Jewish American Heritage Month

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 a familiar face for many in 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 US 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, Litwack recalled.

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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.

I have known Incoming New York State Governor Hochul for years. She has been a friend to the Jewish community. Shes

Posted by Maury Litwack onTuesday, August 10, 2021

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 August 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.

New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, center, in yellow jacket, meets with leaders of New York Citys Jewish community to discuss a nationwide rise in antisemitic attacks, May 9, 2019. (Office of the Lieutenant Governor)

A visit three years ago was followed a week later by her appearance at an 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, was stabbed 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 the 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.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, stands with Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul during an an election night watch party hosted by the New York State Democratic Committee, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, in New York. (AP/Mary Altaffer)

Under Cuomo, 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 the state and get 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.

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Kathy Hochul, set to replace Cuomo as NY governor, no stranger to states Jews - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on August 15, 2021

Editors Note: This article was originally published on Medium and reposted with permission.

Growing up in Brooklyn, I had a lot of friends from different backgrounds many that were white, a few that were Asian, but none that were both, like me. I felt like I was the only one in the overlap of a Venn diagram, part of both circles but still different.

Mostly, it felt like holding two passports. On Saturdays, I went to the Chinatown YMCA to learn to haltingly talk with my mom in her native Mandarin, and on Sundays, I went to Garfield Temple to learn enough Hebrew for my Bat Mitzvah. Ive never been fluent in either. I loved the diversity and abundance (in all things, but especially the food) in the marriage between my far-flung parents and their very vivid cultures. By the time I arrived at Stuyvesant High School, I found myself moving between the nearly half white and half Asian student body not feeling like I fully belonged to either but also privileged enough to not think too much about it.

Its an understatement to say a lot has happened since.

For more than the last year, weve been living through what feels like compounding earthquakes: a pandemic followed by a recession followed by a rupture in the fault lines of racial and social injustice. Like so many other people, Ive thought and learned about many new things this past year, including my own identity. For the most part, I pass as white. I look like my dads mom Selma, and people who knew her find the resemblance uncanny. Which is why I understand peoples confusion when they see my mom and I together. When I was a kid, they would ask her if she was my nanny. These days, they ask me if Im her caretaker. I always wished I looked more like her, because then our connection would be obvious. My identity would be obvious.

Being Asian is central to who I am because it is who my mom is. She moved to America when she was 22, leaving Taipei, Taiwan for Ann Arbor, Michigan. After getting a graduate degree in Urban Planning, she went to work for the New York City Department of Transportation as an engineer, designing the citys traffic lights. I love thinking about how she helped choreograph the crowds and cars crisscrossing the streets.

Story continues

As with so many other ethnic and racial communities, our country has a long and painful history with Asian Americans. They have been imprisoned in internment camps, excluded by immigration quotas, and attacked by their fellow citizens. Asian American Heritage Month takes place in May to honor the Chinese laborers who laid the tracks for the transcontinental railroad that was finished in May 1869. Like my mom, they worked hard so that America could get to work, empowering us to stop and go across the country with iron and steam.

According to Stop AAPI Hate, reported hate incidents against Asian Americans nationwide jumped nearly 74% in the past year and women reported attacks 2.2 times as often as men. I see my mom in these victims. While the doorman closes the door, I am compelled to run to her.

To be entirely honest, Ive never really found my voice on issues of identity and race. I wasnt comfortable speaking up on behalf of the Asian community because as someone who was only half I didnt feel qualified. But where does permission come from anyway? It doesnt come from our genetics (our racial percentages and ancestral fractions) or whether we look like our mothers or our grandmothers. I have permission to say what is true for me: I am not half, I am whole. I identify with my mom and my dad, and instead of being half of each, I am fully both.

When I had my Bat Mitzvah, I became a fully-fledged member of the Jewish community and took on the responsibilities that came with it. This meant that I could officially be counted for prayer services and communal responsibilities, with the burdens and the blessings that entails. Now I wholeheartedly count myself as Asian too. I was the only white and Asian kid I knew growing up, but these days so many of my friends and family have kids that are like me. I hope they know they are not half, but fully both.

Facebook VP Naomi Gleit with her mother

About the Author: Naomi Gleit (Facebook, Instagram) is Vice President of Product and Social Impact at Facebook. She leads the team building products and tools that work across our family of apps, helping people do good on and off Facebook. Naomi also oversees the growth of Facebook's core app, and manages the product management organization and team working to keep people safe on Facebook.

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Facebook VP Naomi Gleit explores what its like to grow up fully both Asian and Jewish in America - Yahoo News

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Posted By admin on August 13, 2021

At the Temple Beth Torah in Holliston, Massachusetts, congregant Misha Defonseca bared her soul on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 1989, or perhaps 1990. As is the case with most aspects of the episode shed set in motion on that January morning, the particulars are murky.

