes. Their tender handholding at scenes end illustrates how romance can bloom when old meets new, when tradition gets a sexy, but restrained, update.

Meanwhile, the coupling of self-proclaimed Yankee Jake and Mamie is presented as something less than liberatory. In depicting this dynamic, Micklin Silver explores the misunderstood, vilified figure of the sophisticated city girl. Dorrie Kavanaughs underrated performance as Mamie gives breadth and depth to the dangerous vamp type of silent film. When we first encounter Mamie in the films opening scene, she is flirting with every man in the room, laughing and coquettishly fanning her dance partner. Having come over from Poland as a teenager all on her own, she has managed to save up money, explaining, I dont want no man to say I had to take her just as she was, without a penny.

But when Mamie thinks that Jake is on the verge of proposing, not yet knowing he is already married, she hands over a chunk of her savings without complaint. This is a different thing now, aint it? she says sweetly. Youre the boss now.

This brittle good-time girl is willing to surrender her self-determination for the chance of love and commitment. When she discovers that Jake uses the loan to furnish an apartment for his wife and son, Mamies vindictive intentions quickly give way, as she and Jake kiss in the hallway outside his apartment. But Mamies tears are not those of a manipulative seductress. She weeps because she is stuck in the role that Jake, and so many stories, have cast her: the heartless homewrecker, representative of all the shallow pleasures American life has to offer. But because Micklin Silver is revising the old story, Mamie is not punished for her transgression but rewarded with her own happy (if indeterminate) ending.

All Gitl and Mamie want is the freedom to author their own futures, and Hester Street emphasizes how women throughout history have fought to tell their own stories, even when they lack the agency or resources to do so. In many ways, the film is a second-wave feminist fable, a kind of usable past, and a metaphor for how Micklin Silver made film art without garnering the support of a male-run Hollywood establishment. As landlady Mrs. Kovarsky (Doris Roberts) declares with aplomb, You cant pee down my back and tell me its raining! A slogan for a Womens March sign if ever I read one.

Yet, these readings neglect the subtler themes of unspoken, inexpressible, connection: between women and between moments in time. In the last scene of the film, Gitl (with Bernstein) and Mamie (with Jake) walk the streets of the Lower East Side. They tread the same bumpy cobblestone path of the films title, one named after Queen Esther, who, in securing the love of a king, ensured the continuity of the Jewish people. The wife and the vamp the Esther and the Vashti have long been pitted against each other, historically and narratively. But might not these two women understand one another better even than their spouses do?

Just so, Hester Street sees these women more clearly than do most proper histories and literary renderings, offering, in its final moments, a crane shot pulling away from Gitl, her husband and her son, as they blend into the crowd and wander off-screen. As a scholar, I have spent much of my career trying to recover womens unsung contributions to American media, and, in my own life, I often reflect on the stories of familial foremothers I never got to meet. (One was a brilliant seamstress, so Im told, while another was an avid reader of TV Guide; I wont make you guess which set of genes I inherited.)

For me, Hester Street has always been about cultural restorationrestoring the Gitls and Mamies to their proper place in the story without relegating them to ancient history. We should hold these womens stories close, because their hopes and trials remain vivid and pressing. I maintain, now as then, that Hester Street is a movie about Jewish women past, present and future.

The restored version of Hester Street premieres Saturday, Sept. 25, at the New York Film Festival.

Annie Berke is the Film Editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her book, Their Own Best Creations: Women Writers in Postwar Television, is forthcoming from the University of California Press (January 2022).

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Though it looked to the past, 'Hester Street' was way ahead of its time - Forward

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Posted By admin on September 24, 2021

Books that celebrate food and culinary traditions that we can't wait to get our hands on

Rebel Homemaker: Food, Family, Life By Drew Barrymore

November 2 is the release date for Drew Barrymores first-ever cookbook with her culinary partner in crime, Chef Pilar Valdes. Rebel Homemaker: Food, Family and Life will feature recipes interspersed with anecdotes from the actors personal life. The cover features Barrymore slurping on a bowl of pasta. She revealed on her eponymous talk show that she has been considering the idea of collaborating with Valdes for a while now. Food and Valdess friendship, she said, were a huge saving grace and something I could hook into when my life felt so floating.

Believe it or not, this one will be American writer, host, and entrepreneur Stewarts 99th launch! Set to release at the end of September, Fruit Desserts is a collection of over a hundred fruit dessert recipes crumbles, crisps, pies, buckles, and desserts. According to the celebrity chef, the cookbook highlights fruits exclusive to each season, and offers easy-to-prepare desserts. Expect Red-Fruit Pavlova, Double-Crust Peach Slab Pie, Apple Fritters, Poached Pear, and Cranberry Pie, among so many other temptations.

Bene Apptit: The Cuisine of Indian JewsBy Esther David

Sahitya Akademi Award-winning author and artist Esther Davids latest book is a holistic portrait of the little-known Bene Israeli community that has lived in India since 75 CE. She lays out a moveable feast, with heart-warming anecdotes and simple yet recipes. (It) is about a fast-diminishing mini-microscopic Jewish community of India, and how it has preserved the tradition of food,says David.

Herself a Bene Israeli Jew, David attempts to record some of the communitys traditions before they are lost, describing its lifestyle, customs and food habits in detail, and also revealing some closely-guarded recipes of Indian Jewish dishes such as chik-cha halwa, rose biscuits, jumping potatoes, hameen, arook, Jewish biryani, pakoda curry, chicken with gongura leaves, agar-agar jelly and many more. The pages are illuminated with illustrations rendered in the authors trademark style.

The Diabetic CookbookBy Michael Swamy

If a diagnosis of diabetes has left you hungry for delicious food, or even if you just wantto eat healthier, Michael Swamys comprehensive cookbook is for you. An alumnus of Le Cordon Bleu, London, the chef, food stylist, food writer and travel photographer offers carefully-curated vegetarian, non-vegetarian and vegan dishes. Over 70 recipes across soups, salads, starters, breads, beverages and desserts will work to help you change familiar dishes by using superfoods and super ingredients to lower your blood sugar levels and to bring back the joy of fine food.

Also see: Plating the past: Going back to the food of our fathers

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Books On Food We Want To Drool Over | Femina.in - Femina

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