Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

Rabbi Shimon Roth lives in Jerusalems Mea Shearim neighborhood one of the citys most religious neighborhoods.

The conservative atmosphere is visible. Men crowd the streets in a sea of black coats and hats, and Yiddish is commonly spoken. Signs are posted asking women to dress modestly.

We are here in occupied Jerusalem, the original capital of Palestine, Roth explained from across a dining room table that was covered with a white lace cloth and a sheet of clear plastic, common in observant homes.

Roth only agreed to be interviewed with a male translator present. And he refused to make direct eye contact, based on a belief that he shouldnt look at women other than his wife.

Roth is a part of Neturei Karta, a Haredisect that takes an anti-Zionist stance meaning the group doesnt believe in the concept of a Jewish state of Israel. Haredim (the plural of Haredi) are extremely religious and have a very strict commitment to Jewish law and custom.

Haredi translates to "trembling," as in trembling before God.

Not all Haredim are anti-Zionist, and even those who are rarely show it in the same way as Neturei Karta. The group is known for demonstrating against Israel and in support of Palestine. Its members can be seen at protests carrying signs that say things like, "Judaism condemns the state of Israel and its atrocities."

Roth explained that, for him, part of living in Israel as an anti-Zionist means not voting or running for office, not taking assistance from the government and openly supporting the return of all of Israel to Palestinians.

The Zionists say that they act on our behalf. They took the name Israel, which is not theirs to have, Roth said. Our goal is to express [opposition] to the Zionists' crimes.

Zionism, the movement that advocates for a Jewish state, is almost always discussed in political terms. But it can also be fundamentally religious.

Judaism is a covenant with God to uphold God's Torah to be subservient to God.

According to Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a spokesman for Neturei Karta in the United States, Judaism is a covenant with God to uphold God's Torah to be subservient to God. Zionism is a transformation to nationalism.

Weiss is famously known for having visited Iran to speak at a conference about the Holocaust alongside then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad and former KKK leader David Duke.

Weiss does not deny the Holocaust.

He said his grandparents and several aunts and uncles died in Auschwitz.The New York Times reported that he attended the conference to say that the Holocaust is being exploited to justify the Zionist state of Israel.

While many Zionists make the argument that God promised the land of Israel to the Jews, Weiss and Neturei Karta understand it very differently.

It's a materialist concept to have a piece of land to be a nation like other nations. Totally contradictory to what Judaism is. That's the basics, Weiss explained.

The basics hes referring to come from ancient history, and specifically the time of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. That temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 CE, which many understand as solidifying the Jewish diaspora.

We are expressly forbidden since the destruction of the temple 2,000 years ago God told us that we should not reestablish a Jewish sovereignty, Weiss said.

[At] the time when we made the covenant, God said we should go into the Holy Land and make a temple but He warned us if we're not on that extremely high level of holiness, then we will be expelled from the Holy Land.

But many Jews disagree, and find Neturei Kartas efforts destructive.

They don't just go to demonstrations they deny [that] Jews have a right to self determination, said Rabbi Yaacov Behrman. Hes a public relations liaison for Chabad, a Haredi group headquartered in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in New York, and said he was speaking in his personal capacity.

They deny Jews have a right to self govern, which is basically antisemitism, Behrman added.

They align themselves with Holocaust deniers. They align themselves with those that advocate for the destruction of the Jewish people. Their ideology lacks any religious or moral legitimacy.

While Rabbi Weiss and Neturei Karta say the Jews were expelled from the land tnow called Israel and that it doesn't belong to them, Rabbi Behrman says this misses a very important point.

They don't acknowledge that it's divine providence that allowed Jews to create the state of Israel, Behrman said. The fact of the matter is the state exists and the fact of the matter is that Jews worldwide are safer because of this state. And if something happens to the state of Israel, it's going to endanger Jews worldwide.

To Weiss though, Zionism is heresy.

It's nationalism. It's void of God, Weiss said. They call themselves a democracy. They proudly announced that you don't have to be religious. They have gay rights parades in the middle of the center of Jerusalem. You don't have to keep kosher. Judaism is not a democracy. It's a religion.

Neturei Karta does have a presence in Jerusalem some even have families who lived there since before the creation of the state of Israel.

I used to walk with my grandfather in the Old City of Jerusalem, and he used to tell me, I lived here and here and here, Roth said. As a child, he used to tell me the stories of his childhood from these streets long before the Jewish state.

Today, Roth and so many others look to those stories from the past, even if they have no agreement about the future.

Translation for this story was provided by Yair Leibel.

Related:Israel says no to a 2-state solution

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Neturei Karta: an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect that doesn't believe in the concept of a Jewish state of Israel - The World from PRX

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Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described Judaism as the religion of hope.

Israel is the country of hope after all, our National Anthem is called Hatikva The Hope.

But right now, as I write these words with the tears in my eyes obscuring the keyboard, it doesnt feel like there is any hope.

Our boy, Sgt. Itay Chen, son of our community members and friends Ruby and Chagit Chen, is no longer among the living.

Itay was serving in the Tank Corps and was last heard from on October 7 at 6.40 a.m.

He was declared missing in action.