She spun an extraordinary yarn recounting her childhood years, from fleeing her home in Belgium after the Nazis apprehended her resistance-fighter parents, to a grueling odyssey on foot across occupied Europe, to an interlude living feral under the tutelage of a wild wolfpack. Her life story had all the tragedy and triumph of a film or a novel or, as fellow Beth Torah congregant and publisher Jane Daniel would soon persuade her, a memoir. Misha: a Mmoire of the Holocaust Years was a runaway success, complete with a co-sign from Oprah, a French film adaptation and a prospective adaptation deal with Disney.

But as suspicions over veracity arose and nudged her words from incredible to not-credible, everything would soon come undone in swift and embarrassing fashion, leading to years of legal battles and millions in fines.

Sam Hobkinson, director of the new Netflix documentary Misha and the Wolves, was instantly intrigued by Defonsecas tale and the layers of meta-narrative surrounding it, like a gobstopper of deception. Six years ago, I came across this whole affair in a small article in a British newspaper, Hobkinson told the Guardian from his home in London. It was about the ongoing court case in Massachusetts, into the tail end of this whole thing, and this struck me as fascinating, insofar as it was a look into how and why we believe things we are told to be true. It took the shape of a documentary about storytelling itself, in a way.

And in the age of fake news, when truth is a slippery concept, this would be particularly fitting. I researched more and more into the background of this trial and couldnt believe the story Id happened upon.

While dissecting that paradoxical phenomenon of believing the unbelievable, his film doubles as tense reportage tracing the trail of the genealogists and other self-appointed quasi-detectives as they sniff out the facts. He reveals critical facts at the same pace that they were uncovered at the time, leaning into the natural suspense that Misha could only invent. I wanted to approach this like a thriller director, and for the audience to experience this story as its participants would have, Hobkinson says. People went into this blind and unknowing, the friends of Misha and the publishers, and they had a gut-wrenching revelation as the story unfolded. I wanted to tell it so that the audience could share in that.

Though playing his cards close to the vest charged up the excitement of what he calls a past-tense story, Hobkinson also recognises that withholding information can be delicate business. He was wary of crossing the line that separates savvy narrative construction from cheap rigging of the game. The director explains that this ethical quandary was in the forefront of our minds all along.

We had this idea of folding in untruths to the telling of the story, he says. We wanted the film-making to reflect that artifice, and we sought out devices that could assist in that. But in simple terms, for documentary film-making, the viewer needs to leave the cinema or finish streaming the series, whatever youre doing armed with all the information there is to know. Along the way, to make the telling more interesting and representative of this storys themes, I think its fair game to hold things back and misdirect the audience. As long as youve delivered everything you know on the subject once all is said and done.

He does just that with the assistance of the self-appointed investigators who trawled file cabinets and library shelves for proof of Defonsecas claims or proof of their falsehood. Hobkinson saw the ethically shady Defonseca and her exploitative publisher as flawed, complex characters, leaving the protagonist role to one Evelyne Haendel, a fellow Belgian survivor and hidden child resentful of the idea that someone could turn the components of her own trauma into a lucrative fib. The flinty old woman was at first reluctant to participate in the production and relive events from years earlier, but once she did, she was open and committed in sharing both her recollections and her reflections on them. Now, the film acts as an unwitting tribute to her memory; she died of lung cancer a few months after recording her segments of the film, having shown Hobkinson what journalistic determination looks like.

One of the things that interested me about [this process] was how it addresses the process of documentary-making, he says. You have the publisher, a woman whos discovered what she thinks is an amazing true story that she wants to tell to the world. And to some extent, shes so bent on telling this story for various reasons that she doesnt do the homework she shouldve. I kept thinking, There but for the grace of God go I. When it comes to finding new stories, the experience of this film has taught me to do my due diligence and then some.

He realised that he was handling sensitive material from the outset: the intersection of Holocaust studies and skepticism is hazardous territory. The devastation of the Shoah has attracted an unusual number of hoaxers beyond Defonseca, from Jerzy Kosinskis fabrications in The Painted Bird to Binjamin Wilkomirskis debunked memoir Fragments to a similar exposure of Herman Rosenblats Angel at the Fence. More than simple literary misrepresentation, these incidents give ammunition to Holocaust deniers. You dont take on subject matter like this lightly, Hobkinson says. You have to be conscious of whether you might be fanning the flames of Holocaust denial. There were some financiers who were worried about participating for that reason they felt it was queasy, highlighting the fact that some people fabricate Holocaust stories. Deniers would have us thinking that if we can claim one story to be untrue, how can we believe the rest? We cant push this issue under the rug, best to tackle it head-on. I wanted to wrestle the narrative back from the Holocaust deniers.

