Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 23, 2021

Renewed fighting has erupted again between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, endangering a ceasefire instituted after an 11-day war in May.

The conflict in Gaza is an early test of Israels new coalition government. Recently, parties across the political spectrum united to remove Israels scandal-plagued prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power, ending a two-year political crisis though he may maneuver his way back into power.

While conducting dissertation research on the relationship between religion and state in Israel, I traced Israels chronic instability to what I believe is its core: Unlike most countries, Israel does not have a constitution.

Constitutions constrain the power of governments by defining in precise terms who has what rights, what rights form the basis of legal decisions and how political power is dispersed among institutions.

Israel is governed by a changeable, ever-growing body of what are called basic laws Chukei Ha-Yesod in Hebrew. The basic laws were passed individually over the past 73 years, beginning with one two-page law that described the makeup of Israels legislature, the Knesset, and citizens voting rights.

Today, Israel is governed by a 124-page collection of 13 laws. Although the basic laws outline a vision of democratic rights, they remain, to paraphrase the late legal scholar Ruth Gavison, unanchored.

This allows Israel to maintain an ambiguous stance on key issues central to a nations identity.

First, Israel has never officially defined the relationship between religion and state. Is Israel founded on the Jewish religion? Or is it a secular state that is home to Jews, with non-Jewish minorities? That question remains unanswered.

Nor has the country fully determined whether Arab Israelis and other non-Jewish citizens who make up about a quarter of its 9 million people enjoy the same rights as their Jewish counterparts.

Israel also waffles on the relative power of the legislature and judiciary.

The Israeli Supreme Court has used this constitutional ambiguity to retroactively subject new legislation to judicial review. Meanwhile, legislators in the Knesset have tried to weaken the courts authority over their lawmaking. Incoming Prime Minister Naftali Bennetts Yamina party, for example, has previously attempted to pass legislation allowing the Knesset to override judicial decisions.

Even Israels official borders arent defined. Israel maintains it has sovereignty over the West Bank territory, but officially the West Bank is not part of Israel. So Palestinians living in the West Bank do not have rights under Israeli law, because they are not Israeli citizens.

Palestinians there live under Israeli military rule, subject to military law that is unconstrained by any constitutional bounds, alongside Israeli settlers who are subject to Israeli law.

This ambiguity led Yuli Tamir, an Israeli politician and academic, to quip, Is Israel even an actual country?

Israel is not the only parliamentary democracy without a formal constitution. The United Kingdom doesnt have one either.

But the United Kingdom has a large body of laws accumulated over centuries of political conflict. This well-established common-law tradition, which served as one of the sources for the United States own Constitution, is the legal basis of governance in the U.K.

Israel, founded in 1948, does not have such a history to fall back on. And many of its problems are common to relatively young democracies. Weak, fractured party systems and competition between ethnic and religious groups are hallmarks of the democratization process. The early U.S., for example, grappled with many such problems, too.

But rule of law generally prevails in the U.S., and democracy progresses, because both the courts and legislators defer to a central document: the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution outlines the powers of each branch of government, as well as procedures for amendment. The U.S. Bill of Rights the first 10 amendments guarantees specific rights of citizens.

The Netanyahu government attempted to settle some long-running disagreements about Israels identity during his most recent term in office though not necessarily with an eye toward strengthening liberal democracy.

In 2018, the Knesset passed a basic law naming Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people. This effort to settle a central identity question pleased almost nobody. Left-wing and Arab Israelis objected to the tacit downgrading of Arabs to second-class status, while religious Jewish groups found the law too secular.

Divisive political gambles like this became commonplace in the late stages of Netanyahus rule. As coalition politics became increasingly fragile, Netanyahu spiraled into what political scientists call logrolling: using policy trade-offs among parties in exchange for political support.

This was especially the case in regard to religion, as Netanyahu bartered policies appeasing the Orthodox Jewish groups that kept him in power. In 2018, for example, Netanyahus coalition passed new legislation enforcing previously symbolic laws such as restrictions on businesses operating on the sabbath. It was a punishing move for cities like Tel Aviv with large secular populations.

Similarly, Netanyahus policy of encouraging Jewish settlers to move to the West Bank and other occupied Palestinian territories and build cities was more political strategy than religious fervor. His aggressive support for Jewish nationalism increasingly alienated Israels Arab population, who have few legal avenues to challenge their treatment.

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Minorities are mistreated and even subjugated in countries that have constitutions, too. But constitutions give them legal pathways to challenge that discrimination.

The Netanyahu era showed that strategic politicians can exploit Israels constitutional vacuum to maintain power well beyond their popular mandate. These destabilizing issues will continue to fester as a new government takes the reins in Israel.

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How Israel's missing constitution deepens divisions between Jews and with Arabs - The Conversation US

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Posted By admin on June 23, 2021

The Supreme Court is currently deliberating over Haaretzs petition, drafted by attorney Tal Lieblich, to release transcripts of cabinet and ministerial committee meetings on the coronavirus. For more than a year, this battle has been wending its way through the courts. In addition to its demand that the full transcripts be released for public scrutiny, the petition seeks to mount a challenge in principle to a rule that automatically defines all ministerial meetings as classified a rule that leads to documentation being buried in the archives for at least 30 years.

The petition which was joined by attorney Shachar Ben-Meir, the Movement for Freedom of Information and other media outlets was submitted after the previous cabinet secretary, Tzachi Braverman, refused to use his power to release the transcripts. He thereby prevented any possibility of transparent, real-time oversight of the governments work at a time when ministers were meeting every night to approve draconian emergency regulations that had a radical impact on Israelis lives, businesses and entire sectors of the country.

Bibi brought Iran closer than ever to a nuke. Can Bennett fix it? LISTEN to Amos Harel

Moreover, he did so despite the fact that Article 35 of the Basic Law on the Government, which he relied on to conceal the content of these discussions, states that the secrecy rule applies only to matters related to the countrys security and foreign relations, not to a completely civilian issue like the pandemic.

The previous governments main argument against transparency was the ministers need to exchange opinions free of pressure. This is a ridiculous argument, given that the government was engaged nonstop in selectively leaking information flattering to its leaders and that the vast majority of ministers serving in the coronavirus cabinet including Benny Gantz, who was then alternate prime minister actually supported releasing the transcripts.

Gantz recently made another appeal for the transcripts release, this time to the new prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Given the fears of another wave of the virus, as well as his campaigns to improve the governments handling of the pandemic, Bennett ought to order the transcripts released and conduct any meetings on the subject henceforth with maximal transparency. This is also important in order to increase public confidence in the government by making it clear that the current cabinet doesnt share the Netanyahus governments culture of secrecy.

Nevertheless, a cabinet decision to release the material wouldnt obviate the need for a decision in principle on a case that could change Israels culture of governmental transparency. During last weeks decisive hearing at the Supreme Court, court president Esther Hayut told the governments attorney that The Basic Law on the Government teaches the opposite of the existing practice. You make transcripts, but you never release any of them.