A few days later, his father Ruby, a man of such strength and integrity that it is hard to believe, came to me in the synagogue and told me there was some good news I desperately wanted him to tell me that Itay was found alive and well and would be joining us very soon but the good news was that he was officially declared a hostage kidnapped by the vile perpetrators of the worst crime against the State of Israel in its history.

Ruby embarked upon a campaign of publicly working to keep the hostages in the minds of the world. As an American/Israeli dual nationality citizen, he flew back and forth to Washington, met with senators, leaders and visited US President Joe Biden in the White House to implore him to do more to bring home the hostages.

Nobody could have done more and all the while, Itays parents and brothers and his extended family in our community never gave up hope.

I sent out a photograph of Itays smiling face that Ruby had prepared with the words Help find Itay. So many of us placed this photograph on our Shabbat tables as an honored guest.

My wife placed the photograph on the wall together with those of our own children above where she lights the Shabbat candles, and each week as she fervently prayed for the peace, health and welfare of our children over the glowing flames, Itay was there too, firmly in our minds and hearts.

But on Tuesday it was announced that Itay had been killed early on that infamous day of Simchat Torah 5784, October 7, 2024, and his body taken captive to Gaza, where it remains in the hands of the heinous terrorists.

The news hit us like a juggernaut out of control. We werent expecting it we remained full of hope that Itay would be returned healthy and well. But it will not be so.

In the words of the Kinnot which we read on Tisha BeAv the saddest day of the Jewish year, when we recall so many tragedies over the millennia, Woe is to us, we are bereft!

Yes, our communitys hope lies shattered, broken and splintered into tiny pieces, never to be gathered together again, like the glass that Itay will now never stamp upon under the chuppah.

How do we react? How can we go about our daily business, work, looking after the children, dealing with the petty nonsense that life inevitably throws up?

HOW DO Itays heartbroken family drag themselves out of bed in the morning?

Right now, in the eye of the storm, the answers escape me I grasp at ideas swirling around in my head, in no particular order.

When the news broke, I was in the middle of a work video conference and a Whatsapp message appeared on my screen. I felt sick and was unable to concentrate on the words being spoken, and I excused myself from the meeting.

Should we, as a community cancel our upcoming Purim celebrations? Should we stop going out to friends? Should we refrain from everyday activities which seem so trivial today?

These are questions we are grappling with now.

The first instinct is to cancel everything, put our collective heads in our hands and just weep.

But we must go on we are obliged to continue the fight, to achieve the victory that Itay was fighting for, to restore some kind of normality to the lives of our people accepting that it will never be the same again without Itay and the hundreds, no thousands of other blameless victims of this horror.

If we dont they win and we lose. This cannot be allowed to happen.

This has been the Jewish way from the time of our beginnings.

In Egypt when the fledgling Israelite nation were enslaved, the men gave up hope and separated from their wives saying that it was hopeless to bring new life into such a terrible world. The women disagreed and ensured the survival of the nation by continuing to procreate and are praised for their strength and foresight.

In the worst years of the Spanish Inquisition, Jews continued to be Jews, albeit sometimes in secret, but they never stopped and even now more than 500 years later the descendants of the Bnei Anusim (Hebrew for the progeny of those who were coerced) are coming home.

Even during the Holocaust, hope was never completely extinguished and Israel itself rose from the ashes.

So, I dont know how I or we will do it but we will continue, we will get up, get dressed, go about our daily lives, and do what is necessary yes, with a heavy heart, but we will do it.

We will celebrate Purim, we will smile for our children and grandchildren when they show us their costumes, and we will never lose hope, because we owe it to Itay and the other brave heroes of our people to remain the People of Hope.

The writer is a rabbi and physician living in Ramat Poleg, Netanya, and is a cofounder of Techelet-Inspiring Judaism.

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Now, as throughout Jewish history, we must be a people of hope - opinion - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

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This Shabbat, the Shabbat before the Jewish holiday of Purim, religious Jews all over the world will flock to the synagogue to keep one of the Torahs commandments: to remember Amalek. The commandment in itself is not rare in Judaism. The verb remember appears in the Torah 169 times. Clearly, memory is a critical part of Judaism. What makes this commandment interesting is what we are required to remember.

The National Geographic https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/cultural-memory/ has an interesting article on cultural memory, which they define as the constructed understanding of the past that is passed from one generation to the next through text, oral traditions, monuments, rites, and other symbols. But cultural memory is not simply an understanding of the past. There are other extremely important elements to cultural memory.

Firstly, it is a way to learn from the past. The well-known saying those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it has proven itself again and again. According to the National Geographic article, traumatic memories are some of the most powerful ones. The article brings the example of Russias role in World War Two in which 10 million Russians were killed. This historical event is still a vital part of Russian remembrance. The memory serves to prevent a tragedy like this from reoccurring. It also provides them with feelings of strength, defiance, and survival.

Secondly, cultural memory is an important part of cultural identity. In his book Covenant and Conversation, https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/ki-tavo/we-are-what-we-remember/ Rabbi Jonathan Sacks discusses the importance of history for Jewish identity. When Moses first encountered God at the burning bush, he asked the question, Who am I?. Seemingly he was asking God, Who am I to stand in front of Pharoah?, but Rabbi Sacks explains that Moses was asking a much more fundamental question. He grew up in Egypt and then in Midian, and now he is being told to become the leader of the Jewish people. Moses actually wanted to know who he really was.