That imperative shapes the final scenes of the film, which point not toward the frisson of scandal, but to the question of who can be entrusted with stewardship of history. Defonsecas lies and their fallout illustrate the vital importance of safeguarding the truth, and how easily the appearance of truth can be appropriated, manipulated and abused. For the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, nothing could be more crucial than the maintenance and preservation of the record. This requires a trust that Hobkinson, along with his audience, learn can be all too easily abused.

As we were going along, I thought a lot about why Holocaust narratives have attracted so many hoaxes, Hobkinson says. I hope this comes through in the film, that the story Misha told was pretty out there. But the context from which she tells it, her own experiences as a young Jewish girl during the Holocaust, make it very difficult to question. The thing that protected her, that made her hard to question, was the place of authority from which she was telling it. Potentially, thats why more Holocaust hoax narratives have slipped through, because its a sort of sacred ground. Far be it from me to question someone sharing these horrible experiences theyve gone through.

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Misha and the Wolves: an incredible survival story that was too good to be true - The Guardian

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Posted By admin on August 13, 2021

When Rabbi Jessica Wainer was growing up,she always wanted to be a doctor.

The majority ofher family worked in the medical field, and that was her dream too - until she studied abroad in Jerusalem and interned at a rabbinical school. "Through that program, I realized that what interested me in medicine was the people side of things - being able to help people through situations and walking with people in all their journeys in life," she said. "Irealized Icould findmuch more of thatin the rabbinate, so I decided to go to rabbinical school."

After attending Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati - the rabbinical school she interned with in Israel - and serving congregations in West Virginia, Michigan, Kentucky, and Ohio, she found a position in the exurbs of Washington, DC. Now, shehas movedfromNorthern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston, VA,where shewas the Associate Rabbi and Director of Congregational Learning, back to her hometown.

Wainer, who grew up in Oak Park, has taken a positionas theAssociate Rabbi at Congregation Etz Chaim of DuPageCounty,whichshewas thrilled to begin in early July.

She was inspired to return because of the opportunity to rekindleoldfriendshipsand"buildconnections with the larger Jewish community of Chicago."Wainer sees Chicago as a "veryheimishcommunity, down to earth, where everybody knows everybody, and people are willing to help and make sure everything gets done."She looks forward tobuilding a "relational-style rabbinate"alongwith RabbiAndreaCosnowsky, Etz Chaim's Senior Rabbi.

"The more I learned about the congregation, the more I thought it would be a really good fit for me and my rabbinate," said Wainer,and she is eager to hit the ground running. She described her priority as "building relationships with as many people as possible, getting to know and understand them, and working together in partnership"to create an enjoyablesynagogueexperience.

She hopes to build on Etz Chaim's social justice workand missions of inclusion and diversity. Additionally, she will bring her experienceproducingprograms for hercongregationin Virginiaduring the pandemic to buildinventiveprograms to appeal to new and old members.

As a rabbi, Wainer had to reframe her training to come up with innovative ideas: "A lot of times in the Jewish world we think about recreating the wheel, and in thepandemicwe were creating the wheel,since it had never been done before," she said.

Wainerexploredhow toforgemeaningful experiences without singing as a group, or even gathering in the same room, developingher sense of creativitytoriseto thechallenge. She now hopes to meet a new challenge in her newrole:What is the best way to serve the entire Jewish community, if different people have different comfort levels with in-person services and events?

"I want to provide equal access to Judaism through online and in-person access points," said Wainer, whois also eager to"getto know the Chicago community as it is now," as the pandemic wanes.

"Coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people are exploring what they want from their Judaism and finding congregations that fit them," Wainer said. She wants to get to know people in the community who haven't yet found their place and help them to do so.

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JUF News | Return of the Rabbi - Jewish United Fund

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Posted By admin on August 13, 2021

Teenagers and young adults are inspired when they feel they are part of something larger than themselves, when they feel they are not just consumers but are attaching themselves to a larger mission for the Jewish future, Rabbi Gideon Black of Englewood said.

Rabbi Black, 38, is the new chief executive officer of the New York region of NCSY, the flagship youth movement of the Orthodox Union, the umbrella organization for North American Orthodox Jewry.

Rabbi Blacks insights into what inspires teenagers come from experience. He spent the past decade working with the OUs Jewish Life on Campus program, first as a campus rabbi at New York University from 2011 to 2015, and then as OU-JLICs national director of professional recruitment and leadership development for the last six years.

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Its thrilling to work with young adults in college as they confront big questions about life and Judaism, he said. But I value this remarkable opportunity to engage people at a younger age, when their identity is in formation.

