Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

Buried in a cardboard box filled with old diaries, crumbled letters and black and white photos, one manila folder etched with bright-red cursive caught Rachael Cerrottis eye.

On the front was a note written by her late grandmother, Hana Dubova, a Holocaust survivor, that read, For Rachael and Jesse, so youll know a little about my life when I was your age.

For Cerrotti, a photojournalist in her early 20s whod become fascinated by her grandmothers journey fleeing the Nazis starting at just 14 years old, that letter was a permission slip, a green light to dive deeper into her grandmothers 17-year odyssey as a Holocaust refugee.

So starting in 2014, Cerrotti embarked on a journey of her own that would forever change her life, retracing every step her grandmother took across central Europe, Scandinavia and the United States, and creating powerful bonds with the descendants of those who saved her grandmothers life.

Now after more than a decade consumed by her grandmothers experience, Cerrotti is publishing her first book, We Share the Same Sky: A Memoir of Memory and Migration, to be released Tuesday.

The memoir, published by Blackstone Publishing, currently listed as Best Book of August by Apple Books, is an expanded version of the award-winning podcast Cerrotti released in 2019 under the same title.

Cerrotti now works as the inaugural storyteller-in-residence for the USC Shoah Foundation, a nonprofit established by Steven Spielberg. The foundation records and collects testimony from survivors of genocides around the world, her grandmothers story included. Cerrotti says she never intended to spend so much time focused on her grandmothers story.

When she first asked her grandmother to participate in interviews about her journey for a college project in 2009, it was mainly so she could spend more alone time with her in her last few years of life.

But after she passed away in 2010, Cerrotti felt that even with the hours and hours of interviews shed conducted, and the massive archive her grandmother had left behind, it still wasnt enough.

I had so much of my grandmothers stuff that I probably could have written a biography of her life without ever leaving my bedroom, said Cerrotti, while sitting in her apartment in Portland. But I wanted to hear the language, see the landscape, and explore what it all meant in my life.

Maybe, Cerrotti says, it was the journalist in her, with an insatiable hunger to uncover everything. Or maybe it was the obligation and responsibility she felt to her grandmother, who died wondering what shed left behind for the world.

The one thing she knew was that it felt right.

At first I was really interested in my grandmothers displacement, because she was stateless for 17 years, Cerrotti said. A lot of times you learn about World War II, you get to 1945, Hitler kills himself and its over. But thats just the beginning of the survival story. My grandmother left when she was 14 and her entire family was killed. I was really interested in what it meant to be a part of a displaced community, and the power it takes to rebuild your life.

So with her camera equipment and her grandmothers diaries in hand, Cerrotti packed a bag and set her eyes on the past and the people and places around her. But in 2016, Cerrottis husband died unexpectedly. The loss turned her life upside down, and she realized just how much her story had become intertwined with her grandmothers. She scrapped her entire first draft and began to rethink the story she was telling.

During that time, Cerrotti says her grandmothers story is what saved her. She moved to the farm in Denmark where her grandmother had once lived, working for descendants of the farmers who saved her life.

I began to return to these places my grandmother went to for physical refuge, for my own life, for my own emotional refuge, she said. My grandmothers diary started to read differently, and slowly I started to see those subtle moments in my grandmothers stories in a way I couldnt have seen before.

Starting in late 2016, Cerrotti, who was now moving between the U.S. and Europe for as long as her visa allowed, began to tell the story that felt true to herself.

I really had to embrace becoming a main character in this story because it was sometimes very uncomfortable for me, she said. And then also as politics started to shift, with the migrant crisis in Europe, and xenophobia and the anti-immigrant right, it felt like it would be irresponsible to tell the story not through a contemporary lens.

In 2018, as she worked on reshaping her memoir, Cerrotti received funding with the help of the USC Shoah Foundation to put together her podcast. The podcast, We Share the Same Sky, was listed as one of the best podcasts of 2019 by Huffington Post.

For Cerrotti, the responsibility she feels to tell this story is not just for her grandmother, but also for those struggling in a similar way today, and to future generations.

I think we all have a responsibility to take a deep breath and say, OK, I understand this history, but what does it mean to me?' she said. If I look back at my family history, and why am I here, its because people who didnt know my grandmother, and who did not share her identity, cared about her.

Stephen D. Smith, director of the USC Shoah Foundation, also sees Cerrottis work as part of a much larger responsibility to bridge past and future.

As the generations pass, the legacy is handed down to those who live in a divided world with hatreds of so many kinds, said Smith. Rachael is connecting the dots between a world that was torn to pieces by hatred and the chance we all have to prevent that reoccurring. I feel like I know Rachael and Hannah through all the people we meet along the way. It is living history.