She also said the government had failed to consider each case on its merits, even though the law allows it to use its discretion. We must therefore hope the court wont leave the decision to the cabinet, but will rule in favor of releasing the transcripts out of a principled opposition to unacceptable concealment.

The above article is Haaretzs lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

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Posted By admin on June 23, 2021

It looks like chicken and tastes like chicken, but diners in Israel are tucking into laboratory-grown "meat" that scientists claim is an environmentally-friendly way to feed the world's growing population.

Also read | The first vegan restaurant to win a Michelin Star

In a small restaurant in a nondescript building in a science park in the central Israeli town of Ness Ziona, diners munched burgers and minced meat rice rolls made with "cultured chicken" -- meat grown in the adjacent SuperMeat production site.

"It was delicious, the flavour was great," said Gilly Kanfi, a self-described "meat eater" from Tel Aviv, who had signed up for the meal months in advance.

"If I didn't know, I would have thought it was a regular chicken burger."

The Chicken, as the eatery is called, is a testing ground of sorts for SuperMeat, hosting periodical test meals to generate customer feedback while waiting for regulatory approval.

Rapid growth

The restaurant's dark and elegant interior is framed by large windows looking onto a bright-lit laboratory, where technicians monitor large stainless-steel fermentation vats.

"This is the first time in the world people can actually have a taste of a cultivated meat product, while observing the production and the manufacturing process in front of their eyes," said Ido Savir, SuperMeat's chief executive.

Here, at least, the laboratory has made redundant the age-old question of whether the chicken or the egg came first.

The process involves cultivating cells taken from a fertilised chicken egg.

Cell cultures are fed a plant-based liquid including proteins, fats, sugars, minerals and vitamins.

With all the feed going directly into production, it grows rapidly, with the mass doubling within a matter of hours, the company says.

Savir, a vegan with a background in computer science, sees himself as being at the "forefront of a food revolution" trying to help supply food while limiting the impact on the planet.

Developers said they are working to provide more ethical and sustainable ways to create cruelty- and slaughter-free meat, with the product grown without using genetic engineering or antibiotics.

The company is currently able to produce "hundreds of kilogrammes" each week, Savir said.

'Game-changer'

But he hopes to earn regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, and would then increase production to a "commercial" scale.

"This way we'll be able to reduce the amount of land, water use and so many other resources, and keep the product very healthy and clean," he said, noting the high prevalence of diseases among chickens produced in factory-style production.

Global meat production is projected to rise 15 percent by 2027, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

SuperMeat is not the first to develop the technology. In December, a Singapore restaurant made history when it became the first to sell lab-grown chicken meat.

The Israeli firm has developed a versatile product, blending muscle, fat and connective tissue cells to create different cuts -- even including pet food.

Zhuzha, a white bull terrier attending the meal along with its owner, enthusiastically devoured the SuperMeat dog food it was handed.

"Pets love our meat as well," Savir said with a smile.

The human diners said the product was as good as the real thing.

"It really surprised me," said Lisa Silver, a regular meat-eater. "If I can get that in a restaurant, I will go vegan, totally. It's a game-changer."

For her sister Annabelle, it was the first time in years she had eaten meat.

"One of the reasons that I became vegetarian originally was because it's not ethical, it's not sustainable," she said.

"To get meat minus the cruelty is just amazing, it's perfect, I could eat this every single day."

Vegetarian-friendly?

But the question whether the product should be considered meat is one faced not only by vegetarians -- but also Jewish rabbinic authorities.

Producing meat in a cruelty-free way that does not harm the environment is a positive development that will "save the world problems", said Rabbi Eliezer Simcha Weisz, a member of Israel's Chief Rabbinate Council.

While rabbis would have to learn the novel process and supervise it, Weisz said he expected the product would eventually receive a kosher designation.

Tal Gilboa, a prominent veganism activist who served as an adviser to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel was leading the way on cultured meat technology.

Gilboa would like the world to turn to a plant-based diet, and sees cultivated meats as a pragmatic way for people to take the first steps to vegetarianism.

"The world population is increasing at a break-neck speed," she said, adding that the only way to keep up will be "through technology".

Savir believes the technology could change humanity for the better.

"Like we saw with the revolution of the smart phone, once this is available, we'll start producing so much meat," he said.

"It would increase food security for nations around the world, a very sustainable, animal-friendly and efficient process."

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2021

Michigan has been home to Jews since 1761, when the first Jewish settler, Ezekiel Solomon, came as a fur trader and supplier to the British troops in the strategic wilderness outpost at Fort Michilimackinac.

Chapman Abraham, one of Solomon's partners, is the first known Jewish resident in Fort Detroit, held by the British. By 1762 he was bringing furs and needed goods in flotillas of voyageur canoes back and forth on the hazardous water route from Montreal. While residing most of the year in Michigan, both Solomon and Abraham remained members of the Montreal congregation, Shearith Israel. During Chief Pontiac's 1763 native uprising against the British, they each were captured and imprisoned, but eventually released. These two pioneer Jewish fur traders are recognized by Michigan Historical Markers placed by the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan.

Years before the American Revolution, Ezekiel Solomon, Chapman Abraham, and their other Jewish trading partners, Gershon Levi, Benjamin Lyon, and Levi Solomons, are credited with helping to "push back the wilderness of the Great Lakes country," and open up the continent for settlement. The British did not leave Michigan until 1796.

The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, the laying of the railroads by 1848, and boat traffic on the Great Lakes opened up the route to Michigan. Moreover, the early promise of freedom of religion in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and free public education attracted Jewish immigrants. As the fur trade had brought Jews to Michigan in the 18th century, Michigan's prosperous lumber and mining industries offered economic opportunities during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jewish immigrant entrepreneurs fanned out to peddle needed supplies to the lumber and mining camps and farms in the wilderness of both the upper and lower peninsulas. These peddlers provided a needed alternative to the lumber barons' "company store." They became active citizens of their new communities and established Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in order to maintain their Jewish heritage. Their beginnings as peddlers often developed into prosperous mercantile businesses.

Michigan was declared a state in 1837. Ann Arbor was the first Michigan community where a colony of Jews settled in the 1840s, during the German-Jewish immigration. The five Weil brothers and their parents arrived in 1845; they conducted Sabbath and holiday services in their home. Michigan's first Jewish cemetery was established in 1848/9. The site is on the east lawn of University of Michigan's Rackham Building, noted with a historical plaque.

Starting out as farmers and peddlers, the Weil brothers later operated a prosperous tannery with over 100 employees. Jacob Weil, educated in European universities and a rabbi, was elected alderman in Ann Arbor and invited to the faculty of the University of Michigan, which he declined in order to continue as president of the family tannery firm. By 1873 the Weils had moved to Chicago to expand their business, J. Weil and Bros. Jewish immigrant families followed the route of the railroad across southern Michigan to Chicago, establishing themselves in the mid-19th century not only in Ann Arbor, but also in Ypsilanti, Jackson, and Kalamazoo. Maurice Heuman was elected mayor of Jackson, Samuel Folz in Kalamazoo.