While the flavor or content of a program or event may differ for a 15-year-old as opposed to a 21-year-old, the deeper values and what were trying to achieve is quite similar, he added.

Theres a certain commonality that runs through all ages in terms of what they are looking for in their Judaism and what they admire in role models. Teens and young adults connect to role models whom they see as authentic someone they can trust, who lives and breathes the values they are sharing, Rabbi Black said.

NCSY was founded in 1954 as the National Conference of Synagogue Youth and now has chapters throughout the United States, Canada, Israel, Chile, and Argentina.

Although run under Orthodox auspices, NCSY welcomes all Jewish boys and girls, ranging from those with no formal Jewish education or affiliation to those growing up in the synagogue and day school world.

Year-round programs include weekend Shabbatonim, Jewish Student Union clubs on public high school campuses, afterschool Latte & Learning sessions, summer camps, trips, and service missions.

Young peoples attention is being drawn in many directions, from social media to sports, so the counselors and the content need to be fun and uplifting, Rabbi Black said. We want to see them leave a program or Shabbaton with a smile on their face.

He estimates that there are about 100,000 Jewish teens in the regions catchment area New York City, Long Island, and Westchester and Rockland counties. About half are from ultra-Orthodox families, which rarely engage with NCSY. That leaves about 50,000 young people, many without any Jewish affiliation.

We want to engage as many of those teens as possible and that the engagement shouldnt be fleeting but should be substantial and enduring, Rabbi Black said.

He and his staff of 19 aim to continue NCSYs strong momentum in areas including Manhattans Upper East Side and the Five Towns and Great Neck on Long Island, and increase its activities on the Upper West Side and in midtown and downtown Manhattan, Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Scarsdale, New Rochelle, and Monsey.

NCSYs international director, Rabbi Micah Greenland, said that he is excited for Rabbi Black to sharpen and implement his ambitious vision in leading New York NCSYs program in order to better reach and impact the next generation of Jewish teens throughout the New York area.

The regions previous CEO, Rina Emerson, has been appointed as NCSYs national chief operating officer.

Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Rabbi Black studied at the London School of Economics and has a law degree from University College London.

After attending Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel, he moved to New York in 2007 to pursue his rabbinical ordination at Yeshiva Universitys Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He concurrently earned a masters degree in Jewish philosophy from the universitys Bernard Revel Graduate School and completed Columbia Business Schools developing leaders program.

During his rabbinical training, Rabbi Black interned at the Manhattan Jewish Experience and the Riverdale Jewish Center. After ordination, he began his work at NYU in the summer of 2011.

Kenneth Sicklick, the chair of New York NCSYs board, said that Rabbi Blacks extensive experience at OU-JLIC and his warm personality will serve him well in his new position and will enhance the NCSY experience for thousands of New York teenagers.

Rabbi Black and his wife, physician assistant Aliza Berkowitz Black, send their four children to the Moriah School in Englewood.

When asked to pinpoint the area in which todays Jewish teenagers need the most guidance, Rabbi Black was silent for a few moments as he composed a thoughtful response.

They need guidance on how to take their parents and grandparents Judaism and make it their own, he said. To view something that seems ancient maybe even beautiful, maybe even precious, with wonderful family associations not as something from the past, like an heirloom that belongs on the mantlepiece with the family photos, but as something really relevant to their day-to-day living.

We want them to view that tradition that their families may have not as being antiquated or irrelevant, but as essential and life affirming. As long as they view it only as part of their history, but not integral to their present lives, then it wont become part of their future.

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Making it their own - The Jewish Standard

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Posted By admin on August 13, 2021

The numbers of ways educators were able to do their jobs and serve their students during the COVID-19 pandemic is probably equal to the number of educators that exist. Just about every teacher has a personal story to tell. Today, we are going to hear the stories of two.

First, we head to Alexandria, Virginia to meet Rabbi Bailey Romano. She was just about a year into her career as a Jewish educator when she had to take an entire religious school online. But some intimate experiences with disaster in her past uniquely prepared her for the challenges of COVID.

Then it's off to Pensacola, Florida, where the choir director at the University of West Florida is now sharing his musical vision with the whole community. And he took on that project in mid-pandemic.

Well also hear how a choir director kept a whole city singing during COVID, and spend an Academic Minute blaming the left. Left turns, that is.

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The Best Of Our Knowledge #1612 "The Rabbi, The Choirmaster & The Pandemic" - WAMC

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Posted By admin on August 13, 2021

Raviv Ullman might have been your middle school crush when he starred in Disneys Phil of the Future. Today, hes probably more akin to your rabbi (not that you cant have a crush on your rabbi).

