Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 5, 2021

(Corrects acronym in second paragraph)

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) -Europe will celebrate its first continent-wide Jewish LGBT+ Pride on Saturday against a backdrop of rising concern about anti-Semitism and homophobia in countries such as Hungary, Poland and Germany.

Organised by the European Union for Progressive Judaism (EUPJ), participants said a recent anti-LGBT+ law passed in Hungary underscored the need for EUPJ Pride Shabbat, which will be online-only due to coronavirus restrictions.

Hungarian lawmakers passed legislation last month banning the dissemination of content deemed to promote or show gender change and homosexuality to those under the age of 18.

In certain places (across Europe) you often have religion being used to say that it is incompatible with LGBTI rights, David Weis, president of the Liberal Jewish Community of Luxembourg, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Its important to show that you do have religious movements that do not at all see it that way, and that religion or tradition can be used to promote inclusiveness. And that is something that progressive Judaism has done for a long time.

Europes Jewish population stands at about 1.3 million, according to a 2020 estimate by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

Over the past few years, many European countries have seen rises in hate crimes against minorities including the Jewish and LGBT+ communities.

Germany said in May hate crimes against LGBT+ people increased by 36% in 2020 from a year earlier, while those targeting the Jewish community rose by 15.7%.

Saturdays event will comprise a prayer session followed by a panel discussion on the challenges faced by the LGBT+ Jewish community across Europe.

However, organisers and participants remain optimistic of organising some form of physical event for 2022, following in the footsteps of similar Jewish Pride events in the United States.

Raising awareness of LGBT+ Jewish people is vital across Europe but also within the Jewish community, said Antonio Eliav, head of Keshet Sefarad, a Spanish-based LGBT+ Jewish organisation.

Unfortunately some queer Jewish people are turned off (when they see the lack of LGBT+ representation) within the Jewish community. So I think its really important to have spaces, like this one, that is unique to both, Eliav said.

Reporting by Hugo Greenhalgh @hugo_greenhalgh; Editing by Helen Popper. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit news.trust.org

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Europe to hold first Jewish LGBT+ Pride with prayers and debate - Reuters

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Posted By admin on July 5, 2021

UW and the community | UW Notebook

June 29, 2021

Recent news from the Jackson School of International Studies includes a new endowed scholarship for study of India made possible by two alumni, and a book on angels in ancient Jewish culture by Jewish Studies professor Mika Ahuvia.

Alumni gift supports student study of India

S. Rao and Usha Varanasi

A new endowed scholarship in the UW Jackson School of International Studies will fund study of India for students in any discipline, with a focus on undergraduates.

The S. Rao and Usha Varanasi Endowed Scholarship for Studies of India in the Jackson School will be funded by a $100,000 gift by the two alumni who are longtime donors.

The South Asia Center will award the scholarship annually to students who demonstrate interest in India through coursework, study abroad, language training, honors thesis research or other initiatives.

We are fortunate to have grown up in two major democracies, India and the United States, but we feel that the understanding of strengths and similarities between our two beloved countries is often superficial, the Varanasis said in an article on the Jackson School website.

Our endowment is an encouragement to students to learn about India from renowned teachers and experts because knowledge deepens empathy.

* * *

Book by Mika Ahuvia explores angels in ancient Jewish culture

Angelic beings can be found throughout the Hebrew Bible, writes Mika Ahuvia, associate professor in the Jackson School. And by late antiquity the archangels Michael and Gabriel were as familiar as the patriarchs and matriarchs (and) guardian angels were as present as ones shadow.

Mika Ahuvia

In her new book, On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture, Ahuvia explores the ancient Jewish practice centered on humans relationships with invisible beings who acted as intermediaries, role models and guardians. The book was published this month by University of California Press.

Using such non-canonical sources as mystical texts, liturgical poetry, amulets and incantation bowls, Ahuvia shows that when ancient men and women sought access to divine aid, they turned not only to their rabbis or to God alone but often also to the angels.

Ahuvia teaches courses in Jewish studies, global studies and comparative religion at the Jackson School. She is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and a faculty member of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies.

Learn more at the Jackson School website. Watch video of a conversation with Ahuvia about the book produced by Fordham University.