A Historical Marker in Kalamazoo honors arctic pioneer Edward Israel, a University of Michigan graduate, who served in 1881 as scientist on the nation's first polar expedition led by Lt. A.W. Greely. Along with 18 of the 25 expedition members, Israel perished of starvation after severe storms in the third winter of the expedition.

By 1845 the families of German immigrants Samuel Leopold and Julian Austrian, sailing their one-masted sloop to Mackinac, established a pioneer fishing business which soon shipped as much as 1,000 barrels of salted fish to cities around the Great Lakes, including Cleveland. They became owners of a large fleet of sailing vessels, and after the discovery of copper in the Upper Peninsula, opened shops in five towns across the peninsula.

Jake Steinberg, Gustave Rosenthal, and Moses Winkleman operated successful stores in different "U.P." towns, supplying the many lumberjacks and miners and their families. "Winkleman's" grew to a large chain of shops for women's apparel.

An observant Jew who closed his store on the High Holidays, William Saulson operated the prosperous "People's Store" in St. Ignace. In 1888, he was elected Mayor of St. Ignace. In an ad published in 1884, Saulson proposed the building of the Mackinac Bridge, which opened 75 years later, in 1958. The five-mile-long suspension bridge linking the two peninsulas was designed by engineering genius David Steinman; Lawrence Rubin was the executive secretary of the Mackinac Bridge Authority.

Bavarian-born Dr. Frederick L. Hirschman, an 1873 graduate of one of the first classes of the Detroit College of Medicine, went to the Upper Peninsula to combat the smallpox epidemic there, and remained a doctor to the Republic Mines until his early death at the age of 38.

By 1903, at the far western end of the Upper Peninsula, Russian Polish immigrants Harry and Sam Cohodas first opened fruit markets in Houghton, Hancock, and Calumet. These developed into the nation's third largest wholesale produce business. The Cohodas family became nationally known for its philanthropy and support of civic and Jewish causes. Temple Jacob opened in Hancock in 1912, named for merchant Jacob Gartner, and still serves the Jewish students and faculty of Michigan Technological University.

Supplying five million board feet annually for the building of the nation's homes and factories, "white pine was king" in Michigan until about 1910, when the valuable forests had been stripped. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Jews followed the centers of lumbering, from Bay City and Saginaw on the state's eastern side to Grand Rapids, Traverse City, and Muskegon on the western shore, and, as mentioned, crossing over to the Upper Peninsula. A successful work shirt manufacturer, immigrant Julius Houseman first was elected mayor of Grand Rapids, then to the Michigan State Legislature, and in 1883 to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was the only Michigan Jew to serve as United States Congressman until a century later, with the elections of Howard Wolpe and Sander Levin.

Peddler Julius Steinberg from Souvalk, Poland, settled in Traverse City, where he soon built a prosperous clothing and dry goods store, and in 1894 opened an elegant two-story Grand Opera House on top of his store known as "the finest opera house north of Chicago."

"The oldest synagogue building in continuous use," according to the Michigan Historical Commission, opened in Traverse City in 1885. A second synagogue was founded in 1896 in nearby Petoskey. Both continue in active use, serving local Jews as well as summer and winter vacationers.

A port on Lake Michigan, Muskegon survived the decline of lumbering by building foundries and factories to supply the emerging auto industry of the early 20th century. The Muskegon Scrap Metal Co. was run by Henry, Harry, and Isadore Rubinsky. In nearby Holland, Padnos Iron and Steel grew into an essential supplier to industry; the Padnoses are prominent philanthropists in the state. Later, in 1933, World War I veterans Harold and Leo Rosen opened the American Grease Stick Company, a major supplier of solid lubricants to the auto industry. The Muskegon Jewish House of Worship was dedicated in 1948.

In the 1890s, Russian Polish Jewish immigrants established a "Palestine Colony" at Bad Axe in Michigan's "Thumb" area, which unfortunately did not survive the economic "Panic" of that decade. Later, the Sunrise Cooperative Farm Community, of close to 100 families, supplied mint to Parke Davis pharmaceutical, but only lasted from 1933 to 1938. In the fruit belt of southwestern Michigan, a number of Jews established farms; the Ben Rosenberg family remained as successful farmers and community leaders for three generations. Nearby South Haven, on the shores of Lake Michigan, became known as the "Catskills of the Midwest." For three decades before World War II, Jewish immigrant families ran more than 60 resorts there, attracting thousands from Chicago and the Midwest.

By 1850 in Detroit, 12 Orthodox men formed Detroit's first Jewish congregation, the Beth El Society. In a characteristic pattern, they hired a rabbi, Rabbi Samuel Marcus, who for $200 a year also served as the mohel, the shohet, the cantor, the teacher of the children, and the judge to settle community disputes. They rented a room in which to meet, set up a school, bought land for a cemetery, arranged for traditional burials, and formed societies to care for the sick, the poor, and the widows and orphans. Rabbi Marcus died in the cholera epidemic of 1854.

When the Beth El Society adopted the Reform ritual advocated by Cincinnati's Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, in 1861 17 traditionalists withdrew to form the Shaarey Zedek Society. Today these two congregations are among the country's largest and most active, and both are recognized with Michigan Historical Markers.

In the time before the Civil War, Beth El's Rabbi Leibman Adler was preaching vigorous abolitionist sermons. Ernestine Rose, a Jewish woman who belonged to the national coalition of social reformers, had visited Detroit in 1846 to speak out against slavery as well as child labor, and for women's rights. Temple members Emil Heineman and Mark Sloman were active participants in the Underground Railroad. From the 151 Jewish families in Michigan, 181 men and boys served in the Union Armies; 38 lost their lives in the conflict.

To meet the needs of the growing wave of immigrants, in 1899 Detroit established the United Jewish Charities, under the leadership of Rabbi Leo M. Franklin. This included the Hebrew Free Loan Association, which since 1895 had been helping peddlers with loans of $5 to get them started.

By the early 1900s, an emerging automobile industry was providing additional economic opportunities. Engineer Max Grabowsky and his brother Morris, along with Bernard Ginsburg, formed the Grabowsky Power Wagon Company to manufacture the world's first gasoline-powered truck. Their successful four-story business in Detroit was bought by Will Durant to make up the new General Motors Company. Durant also hired bookkeeper Meyer Prentis who became treasurer of General Motors in 1919. Robert Janeway headed an engineering group for Chrysler for 30 years; A.E. Barit served as president of the Hudson Motor Car Company from 1936 to 1954. Participating in the wave of American inventiveness, in 1903 Rabbi Judah L. Levin received United States patents, and later British and Japanese patents, for his adding and subtracting machine which now is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institute.