While Ullman still acts, hes moved past goofy sci-fi comedies to more serious work, such as a documentary about the Dakota Access Pipeline. And, during the pandemic, he began a new podcast, called The Study, in which he dissects and interprets the weekly Torah portion along with various Jewish professionals and luminaries. Guests have included Ilana Glazer and Neshama Carlebach.

Ullmans maternal grandfather, Joseph Ehrenkranz, was a charismatic pulpit rabbi in Stamford, C.T. Ullman called him a superhero who everyone knew from his incredible sermons, so in a way, the podcast is nothing new. But Ullman takes a different approach to the text, looping in activism, environmental themes and even the history of smells.

When we spoke, Ullman was warm and chatty, often going off into long, philosophizing spiels as he considered Judaism, art and his relationship to Torah as well as comparing notes with me on biking around the city from his former days living in Brooklyn. I often forget that Im in interview mode and Im just having a good time talking, he said.

Our conversation, edited lightly for clarity and rather heavily for length, is below.

Raviv Ullman, all grown up.

I have to admit that I grew up without cable and I have never seen Phil of the Future.

Youre in the clear. It was a very specific moment, that show was not on for very long, and so it was a very small but mighty audience. Im glad to talk about other things.

Why dont you tell me a little bit about what youve been up to recently? I know youve been working on this documentary about the Dakota Access Pipeline.

When I started that project, a director friend said, Oh, youre making a documentary have fun for the next six years! And I said, Ha ha, six years. Anyway, it looks like thats about how long documentaries take to make, so thats still an ongoing project.

I have also started working in the opera space recently, which is brand-new but really exciting. Boston Lyric Opera and Long Beach Opera commissioned an eight-part miniseries by James Derrah, the LBO artistic director, and Ellen Reid, who won a Pulitzer for opera, and they wrote this opera. I was invited to come act in it it was a dual cast where they would record it in a studio and actors would act it on screen.

Ive since been roped into this opera world. Up until recently, Id actually never been to an opera. Hearing opera singers, like [Metropolitan Opera star] Isabel Leonard, sing at full volume, feet away from you, is one of the most insane things Ive ever experienced. Its like being on a roller-coaster ride, you feel it in your toes.

And how did the podcast fit into all of this?

In the beginning of the pandemic, everything shut down, and everything that I do is collaborative. I really missed that. A podcast that was studying Torah with a rotating group of rabbis seemed like an incredible way to be in conversation with people about the world around us.

It was born out of doing Shabbat dinners at home. In the pandemic, we kept it up and that was really helpful. It was really hard to engage with the world we didnt know what the heck was going on. There was a pandemic, and a whole new upswell of activism, and it was hard to look straight at it all the time, with perspective.

Torah gave us an in. Heres whats happening in the Torah, and what does that make us think of, and how do we reflect on it? That was a really useful tool that kept a big group of friends in deep conversation with each other at a time when we didnt know where exactly to start the conversation. So Im trying to be truthful to that with the show.

How did those Shabbat dinners get started?

I went to Israel with my brother for a few months and came back inspired to have Shabbat again, so I started hosting Shabbat for friends in both L.A. and New York, wherever I was. We werent a group of people that were looking to go clubbing on a Friday night, we wanted to spend it breaking bread, and everyone was welcome.

I remember being nervous to get all of these non-Jews to wash their hands for challah and then stay quiet until they ate it. And then it was everyones favorite thing people looked forward to that quiet moment at the end of the week.

That kind of blew my mind. People are starving for this ritual! We need Shabbat to just take a break for a second, even if its the 20 seconds between washing your hands and the challah.

Then I hosted Shabbat Zoom every week in the beginning of the pandemic and so many people showed up. Like, this was after they had been on Zoom all week long, and they still showed up.

Who is the podcasts audience? Its very specific and very Jewish, yet on the other hand, its not you talk to all kinds of people and connect the text to the environment, to Black Lives Matter, to activism.

I recently had this realization that all of the different art that I want to make the person that I want to make this for, the intended audience for all of these things, is me.

I get really frustrated in the arts when people try to make something for everyone. I definitely dont pretend or want to pretend that Im speaking on behalf of all millennial Jews, or all progressive-leaning Jews.

The journey of the show was me being curious to go through the Torah for the first time as an adult, and to do it with people who are way smarter than me. And that is seemingly resonating we dip in and out of the number one spot on iTunes, which is wild.

How do you approach all of the boring parts of Torah? You know, the bits youre afraid to get as your Torah portion for a bar mitzvah, that say exactly how long the Temple should be or what kind of wood to use.

We like to have fun with it. Leviticus can be a little dry sometimes, but why are these things so deeply specific? When I read this whole thing about acacia wood and the very specific incense that was used, that made me wonder why smell is so important, and how smell has been used in religions across the course of history. So we brought people in to talk about that.