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From the Jackson School: Endowed scholarship for India study, book on angels in ancient Jewish culture - UW News

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Posted By admin on July 5, 2021

Since the early 2000s, Yael Bartana has brought the remnants of the Jewish question into sharp relief. Redemption Now, a survey at Berlins Jewish Museum on through October 10, includes early videos that simultaneously detail and estrange the rituals of Israeli Orthodox Jewish and settler communities. In recent years, her work has grown more formally elaborateand provocativein its choreographies and pre-enactments. Her trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned, 200711, staged the dramatic genesis of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, while the Philadelphia-set The Undertaker, 2019, mixed avant-garde choreography with American Civil Warreenactment culture and street protest. For her latest worka kind of historical drag in which a white-robed savior rides into a temporally ambiguous BerlinBartana employs a strategy of critical camp to address the specter of National Socialism, the pull of irredentistand messianic myths, and the challenges to a nations consciousness in a post-truth era.

ACCORDING TO JUDAISM, the messiah will arrive on a donkey. In the making of my new video workMalka Germania (Hebrew for Queen Germania), I knew I wanted to keep this particular part of the prophecy intact while queering other aspects of the story. I knew early on that I did not want my messiah to be portrayed by a male actor with classic Jewish attributes. This would be too much on the nose for me.Instead, I started looking for an actress similar to Tilda Swinton and found her in Gala Moody. With her androgynous features and Aryan color palette, I felt she would be the right Malka for me. The work is the spitting image of National Socialist propaganda and fantasy, a paradox that might challenge the inherent expectations of the audience, creating confusion and curiosity by proposing that the redeemer is among us.

Within the specific historical-mythic structure ofMalka Germania,the Queens glaring whiteness raises the question of the role of the Jew, which is something I have long dealt with in my overall practice. Especially the notion of the useful Jewthe incongruity ofthis figure driving an ideology like Evangelicalism, with its telos of redemption, but also the proto-existentialism of Franz Rosenzweigs 1921 work Star of Redemption. For my staging of these topics, Ive been called both the Israeli Leni Riefenstahl and a useful Jew.

Malka Germanias reception is site-specific, in that audiences will encounter the work with their own historical baggage, personal as much as national. The scenes are set not only throughout Berlin but also in the citys lush woodlands and lakes. Theres the familiar German trope of the forest, which has served as the backdrop to the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, to the organizations where Nazisms young bodies and minds were conditioned, and to the horrors of the concentration camp. With the extras in the film, such as the bathers by the Wannsee, the point, for me, is not so much to insist on the clichs of the German petit bourgeoisie. Rather, what interests me about this multigenerational yet uniformly blond cast is blondness as such, colored by fiction and history. When I first came to Germany, I expected everyone to look like propaganda posters from the 1930s, which is ridiculous but tells you something about the sway this imagery still has over the Israeli imagination, its sense of sovereignty, and its politics. I was frankly disappointed that the population of Berlin didnt match my childhood projections: this fraught fascination with a superior people, inextricably linked to the wretched image of the Jew and, consequently, to the discourse of anti-Semitism and the history of extermination. This constellation not only significantly informs Holocaust trauma and the politics of memory but would be deployed by the state as ideology, the unquestionable explanation for why we as Jews ought to live in Israel.

There is certainly pathos in the film, but I square, or queer, this pathos with a certain realism. In my work, realism comprises unconscious or concealed currents in society, or rather these currents ebb and flow, such as the rebounding German identitarian movement and its opposition. Im thinking here of the films nightmarish wet dream sequence, in which Albert Speers unrealized Germania dome emerges from the pastoral Wannsee, exploding the pimple of repressed history. In my film, special effects serve the function of particularizing social and historical affects, a device through which these feelings surface and become discursive. Spectacular or notcall it Zionism on steroidsthe arc Im proposing inMalka doesnt resolve into a unifying master narrative but will instead differently affect and redeem viewers and their respective conceptions of the German past and present. Its a transhistorical queering of contemporary Berlin at the hands of this androgynous Aryan messiah, much like the films fictitious, Hebrewized Berlin intersection of Redemption and Occupation Streets: a transposition from an actual Tel Aviv junction that encapsulates the grim paradox of Israels founding history, or really of any territorial messianic project.

As told to Daniel Horn

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Yael Bartana on messianic myth, redemption, and the Jewish question - Artforum

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Roger Pinto and his son David speaking on Israeli television shortly after their ordeal at the hands of an antisemitic gang in 2017. Photo: I24

A court in Paris has sentenced nine individuals to prison sentences ranging from four to 12 years after they were convicted for a vicious gang robbery of a French Jewish family in 2017 that was motivated by antisemitism.

Three of the nine offenders sentenced by the Assize Court in Seine-Saint-Denis were directly involved in the Sept. 2017 assault on Roger Pinto, who was 83-years-old at the time, his wife Mireille, who was 73, and their son David, who was 41. The leader of the gang received the longest sentence, at 12 years.

Two other robbers received eight and seven year sentences respectively, while the remaining members of the gang who received the money and valuables stolen from the Pintos were sentenced to four years.