Gods response was telling. He was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses identity was related to his genealogy, not where he lived. It was the history of his people that defined his essence. God explained to Moses about the promise He made to his forefathers. He explained that He told them He would bring the Jewish people out of slavery to freedom. This is the story that the Jewish people would tell over and over again, through every generation because as Rabbi Sacks puts it, we are what we remember.

According to National Geographic, cultural memory is the longest form of memory, and as collective memory (as opposed to an individual memory) it is preserved in objects, symbols, activities, and books. It provides us with a deep comprehension of the culture, values, and norms of a particular society.

Shabbat is a perfect example of the latter idea. In Exodus 20:8, we are commanded to remember the Shabbat. We do so through prayer, food, song, and refraining from certain activities. Shabbat is more than a remembrance of the six days of creation, it is a reflection of the values and beliefs of Judaism. It celebrates the ideas of monotheism and Gods interaction in the world. It also celebrates the values of family and Torah learning. The Jewish Shabbat reflects the uniqueness of Judaism.

The concept of trauma in cultural memory reminds me of a book called The Giver written by Lois Lowry. In it, Lowry creates a future society that aims to preserve peace and order among its residents. To do so, it has to eliminate certain things. Residents must be protected against strong negative feelings towards one another like anger and jealousy. The society chooses elders to come up with rules that will accomplish this feat. The people must dress the same, wear their hair the same way, and take pills to suppress strong emotions, even good ones which can ultimately threaten the peace of their society, like love. The elders match people with their spouses, whom they choose based on a balance of the two personalities. Children are presented to the family units during a ceremony marking the first year of the childs life. The birth mothers of these children never even meet the child. It is a job within the community to give birth to children so that they can be given to a certain family unit. Memories of the past are also abolished from the society. There are no books, other than their book of rules. Historical memories are perceived as threats to a society that wants nothing to do with the disorderly past.

There is, however, one member of this society who has the important role of remembering the past. He is known as the Giver, and his job is to read books and learn about past generations. But this Giver has special qualities. Not only does he understand the past intellectually, but he can experience it as if he lived through it himself. The book is about a boy named Jonas who is appointed to be the next Receiver of these memories, which he obtains from the Giver.

The memories themselves can be exhilarating, delightful, depressing, and even terrifying, which are all strong emotions that the other residents cannot experience. Ultimately, Jonas decides to abandon this community that suppresses historical experiences. He decides that even things like war and death share important lessons for society. After all, it is human history that ultimately defines us as humans.

This Shabbat we will read about a particularly difficult historical event that we remember every year: the attack of Amalek in the desert. We will read from the Torah:

REMEMBER what Amalek did to you along the way as you left Egypt;how he confronted you along the way, and smote the hindmost among you, all that were enfeebled, when you were faint and weary; and he did not fear God.Therefore, it shall be that when the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess, you shall erase the memory of Amalek from under the heavens; you shall not forget.(Devarim 25:17-19)

The war against Amalek is a crucial event in Jewish history and a perfect example of cultural memory. But why is Amalek singled out? Many nations attacked the Jewish people?

A multitude of reasons have been offered by commentators. Some say that Amalek was the first nation to fight against the Jews after the splitting of the sea when other nations were afraid to do so. This made it more feasible for others to attack the Jews. Others believe that Amalek represents an idea, rather than a specific nation, that is contrary to Judaism and must be contended with. But I believe October 7th has shed some new light on this commandment to remember.

Im fully aware that articles and blogs have been written about the differences between Amalek and Hamas. And while the commandment to wipe out Amalek cannot literally apply to any other nation (as Amalek was a biological nation that no longer exists), the commandment to remember them does apply. And as stated above cultural remembrance is about many things. It is about learning from the past and cultural identity. Unfortunately, Jewish identity is very much associated with nations like Amalek. Our history is replete with nations that have tried to wipe us off the face of the earth. Purim is one example of such an event. October 7th is another.

Hamas took lessons from Amalek. They attacked the rear, the southern cities that were not properly protected. They waited until we were weak, a nation divided both politically and socially over issues like judicial reform. Like Amalek, their goal was simple to wipe out the nation of Israel. They made no secret about it. It is most unfortunate that Jews have become identified with the malevolent plots of their attackers.

But the commandment to remember Amalek runs deeper. The fact that Hamas succeeded in torturing and murdering so many of us on October 7th was the result of the fact that we failed to remember. This led to a dangerous form of complacency. We simply did not believe that Hamas was so evil because we forgot about Amalek. That is why this commandment is so crucial. We must remember Amalek, so this does not happen again and again. We must destroy the evil in our midst so that next year this will become another crucial memory, but no longer a living threat.

And there is still a further facet to this commandment. The stories of Amalek, Purim, and October 7th are not just stories of our failures; They are also stories of our resilience. Amalek no longer exists. The Persian Empire from the time of Purim no longer exists. The Jewish nation outlived both. And this is what will happen with Hamas. Historically Jews have overcome every form of evil that has been thrown at them. This history is also an essential part of our national identity. And Its crucial to remember that as well.