Now living in Portland since October, Cerrotti says she is thrilled to be publishing her first book as a Maine author.

Though she was born and raised in Boston, Cerrotti has vacationed in midcoast Maine throughout most of her life. Maine, she says, has provided her with a sense of consistency that becomes immensely important.

Maine has been this really symbolic space for me over the years, she said. Its been the only constant location throughout a lot of really drastic changes in my life, so I tried to infuse that into the book a bit.

Cerrotti is currently working on a monthly podcast with the Shoah Foundation called The Memory Generation, which explores testimony from its Visual History Archive, a trove of more than 55,000 interviews with survivors from Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda and other countries.

Looking ahead, the young writer, whos spent over a decade working on her grandmothers story, is unsure whats next.

Ive actually been kind of scared of this moment, because now, Im like, What do I do now? Cerrotti said. This has been my purpose for so long, and so Im really saying goodbye to this chapter of my life.

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

In a bitter confrontation with Poland, one of its main allies in Europe, Israel has withdrawn its top diplomatic representative in Warsaw following the ratification of a law that drastically reduces the chances of recovering property confiscated from Holocaust victims or receiving compensation. Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called for consultations on Saturday night with the Israeli charge daffaires, Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon, hours after Polish President Andrzej Duda ratified the controversial legislation after its approval in Parliament. The rule limits the restitution of property stolen from Jews by Nazi German occupiers during World War II and nationalized by the subsequent communist regime.

The Israeli minister, who has not hesitated to cross out the new rule as anti-Semitic and immoral, he has warned that he will exert maximum diplomatic pressure with the support of the United States. Precisely the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, a descendant like Lapid of victims of the Soah, had asked President Duda on Thursday not to ratify the law so that it could be reexamined by the Warsaw Parliament.

Poland was home to the largest Hebrew community in Europe before the Holocaust. Three million Jews were murdered by the Nazis on their territory during World War II. After the conflict, the new state nationalized the assets that had been confiscated instead of returning them to their rightful owners. In many cases, Jewish properties were occupied by other Polish citizens, sparking a barrage of lawsuits in recent years.

The Polish Constitutional Court ruled in 2015 that the government should put a time limit on claims. Parliament has now set it to a maximum of 30 years back in time, which minimizes the assets affected.

Once the law has been ratified by the Polish president, the vast majority of the claims of the victims families will hardly succeed in the lawsuits against the State, which are being pursued within the framework of a long process with high costs. Unlike other European states, Poland has not set up a fund to compensate the heirs of stolen property.

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I am the son of a survivor of the Shoah. My grandmother was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles. We suffer the consequences [del Holocausto] every day in our collective memory, the centrist leader Lapid recalled three years ago from the opposition in a diplomatic clash with the Warsaw Government that was closed after an agreement negotiated by the former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. As foreign minister and political architect of the new Israeli government, he threatens to suspend the pact reached then.

Poland has become an undemocratic country, which does not respect the memory of the greatest tragedy in the history of mankind , read the little diplomatic statement released by the Foreign Minister. Lapid announced that the new Israeli ambassador in Warsaw, recently appointed, will remain in Israel until further notice, without relieving the charge daffaires who has just been summoned. He also suggested to the Polish ambassador in Tel Aviv that he extend the holidays in his country indefinitely and not return to Israel.

The Polish government showed its disapproval of the words of the Israeli head of diplomacy, according to a statement quoted by Reuters, and announced that it will adopt appropriate political and diplomatic measures under the principle of symmetry in bilateral relations. Israel has openly clashed in recent years with one of its main supporters in Europe.

Former Prime Minister Netanyahu shunned direct confrontation over the so-called Polish Holocaust memory law and leaned in 2018 towards negotiation to preserve the relationship with the ultra-conservative government of Poland. The controversial legal reforms undertaken by the ultranationalist Law and Justice Party have become an attempt, according to many historians, to rewrite the past.

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Israel clashes with Poland over law limiting return of property to Holocaust victims - Market Research Telecast

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

Contrary to what one might expect, the central question raised by the all-over-the-map documentary The Meaning of Hitler is not Can Hitler happen here, and now?

That was an interesting premise for academic debate in 1966. Not today. The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, along with countless other recent incidents, proves that white nationalism is a clear and vivid threat.

Rather, the query posed here, in different ways by various learned experts in numerous countries, is What good are the lessons of history if a large number of people dont know, deny, ignore, bury, erase, misrepresent or lie about the underlying history?