The familys ordeal began whenDavid Pinto discovered on the morning of the attack that the electricity was not working in the family home in the Livry-Gargan neighborhood of Paris. Going down into the basement to check the electricity meter, David opened a door which enabled three assailants, who had set a trap by cutting off the electricity supply, to force their way into the house.

Having gagged David, the three men dragged him to the first floor of the family home. There, they encountered his mother, Mireille, who managed to alert her husband, Roger, before she too was grabbed by the gang. Mireille said that she was caught and gagged by the three men.

The gang also attacked Roger Pinto, beating him unconscious. Mr. Pinto said that as he regained consciousness, he heard one of the gang members tell him, You are Jewish, we know that the Jews have a lot of money and you will give us what you have. If you do not give us what we ask you, well kill you.

Roger Pinto continued: The three men had a screwdriver and a knife, which they constantly threatened us with. They threatened to kill us. That was unbearable. These thugs took our creditcards, took all the goods we had, jewelry from my wife.

The Pinto family were tied and locked in a room while the gang carried out the robbery, which included several thousand euros in cash. After several hours, Mireille Pinto managed to call the emergency services using Davids phone. For us it was really an eternity, she said. It was a very traumatic event.

The Pintos lawyer, Marc Bensimhon, hailed Fridays decision as a victory for the law.

The aggravating circumstance of antisemitism has been confirmed by the Assize Court, which will set a precedent, Bensimhon commented.

Among the mutations of antisemitism that French Jews have confronted in recent years is the myth that Jews are an uncommonly wealthy community with the widespread habit of keeping cash and expensive valuables in their homes. In 2014, ayoung Jewish couple in the suburb of Creteil was subjected to a violent robbery, during which the woman was raped, that was motivated by the same belief. More recently, in 2018, the body of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, was found burned and with multiple stab wounds in her Paris apartment after she was robbed by two men who targeted herbecause she was Jewish.

French Jews were anxiously watching the trial of the Pinto familys assailants, which began on June 21. The community was outraged in April this year after the countrys highest court excused excuse from trial the accused antisemitic killer of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman brutally murdered in her Paris apartment in April 2017, on the grounds that the perpetrators intake of cannabis had rendered him temporarily insane and therefore not criminally liable.

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Antisemitic Gang Who Assaulted and Robbed Jewish Family in Paris Sentenced by French Court - Algemeiner

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Posted By admin on July 5, 2021

WESTPORT, Connecticut A year after Easy Rider came out, Bruce Ente bought his first motorcycle. It was 1970 and Ente, then aged 19, decided what he needed was a Honda CB350. So he spent his bar mitzvah money to make the purchase.

I just got this idea that I wanted a bike, Ente, treasurer of the Jewish Motorcyclists Alliance (JMA), told The Times of Israel via Zoom from his home in Oberlin, Ohio.

Ente was studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the time. So he and his two friends each bought a bike, depleting the shops entire motorcycle inventory. After they finished the semester they shipped their bikes from Haifa to Greece, and then on to the United States.

When Ente told his parents, they werent pleased.

A nice Jewish boy riding a motorcycle? Most people think motorcycles and Jews are oxymoronic, said Ente, a retired research psychologist. But the reality is that Jewish men and women are no less intrigued and fascinated about motorcycles than any other person. We are victims of our own mythology, that people of the book cant be people of the bike.

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After Ente returned home, he sold his CB350 to a fellow student at Oberlin College and Conservatory. Today he rides a Yamaha FJR1300, which is a sport touring bike.

Jewish Motorcyclists Alliance treasurer Bruce Ente, on a BMW. (Courtesy)

It has 168,000 miles on the odometer, 118,000 miles of which are mine, Ente said. His most recent cross-country trip was a five-week, 9,400-mile trip across the US up into British Columbia. He also led a trip to Cuba in 2019.

Ente is deeply involved in his local community and is a member of two Jewish motorcycle groups the local chapter of the Shul Boys and the JMA. And while the JMAs unofficial motto might be, Eat to ride, ride to eat, its deeper credo is about nurturing community.

We eat and have fun, but we have a bigger purpose of teaching Never Again. And beyond the Holocaust, its about expanding diversity and inclusion and tolerance, said Ente. We have an obligation as Jews to use the experience of our people to help other people.

The JMA which is essentially a club of clubs was founded in 2004 after several Jewish clubs arranged a meet and greet at Mikes Famous Harley-Davidson in Delaware. The event inspired the JMAs creation as well as the idea for Ride 2 Remember, an official ride in memory of the Holocaust.