However, since Jews were substantially excluded from the executive ranks of the automotive corporations, many Jewish entrepreneurs became suppliers to the industry. Jewish shops, which eventually grew into thriving businesses, supplied manufactured parts, glass, paint, chemicals, textiles, slag, and coveralls and operated laundries for factory uniforms. Max Fisher's Marathon Oil Company recycled and refined used oil. The Industrial Removal Office in New York City sent Jews to Detroit for industrial jobs and for work at the Ford Motor Company for "$5 a day."

Providing a needed voice for the rights of workers, Jews were prominent in the labor movement. Samuel Goldwater was elected president of Detroit's Cigarmakers Union in the 1890s. Later Myra Wolfgang organized the waitresses' union. Many Jewish leaders worked with Walter Reuther in the UAW, including Sam Fishman, Bernard Firestone, and Irving Bluestone, who later served as professor of labor studies in the Economics Department chaired by Professor Samuel Levin at Wayne University. Prominent labor lawyer Maurice Sugar's papers are collected at the Reuther Library at Wayne University.

In 1912, Henry Ford, who was actively antisemitic a decade later, hired architect Albert Kahn to design the first factory to house a continuously moving assembly line to manufacture the Model T. Kahn continued to design Ford factories. Henry Butzel served as chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, while his attorney brother Fred became known as "Detroit's Most Valuable Citizen." Charles Simons was appointed justice to the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals; while his brother David was elected to Detroit's first nine-man city council in 1914.

In the 1990s, with a total Michigan population of 9,478,000, there were 107,000 Jews statewide, with a Jewish population of 96,000 in metropolitan Detroit, the greater majority in the nearby Oakland County suburbs. It is anticipated that more current studies will show a greater degree of spread to additional nearby communities as well as a decline in the Metro Detroit Jewish population.

An estimated 200,000 Muslims live in Metro Detroit, many concentrated in Dearborn. The local American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Jewish Community Council are each involved in outreach activities between local Muslims and Jews.

Carl Levin served as United States Senator, elected four times from 1978.

His brother, Sander, was re-elected to the House of Representatives from 1982. A leader of the statewide Democratic ticket, Kathleen Straus was elected to the Michigan Board of Education and served as president. Community activist David Hermelin was appointed by President Bill Clinton as ambassador to Norway, where he served until his untimely death. Florine Mark, founder of Weight Watchers in Michigan and a philanthropic leader, is in the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. William Davidson , a third generation Detroiter, is the owner of the Detroit Pistons, the Detroit Shock, and the Tampa Bay Lightning; chairman of glass manufacturer Guardian Industries, Inc; he is a major philanthropist taking a special interest in Jewish education. The patriarch of the Jewish community, Max Fisher , who passed away in 2004, was recognized as the "dean of American Jewry" and was acknowledged by United States presidents as a "world citizen."

As of 2017, Michigan's Jewish population was approximately 83,155 people.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2008 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved. J.L. Cantor, Jews in Michigan (2001); I.I. Katz, The Beth El Story (1955). WEBSITE: MICHIGAN JEWISH HISTORY: http://www.michjewishhistory.com. See complete texts: Jewish Historical Society of Michigan, vol. 10, 1970, Graff, George, "Michigan's Jewish Settlers"; vol. 23, #1, #2, 1983. Aminoff, Helen "First Jews of Ann Arbor"; vol. 30, 1989. "Historical Markers"; vol. 38, 1998. Elstein, Rochelle. "Jews of Houghton-Hancock"; vol. 42, 2002. Teasdle, Holly. "Jewish Farming in Michigan"; vol. 42, 2002. Wamsley, Douglas. "Michigan's Arctic Pioneer: Edward Israel and the Greeley Expedition"; vol. 44, 2004. Rose, Emily. "Ann Arbor"

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2021

Jeffrey Lax says his nostrils are flaring. He is used to coming face to face with hate.

The 47-year-old Jewish professor of business at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y., was appalled by a recent 83-34 vote by the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY on a June 10 resolution that condemns the continued subjugation of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation and use of lethal force by Israel and also racism in all its forms including anti-Semitism, and recognizes that criticisms of Israel, a diverse nation-state, are not inherently anti-Semitic. The resolution also called Israel an apartheid state and made no mention of Hamas.

Whoever wrote this was not very intelligent, Lax told JNS in a phone interview. You cant have it both ways. If Israel is an apartheid state, how can it also be a diverse nation-state? Its clearly an anti-Semitic trope to call it an apartheid state. Do they not know that there are Arabs in the government? They serve on the Supreme Court and make up 20 percent of the population. Its absurd. Facts matter.

Lax, who is also an attorney, said hes quitting the union because he doesnt want his money to go to Jew-hatred. He said union dues are about 1 percent of his salary. He noted that in a letter, he wrote to PSC president James Davis and made it clear that just because a resolution says its not anti-Semitic does not make it so. He said the resolution also seeks put an end to American financial support to Israel, which is tantamount to divestment and a third of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement known as BDS.

He said its embarrassing to see educators who are so uneducated.

Its downright anti-Semitic that the resolution completely failed to mention that Hamas rockets were fired down at Israeli civilians, said Lax. This was a month ago, not years ago. Did they forget? This was a reaction to the fighting in Israel. That Palestinians died is a terrible tragedy, of course. But you cant ignore the actions of Hamas. It took place. Its a fact. You cant just choose to ignore it and expect that you are doing something honorable. Its nonsensical.

Jeffrey Lax, a professor of business at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, N.Y. Credit: Courtesy.

Lax said the vote did not surprise him because there is a history of anti-Semitism in the union. He said he believes more than 55 other union members have also resigned.

I dont want my money to go to foster anti-Semitism, said Lax. Its absurd.

He said the throw in of the term anti-Semitism didnt address the real conflict and was only used as a facade or a childish attempt to appear as though it was not anti-Semitic

Lax, who is Orthodox, said he had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and was vindicated on all counts in a ruling about four or five months ago. He said his formal complaints stated that no Orthodox or Zionist professors were permitted to join the Progressive Faculty Caucus (while nobody else was turned down) at his college; in addition, under investigation, other members admitted that they purposely planned meetings on Friday night so Lax would not be able to attend.

It was very stupid of them to admit it, said Lax. I dont know why they admitted it, but they did.

He said he was disappointed that the union took no measures to rebuke his colleagues who had ill-treated him. He said the situation is not good and while his job is secure, he doesnt always feel that he is.

Im not afraid of being fired, he said. I dont think that will happen. But Ive been harassed. I was once surrounded by five union members. I was trying to leave and a guy put his hand above my head. He said, No, were just getting started. So theyve been very threatening to me.

People are angry about this

Lax said union members should be embarrassed that in the resolution, there was no mention of 10 Israeli civilians who were killed or Jewish Americans who were getting attacked on the streets of New York City.

Part of the problem, he added, was fellow Jewish teachers.

There are definitely Jewish professors who voted for this, he said. Im not surprised by it. You dont have to be not-Jewish to be anti-Semitic. There are plenty of secular Jews who hate religious Jews. There are plenty of non-Zionist Jews who hate Zionist Jews. No matter what stream you follow, that doesnt give you the right or a shield to discriminate against others. Its just wrong.