This is not a new idea for those, like historian Deborah Lipstadt, whove been confronting antisemitic Holocaust denial for decades. The contemporary impetus for The Meaning of Hitler, which was filmed before the pandemic, is unambiguous: The existential and actual threat of the demagogue former president, Donald Trump.

The timing and goals of this film are unassailable. If its approach is scattershot, well, it still allows for the collection of a large number of ideas and insights.

The Meaning of Hitler opens Friday on demand and in theaters in New York and Los Angeles.

English novelist Martin Amis, whose pithy observations run through the film, sets the tone early. Our understanding of Hitler is central to our self-understanding, he says. Its a reckoning you have to make, if youre a serious person.

Veteran filmmaking couple Michael Tucker (an American) and Petra Epperlein (a German) take the late German journalist and historian Sebastian Haffners eponymous 1978 book as their jumping-off point for revisiting elements of Hitlers biography and appeal, and the methods and madness of the Nazi regime.

At the same time, using clips from long-forgotten films from Hollywood and Europe, the filmmakers aim to shine a withering light on the lingering mythic aspects of the Third Reich without adding to it themselves.

A visit to Hitlers childhood home in Austria and the site of his World War I battlefield experience in Flanders proves prosaic, but Tucker and Epperlein score an oddball hit at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, where four of Hitlers watercolors dating to 1910 are stored.

The filmmakers are careful to provide Nazi-era facts at every turn, especially on the occasions they give a bit of screen time to dissemblers, deniers and anti-immigrationists such as the repugnant David Irving (accompanied on a visit to Treblinka, of all places). But others in the film, including historian Saul Friedlander and Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, are cognizant that they are speaking to reality-based viewers who dont need to be sold on the actuality of the Shoah.

Lipstadt realizes it, too, but that doesnt stop her from speaking bluntly. If this history [the Holocaust] can be rewritten, she declares, any history can be rewritten.

So how, as ever, to reach the accidentally ignorant, the willfully uninformed and the opportunistically misled? How to combat the propaganda tactics perfected by Hitler and appropriated by current wannabe fascists?

At Friedlanders suggestion, the filmmakers discover a possible answer at Sobibor. In a quiet, bird-less forest, an archaeologist describes how Hitler demolished and buried the death camp after the successful prisoner revolt of 1943.

This shameless attempt to erase the Nazis crimes, by planting over them, succeeded for a while. But not forever. There are always people historians, journalists and scientists, for starters for whom the truth is paramount and essential.

At the very least, The Meaning of Hitler is a tribute to a generation of truth-seekers and truth-tellers. Savor their wisdom, and heed their warning.

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Review: 'The Meaning of Hitler' is obvious and elusive and worrying J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

By Ron Kampeas

(JTA) Ruth Pearl, who dedicated the latter part of her life to preserving the legacy of her son Daniel, a journalist who was murdered in Pakistan, has died at 85.

Pearl, who suffered from a lung ailment, died at her Los Angeles home on July 20.

On Jan. 23, 2002, Pearl woke up with a premonition that her son, then 38 and a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was in peril, according to an account in The Washington Post. In an email, she asked her son to assure her that he was safe. She never heard back.

At that very moment, Daniel Pearl had been lured into a trap: Expecting to meet a source, he was kidnapped, and nine days later beheaded on videotape. Daniel Pearl was in Karachi to report on the actors and structures that brought about the 9/11 terrorist attacks several months earlier.

My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish, were among his final words.

Ruth and Judea Pearl sought to reconcile the privacy they craved to cope with their towering grief with the need to preserve the legacy of Daniel Pearls passions: music (he was a skilled violinist), journalism and being Jewish.

They launched the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which brings journalists from Muslim majority countries to the United States to work at news outlets and sponsors concerts. The Pearl Project at Georgetown University advances investigative journalism; its first investigation was into Daniel Pearls murder. Its conclusion: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who remains captive in the U.S. jail at Guantanamo Bay, carried out the killing.

Judea Pearl has said that Ruth Pearl was proudest of the 2003 book she edited, I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl. She solicited essays from some of the best-known Jews of the time, including Elie Wiesel, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Edgar Bronfman.

Ruth Pearl was born Eveline Rejwan in Baghdad. In 1941, as a five-year-old, she hid out with Muslim neighbors during the Farhud, the massacre of 179 Jews in the Iraqi capital. The persecution that Arab militants aimed at Iraqi Jews helped shape her views.

Dehumanizing people is the first step to inviting violence, like Nazism and fascism, she said in testimony delivered to the Shoah Foundation of the University of Southern California.

When she was older, Pearl helped smuggle Jews to Israel and then immigrated herself, serving in new countrys Navy. Along the way she changed her name to Ruth. She met her husband at the Technion, and after graduation they moved to the United States, where she worked as a software developer.