The Shul Boys motorcycle club visit the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, Ohio. (Palmieri Photography)

Today the JMA holds rides and meets to promote educational and charitable activities benefiting the wider Jewish community and broader non-Jewish community. Over the past decade, it has raised about $400,000 for Holocaust centers in the United States and Canada. Additionally, the JMA and its member clubs frequently gather to assemble care packages for the food insecure, celebrate Jewish holidays such as Sukkot, or visit seriously ill children at summer camps.

The JMA now has 42 member clubs in the US, Australia, Canada and Israel. There are the Shul Boys and the Chai Riders, Hillels Angels and The Tribe. Some are religiously observant while others are secular. Members include dentists and doctors, rabbis and cantors, teachers and veterans, accountants and software engineers.

Its more than just a club. Its more than just a group. Its a family and its wonderful, said Rob Zucker, who owns a motorcycle finance company in Roswell, Georgia.

Members of the Chai Riders motorcycle club visit Camp HASC for developmentally disabled children. (Courtesy Lauren Secular)

Of course, as in all families, disagreements arise. To help maintain harmony, there are rules, said JMA vice president David Rosenblatt in a Zoom interview from his home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

We are Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. We have very right-wing people and very pro-gun people. We have very left-wing and progressive people and very anti-gun people. So we dont talk religion or politics. Both are off-limits on the JMA website, said Rosenblatt, who rides a Honda VTX 1800R.

If members wish to debate they can do so on a private page on the JMA website, he said.

Discourse guidelines aside, the motorcycle enthusiasts feel JMA membership is another way to celebrate their Jewish identity, said Lauren Secular, JMA treasurer and founder of Chai Riders.

A member of the Shul Boys and Jewish Motorcycle Alliance . (Palmieri Photography)

In the Tri-State area, members of the Chai Riders meet for dinner once a month at a kosher restaurant.

Every summer the clubs female riders go to Camp Simcha in upstate New York where they spend time with the campers, who are seriously ill. The male riders visit Camp HASC, for children who are developmentally disabled. Toward the end of the summer, the club visits two camps run by the nonprofit OHEL Childrens Home and Family Services.

While treasurer Secular isnt observant, shes found the closeness and camaraderie of both the Chai Riders and JMA inspiring.

The most important shul is the one you dont go to, she said, using the Yiddish term for synagogue.

Secular got her first taste of the motorcycle life when she hitchhiked to the beach as an 18-year-old.

Picture the puppy sticking his head out the car window. Thats what riding is like; the freedom, the wind. Your mind is clear, its relaxing. Its you and the bike, she said.

Secular bought her first motorcycle in 1984, about a year after that first ride as a passenger. While she no longer rides that bike because I dont have a 19-year-old body anymore, she still owns it, along with five others.

Jewish bikers proudly display the Israeli flag. (Courtesy Jewish Motorcycle Alliance)

This September, Secular will join hundreds of other motorcyclists for the annual Ride 2 Remember. The ride will return this year to Whitwell, Tennessee, home of the Paper Clips Project which saw middle schoolers create a Holocaust memorial that eventually gained worldwide attention.

Like Secular and other JMA members, Steve Goode of Deerfield, Illinois, also sees motorcycles as a way to spend time riding for pleasure and for a purpose.

Goode met with The Times of Israel at Golds Delicatessen in Westport, Connecticut, on June 12. He was just about a week into The Great American Deli Schlep a 16,000-mile, 75-day motorcycle ride to visit 42 Jewish delis across the lower 48 states.

Jewish biker Steve Goode inside Golds Deli in Westport, Connecticut, part of his 75-day cross-country trek that will see him visit 42 delis to help spread awareness about the problem of food insecurity. (Cathryn J. Prince)

Goode was riding to raise awareness and funds for MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, a national organization fighting to end food insecurity among people of all faiths and backgrounds in the US and Israel.

Goode parked his 2018 Honda Goldwing Tour bike outside the 60-year-old deli long enough for a nosh and a conversation with locals about Americas hunger crisis before heading back on the road. He wanted to make Massachusetts by twilight.

With several cross-country rides under his belt, Goode, a member of the Chicago-based Chaiway Riders and the JMA, said each time he heads out he relishes seeing lesser-known sites and traveling on less-frequented roads.

Riding a motorcycle is the closest thing to meditation I can think of and if you really want to get to know the country, you need to see the back roads of Kentucky or Arizona, Goode said.

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People of the bike: Jewish motorcyclists who ride hogs and mow down stigmas - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on July 5, 2021

There are many Jewish athletes competing in the Tokyo Olympics this summer. But theres one whom were really kvelling over: canoe slalom competitor Jessica Fox.