He also said the delegates were wrong to not discuss the vote further with the 25,000 union members.

Its a matter of respect, he said. They purport to represent the entire union, and this was a very controversial resolution and I dont think they represent the union. People are angry about this, as well they should be. Im angry about this because you dont make a decision like this without properly discussing it first.

Lax said he hoped that people can become more educated about the situation in general and the Middle East in particular. He is also alarmed at growing anti-Semitism.

Its sad that people are saying these things in 2021, said Lax. I only hope people do some research to see how foolish this resolution was. My hope is that other unions across the country do not follow suit.

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2021

As the AIPAC consensus - the norm for American Jewish political life for decades - recedes, the "American Jewish Left" is becoming increasingly visible and heterodox opinions on the left are proliferating.

However, with that profusion comes the need for distinction and nuance about the spectrum and character of that new left, not least in terms of how its constituent camps relate to Israel's statehood and the Israeli occupation.

Etan Nechins recent piece (The American Jewish Left's Untimely Abandonment of Israel's Leftists), with which I largely agree, lacks that nuance. He critiques the "American Jewish Left" without defining what he means.

By the end of the article, two things become apparent: Nechin is talking solely about the part of the (far) left which opposes Israel as Jewish state, i.e., the anti-Zionist left, and he ignores even the existence, let alone the activities, of what is sometimes called the pro-peace, pro-Israel left, the "Zionist left," or even "liberal Zionists," a term that is seemingly falling out of favor all around the political spectrum.

My point is not primarily about definitions. Increasingly, the arguments over Israel in the U.S. are being simplistically described as "pro" and "anti," which both distort reality and imply there is no middle ground. In fact, the vast majority of American Jewish opinion is in that middle ground, which largely coincides with sentiment supporting (in principle if not necessarily in immediate practice) the venerable two-state solution. It is only the anti-two state extremes, on both left and right, that attempt to maintain their purist "with us or against us" mentality.

Of course Nechin does nothing wrong by focusing on what I call the far, i.e., anti-Zionist left. But he owes it to his readers to make clear that there is a much larger group, also on the left and strenuously opposed to the occupation and related policies, that has long been doing exactly what he advocates, i.e., working closely and coordinating with the existing and active Israeli left, both in the electoral and NGO arenas. As a more than 30 year veteran of this part of the American Jewish political spectrum, I know whereof I speak.

J Street is, of course, the best-known and most high profile of this group of organizations, and it likes to declare there was no home for pro-peace, pro-Israel Americans, especially Jews, before it was founded in 2007. However, as its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, well knows, there were a number of organizations that advocated those views well before J-Street.

For example, in early 1989, I set up the first Washington office of Americans for Peace Now building on sentiment that had existed since the first Lebanon War. The New Israel Fund, whose explicit mission is to support progressive Israeli NGOs, was established back in 1979. Other organizations followed, though it is unquestionable that J Street finally achieved the national impact all of us had long been seeking.

J Street works closely with Israeli left-wing parties Labor and Meretz, and various other parties over the years and coordinates strategy, while maintaining itself as an American (primarily Jewish) organization. Anyone who has attended a J-Street conference (the "Woodstock of the American Jewish Left") cant help but bump into many of the leaders of the Israeli Left.

And there's more, outside of J Street. My own organization, Partners for Progressive Israel, is affiliated with Meretz. There's growing support for the Israeli NGO Eretz lKulam, which advocates a two-state confederation, reflecting newer trends in thinking about possible political configurations. Most of these moderate left organizations have affiliated with the new Progressive Israel Network, a consortium of (currently 11) American Jewish organizations that maintain their separate identities but coordinate their statements, some activities, and support for the organizations of the Israeli left.

In fact, what defines the primary difference between us and the individuals and organizations Nechin critiques is precisely that they reject working within the Israeli political consensus. Some, like Peter Beinart, are fully knowledgeable about it, and have deliberately moved out of that consensus, for reasons hes written about at length. Others identify exclusively with the Palestinians because of their status as an oppressed people.

Sometimes we in the "moderate" left and they on the "far" left support the same organizations, such as Btselem and Combatants for Peace. Perhaps the most visible red line between us is their support for, and our opposition to, the supremely ineffectual Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

I absolutely agree with Nechins call for the (far) left to "set aside their ideological purity obsessions and work with Israels center left, who sit in the new government too." But their refusal to do so is what defines them. As they well know, there is already an energetic moderate left, closely tied to the realistic, on the ground Israeli political and NGO ecosphere. That is what they reject.

The moderate American Jewish left will necessarily have to work harder in the coming period to define itself vis-a-vis the rise of the farther left, as it has traditionally done with regard to the center and the right. But what Nechin wants to see already exists. Those who reject it have consciously made their own choice.

Paul Schamis president ofPartners for Progressive Israeland Director of the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland, where he is a Professor of Israel Studies. The views expressed here are his own

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I'm on the American Jewish left and I haven't abandoned Israel - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2021

Approaches to higher education alternatives as affected by COVID-19 confront Alan Drimmer as he moves into the presidency of Cleary University July 1. Cleary is a nonprofit Michigan school established in 1883.

Drimmer, whose career has placed him in Midwest educational posts after Mideast diplomatic assignments, is thinking through plans to accelerate programming that realistically prepares students for the job market and expands the community served by the university, which is based in Howell and has a Detroit center.

Im very excited to join the Cleary community and help build awareness for the good things Cleary is doing with the Cleary Mind, a trademarked program that needs more visibility, Drimmer said of the university centered in business arts.

Cleary came to my attention because several years ago they developed a framework [the Cleary Mind] for the kinds of skills and competencies that people need in the workforce, and they used data to find out what people need to be successful. A lot of that was not in the curriculum earlier, but they made a conscious effort to encapsulate that.

Besides the knowledge specific to certain jobs, Cleary research found eight skill factors necessary for students to master regardless of the job direction each is pursuing: critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, communications, persuasion, entrepreneurship, leadership and ethics.

I thought this was really innovative, said Drimmer, 60, whose work as a higher education consultant included an affiliation with the Boston Consulting Group, which has a Detroit office. Cleary rewired the whole curriculum to map it to these eight. These are not just things that we think are important. Theyre important to employers.

Cleary, founded in Ypsilanti, offers associates, bachelors and masters degrees while focusing on personalized experiences that encompass sports and other programs of community interest. The school is able to serve nearly 1,000 students in person and online a number administrators are aiming to increase and has a capacity of housing about 200 students.

Drimmer, raised in a Cleveland Jewish family committed to the Civil Rights Movement, understands the importance of accommodating personal interests as he looks back on his own educational and career choices. Interested in the Mideast as a teenager, he was allowed to live on a kibbutz during his 16th year. At the University of Chicago, political science was at the center of his bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees.