In January, the Pakistan Supreme Court ordered the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the sole figure involved in Daniel Pearls murder who was convicted, devastating the Pearls. The U.S. government says that Saeed remains a wanted man.

A lower court last year had ordered the British-born Saeeds release, and the Pearls lost their appeal in the Supreme Court.

In a video appeal, Ruth Pearl explained to Pakistanis why they hoped to keep Saeed in jail.

Theres not a single day that we dont miss our son, she said.

Along with her husband, Pearl is survived by two daughters; Daniel Pearls wife, Mariane; and five grandchildren. One of the grandchildren, Adam Daniel Pearl, was born after his fathers killing.

Main Photo: Ruth Pearl listens as President George W. Bush speaks to the media after meeting with Jewish community leaders in the White House, Dec. 10, 2007.(Matthew Cavanaugh-Pool/Getty Images)

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Ruth Pearl, mother of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, was 85 - Connecticut Jewish Ledger

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

RAMAPO A Hasidic Jewish wedding expected to attract thousands of guests on Tuesday will not be held at the Rockland Community College fieldhouse.

Concerns about spreading the deadly delta variant of the coronavirus led Rockland Health Commissioner Patricia Schnabel Ruppert to advise the college to cancel all rentals and large-scale events, officials said Thursday.

"It seems that theRockland County health commissioner has advised the college to refrain from large-scale events given the increase in cases and the dangers associated with the Delta variant," college spokesperson Risa Hoag said.

"So, effective immediately, RCC is suspending all fieldhouse rentals for the next 60 days and they will reconsider rentals after the suspension period based on the health and safety circumstances at that time," Hoag said.

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The Ger Hasidic Jewish wedding had been scheduled at the college fieldhouse on Tuesday after plans for a New Jersey location reportedly didn't pan out.The fieldhouse capacity is 5,025 people, according to the RCC website.

The college never executed an agreement with the partiesas it was determined that it would be inappropriatedue to the "dangerous delta variant,"said Susan Lyddon, vice president forInstitutional Advancement for RCC.

There was no indication on where the wedding will be held as representatives of the community werenot immediately available for comment.

Ramapo Supervisor Michael Specht said Thursday he was not aware of RCC's decision and has not been approached to rent out the Palisades Credit Union Park, the home of the New York Boulders.

Specht said while the ballpark is outdoors, if asked, he'd have to consult with the health department and other officials given the health issues.

The Ger Hasidim is the Jewish state's largest Hasidic sect. It is based in Israel but has a following in Rockland, where the rabbi has been staying.

The Ger Hasidim is aPolish Hasidic dynastyoriginating from the town ofGra Kalwaria,Poland.

Beforethe Holocaust during World War II, Ger followers were estimated at more than100,000. Ger had beenestimated at12,000 in Israel as of 2016.

John Lyon, a spokespersonfor County Executive Ed Day, said the government learned about the RCC event on Wednesday.

Lyon said significant concerns were raised about holding any type of large-scale event given the recent increases in local active COVID-19 cases and the presence of the delta variant in Rockland. Lyon said they "agree with ... and appreciate" RCC's decision.

The wedding organizers will pay for security and other costs by the Rockland Sheriff's Office, which is responsible for the college and county property.

Rockland Countys COVID dashboards show that there were 608 active confirmed cases on Aug. 11; on Aug. 5, there were 321, and on July 27 there were 156.

New York state laws were enacted to limit large gatherings due to COVID-19, though most restrictions have ended.

Hasidic weddings can draw thousands of people.

Thousands reportedlyattended a Satmar wedding in Brooklyn in November 2020, leading to a reprimand by city and state officials and a threat of a $15,000 fine.

The wedding, which lasted more than four hours, was held at the Yetev Lev DSatmar synagogue in Williamsburg and celebrated the marriage of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the grandson of Satmar Grand Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum.

During the pandemic and earlier measles outbreak, larger crowds of people in Rockland, including amid the Hasidic communities, congregated for social events, funerals and burials, and other gatherings.

The county attempted to crack down on the large gatherings in violation of regulations and even asked the public to report incidents to the police and health department.

Steve Lieberman coversgovernment, breaking news, courts, police, and investigations.Reach him at slieberm@lohud.com. Twitter: @lohudlegal.Read more articlesandbio.Our local coverage is only possible with support from our readers.

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

KIRYAS JOEL - A community that began in the 1970s with about a dozen families moving upstate from Brooklyn has grown to become Orange County's most populated municipality with around 33,000 residents as of a year ago.