The other thing thats even more difficult and more thrilling are the really problematic parts. Like, Pinchas is a problematic character but hes written as a hero. And we find a lot of misogynistic writing in the Torah. On the show, we try to really look at that and tear it apart. What if were able to trace some modern bit of misogyny back to a line in Torah? Then weve actually uncovered something and can start to unravel it.

It sounds like theres a clear theme of interrogating stories in all of your work.

Thats the Judaism I grew up with. Friends would come over for Seder, and theyd been used to reading through the Seder as fast as possible to get to dinner. But we sit around for hours and hours and hours and rip the thing to shreds, and we do it every year. Its one of my favorite things to do, because its like this deep engagement with my family.

I was taught that asking questions is one of the most Jewish things you can do. Israel means to wrestle with God Im leaning into that as hard as I can. I dont have to blindly accept anything, the whole point is to wrestle with it and ask the hard questions.

How has doing the podcast changed your relationship to Judaism?

One of my favorite parts of making the show is sitting down with my producer Evan, and we read through the Torah portion together, and think about all of the conversations we could have, and then figure out how to do the episode. But Evan and I are in deep conversation around the text, and thats our own chevruta. Id never done that as an adult, not since I was at Hillel Hebrew Day School.

Who is your dream guest?

Id love to study Torah with Obama, or to talk to [Secretary of the Interior] Deb Haaland about her spiritual journey and the importance of land and our relationship to it.

Oh, or when I was a touring musician, I did a tour with Lizzo, very early on in her career. It would be fun to study some Torah with Lizzo.

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Disney star Raviv Ullman is ready to be your new rabbi - Forward

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Posted By admin on August 13, 2021

Sitting down with Meir Goldberg, 39, was a leap back in time for me. I remember him when he was a teenager, and it was fun to catch up with him after all these years. Meir has been living in Israel for 18 years and says he would never live anywhere else. He lives with his young family in Raanana and enjoys going back to Michigan regularly for business and to visit family and friends.

MG: I grew up going to the Young Israel of Southfield where my father (Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg) was the rabbi and is still rabbi emeritus. I went to Yeshiva Beth Yehudah for elementary school.

MG: I studied at Yeshivat HaKotel during the Second Intifada, and that year, my father led a group of young people from my community on the March of the Living. I hung out with the group, and the discussions with the kids were understandably intense. They had come to Israel straight from the gas chambers of Poland.

My great-grandmother died in Auschwitz, and my grandfather, for whom I was named, was a partisan fighter who smuggled children out of the camps. It was personal. Being with these young people who were reliving the depth of the Jewish experience made me feel even more intensely the blessing of the ground underneath me. It was a moment of awareness that my roots, my heritage, everything about me, was very much connected to this land.

MG: I grew up coming to Israel regularly as a child and developed a great love for the country and the people. I never imagined, however, making Israel my home. It was after one particular trip, when I was 22, that I found myself connected to a great community of fellow Anglos. At the same time, there were tremendous business opportunities that were very attractive.

MG: The real estate market in Israel was booming. I began a business with my U.S. network, finding apartments, renovating buildings and eventually developing projects. I also met my wife who was born in England and moved here at a young age. Israel had become home, so it was natural to make aliyah officially.

MG: As much as I enjoyed real estate development, I saw the growing tech sector in Israel as an opportunity to help support the country while offering my growing U.S. network of investors real opportunities for top Israel investments.

I joined an amazing company called OurCrowd, which was focusing a great deal of talent and know-how in choosing the right startups to invest in. As we have experienced extraordinary exits, my network of investors, including back in Detroit, has grown significantly. It gives me a great excuse to come back to Detroit often and see my family and friends.

I am also very passionate about the Kids Kicking Cancer program in Israel, where I sit on the board. My dad started KKC in Detroit a number of years after my sister passed away. We have a strong program in 12 Israel hospitals but have also supplied our martial arts therapy to young trauma victims all over the country.

MG: I miss my family. I also miss getting to see the Pistons, Lions, Tigers and Red Wings live. And Jerusalem Pizza, and not in that order.

MG: Many people are challenged going a bit out of the culture that they are used to. However, when it comes to Israel, you dont need a strong Hebrew or religious background to quickly feel enveloped by the country of the Jewish people. I love Detroit, but I know that in Israel, I am really home.

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Meet Meir Goldberg: Business Opportunities Attracted Him to Israel The Jewish News - The Jewish News

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Posted By admin on August 13, 2021

This weeks Altercation is (mainly) authored by the extremely prolific Shaul Magid, professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, Kogod senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue in Seaview, New York. It draws on the research and arguments of his new book, Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical, though its contents are original to Altercation.