My focus was on the Arab-Israeli wars, and that was the subject of my dissertation, said Drimmer, who became a Raoul Wallenberg Scholar at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Research Fellow at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad at the American University in Cairo. I joined the foreign service and was a diplomat in Jordan representing the State Department between the two Gulf Wars, and there was excitement and intrigue.

Back in the United States, he served as an international economics sanctions officer for the Treasury Department before deciding to alter his professional direction.

I decided to pivot to education because I wanted to make a change in the world, said Drimmer, whose father had taught history at Spelman College in Atlanta and Cleveland State University. I believed rightly or wrongly that my ability to impact foreign policy was very limited. However, I did think I could make an impact in education.

My teachers at the University of Chicago made a strong impression, and my dream became to improve the quality of student-faculty relationships. At the University of Chicago, the faculty cared about me as a person and challenged my assumptions about building a meaningful life, inspiring me to dedicate my professional life to improving access to education.

To achieve his revised career goals, Drimmer earned a masters degree in business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He went on to positions that included provost and executive vice president at the University of Phoenix, chief academic officer and senior vice president at the University of Maryland Global Campus in College Park and provost at the National Defense University in Chicago.

When I decided to work in education about 20 years ago, I made a conscious decision to focus on helping students move into the labor market, Drimmer said. I also made a conscious decision to focus on institutions, probably the vast majority of institutions in this country, that are not elite and highly selective. They are institutions that help people find a path.

One of the reasons I wanted to come to Cleary was that I really think theyre on the right path. They want to help people develop and position themselves to be successful in the job market, and they have some very sophisticated ways of doing that.

Drimmer, married to an attorney (Jacki) and the father of two university and two high school students, envisions an important part of his job as motivating current students to stay in college and motivating former students to complete their degree requirements.

The first critical issue facing college students is to find flexibility, said Drimmer, who points out that half the students starting college do not finish and so he wants Cleary to offer adaptability for students in various age groups, whether working or not and whether comfortable with different kinds of technology or not.

Cleary tries to maximize the classes students already have taken and the skills that they have. Students can go fast or slow. They can go online or face-to-face or a mix. They can get a degree or a certificate.

Addressing the rising costs of higher education, Drimmer will be looking into diverse ways Cleary students can get financial aid and allow credit for accomplishments at other schools and on-the-job experiences.

At Cleary, we really want to have an impact on students to deepen their experiences and help them reflect, Drimmer said. We want to help people launch either into new careers or into milestones in their existing careers, but its not just about learning skills. Its also about developing as a person.

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Diplomat Turned Educator will Head Local University Detroit Jewish News - The Jewish News

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2021

While fascism was growing in Europe in the 1930s and Jews there were increasingly threatened, the United States under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt emphasized trade cooperation and neutrality to stay out of the conflict that erupted into World War II.

As Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, his Nazi party increasingly demonized, imprisoned and attacked residents of Jewish descent, forcing many to flee or die.

The Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus in Farmington Hills visits a little-known aspect of this period in Trauma and Adventure in Transit: Jewish Refugees in Iran and India. Atina Grossmann, professor of history at the Cooper Union in New York City, will present the lecture on June 27.

Atina Grossmann is Professor of History at the Cooper Union in New York City. Her parents fled Nazi oppression and traveled to Iran and India in the 1930s. Photo courtesy of Atina Grossmann

The virtual event will provide insight on the Jews who escaped to India and Iran after 1933. On the margins of the Holocaust and anxious about their families fates, they were homeless and stateless, but also oddly privileged as adventurous Europeans in non-Western societies, according to the center.

This fascinating program will show how the plight of these Jews were shadowed by the emerging European catastrophe, and how they navigated complex and unfamiliar terrain in India and Iran, Rabbi Eli Mayerfeld, CEO of the Holocaust Memorial Center, said in a press release. They lost their livelihoods and professions, and had an anxious sense of their families fate or what their future held.

Grossmanns talk is informed by the experiences of her parents, and she will detail the challenges these Jews faced of living in a precarious forced transit that also offered experiences of adventurous travel, Mayerfeld said.

The program probes refugees understanding of their own unstable position, the changing geopolitical situation and coming to terms with revelations about the destruction of European Jewry.

Grossmann used archival sources, memoirs and letters, fiction and second- and third-generation reflections. She reviewed an extensive collection of family correspondence and memorabilia from both Iran and India between 1935 and 1947, including an almost daily letters between her mother in Tehran and her father in British internment camps in India and postwar in Bombay. Grossmann pays particular attention to the significance of gender and age and to the challenges of writing a hybrid history that aims to narrate a family story folded into a larger historical remapping of war, Holocaust, empire and displacement with Iran and India as key sites.

The program will take place as a live Zoom webinar at 7 p.m. Sunday, June 27. To register, visitholocaustcenter.org/june.

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Holocaust Center presents Jews' escape to India and Iran after 1933 - The Oakland Press

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2021

A Crime on the Bayou is a horribly generic title. Is it a new James Lee Burke thriller, in which Dave Robicheaux investigates how Alec Baldwin killed a potential film franchise stone-dead with just one performance in 1996s Heavens Prisoners? Perhaps its a buzzy podcast thats sure to spark a fierce bidding war for the screen rights, only to later be disgraced over dubious reporting methods? Or a shamelessly clickbaity headline that turns out to be about neither crime or the Bayou, and will make you want to wash your hands afterward?

You may not be surprised to learn that it is none of the above. A more accurate, but less snappy, title would be A Crime on the Bayou: Two Mensches Fearlessly Take on the Racist South but I have few other complaints about director Nancy Buirskis new documentary (out now in select U.S. cinemas and a shoo-in to feature at Israeli film festivals later this year).

This is a powerful, moving film about hatred of both Blacks and Jews in Americas Deep South in the 1960s (a shockingly antisemitic placard at one white demonstration calls for Blacks to be deported to Africa, while traitors should be dispatched to the gas chamber), and a disturbing depiction of institutionalized racism that was not so much embedded into the system as an integral part of the foundations.

Ultimately, it champions the efforts of two dogged, determined, decent men to foment change and turn the tide of history in a hotbed of racism like the Mississippi River Delta. Black fisherman Gary Duncan and Jewish lawyer Richard B. Sobol would take the state of Louisiana all the way to the Supreme Court in January 1968 and historical spoiler alert win.

Ill let the film give you the details, but the elevator pitch is that Duncan, then 19, was the victim of a miscarriage of justice after falsely being accused of assaulting a white schoolboy while trying to act as peacemaker in their swampy Louisiana backwater of Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, one day in October 1966.

Dont be too hard on yourself if youre not aware of this incident not many people will be, and its not like Bob Dylan released a protest song about it. After all, were not talking Rubin Carter levels of injustice here about a man rotting in jail for years and years, but rather a rotten system led by a disarmingly unabashed white supremacist called Leander Perez, who sought to Make the Deep South Great Again with every bone in his racist body.