Figures from the 2020 census released Thursday show that Kiryas Joel grew by a booming 63% in the last decade, pushing its population past that of the cities of Middletown and Newburgh and of towns much larger than the 1.5-square-mile Hasidic village. Its nearest population rival is Warwick, which is 105 square miles.

Kiryas Joel also vaulted ahead of other Hudson Valley population centers since the 2010 census, surpassing the cities of Poughkeepsie and Kingston and the village of Spring Valley in Rockland County, according to the Census Bureau's data.

Kiryas Joel accounted for almost half of Orange County's population increase of more than 28,000 from 2010 to 2020. The county as a whole grew by 7.6% in that decade and had about 401,000 residents as of April 1, 2020.

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Kiryas Joel's steady growth is driven largely the customs of a community in which couples typically marry young, settle close to home and raise large families. More than 3,500 condominiums are being built or planned in the village's limited remaining space to help meet the constant housing demand.

That construction means the population will continue to climb by the thousands in the years ahead. Just one of those housing projects, a1,600-unit complex taking shape on a 70-acre peninsula of the village, is expected to house as many as 9,000 people once completed, according to its planners.

The 2020 census provided the following counts for Orange County's most populous municipalities: Kiryas Joel, 32,954; town of Warwick, 32,027; town of Newburgh, 31,985; town of Wallkill, 30,486; Middletown, 30,345; city of Newburgh, 28,856; and New Windsor, 27,805.

Kiryas Joel was incorporated as a village within the town of Monroe in 1977 and named for Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the founder and leader of the Satmar Hasidic movement. Teitelbaum, who led the Satmar Hasidim to Brooklyn from Hungary decades earlier after the horrors of the Holocaust, died in 1979 at age 92.

The densely populated village has been expanded three times through annexation, most recently with the addition of 164 acres in 2016 and then 62 acres in 2019. The 2019 annexation followed the creation of the town of Palm Tree, which was formed to separate Kiryas Joel from the town of Monroe and has the same boundaries as Kiryas Joel.

Kiryas Joel has been building a 13.5-mile long pipeline for the last eight years to tap New York City's Catskill Aqueduct as a long-term water source for its ever-growing population. It started laying the second half through Cornwall and New Windsor this year. The most recent cost projection for the entire project was $94 million.

In addition to the rapid growth inside Kiryas Joel, many families from the community - as well as Brooklyn - have flocked to neighboring Blooming Grove, Woodbury and Monroe in the last several years in search of more suburban-style homes and quiet neighborhoods.

That out-migration is reflected in the state's enrollment data for nonpublic schools, which shows that the number of children living outside Kiryas Joel and attending Hasidic schools in the area has grown by about 1,600 in the last five years.

cmckenna@th-record.com

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2020 Census: Kiryas Joel grew by 63% in 10 years and leads Orange County in population - Times Herald-Record

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

SOUTH BLOOMING GROVE Property owners soon will be able to apply to the Village Board for permits to open synagogues or turn parts of their homes into prayer spaces under a newly enacted zoning amendment.

The new permit policy for houses of worship was one of a set of zoning changes Mayor George Kalaj and village trustees adopted on July 29 after holding a second public hearing on them. Other changes included doubling the footprint limit for new homes and increasing the allowed density for affordable housing.

The revisions follow a complete turnover of the five-member board in two elections in which South Blooming Grove's growing Hasidic community asserted its voting power, sweeping out all incumbents. The changes, first proposed in May on the heels of the second election, appear to have been a high-priority accommodation for those families and for builders.

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Audience speakers were starkly divided at an online hearing in May that focused largely on new houses of worship. Hasidic residents cheered the proposal as a victory for religious freedom, while other speakersquestionedthe impact on neighbors, the cost of future property-tax exemptions, and the lack of guidelines about what factors the board must weigh before granting permits.

The rules are spare, merely distinguishing between houses of worship that occupy parts of homes and those that stand alone, whether small or large. The Village Board would have to get the Planning Board's recommendations before issuing permits for large houses of worship, defined as holding 50 or more worshippers.

The board overrode the Orange County Planning Department's advice on beefing up those rules.County planners had told the board to expand the proposal to define in greater detail the three categories of houses of worship, limit each to appropriate zoning districts, and spell out the conditions they must meet for approval.

"Providing objective criteria for each class can help the community to avoid potentially significant adverse environmental impacts related to community character, transportation, and visual resources,"read the five-page review letter signed by CountyPlanning Commissioner Alan Sorensen on July 14.

None of those additions were made, other than to say that freestanding houses of worship must comply with the state's fire prevention and building codes.