When people today hear the name Meir Kahane, most think about the militant and racist rabbi turned Israeli politician who founded a political party in Israel, was elected to the Knesset in 1984, and was removed in 1987 under the Racism Law legislated just for him, which made his party illegal. Many may be familiar with his policy to transfer Arabs out of Israel, his belief that Israel cant be both Jewish and democratic, and his critique of left-wing secular Israelis, calling them Hebrew speaking goyim.

Those more familiar with Israel may be aware of the ubiquitous Kahane was Right graffiti that dotted the landscape, especially after the second intifada in 2000, the emergence of a series of Israeli politicians who still view Kahane as a mentor, and the rise of small but vocal neo-Kahanist vigilante groups that terrorize Arab civilians in the name of Kahanes vision of what a Jewish state means. There are very few in Israel who are not familiar with the term Kahane or Kahanism and what that implies. His funeral in Israel in 1990 was one of the largest in the history of the country.

In contemporary America, however, things are very different. Kahane is almost a persona non grata in the American Jewish conversation, and when his name is mentioned, it is usually in regard to something in Israel. Ironically, Kahanes career began in America with the founding the Jewish Defense League in May 1968, and by early 1970 he had all but hijacked the Soviet Jewry movement through his call for civil disobedience and even violence to persuade Russia to free its Jewish dissidents. He testified before Congress about Soviet Jewry in June 1968. In March 1971, he organized a rally in D.C. for Soviet Jewry that was the largest rally ever held at the White House. He was the subject of long articles in Esquire and The New York Times Magazine, and was a feature interview in Playboy in 1972. JDL chapters sprang forth in many cities across the country, and his Soviet Jewry activism was the subject of a White House discussion between President Nixon and the Soviet ambassador. In 1971, a Look magazine poll showed that about 25 percent of American Jews had a positive view of the JDL. Kahane was not a marginal figure but a national one. It is likely that between 1968 and 1973 he was mentioned in The New York Times more often than any other rabbi in America.

So why do we know so little about Kahane in America? Jonathan Sarnas comprehensive book American Judaism does not mention him or the JDL at all. This is no oversight. There has been a marked attempt among scholars and institutional Judaism more generally to erase Kahane from American Jewish history.

Perhaps thats because Kahanes American record includes leading an organization that committed several murders. In 1985, regional offices of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee were bombed; the bombing in Santa Ana, California, killed ADC official Alex Odeh. Irv Rubin, the head of the Los Angeles branch of the JDL, publicly celebrated the killing, and eventually several JDL members were convicted of murders of other Arab Americans, while JDL members whom the FBI posted rewards for in Odehs killing remain free in Israel. Rubin died in prison awaiting trial for other violent acts. The JDL credo that set it apart from other far-right American Jewish organizations was its embrace of deadly violence.

Despite that, the ultranationalism of Kahanes worldview has seeped deep into the collective subconscious of American Jewry. We simply cannot tell the story of postwar American Jewry without Meir Kahane.

To get at what I am arguing, we must distinguish between two things: Kahanes tactics and Kahanes worldview. Kahanes tactics were very much a product of his time; the culture and race wars of the late 1960s, the radicalism of the New Left that led many young first-generation Jews to radicalize and adopt radical politics for Jewish causes after the New Left became anti-Israel after 1967. Kahanes militarism was a reflection of those years, even if his American followers proved to be a good deal more deadly than any wing of the New Left.

His worldview, however, was something different. It was an amalgam of Cold War anti-communism, an attack on American liberalism, and a systemic critique of the moderate nature of a mainstream Jewish establishment that was wary of making trouble. He challenged the regnant belief that liberalism and moderation would save the American Jewish dream. Interestingly, Kahanes early program was a diasporist one and not focused on Israel at all. An early JDL manifesto claimed the organization sought to save the American dream for Jews by instilling in its youth an assertive and activist program to fight assimilation, anti-Semitism, and intermarriage.

If we remove Kahanes militant tactics, his general worldview is alive and well.

His belief in the ubiquity of anti-Semitism in America was strongly resisted by the American Jewish establishment, and most American Jews. His belief that liberalism had no answer to intermarriage was similarly contested. He wrote a book on intermarriage in 1974, Why Be Jewish?, when few Jews were writing about intermarriage. Based on the 1972 sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie, he called American Judaism Bernism. He lamented the American bar mitzvah (all bar, no mitzvah) and offered a Judaism of the street before there was a social justice movement. When American Jews were still worried mostly about anti-Semitism on the right, he claimed anti-Semitism on the left was more threatening, and in the 1970s he argued that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were identical at a time when few made that connection. Kahane argued against Black nationalism the way some Jews today argue against critical race theory. In the late 1960s, he argued Jews were not responsible for whatever had happened to American Blacks, at a time when many liberal Jews favored reparations. Today, Kahanes view on reparations can be heard in many quarters of the moderate Jewish world.