Cheryl Levi is a writer and a high school English teacher who lives with her family in Bet Shemesh, Israel. She has a master's degree in medieval Jewish philosophy and has written numerous articles about faith crisis in Judaism. Her book, Reasonable Doubts, was published in 2010.

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Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of Remembrance | Cheryl Levi | The Blogs - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

As has often been remarked upon, we Jews love to argue. It can be over something trifling or something important: but a broiges is a broiges, right? Occasionally a broiges is something to be treasured, and I think that Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, wishes more of us would indulge.

That, at any rate, is part of the message in Rabbi Zarums new and groundbreaking book, Questioning Belief, Torah and Tradition in An Age of Doubt, in which he elevates broiges to a whole new level. This is not a run-of-the-mill argument, but a passionate and forensic examination of the arguments that Jews have with Judaism. Why do we do this or that? Much of Jewish practice is illogical, explained away to children as just because.

But Jewish adults need better explanations. As Rabbi Zarum observes in his introduction to Questioning Belief, there is a risk in mistaking the Jewish tradition for a vast supercomputer. Press a button and a specific, timeless answer to any question just pops out.

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Over the course of 12 fascinating chapters, Rabbi Zarum unpicks the most common questions about Jewish life in the wake of modern scientific discoveries, and endeavours to provide intelligent answers. Was the Flood real, people ask, or the Exodus story? What has Judaism to say about slavery, or collective punishment? (Clue: we dont approve of either.)

And in the five years it took him to write this book, Rabbi Zarum concludes that in the end, my thinking moved me from a defence of Judaism to a re-evaluation of it for the modern age. The question, he says, is did the re-evaluation change Judaism, or change you? He says that the re-evaluation changed him: as someone from a scientific background his PhD is in physics who would usually require detailed proofs, he gently pushes the reader to acknow-ledge that not everything in the Torah is meant to be taken literally.

Many of the stories in the Torah are, says Rabbi Zarum, morality tales to teach human responsibility for the world. And context is key: the rabbis say you mustnt take the Torah literally. The line that the strictly Orthodox rabbis say should not be taken literally is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. So the question then is, whats literal and whats not literal.

Who is this book aimed at? Ive tried to be what I call middlebrow. Theres highbrow, which is for academics, very intellectual, very hard to read, and everything justified on the highest level. Theres lowbrow, which is not fully grounded its lovely stories but its not quite honest about the complexities of Torah. Ive tried to steer a middle level to admit the difficulties in Torah, try to answer them, but make it relevant to people. So Questioning Belief is as likely to throw in a glancing reference to the Beatles as it is to supreme exponents of Torah commentary.

His audience, he says, is mainstream educated people, who want to live a meaningful Jewish life but cant let go correctly so of their rational understanding of the way the world is. They want to believe, but they find it difficult.

His principle, he says, was that if God made the world, and God made the Torah, they cant contradict. So I would look for an answer. And what I found were many halfway, or apologetic answers so I looked for deeper answers.

Rabbi Zarum is aware that still, in some communities, questions are positively discouraged. But, he says, learning with the late Rabbi Sacks, (whose daughter Gila provides a thoughtful foreword to the book), was like a breath of fresh air and that he and his contemporaries were encouraged to ask questions wherever they could.

Of his own upbringing, he says: My father was a Yemenite Jew and he knew the Bible by heart. He never looked over his shoulder at people from Gateshead or Stamford Hill. My cousins on my mothers side were from Stamford Hill. Wed go to simchas, theyd be wearing black hats and coats and my father would be in a modern suit. They would talk to him and hed be quoting Bible verses by heart it was an equal conversation. So I grew up never thinking theyre better I just thought, theyre different.

One of the most painful and frequently-raised issues is that of God and the Holocaust: how it could have happened, why prayer did not seem to have any discernible effect. Yes, says Rabbi Zarum, pouncing on the point, this comes under the heading of arguing with God God doesnt want us just to accept things, he wants us to fight back.

With some charm, he cites the story of a Chasid who approached his rabbi to say: I dont understand. How could God, who is perfect, create a world which has all these terrible things in it? And the rabbi says, its a good point. Do you think you could do better? The shocked pupil stammers, I could try. And the rabbi says, go! Make it better! Now, from a rational point of view, and my science training, thats not an answer. But it is a way to live. Thats the Jewish answer: that God wants us to argue and rally against the immorality of humanity, and to make good.

Even today, with the horrors of the Hamas attacks and the Israeli response, which has led to global condemnation, Rabbi Zarum still believes that Jewish ethics and values have an effect on the world stage. We are not the only ones, but we are part of the consciousness of the world. I am, in fact, more worried for the West than for the Jewish people right now. Weve got a covenant with God and weve been around for thousands of years. Weve been through a lot of these things and we seem to have survived every time. Im fairly confident of our survival. But Im worried about the deep issues because we are too often the canary in the coal mine.

Intriguingly, Rabbi Zarum cites Rav Kook (Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandate Palestine, and one of the founding fathers of religious Zionism), when he observes: Doubters are more concerned with their doubts, than believers are with their beliefs. Rav Kook might say that the desire to study a work about questioning beliefs implies that you are eager to reflect on your relationship with God, and that this could lead to a renewed and heightened faith.