The village board was set to discuss the application process for new houses of worship at its meeting on Monday night.

According to the Planning Department review, other zoning changes the board made will:raise the maximum footprint for homes to 5,000 square feet from 2,500 square feet;increase the height limit to 35 feet from 25 feet; and increase the number of extra homes a developer is allowed to build when affordable units are included in a project.

The review required the board to explain why those and other steps were being taken and include an analysis of their potential impact in the board's environmental review. Planners questioned whether the village's water system and other infrastructure could support denser development.

The board needed a super-majority of four votes under state law to override the Planning Department's requirements, which it got with a unanimous vote. The board resolution to adopt the zoning changes said of the planners' input: "After reviewsome of the modification requests were made, others were not."

During the same meeting at which the zoning changes were adopted, the village board voted to begin paying salaries of $300 per week or $15,600 a year to two men Kalaj appointed as unpaid assistants after taking office last September. The appointees, Isaac Eckstein and Joel Stern, lead a group called United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove. Kalaj described Stern as his campaign manager while running for office last year.

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South Blooming Grove amends zoning to allow new houses of worship and bigger homes - Times Herald-Record

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

(JTA) Ten years ago, I sat shocked watching a new music video from one of my creative Jewish heroes, Matisyahu. Newly married and studying in yeshiva, my husband and I were trying to figure out how to uplift the art world in alignment with our Orthodox Torah ideals.

Yet here was my icon, Matisyahu who rose to fame singing about his faith and wearing the black hat and modest suit of a Hasidic Jew dancing around in a Santa suit for his Miracles video with a shot of an immodestly dressed woman and a guy dressed up as Antiochus using the word babes. Outraged, I wrote a blog post imploring the singer to remember that he was a poster child for a serious, beautiful and deep people.

A few months later I ran into Matisyahu himself in a random little shul on Shabbat. I introduced myself after services and took the quick opportunity to bless Matisyahu in coded language that he should continue helping the Jewish world. He bowed his head in thanks and I walked away feeling good about what I had said.

I understand now that I was really blessing him to continue to suppress his own truth and voice, and for him to toe the expected traditional Orthodox Jewish line out of my fear of what non-Jews might think. At the time, I believe he owed it to all of us.

A few years after we left Israel, my husband and I began hosting gatherings in Brooklyn for creative, out-of-the-box Jewish thinkers. Our guests included a significant number of what are derogatorily referred to as off-the-derech Jews: those who had been raised in the ultra-Orthodox community but had left it. Many of them no longer followed many or most of the traditional Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law. But, my God, their Jewish spirit and the depth of their insights blew me away.

I can still hear the haunting, booming melody of one man who occasionally came. Born and raised in a strict Hasidic sect, he cherished his memories of singing together with his father and brothers on Shabbat. He had chosen to leave that community because he needed to search for a truth and a life beyond it, but he loved Judaism so fiercely and deeply that I can cry just thinking about what it was like to hear him sing.

If I could say one thing to my outraged self-watching Matisyahu shift directions 10 years ago, and what I would say to Orthodox Jews today who say they are hurt by My Unorthodox Life and any of the other critical examinations of the Orthodox world, it is this:

Listen.

These Jewish people who have left and are now creating art that is critical of your community are your greatest teachers.

They have seen the belly of the beast and they have valuable information for you. They know how to make your world healthier, safer and more just. And they love the Jewish people and Judaism perhaps more than you will ever understand.

Instead of worrying about the optics of a celebrity Hasid going his own way, I should have been worrying about those who are hurting, who are being abused by the systems that structure the Hasidic world. Those who want a different life but cant escape. Or those who escape with scars.

Just listen to their stories, I would tell my past self, and see how you can be a part of the change.

I know that many thrive in Orthodoxy. But the point isnt that the system works for some or even most people. The point is that when someone is sharing their story of what didnt work for them, it creates an opportunity to discuss the change that can be made, from giving yeshiva students an adequate secular educationtochanging the way homosexuality is viewed.

If those critical of the Orthodox world are dismissed as traumatized, mentally disturbed or bitter, we miss out on the greatest gift our society could receive. To become whole. To become better. To end abuse. These voices are the checks and balances for a society.

Once upon a time, before I married, I was a kiruv, or outreach, professional. I worked with an offshoot of a Modern Orthodox youth group that worked largely with secular Jewish youth.

I was close with one high school student in particular, a dancer who had recently started keeping Shabbat and Orthodox modesty laws. The advisers told her that she could be a dancer or she could be a religious Jew, but she couldnt be both.