Jessica, 27, already a two-time Olympic medalist, will be competing in Tokyo this July for Australias canoe slalom team. (Canoe slalom, FYI, is timed event in which athletes race whitewater courses via canoe or kayak, with a series of upstream and downstream gates.) In fact, Jessica is the most awarded canoe slalom player ever talk about impressive!

But here at Kveller, aside from Jessicas accolades, what really impresses us is how canoe slalom is truly a Fox family affair. Jessicas father, Richard, competed in the event for the United Kingdom in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. And her mother, French Jew Myriam Jerusalmi-Fox, won bronze in Atlanta in 1996. Even her younger sister, Noemie, is in on the action: most recently she competed in the U23 World Championship.

Perhaps the most kvell-worthy fact of all about Jessica? Her mother is more than just an inspiration, or her biggest fan Myriam is her coach. (Talk about mother-daughter bonding time!) Myriam has been coaching Jessica (and Noemie!) since they got started in the sport and now, Jessica is ranked no. 1 in the world.

Read the full story HERE.

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Jewish mother-daughter duo head to the Tokyo Olympics - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By admin on July 5, 2021

A Jewish elderly couple was confirmed to be among those killed in the building collapse in Surfside, Florida, last week.

The bodies of Leon Oliwkowicz, 80, and his wife Cristina Beatriz (Rus) de Oliwkowicz, 74, were recovered by rescue workers on Sunday and identified later that night. The couple was laid to rest in a traditional Jewish ceremony on Monday.

The couple, natives of Venezuela, had lived on the 8th floor of the condo tower for several years, according to Venezuelan journalist Shirley Varnagy, a close friend of their family.

They had sent their children to live in the US from Venezuela, and then joined them as the economic and political crisis worsened in their native country, said Rabbi Moshe Perlstein, dean of the Yeshivas Ohr Eliyahu-Lubavitch Mesivta, an Orthodox Jewish School in Chicago where one of their daughters, Leah Fouhal, works as an office manager.

Perlstein flew to Florida to support Fouhal after the disaster as she waited anxiously to learn her parents fate. Late Sunday, authorities announced that their bodies had been recovered.

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On Friday, she was there and she was standing a few blocks away, and smoke was coming from the [collapsed building]. And she tells me, I just hope Ill be able to bury my parents instead of their ashes And then, thank God she was able to bury her parents, not the ashes, he said.

The Jewish people have unfortunately known too many cases where we have buried ashes. We dont want to bury people, but its better than burying ashes, he said as he prepared for their funeral on Monday.

People visit the makeshift memorial for the victims of the building collapse, near the site of the accident in Surfside, Florida, north of Miami Beach on June 27, 2021.(CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP)

Perlstein said the couple was known for their generosity: Three years ago, they donated a valuable Torah scroll to the school in memory of Leon Oliwkowiczs parents.

He was a person that enjoyed when he gave, he was happy. He loved giving, Perlstein said. With his wife, they were very dedicated to their children, helping the children, doing anything they could for their children, he said. It was their life giving to the family and giving charity to others.

At the 2019 procession to celebrate the Sefer Torah, according to Chabad, Oliwkowicz spoke in Yiddish and expressed his satisfaction at finally having the opportunity to commission a Torah scroll in memory of his parents.

So far, 11 people have been confirmed dead and 150 are still missing following the collapse of the 12-story condo building in Surfside, Florida, just outside Miami early Thursday morning.

Jewish faithful pray at the Shul of Bal Harbour after members of the community were reported missing in the partial collapse of a 12-story beachfront condo, Thursday, June 24, 2021, in the Surfside area of Miami. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

On Monday, authorities said they also recovered the remains of Frankie Kleiman, 55, who had recently gotten married, and Michael David Altman, 50. Frankies wife, Ana Ortiz, and her son, Luis Bermudez, both from Puerto Rico, were both confirmed dead on Sunday. Kleimans brother, Jay Kleiman, and their mother Nancy Kress Levin, are still among the missing.

Rabbi Sholom D. Lipskar, the founder of the Shul of Bal Harbour, said many members of his community remain unaccounted for following the collapse.

The circumstances are very, very grim, said Lipskar. Its a very large group of people, unfortunately, he said. From the synagogue, everybody knows somebody. Its like one big community, so [there were] a lot of people that lived in that building.

A delegation from the IDF Home Front Command arrived in Florida on Sunday to help aid in the search and rescue efforts. Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai, who accompanied the delegation, is returning to Israel on Tuesday after meeting with officials and bereaved family members.

While I wish I was here with you for happier times, real friends show up for each other every day, Shai told a group of local rabbis on Tuesday. Were here for our Jewish friends and every human being affected by this tragedy.