Crime is a terrific film and follows last years John Lewis: Good Trouble in shining a welcome light on the dark practices of the South in the 1950s and 60s, and the people who fought them including a group of Jewish lawyers who headed south from their East Coast law practices for a few weeks every year to be part of that cause.

Sobol, who died in March 2020 at age 82 of pneumonia, was exceptional even among the Jews helping fight for Black rights at the time.

While others would donate three weeks annually to the struggle, the New York-born Sobol went a step further: He quit his promising job at one of Washingtons esteemed law firms (whose partners included future disgraced Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas as a partner Sobol notes with disgust that one of the other partners insisted that they never hire Black secretaries) and relocated to New Orleans, where he worked permanently as an out-of-state civil rights lawyer.

Another star of the film is fellow Jewish attorney Armand Derfner. Hes the charismatic former head of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, which would take on civil rights cases; Derfner would be shot at, and even have the family dog poisoned, for his troubles.

He contributes some real zingers in his otherwise touching testimony here (his parents had gotten the last train out of Nazi-occupied Paris in 1940), including how all of the other civil rights lawyers were jealous of Sobol because he got all the headlines and all he had to do was spend a couple of hours in jail to achieve recognition (following an attempt by Perez to pressure him not to take on civil rights cases).

Another notable interviewee is writer Lolis Eric Elie, whose father, Lolis Elie, was one of the partners of the most prominent Black law firm in New Orleans for whom Sobol worked.

When hes discussing the talk that many Black parents have with their kids about blue-on-Black violence, he points out that it really wasnt necessary in his Louisiana home. How often do you talk to your parents about humidity? Its always there, he sums up.

Several careers

Nancy Buirski has had a fascinating career. Several, actually. In a previous millennium, she was the foreign pictures editor at The New York Times and also worked at Magnum Photos, prior to founding and running the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival for over a decade from 1997.

She came to filmmaking at a later stage of life than many, but hasnt wasted any time in the intervening years. A Crime on the Bayou is the third of her documentaries to uncover racial injustice and celebrate the people who fought it, following the award-winning The Loving Story in 2011 and The Rape of Recy Taylor in 2017.

But she has also made documentaries about legendary film directors (2015s By Sidney Lumet) and great ballet dancers (2013s Afternoon of a Faun, about Tanaquil Le Clercq), while her next project is about the milieu that inspired John Schlesingers oh-so-dark LA drama Midnight Cowboy in 1969.

The following phone interview with Buirski, conducted prior to A Crime on the Bayou premiering in New York last Friday, has been edited for brevity, clarity and in an effort to make the interviewer sound coherent.

How aware were you of this crime on the bayou at the start of the process?

Lets put it this way, I wasnt surprised to learn that something like that could happen, but I wasnt aware of that particular case. I learned about the case reading the proposal for a book by Matthew Van Meter, called Deep Delta Justice [published in July 2020], and that introduced me to the case of Gary Duncan and the work of Richard Sobol.

Gary and Richard both come across as remarkable men in the film. Having worked closely with them, whats your take on who they are as people?

Theyre both incredibly humble and very noble, in my estimation. Neither one of them ever bragged about what they did. Richard was at first reticent to do the documentary, because he was proud of what he did but didnt understand why the world would need to know about it and we convinced him that the world did need to know about it.

Gary is a very gentle and stoic man, and still feels very strongly about his rights none of that has changed. But hes also incredibly warm and generous. I came to love both of them. I was happy that Richard Sobol could see the film before he passed away; that meant so much to me.

Theres a quote from a fellow lawyer in Sobols New York Times obituary that says Richard wasnt a traditional type of lawyer, and I thought: You can say that again. Did you get a sense of why civil rights became his life and why this wasnt a three-week vacation thing like with some of the other lawyers?

His principles. This was a man who had very deep and powerful principles, and once he got [to New Orleans] and realized what he could accomplish he said: I accomplished more in three weeks than I ever could have accomplished in three years in Washington. And it wasnt just how much he accomplished, but the value of what he accomplished.

I wouldnt say it was an easy decision to move south, because uprooting your family is never easy, but I think morally and emotionally and intellectually, it was a clear decision for him to stay.

He talks very briefly in the film about how Jews who survived the Holocaust, and close descendants of those who did, felt driven at the time to help Black people given their dire situation. Did he say anything else about that?

No, he didnt. I think thats all he had to say about it I think he felt it was fairly obvious that if youve lived through the Holocaust, either through your relatives or immediate family, and thats touched you in any way, one would clearly empathize with people who are going through similar struggles.

The Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement is well documented, and its also a very strong presence throughout your film. Were you always intending to frame the story in such a way?

Given the amount of information we know, the Jewish involvement was a clear part of the story. I didnt intentionally set out to frame it that way, but the relationships between racism and antisemitism seemed very clear to me were basically talking about hate. Were talking about people who are so afraid of people who are unlike themselves that they become hateful and they attack, physically and otherwise, people who are different them.

One of the horrors of the story is Leander Perez, the political boss of Plaquemines Parish who we see shamelessly spouting white supremacist rhetoric in the film. He died in 1969, but did you consider reaching out to members of his family?

Most of his people had passed. There are a few descendants, but I felt that he speaks for himself he comes across loud and clear! He was such a media hog and he allowed himself to be photographed and interviewed so often that Im not sure I needed to speak to anybody else. [There is one particularly jaw-dropping moment when he is interviewed by William F. Buckley Jr. and rejects the idea that he is a bigot mere seconds after stating that all Black people are inherently immoral. They are unmoral. I know that to be a fact. Why should I try to hide it?]

The film is already fairly complex in its ideas: the intimate story of Gary and Richard and their relationship, their beautiful friendship. And then theres more abstract ideas, global ideas, that deal with racism and antisemitism. Theres a lot thats packed into this film and I hope its woven together effectively, because thats the challenge in making a film like this.

Single moments

You mention the footage of Perez but what about events in Louisiana at the time? Was there much material to comb through? You use some great still images, for example.

During the civil rights struggle, there were a lot of very fine documentary photographers covering that. Theres a tremendous amount of footage, much of which weve seen a lot of already, and thats one of the reasons I leaned into the photographs because many of those hadnt been seen. I thought that those pictures so beautifully captured the essence of what was going on, not necessarily on the nose, not necessarily describing exactly what we were talking about, but they were representations of the general climate and the toxic environment that these people were living in.

Given your own background working on picture desks at the Times and Magnum, how much does that past still inform your present? How much do you think in terms of a single image in your films?

I cant help it. My inclination to think in terms of single images or single moments, maybe thats a good way to put it does grow out of that. And it even plays a role in the footage that I use as well, because Im very conscious of the visual power of beautiful, archival footage evocative archival footage. Ive been looking at, studying and handling still photographs for most of my life. Its one of the reasons I felt a natural inclination to move into documentary film.

Your documentary career seems to split into what might be called socially motivated movies such as this, The Loving Story and The Rape of Recy Taylor, and films on the likes of Sidney Lumet and the upcoming one inspired by Midnight Cowboy. Is it easy for you to separate the two strands?