I leave the London School of Jewish Studies imagining which prominent atheist would benefit from reading this book and smiling at the thought.

Questioning Belief: Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt is published by LSJS and Maggid Books, 22.99

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Book elevates the concept of broiges to a whole new level - Jewish News

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Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

Next month, a majority of American Jews will gather with family and friends around a table to celebrate a Passover Seder, one of the most recognizable Jewish holidays, especially in the United States. Many of those offering the ritualistic meal will have designed elements of it themselves or chosen from various ideas on offer that speak to them personally.

According to American Judaic scholar Arnold Eisen, the former chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York, American Jews by and large want to maintain some Jewish rituals but demand autonomy as to how they will do so. Thus, most of the same Jews celebrating the first Passover Seder will not go to synagogue the following Shabbat, where they do not control the ritual, Eisen said.

After hours and hours of conversations with American Jews, Eisen reported that Jews will not observe anything they do not find meaningful in the moment they observe it because that would be inauthentic.

Eisen spoke about his studies in person at Temple Chai on Monday, March 11. Additionally, about 200 people watched online as Eisen gave the 35th edition of the annual Eckstein Lecture, sponsored by Arizona State University Jewish Studies.

Arnold Eisen

The programs director, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, introduced Eisen and explained that the lecture has focused on American Jewry in the last few years and called Eisen an interpreter of American Judaism.

Eisens lecture, American Jewry Today and Tomorrow, detailed large portions of his years of research about the American Judaism of yesterday and how it continues to impact the Jewish community.

American Jews still generally adhere to what Eisen termed a folk religion that allows them to testify to their religious experience, regardless of their belief in God and how they define it.

The traditions and rituals that carry the most meaning to contemporary American Jews are those like Passover connected to family, especially to parents and grandparents, which is in line with Americans from all faith traditions, he said. Thus, Passover continues to be essential for its familiar connection and universal celebration of freedom. Jewish rituals with less universal ideas that are more particular to Judaism alone, such as Sukkot or Shavuot, are less meaningful to most contemporary Jews.

American Jews want to determine for themselves how distinctive they want to be, whether celebrating Jewish holidays, practicing dietary laws or sending their children to Jewish schools.

Every single thing you do has to pass the bar of Is it meaningful to me to do this? How distinctive do I want to be? Eisen explained. While leading the JTS, an academic and spiritual center of Conservative Judaism, hes talked with hundreds and hundreds of people about how they choose whats most meaningful.

Parents tell him that choosing between Hebrew school and soccer practice for their children is painful, but sometimes they come down on the side of soccer because it makes you part of the larger world, whereas Hebrew school sets them apart.

That makes sense, given that American Jews historically have juggled certain big theological ideas. First, is the idea that Jews are Gods chosen people. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Jews trying to make it in the U.S. could see a chance to be accepted by non-Jews.

It was not good PR to tell the people that you want to be part of that you have to be apart from them, Eisen said.

He discussed the theories of the Jewish sociologist Nathan Glazer, who proposed that Jewish particularity would be a problem for the Jewish people because American society expects to see ethnic particularity abandoned. Glazer correctly predicted that intermarriage between Jews and Christians would become common. Outside of the Orthodox world, about 70% of American Jewish marriages are between a Jew and a non-Jew.

On the other hand, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg argued that Judaism cannot survive if Jews are just like everybody else. Eisen explained that 20th-century Jews were also grappling with the rabbis insistence that the Jewish community could only survive if it emphasized its uniqueness rather than turning from or hiding it.

Jewish sociologist Charles Liebman later described the Jewish community as one caught between conflicting desires for integration on the one hand and being apart from the non-Jewish society on the other. Trying to walk that tightrope, Liebman suggested, would make most American Jews shrink from extremes and land somewhere in the middle. However, Eisen pointed out that theory kept him from foreseeing the rise of Haredi Jews.

Whats actually shrinking in American Jewish life is the middle, Eisen said.

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism and someone Eisen met in person when he was in his 90s, insisted that it was important to make Judaism intuitive by surrounding people with Jewish history, literature, language and community so that people ask, Why should I not be a Jew? rather than Why should I be a Jew?

For more than 1,000 years before modernity, Jews lived in societies ruled by Christianity or Islam and knew where they stood. Sometimes it was bad and other times it was good. Maybe you were second-class citizens but you were tolerated, Eisen said. Modern ideas of liberal democracy shifted everything, especially in the U.S. and thus, American Jews have been negotiating their place within it over the last 150 years with some difficulty, and the Jewish calculus of how distinctive to be is something that continues to this day, he said.

As for the future, Eisen said its a fools errand to make predictions without knowing all the variables of the next 10, 20 or 30 years, an impossible task. He can only make educated guesses and said its more important to try to make it the kind of future that we want to have, rather than worrying about whats going to happen.

That said, the future definitely changed on Oct. 7, but theres no way to predict what that will mean for the future of American Jews and Judaism, he said.

We should not worry about the future of Judaism in America. The question is what you and I are going to do today and tomorrow to secure the future of Jews in America thats the only question. JN

For more information, visit jewishstudies.asu.edu.