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Elderly Jewish couple confirmed dead in Miami building collapse - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on July 5, 2021

Two major moves in progress dramatize the six-year success of the Detroit Public Theatre (DPT) the move into a larger space and the move of its first commissioned play from Motown to Broadway.

Sarah Winkler, a longtime New York stage professional who partnered with local stage professionals and community leaders to establish DPT, mustered through the pandemic by collaborating on plans for the new 7,000-square-foot facility and proudly tracking the development of Broadway-bound Birthday Candles.

DPT, which had been housed in a 150-seat venue at the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center in Midtown, is moving three blocks away to occupy its own building on Third Avenue, and it is scheduled to open in the spring of 2022 with a seating capacity of 200.

Birthday Candles, written by Grand Rapids native Noah Haidle and enhanced with music by Kate Hopgood of Ypsilanti, opens in the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway in a similar timeframe. Premiering director Vivienne Benesch will continue with the new production, starring Debra Messing (Will and Grace).

The leadership at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) had recognized the need for a theater, like the Detroit Public Theatre, in the cultural district so they welcomed and incubated us so generously, said Winkler, producing artistic director with acting and administrative experience.

We shared our space with the education programs at the DSO, and the leadership of the DPT and the DSO always knew at some point DPT could outgrow the space. Our theater programming was growing exponentially at the same time the outstanding education programs of the DSO were growing exponentially.

To celebrate the new space, DPT has scheduled a free Summer Block Party with food, entertainment and games 2-10 p.m. Saturday, July 10.

The DPT, which launched soon after Winklers family moved to Michigan, partnered with Courtney Burkett and Sarah Clare Corporandy, all holding the title of producing artistic director. Burkett, former director of theater programs at Mosaic Youth Theatre, has worked as an actress, director, administrator and teacher. Corporandy continues as managing director of the Chautauqua Theater Company in New York. Playwright Dominique Morisseau recently joined the leadership team.

Right now, we have a full-time staff of seven, and were going to expand to a full-time staff of 10, Winkler said. Well be hiring a general manager, facilities manager and connectivity and engagement manager to develop even more programming for outreach to audiences.

Plans are being made for a 2021-22 season to be performed at different area venues, adding to the 20 productions in residence and six productions and festivals in Detroit communities.

To find the new location, DPT convened a committee led by attorney-businessman David Jaffe and community arts leader Debbie Erb. The committee included board and community members as well as real estate and building experts.

The team looked at more than 35 spaces before deciding on what had been a muffin factory and garage. Members liked its wooden ceilings, complicated metal trussing system and high-ceiling construction. Valet and free parking close to the theater will be offered.

An important consideration was the buildings potential for availability to other arts organizations. An example of DPT outreach has been the Shakespeare in Prison program, directed by Frannie Shepherd-Bates and started in 2012 before joining with DPT in 2015.

The DSO opened up their home to us, and we want to pay that forward and provide subsidized performance space for other performing arts organizations in Detroit, Winkler said.

Looking back on DPT productions, Winkler appeared in two: The Harassment of Iris Malloy by Zak Berkman and Cry It Out by Molly Smith Metzler. Her earlier New York roles have placed her in Einsteins Gift by Vern Thiessen and The Last Seder by Jennifer Maisel. She also was producing artistic director of the Off-Broadway Epic Theatre Ensemble.

Winkler played strong women in both Detroit plays and anticipates widening attention to Eric Gutmans From Broadway to Obscurity. It was filmed for showing on Detroit Public Television and its Buffalo affiliate while efforts are in the works to offer that show through other public television stations.

Winkler is married to Simon Leopold, chief financial officer at Agree Realty, and they have three sons. During the pandemic shutdown, the family longed for their favorite activities at Congregation Shir Tikvah in Troy.

Winker enjoys a laugh about the history of the new space, constructed in 1919.

The building in renovation had been a factory making Bays English Muffins, a favorite of her mom. Elaine Stritch, the late and acclaimed Detroit-bred actress, was married to the late John Bay, whose family owned Bays Muffins. Stritch, the legend goes, gave out muffins to cast members on the opening nights of productions in which she starred.

Were not going to have a lot of food in the theater snack bar, but we are going to have Bays English Muffins, Winkler said. Im obsessed with that.

Returning to the serious side of her work, Winklers team is in the process of raising $3 million for DPT, which has raised $2 million. She explained, Theres been a strengthening, particularly in this year, of my beliefs that theater has the power to unite and create empathy and activate communities understanding and caring for each other.