On these and other issues, what Kahane was saying about American Jewry in the late 1960s and 1970s is what many mainstream Jews are saying in 2020. If we remove Kahanes militant tactics, his general worldview is alive and well. He founded Camp Jedel where Jews could learn to shoot guns as Jews. Today, some American Jews proudly send their children to the IDF military Gadna program, where American Jews learn to shoot guns as Jews. In some way, what Kahane wanted was to transfer Israeli survivalism to American shores. In the 1980s, Kahane argued that a Jewish and democratic state was schizophrenic. Today, faced with a half-century occupation, some Jews are questioning whether democracy should be sacrosanct if it challenges a Jewish state.

In short, if we separate tactics from worldview, Kahane has seeped into the collective subconscious of American Jewry more than we are willing to admit. In Israel, facing up to Kahanism is easier as it is more open and thus more a part of the conversation. The attempt to erase Kahanes legacy in America makes it much more difficult to recognize and confront. Many want to see him as a persona non grata. And therein lies the danger. The neoconservatism that emerged after Kahane was gone has been partly responsible for the rightward shift in some of American Jewry. But Kahanism lurks just beneath the surface. Someone once said that even though Kahane left America, America never left Kahane. I would add that in the collective mind of much of American Jewry, Kahane lives on in many of the moderate and genteel discussions about Jewish survival today.

I see that that Rabbi/Professor Magid is also a clawhammer banjo player and a student of Ken Perlman, one of the great living banjo virtuosos and musicologists of old-time banjo as well as the musical partner of Al Jabour who was, until his death a few years ago, the curator of American folk music at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. There are a few people in this world who have too much talent to be accorded to a single person. Its just not fair. I had this thought twice in the past week, once when I was reading about Jhumpa Lahiri and again when I was reading about Viet Thanh Nguyen. Both are significant scholars as well as brilliant authors of fiction. (Of course, they are also terrific, albeit unnecessary, arguments for the value of an open immigration policy.) Ive not read Lahiris new novel, Whereabouts, originally written, infuriatingly to mere mortals, in Italian, a language she recently decided to learn, but I did read Nguyens magnificent two novels and can recommend them unreservedly. Start with The Sympathizer before moving on to The Committed.

We cant solve many of the worlds problems all by ourselves here at Altercation, but one I think we can dispose of is the sad fact that many people think Tom Jones is lame. Well, think again after you have watched Tom sing Long Time Gone with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Raise Your Hand with Janis Joplin; Burning Down the House with the Cardigans; and, more recently, Leonard Cohens Tower of Song all by himself.

Finally, what the world needs now, no less than love sweet love, are conservatives who have a sense of honor and devote themselves to tell the truth, regardless of where it may lead. There are just a few of these left and we lost one with the passing of Yale historian (and Brooklyn College alumnus) Donald Kagan, whose four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War is one of the great scholarly achievements of the past half-century.

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Altercation: The Ghost That Stalks the American Jewish Establishment - The American Prospect

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Posted By admin on August 13, 2021

An Israeli girl found a 1,500-year-old bronze coin at the site of an ancient Jewish village near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel on Tuesday, the Nature and Parks Authority said.

The Yitzchaki family from the West Bank settlement of Har Bracha visited the Korazim archaeological park and played a scavenger hunt game involving the unique building style of the Talmud-era village, the parks authority said.

During the game, the girl found the ancient coin on the ground. She handed it to park staff.

This is an ancient bronze coin that, according to initial estimates, dates to the Talmudic period between the 4th and fifth centuries CE, said the archaeological park manager, Dekel Segev. This was the peak period of the Jewish village in Korazim.

Segev praised the girl for immediately handing over the coin to the park authorities.

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The girl and her family showed good citizenship and handed us the coin since it is a national treasure, he said. The coin will be passed on to the Israel Antiquities Authority for further research and preservation.

A 1,500-year-old coin found at the Korazim archaeological site in northern Israel, August 10, 2021. (Dekel Segev/Israel Nature and Parks Authority)

The Korazim site, which overlooks the Sea of Galilee, includes the remains of a synagogue. It also attracts Christian pilgrims since the name of the place is mentioned in the New Testament.

Visitors to the site can tour the grounds as well as participate in archaeological activities in the ancient town, which is a popular attraction for families with young children.

The Galilees Korazim archaeological park in October 2019. (Amanda Borschel-Dan/Toi)

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Girl finds 1,500-year-old coin at Talmud-era Jewish village in northern Israel - The Times of Israel

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