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To be 'a part of' or 'apart from,' American Jews, identity and the future - Jewish News of Greater Phoenix

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Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

In the middle of Sweet Baby Inc. and its employees attempting to cancel Brazilian gamer KabrutusRambo, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called on online games to be regulated.

A screenshot from Helldivers II (2024), Arrowhead Game Studios

Two weeks after Sweet Baby Inc. employees called for the canceling of Brazilian gamer KabrutusRambo and his Steam curator list that lists out all games that Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on that are currently available to purchase on Steam, the ADL posted to X, As digital social spaces, online games should be regulated to address hate & extremism.

The organization added, Its vital for Congress to examine extremist radicalization in these spaces & we are grateful to Representative Lori Trahan for leading this effort.

ADL on X

READ: Sweet Baby Inc. Employee Begs Followers To Report Steam Curator That Tracks Sweet Baby Inc.s Involvement In Video Games

The outlet also links to an article published in The Hill by Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat. Rosenblat was awarded a fellowship from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans in 2017. She was allegedly awarded the fellowship to obtain her law degree from Yale Law. She was previously a Global Human Rights Clinic Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Chicago. According to her LinkedIn, she is currently a Policy Advisor on Technology & Law at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

In the article Rosenblat writes, Discussions of harms in gaming historically have focused on fears about the content of the games themselves. However, the socialenvironment of games is what actually posessignificant threats to players safety and well-being.

She asserts, Exposure to hateful speech is routine while doxxing exposing someones private identifying information and physical threats arealso common. Of acute concern ismounting evidencethat extremists and other bad actors take advantage of the preexistingtoxic gamer culture to disseminate their hateful ideologies and unleash hate-based harassment.

A screenshot from Palworld (2024), Pocketpair

Later in the article Rosenblat shares her aims, Regulators should consider online games fair game for regulation. Indeed, it is unclear why games are typically excluded from the same regulatory approaches that apply to social media sinceonline multiplayer games are social platforms.

Online games nominally fall within thescope of the Digital Services Act, and the regulations enforcers should ensure that game companies comply with its extensive requirements including publishing human rights risk assessments, removing illegal content, countering disinformation and extremism, issuing transparency reports and providing data to vetted independent researchers, she adds. This law provides a significant regulatory push for game companies to put in place responsible business policies and practices.

A screenshot from Overwatch Season 9 (2024), Blizzard

READ: Sweet Baby Inc. Employee Chris Kindred Doubles Down On Call To Cancel Steam Curator List And Labels Members As Nazis

This push comes in the wake of the ADL publishing a so-called report titled Hate is No Game: Hate and Harassment in Online Games 2023 on February 6, 2024.

The reports executive summary declares, Hate and harassment in gaming is now so pervasive that it has become the norm for many players. An estimated 83 million of the 110 million online multiplayer gamers in the U.S. were exposed to hate and harassment over the last six months. Three out of four young people (ages 10-17) experience harassment when playing video games.

Key art for Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 2 (2024), Epic Games

READ: U.S. Government Funded Organization Take This Encourages Game Developers To Denounce Gamers Who Are Being Harassed By Sweet Baby Inc.

Interestingly, a similar report from the ADL that made similar claims was the so-called inspiration for Take This founder Dr. Rachel Kowert to found her organization.

During a Game UX 22 presentation Kowert shared, In 2019 the Anti-Defamation League reported that nearly one in four, was 23%, of game players are exposed to white supremacist ideology in game.

She continued, And honestly, somebody asked me earlier how I got into this work because it seems like a very niche area, but it was this report. And when I saw that I thought that number is so high it cant be that high; it cant possibly be that high. And I called Daniel Kelley, who led this research, and he was like, No, thats the number. And I was like, Okay, we have to do something about that. Thats terrifying.

Ironically, she admitted the reporting and research of the ADL was suspect, In 2021, they did another report looking at the same thing and they found the number was closer to one in ten, but its unclear whether this is actually a change in the landscape or just differences in sampling as it is with research sometimes.

A screenshot from World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Seeds of Renewal (2024), Blizzard

And its no surprise that one might find these assertions suspect given the ADL admits in their most recent report that its all based off a survey conducted by Newzoo of 1,971 respondents between the ages of 10 through 45. It also admits to oversampling on key interest groups including Jewish, Muslim, LGBTQ+, Black / African American, and Hispanic / Latino, to ensure we had enough respondents belonging to these minority groups to be able to examine responses within these groups during analysis.

From there, the ADL admits to manipulating the data, The final dataset (including the over-sampled population, n=2,006) was then weighed, so that the demographic distribution of our final dataset matched the demographic distribution of our initial gamer sample. This involved re-applying weights based on five variables age, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation using a rake algorithm to give each respondent a weight.

Venom in Marvels Spider-Man 2 (2023), Insomniac Games

What do you make of the ADL calling for regulation of online games amid Sweet Baby Inc. attempting to cancel KabrutusRambo for raising awareness about the companys agenda?