As a religious artist, I disagreed. I printed out different opportunities for Jewish Orthodox dancers offered in Israel and America and brought them to a meeting with the student and my colleagues. I insisted that there was no reason she had to choose. I left the meeting feeling good about helping steer the discussion, yet never paused to consider how problematic the situation was in the first place.

Years later I look back and wonder: Why was it OK to take a vulnerable girl into a room with people she looked up to and pressure her to make a choice about her life that did not need to be made?

This was not in some ultra-Orthodox sect. This was a group of Modern Orthodox advisers, all kind and well-intentioned.

For the past 20 years I classified myself as Orthodox, although I always identified more as post-denominational. The denominations limit us. Especially within Orthodoxy, it becomes more about proving you fit in than about being part of an ongoing conversation.

Our creative community in Brooklyn was filled as well with those who jumped between cleaving to tradition and listening to the reality on the ground of what was and wasnt working and shifting because of it.

This past year, I moved far away from everyone who shared their stories with me in the last decade. I now live in Long Beach, California, outside of an observant Jewish community. Its quiet here, as my husband and I try to untangle for ourselves how Jewish practice and belief can serve us in contributing most to the world.

One thing has become clear to us: We need to listen to the critics, no matter where we are. Dont worry about what the non-Jews will think. Dont worry about a backlash from white supremacists or antisemites or other Jews.

Just listen. The future belongs to those who struggle and question and search and shift and can inspire us to create a better Jewish world, if only their stories are taken seriously.

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

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I used to judge ex-Orthodox Jews. Then I started listening to them. - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

(New York Jewish Week/JTA) Kathy Hochul, who is set to succeed Andrew Cuomo as governor of New York, is no stranger to the New York Jewish community.

Cuomo resigned Tuesday, a week after a state investigation concluded that he sexually harassed 11 women. He had faced intense pressure to step aside, including from President Joe Biden, or face impeachment.

Cuomo enjoyed a warm working relationship with Jews across the denominational spectrum. As Cuomos surrogate, Hochul has made it a point to keep up with the issues and concerns of Jews, local leaders say, visiting Jewish day schools, meeting regularly with Jewish community officials and touring Orthodox neighborhoods with local community leaders.

We have brought hundreds and hundreds of students and activists to Albany [to meet her], and most recently last March she spoke at our virtual mission to Albany, said Maury Litwack, director of state political affairs at the Orthodox Union. And for years she has been speaking and addressing our leadership missions to Albany.

Earlier this year, Hochul visited Jewish day schools in Brooklyn and Queens, Litwak recalled.

The Jewish community and Kathy Hochul have a longstanding relationship, he said. She likes to see things and go places and learn about people and their issues, and the Jewish community is definitely a stop for Kathy.

A native of Buffalo, Hochul, who turns 63 this month, was Cuomos running mate in 2014 and reelected in 2018. (In New York, the governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately.) She will become governor when Cuomo formally steps down Aug. 24 and serve the rest of his term, which runs until 2022; she will be the first woman to run the state.

Hochul (which rhymes with local) was among the first politicians to call out a recent spate of antisemitism in the state, in May 2019. When the number of antisemitic incidents nationwide began to spike that year, she convened a meeting in the city with Jewish leaders to address the situation and wrote on Facebook that Anti-Semitism has no place in New York.

Among those at the meeting were David Pollock, associate executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. The meeting demonstrated that she is clearly sensitive to the issue and supportive of the communitys concerns, he told The Jewish Week.

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, also attended and said the meeting was just one of several times Hochul has reached out to the Jewish community.

I have attended a number of meetings she conducted and I find it very important that she is an ardent listener, he said. That is a great quality. She wants to hear the concerns of Jewish leadership.

Hochul has also visited the Yeshiva of Flatbush, a Modern Orthodox day school in Brooklyn. Its executive director, Jeffrey Rothman, said she has been a champion of state aid to private schools for the purpose of hiring qualified instructors to teach science, technology and mathcourses.

Devorah Halberstam, co-founder and director of external affairs at the Jewish Childrens Museum in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said she has known Kathy for a very long time, seeing her at meetings about antisemitism and when Hochul visited the museum.

A visit three years ago was followed a week later by her appearance at the annual event marking the anniversary of the 1991 Crown Heights riots, in which Black residents of the neighborhood, angered after a car in the motorcade of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson accidentally struck and killed a Black child, attacked Hasidic Jews they encountered. A Hasidic student, Yankel Rosenbaum, wasstabbed to death.

I have found her to be very personable, in touch with what is going on and very aware of the different communities, Halberstam said.

In the fall of 2019, members of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council took her on a walking tour of their largely Hasidic neighborhood, including the Chabad Lubavitch movements headquarters on Eastern Parkway.