The Detroit Public Theatres free Summer Block Party will be held 2-10 p.m. Saturday, July 10, in the Selden Courtyard, 656 Selden, Detroit. Information: detroitpublictheatre.org/festivals-partnerships.

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Detroit Public Theatre Brings Strong Tradition to New Venue Detroit Jewish News - The Jewish News

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Posted By admin on July 3, 2021

Tenafly works to include Holocaust history into the schools

Tenafly works to include Holocaust history into the schools following student writing an essay from the perspective of Adolf Hitler.

Tariq Zehawi, NorthJersey.com

Onthe heels of a controversy that left the community reeling, a global human rights organization is partnering with Tenafly to promote Holocaust awareness and turn it into a "teachable moment."

"Rather than arguingover what should and shouldnot have been said, we're using this situation as an opportunityto learn,"said Tenafly Mayor Mark Zinna at a Friday morning newsconference at which the initiative was announced.

Background:NJ student's report on Hitler's 'pretty great' accomplishments prompts outrage

The Holocaust education program is a collaboration between the borough of Tenafly and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The initiative willkickoff on July 12 with a conversation with Holocaust survivor Mark Schonwetter at borough hall. The event is free andopen to the entire community.

By bringing a survivor to tell his story as well asdisplaying an exhibit onHolocaust history in September, "Tenafly is demonstratingthat it is serious about Holocaust education," said Michael Cohen, Eastern director of the Simon WiesenthalCenter. The exhibit "Courage to Remember" will be shown inthe borough, he said.

The educationalinitiativecomes after afifth grader's biography about Adolf Hitler written from the point of view of the notorious Nazi leader provoked outrage in the borough with a growing Jewish population, including many residents wholost family during the Holocaust.

Chao: Cultural nuances contributed to Tenafly Hitler controversy

The handwritten project which seemed to glorify Hitler wasprominently displayed in the elementary school hallway for several weeks before it came to light over Memorial Day weekend, thanks to a parent who saw it and snapped a photo.

An imageof the report with phrases such as "I was very popular," and "I was pretty great, wasn't I?" was widelycirculated online, drawing shock and anger about the essay as well as the teacher who had assigned it without any apparent context or guidelines.

"My greatest accomplishmentwas uniting a great mass of Germanand Austrian people behind me," the essay stated, adding that he murdered 6 million Jews.

The teacher, who is Jewish, had asked students towrite a biography from the perspective of historical figures who "personify good or evil," according to the school district.

News of the essay came amid a recent rise in antisemitism and violent acts against Jewish people around the country.

The Jewish Federationof New Jersey issued a statement in the days following the report asserting that the report was clearly not intended to be antisemitic and the student's familyshould not be blamed. However, the organization did admonish theschoolfor poor judgment.

Tenafly: NJ district announces update of investigation into student's Hitler report. What they found

The incident led to the fifth grade teacher and principal being placed on leave. But it also led to some soul searching about the need for greater sensitivity to groups thatfeel vulnerable, and to convey the lessons of the Holocaustto the next generation.

And now it's brought an eyewitness of the Holocaust to the borough.

Schonwetter, 86, of Livingston, grew up in Poland and survived the Holocaust by hiding in attics, pigpens, and the forest with his younger sister and mother. His father was taken by the Gestapo and murdered in a mass grave.

Flanked by his daughter, Ann Arnold, and local officials, Schonwetter urged everyone to love and not hate. "I feel we should all be one family," he said Friday.

"I went through a lot in my lifeonly because I was a Jew and I hope that nobody has to go through what I went through," he said.

He stressed that the much-discussed essaywas not the child's fault, but was due to a lack of education.

A retired jewelry manufacturer, Schonwetterhas devoted much of his life to Holocaust education and to spreading messages of love and tolerance. He regularlyspeaks at schools and Jewish centers about his family's terrible ordeal and his daughter, Ann Arnold of Norwood, has authored a book about his family's experience called"Together: A Journey For Survival."

School district officials contacted Friday afternoon said they were unaware of the press conference.

Christine Corliss, communications manager for Tenafly public schools, said:"The School Board and District Administration is actively engaged in conversations on how the district can enhance its Holocaust curriculum, and of course welcomes all good ideas and efforts aimed at achieving that goal. We look forward to sharing more about those enhancements as we get closer to the fall."

The teacher who assigned the essay and the school's principal remain on leave, and the district plans to have someone attend the July 12 event, said a district spokesperson.

Zinna said he had notified the district and students and staff were invited to attend.

"This has been organized by the borough. The school is certainly invited."

The Borough Council is a separate entity from the school and cannot address its curriculum, he stressed. "However the school chooses to address [the essay issue]is their business. They know we are doing this. This is a borough event. Everyone from Tenafly is invited."