NEXT: Forspoken Consultant Black Girl Gamers Appears To Discriminate In Their Hiring Practices While Claiming They Are Being Harassed

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Amid Sweet Baby Inc.'s Cancel Campaign, Anti-Defamation League Calls On Online Games To Be Regulated - That Park Place

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Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

President Trumps comments that Jewish people who vote for Democrats hate their religion and should be ashamed of themselves are sparking outrage from Jewish groups and leaders.

Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed, Mr. Trump said in an interview with a conservative radio host, Sebastian Gorka. Noting that he was amazed at how many people show up at Palestinian marches, Mr. Trump said that guys like Schumer see that, and to him its votes.

Iran was stone cold broke under his administration, Mr. Trump said as he criticized President Bidens handling of Iran.

Senator Schumer on X called Mr. Trumps comments highly partisan and hateful rants.

A slew of Jewish groups, rabbis, and leaders are slamming Mr. Trump for playing into antisemitic stereotypes.

Accusing Jews of hating their religion because they might vote for a particular party is defamatory and patently false. Serious leaders who care about the historic US-Israel alliance should focus on strengthening, rather than unraveling, bipartisan support for the State of Israel, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, told USA Today.

Pew Research polling indicates that Jews are among the most consistently liberal and Democratic groups in the U.S. population, with 70 percent of Jewish adults identifying as or leaning Democratic. In the months leading up to the 2020 election, nearly 75 percent of Jewish people disapproved of President Trump, the survey found.

Noting those numbers, Rabbi Jay Michaelson slammed Mr. Trumps inflammatory comments during an interview Monday night on CNN as being beneath even Donald Trump.

This was truly a disgusting comment, he said. Were talking over two-thirds of American Jews that Trump says hate Judaism. As a rabbi who sometimes votes Democratic, I do not hate Judaism.

The comments are a smear against an entire community, he noted, at a time when Jewish people are already feeling insecure and facing antisemitism and now were going to be attacked by the presumptive nominee of a major party and saying that we are self-hating is absolutely despicable.

Several Democratic lawmakers have spoken out against the comments and attacked Mr. Trump personally for them.

Donald Trump is a hateful man whos trying everything in his power to get Americans to hate each other, Congresswoman Becca Balint from Vermont wrote on X. Hes hardly a moral authority on anything, let alone on religion and spirituality.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the comments demonstrated that the Republican presumptive nominee isnt fit for office. Trump demonstrates daily his lack of fitness for the presidency by spreading dangerous stereotypes and embracing antisemites, she wrote on X. We cannot allow this hate peddler to turn Israel and our Jewish faith into partisan issues.

In the wake of the backlash, the Trump campaign has not backed down. His 2024 press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Monday that Mr. Trump is right.

The Biden Administration has given millions in aid to Gaza and the Iranian Regime, Democrats in Congress have signed petitions supporting Gaza terrorists and caved to the demands of Far-Left Palestinian extremists, she said, as Axios reports. The Democrat Party has turned into a full-blown anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist cabal.

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Trump Faces Backlash for Saying Jews Who Vote For Democrats Hate Their Religion and 'Should Be Ashamed' - The New York Sun

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Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

TikTok supporters online are claiming that "pro-Israel lobbying groups" and Jews are responsible for pressuring Congress into fast-tracking bills that would ban the Chinese social media app, which the U.S. intelligence community deems a national security threat.

Online activists across X, Reddit, and other popular internet forums are spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories claiming that prominent Jewish-American leaders oppose TikTok because it has emerged as a central repository for anti-Israel criticism related to the war against Hamas.

One X account with nearly a million followers pinned blame for the ban on Jonathan Greenblatt, the Jewish leader of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a watchdog group that has raised concerns about the prevalence of anti-Semitism on TikTok. The claims parrot classic examples of anti-Semitism alleging that Jews control politics and use this power to silence criticism of Israel. The emergence of this argument is raising concerns on Capitol Hill amid a massive rise in Jew-hatred across America in the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror strikes on Israel.

"Seeing Gen Z in the US overwhelmingly support Palestine in the face of Israeli aggression, TERRIFIED [Greenblatt],"wrote X user "Censored Men" in a March 13 missive to more than 983,000 followers. "Is it such a coincidence that today the 'TikTok Ban Bill' passes after MONTHS of congress pushing for it so heavily?"

"With the speed they moved to ban TikTok, there is 0 doubt in my mind pro-Israel lobbying groups are behind the pressure," wrote another X user, "Lolo," to more than 155,000 followers. "Israel has been getting absolutely cooked on TikTok the last few months and it doesn't help that their own bozo soldiers are posting videos of them doing war crimes once a week."

This type of rhetoric has flourished on X, as well as other internet forums, since the House passed its version of the TikTok ban last week. The legislation is now in the Senate. Its chief Republican backer, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), says the rhetoric is evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is using TikTok to foment unrest in American and promote inflammatory propaganda.

"Unfortunately, there are anti-Semitic people in America who will blame Israel and the Jewish people for anything and everything," Rubio told the Washington Free Beacon. "These are the same people marching through cities in support of Hamas and Houthi terrorists. It is sick and evil."

"I understand why they love TikTok," Rubio said. "The Chinese-controlled app amplifies their views because Beijing wants to divide and weaken America from within. We can debate Middle East policy, but we shouldn't give the Chinese Communist Partya group actively committing genocide against Muslimsthe ability to control that debate."