Actually, I dont. I see the connections among all of these films, and that includes my film on Sidney Lumet and the film I made about Tanaquil Le Clercq, the ballet dancer who was stricken with polio. I feel like there is a moral consciousness that threads its way through all of these films. Ive thought long and hard about this, because I never did feel that they were separate.

Sidney Lumet is very interested in people who stand up to corrupt forces you look at Serpico, Prince of the City, Dog Day Afternoon. Some of his greatest films deal with people who show moral courage, and in fact even in 12 Angry Men, where Henry Fondas character has the courage to stand up to the other jurors who want to convict the accused man.

I feel thats why I was so interested in people like Mildred Loving [who battled a ban in Virginia on mixed-race marriage with her white husband Richard] and Recy Taylor, who stands up and accuses her attackers [in Abbeville, Alabama, in 1944]. And Gary Duncan, who has been pushed around long enough and wont take this anymore.

Youre from New York and over the past decade have headed south to make films about the civil rights struggle in the 60s. Youre continuing on the same path others blazed in the60s, but do you ever see it in those terms?

Its interesting. Michael Schwerner, one of the three men [along with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman] who was killed in Mississippi during the civil rights struggle [and whose story is retold in the 1988 Alan Parker movie Mississippi Burning] he actually came from my hometown, New Rochelle, NY. I think there were a lot of people who came out of those more privileged environments, those suburbs where I grew up, and really turned around and devoted themselves to liberal causes. Im not sure what thats about I think that would take a whole other movie to figure out!

A Crime on the Bayou is out now in select U.S. cities. For more details, visit the Shout! Studios website.

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The Jewish mensch who helped fight racial injustice in the Deep South - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on June 21, 2021

The world will never become a better place until we resolve to fight and resist evil. The globe will never be peaceful until we are inspired to neutralize those who disturb the peace. And social cohesion will never be fully realized until those who tear us apart are stopped.

There are times when we need kosher love that is, the kind of love that brings us all together. And there are times when we need kosher hate that is, the kind of revulsion for wickedness that causes us to say Enough.

Sadly, for me, none of this is particularly new. I spent 11 years as rabbi to the students of Oxford University. I traveled all over Europe, where Jews are becoming a secret society, afraid to display their Jewishness in the open. We just never believed that it could happen here in the United States.

Is that going to happen in America? Will the most powerful country in the world succumb to thuggery? Will the Jewish community surrender to antisemitism? Will we teach our kids to cower in fear?

Not if we learn to practice kosher hate, a firm and moral determination to stop antisemitism, racism and every other form of bigotry.

There are, in essence, two forms of hate, just as there are two forms of love.

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There is moral love, like that between a mother and child and husband and wife, and there is immoral love, like that between a man and his mistress. Or, infinitely more odious, like that between the German people and their fuhrer.

Likewise, there is unkosher and kosher hate. The former is practiced by Hamas against the Jews, the Klan against blacks, and terrorists against democracies. It is an irrational loathing of evil against good. But then there is kosher hate, the desire on the part of the good to stop evil from harming the righteous. Kosher hate never allows us to be indifferent in the face of evil. It removes from us the possibility of ever being neutral bystanders.

It speaks volumes that when our African-American brothers and sisters watched a man being killed by a bad cop even as most cops are heroes in Minnesota, they marched in their millions through the streets of our nation, with so many emboldened by their refusal to put up with discrimination any more. Thats kosher hate, against racism, in action.

And the Jews? Oh yes, we rallied as well. After all the recent attacks in New York, our mainstream organizations got together at the end of May and staged an online rally.

Such timid displays of resistance to antisemitism will never defeat the problem. And unless we begin to show kosher hate to the perpetrators, we risk America, in terms of antisemitism, becoming like Europe.

In the summer of 2017 I took my kids on a journey to the major Holocaust annihilation and concentration sites of Europe: Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy France, and more. I chronicled that journey in my book Holocaust Holiday: One Familys Descent into Genocide Memory Hell. The journey started in Berlin where, as we arrived in Tegel Airport, a security guard walked over to me to plead that I remove my young sons yarmulkes so that they would not get hurt.

Yes, we had arrived to commemorate the martyrdom of the six million only to be told that in Europe the unkosher hatred had not abated.

But America is different. It was always different. The pilgrims came here to escape Europes religious persecution and intolerance. Enshrined in our Constitution is the freedom to worship as we are and to express ourselves as we please.

We dishonor our Jewishness and commitment to freedom by suppressing it, and we dishonor America by hiding it.

Now is the time for a fierce generation of Americans who determine that they will no longer tolerate the intolerable or accept the unacceptable. We will determine to resist all those whose irrational hatred is tearing the fabric of America apart, beginning with those, from Left to Right, who are infected with the disease of antisemitism, the worlds oldest and most malignant prejudice.

HATRED OF Jews has taken different forms: as the other, the killers of Christ, and the descendants of apes and pigs. This bigotry has been one of the few historical constants of the last 2,500 years. The degree of antisemitism ebbs and flows, often according to local conditions and the need for a scapegoat.

The establishment of Israel allowed antisemitism to reach new heights, even as it hid behind the ridiculous claim that hating the Jewish state is not motivated by hatred of Jews.

Since the invasion by five Arab armies in 1948, Israel has been under attack by nations and terrorists seeking its destruction. While Israel was for a time viewed as David fighting the whole Arab world, it is now seen as Goliath trampling on the rights of the Palestinians. Israel alone among the nations is not allowed to defend itself when attacked. It is accused of perpetuating a cycle of violence; and then if, God forbid, a civilian should be killed in a counterterrorism operation, it is pilloried for war crimes.

The world has settled into a comfortable routine whereby terrorists attack Israel, the Israelis respond, and an outburst of antisemitism follows. As others have noted, the terrorists are like arsonists and Israelis firefighters, but it is the latter who are condemned.

No country would tolerate a rocket attack on its capital, but Israel was vilified when it responded to just such an attack on Jerusalem. Over the next 10 days, more than 4,000 rockets were fired at Tel Aviv, Sderot, Ashkelon and other communities within their range.

The Arabs have been conditioned by the international community to engage in no fault wars where they are not blamed for setting the fire and then demand a return to the status quo ante after the firefighters put out the flames.

And we American Jews? We have allowed this. We have allowed it by failing to publicly and forcefully support Israel, especially in its recent war, and allowing Israel to become toxic, especially on campus. We have allowed it through our timidity and lack of resolve. We have allowed it because we are afraid of what the repercussions of a robust defense of Israel would be for us.

But we cannot hide, we cannot fear, we cannot surrender. Antisemitism in America is entering a new chapter, and the only question is whether we will fight it to make it better before it gets worse.

The writer, Americas Rabbi, has just published his newest book, Holocaust Holiday: One Familys Descent into Genocide Memory Hell. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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Jews are the only minority that tolerates the intolerable - The Jerusalem Post

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