Deena Yellin covers religion for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to her work covering how the spiritual intersects with our daily lives,please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email:yellin@northjersey.com

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Posted By admin on July 3, 2021

That changed when a man wielding a baseball bat came after him in front of his synagogue in Graz, Austria. The building had been repeatedly vandalized and while Rosen managed to reach his car and escape unharmed physically, he was shaken to his core.

"After the attack, those warnings of my grandparents had kind of a flashback," he told CNN. "This made me very, very sorry and brought tears to my heart and to my face," he said.

"Being physically attacked is a different dimension than being verbally attacked, which I am used to because anti-Semitism has risen in the last year."

Violence and oppression against Jews and their faith has been a constant in Europe, but recorded incidents of anti-Semitism have been on an alarming rise, partly fueled by lockdowns to stop the spread of coronavirus.

In Rosen's home of Austria, there has been the highest number of anti-Semitic attacks since the country started recording them 19 years ago.

"We've seen a worrying trend not only in Austria, but throughout Europe when it comes to anti-Semitism, he said.

Ngele said the verbal aggression comes first because it is so easy, especially online. "You can do it anonymously. You can do it a lot of times without fearing any prosecution," he said. "And then you get encouraged to do it more, to be more aggressive, to actually add insult to injury and, at some point, get so radicalized that you then transfer it to the real world."

Coronavirus conspiracies

Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission's anti-Semitism coordinator, said the issues were ancient but there had been a new impetus to some of the hate.

"Anti-Semitic conspiracy myths have been there for centuries," she told CNN. "Whenever there is a pandemic, they have come to the fore again. What we see is that, for example, during Covid, anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy myths have increased significantly on social platforms."

As people marched in protest against strict lockdowns imposed by their leaders, the German RIAS organization, which tracks anti-Semitism, noted Jewish tropes among the placards.

At one event in Bavaria, RIAS said, demonstrators held up a photomontage of people being forcibly vaccinated by people wearing uniforms bearing what looked like a Star of David and the word "Zion."

In another case in Berlin, a man appeared to accept the false conspiracy theory that the pandemic was caused by Jews, shouting at two identifiably Jewish pedestrians, "Are you not ashamed, what you did, you Jews?" RIAS reported.

More than a quarter of the anti-Semitic incidents documented were related directly to the coronavirus, the group said in its annual report.

The violence between Israel and Hamas in May this year again fueled anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany, RIAS found, with all Jews being targeted for the actions of Israel's government and military.

"Stop doing what Hitler did to you," read one sign in English held up during a pro-Palestinian march in Berlin, the group said.

Benjamin Ward, deputy director in Human Rights Watch's Europe division, agreed that anti-Semitism was often cyclical and propelled by events in the Middle East. But he added, "If we look more broadly at the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in Europe, we see that it's much older and also much wider. it's really a European issue."

Different ways to deal with hate

In Brussels, Rabbi Albert Guigui is one of those responding by trying to hide his very identity, to look less Jewish.

"Of course, I wear a yarmulke at home, but outside I prefer to cover my head less conspicuously," he said, talking of the baseball cap he dons most days. "It's not healthy to live in an atmosphere of fear and where you feel hunted."

As those with living memory of the Holocaust pass away, Guigui worries more hate will come.

"There is concern precisely because there is no longer that barrier of memory," he said. "Before, people couldn't openly express their anti-Semitism because the memory of the Holocaust was there to remind people where such words lead. Now there's been a liberation of the very speech that generates acts."

Back in Austria, Karoline Edtstadler, the country's minister for the EU, said the government was worried because although it was trying to tackle the upsurge in anti-Jewish hate, the numbers of incidents online and in real life kept rising.

"The positive thing, of course, is we have to foster Jewish life," she said.

That's the new tactic of Rosen, who's bucking the advice of his grandparents and choosing to stand tall as a member of Austria's Jewish community, that now stands at about 15,000 people, a fraction of the 220,000 Jews estimated to have lived in Austria before the rise of Hitler.

He says his grandparents' approach of keeping a low profile after the Holocaust, or Shoah, was understandable but misguided, and it was time to show and introduce others to Jewish life and traditions.

"The post-Shoah society of Jews often thought that being silent, not being too loud, would lead to a higher acceptance of Jews in the main society," he explained, before saying that clearly did not work.

"I will tell my son or young Jewish people to proud of being Jewish and not to be silent."

Journalist Adam Berry contributed to this story.

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A hate-filled attack made a grandson of Holocaust survivors understand their experience a little more. But he decided to buck their advice - CNN

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