She felt very comfortable being in our Hasidic community, recalled Jacob Goldstein, a retired chair of Community Board 9, who accompanied her on the tour.

Married and the mother of two, Hochul holds a bachelors degree from Syracuse University and a law degree from Catholic University. She was an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and served as a member of the Hamburg Town Board and as clerk of Erie County.

As a Democrat, she won a special election in 2011 to fill the seat of Rep. Christopher Lee. Lee resigned after a photo of him shirtless was emailed to a woman he met on Craigslist and was published online.While in Congress, Hochul fought to protect the Affordable Care Act, reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights.

The district, representing Buffalo and Niagara Falls, was considered the most Republican in the state. Hochul lost when she ran again in 2012.

Hochul was essentially the governors representative when he couldnt make it to an event, observed Ezra Friedlander, CEO of the Friedlander Group, a public affairs and public policy consulting group.

She didnt have an independent role but was an extension of the governor and the administration, he said. In the Cuomo administration she was not regarded as the go-to person when you wanted something done legislatively. Although she was lieutenant governor, she wasnt an insider and cannot be held accountable for the governors tsuris.

But at the same time, she has used her position to travel throughout the state, visiting each of its 62 counties and attending various civic functions and getting to know community leaders.

She knows what shes doing, Friedlander said. For many years she has been waiting for this moment to be her own person. She is ambitious and wants to be governor. She has relationships she has built upon. It will be interesting to see if she can parlay that into her own term. I think she will make a strong push to get elected in her own right. She will not go quietly into the night.

After New York State Attorney General Letitia James released the results of her offices investigation into Cuomo last week, multiple Democrats, including President Joe Biden, called on Cuomo to step down. The New York Assemblys Judiciary Committee said it would hold hearings this month to decide if it will recommend that legislators move forward with impeachment.

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What Jewish New Yorkers need to know about Kathy Hochul, who will replace Cuomo as governor - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

A rattletrap Jewish group home that packed scores of teens into two houses on Staten Island has infuriated neighbors and prompted a Fire Dept. probe.

Residents called in complaints alleging that boys were being crammed into the connected properties in Willowbrook, which are linked by a makeshift wooden staircase that allows kids to walk between the homes.

They run up and down the staircase all night, said area resident Sylvia Simmons. Its very noisy. Its a big group. About 70. Theres garbage all over the place.

Simmons said the youths appeared to have little to no adult supervision.

For about a year she and others complained to authorities that the rambunctious boys were a source of noise and disruption to the otherwise quiet bedroom community and might be at risk of neglect or abuse.

[One] night maybe 10-11 at night all of a sudden I hear thumping, said neighbor Leena Appu.

I thought it was my kids jumping on the bed and I realized the boys had wine bottles in their hands and were jumping on the top of [a] van dancing.

On July 12, the FDNY inspected the operation and found 47 bunkbeds jammed into every available space, including cellars of the properties at 143 Sunset Ave. and 94 Fillmore Ave, department spokesman Frank Dwyer told The Post.

Officials also discovered a commercial-style cafeteria inside the Sunset Avenue home and a 1,000-square-foot trailer in the yard, which the operation was using as an educational facility, said Dwyer.

It appeared to have the same offerings as yeshivas, Jewish education centers that are common around Orthodox and Hasidic areas of New York City.

The FDNY then shut down the set-up.

FDNY members ordered a full vacate for both addresses, based on overcrowding, and lack of egress, said Dwyer.

Occupants were able to get their belongings, but not sleep there.

Both homes today bear stark postings from the Department of Buildings and FDNY, warnings that returning to the homes would be imminently perilous to life.

The DOB visited the properties again on Wednesday and found no new violations, it said, though Appu claimed a construction crew was working inside the Sunset address just hours later that evening. Some neighbors worry that the teens will return.

The Sunset Avenue property owner, Chana Wolner, has racked up $95,030 in fines since purchasing the home in February 2020, including a Department of Buildings violation in December last year for doing electrical work without a permit, which inspectors dubbed immediately hazardous.

She was also slapped with violations for improperly adding new gas and electrical lines.

The 68-year-old Wolner has skipped six of seven summonses to appear before the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, records show. Her next date is Aug. 18.

The Fillmore Avenue address is owned by 94 Fillmore LLC.

Wolner is an administrator of Nesivos Bais Yaakov, a Yeshiva based at 622 Foster Ave. in Brooklyn. She hung up the phone after being asked about the Staten Island property.

Reps for the school did not reply to requests for comment.

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FDNY shuts down overcrowded boys home that infuriated Staten Island neighbors - New York Post

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