Rubio is shepherding a bill, similar to the House version, that would ban TikTok unless the app's parent company, Chinese-owned ByteDance, completely divests from it.

Commentary magazine recently dubbed the pro-TikTok crowd's focus on Jewish-American and pro-Israel supporters"the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the social media age."

The magazine noted numerous examples of high-profile TikTok advocates claiming the ADL and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the nation's largest pro-Israel advocacy group, are pulling the strings to get TikTok banned.

"Wow! I am fucking SHOCKED that Dems are voting to ban Tik Tok. This is AIPAC at work," Democrat Pamela Keith, a formerFlorida state lawmaker, wrotelast week on X.

AIPAC played no role in advocating for the TikTok ban.

The comments section of an X post last week by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) in support of a ban quickly turned into an anti-Jewish conspiracy forum, again highlighting how the debate about China's efforts to spy on Americans is being eclipsed by anti-Semitism.

On Reddit, another popular internet forum, one userwondered, "Is Israel behind the attempt to ban Tik Tok in America?"

Jewish groups such as the ADL and the Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group representing Jewish community organizations across the country, have publicly backed the TikTok ban, citingthe prevalence of anti-Semitic rhetoric and pro-Hamas propaganda.

The ADL in a 2023 report revealed a preponderance of anti-Semitic material on TikTok that evaded the app's content guidelines. This type of content has ballooned in the wake of Israel's war on Hamas, with GOP lawmakers last yearsounding the alarm about a "deluge of pro-Hamas content" on TikTok.

Jewish staffers at TikTok alsodisclosed late last year, after Hamas's attack on Israel, that there is "rampant antisemitism" and "Israel-hate in [the] workplace," the Times of Israel reported.

Published under: AIPAC , Anti-Defamation League , Anti-Semitism , CCP , Israel , Marco Rubio , Propaganda , Reddit , Social Media , TikTok , Twitter

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TikTok Supporters Blame Jews for Congressional Ban - Washington Free Beacon

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Posted By admin on March 21, 2024

- US administration is trying to hide realities with its efforts to block TikTok, according to academic Nursin Atesoglu Guney

ISTANBUL

As the US House of Representatives passed a bill proposing a ban on Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, one of Americas major Jewish groups released an unprecedented statement in support of the legislative action.

The bill gives TikToks Chinese parent company, ByteDance, six months to sell the apps US assets or face a total ban in the country. The measure, however, still needs Senate approval and the presidents signature.

The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), an umbrella organization of American Jewish groups, lauded the move, alleging that TikTok has helped fuel a horrific spike in antisemitism.

The JFNAs appreciation of a possible TikTok ban indicates that such a move will be in favor of Israel, an expert told Anadolu, adding that increasing pro-Palestine and anti-Israel posts on the app are harming Israeli schemes to control American youths opinions.

Nursin Atesoglu Guney, head of the international relations department at Istanbuls Yildiz Technical University, underlined that the US House move is aimed at protecting Israeli interests.

But she asserted that the plan will amount to nothing, while also refuting the argument that antisemitism is on the rise on the platform.

What is really happening is not TikTok paving the way for antisemitism, but showing a real phenomenon, that is the growing dissent among youth against the dominant pro-Israel narrative in the country, the academic said.

Theres no stopping the perception that Israel is an aggressor, she said, referring to the devastating assault Israel has been waging in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

Israel, which stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, has now killed more than 31,300 Palestinians in Gaza, injured over 71,100 others and pushed millions to the brink of famine.

These protectionist moves will amount to nothing. They might be resorting to those due to the fact that the elections are drawing closer, said Guney.

Youth not believing the lies anymore

The academic also criticized the statement in which JFNA pins the blame on TikTok for growing anti-Israel sentiment among American youth.

She stressed that sources of information are no longer restricted to conventional media, and the youth are exposed to different opinions and content through social media.

The youth can clearly see the reality as they closely follow social media, said Guney, adding that they are not believing the lies anymore.

The US administration is trying to hide realities with its efforts to block TikTok, she said.

Israel and the US are arguably the staunchest allies on a global scale, and Washington considers Israels security vital to its own strategic interests.

As growing dissent on TikTok has been instrumental in shifting American public opinion against Israel, the app has become a target for many pro-Israel lobbies such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

In a recent interview with MSNBC, ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt said TikTok has become the 24/7 news channel of so many of our young people, and its like Al Jazeera on steroids, amplifying and intensifying the antisemitism and the anti-Zion(ism) with no repercussions.

JFNA also said ByteDance is beholden to the Chinese government, which has squarely positioned itself against Israel.

China has filled its state-controlled media and social media channels with antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, the group said.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew criticized the disappointing vote, vowing that the company will do all we can to protect the app, including exercising legal rights.

He asserted that the company has taken several measures to protect data and insulate TikTok from outside influences.

In a statement, TikTok said it remains hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service.

This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: its a ban, read the statement.

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Why a potential US ban on TikTok will favor Israel - Anadolu Agency | English

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Posted By admin on March 13, 2024

Every time I write, as I did last week, that I dont think anti-Zionism is necessarily antisemitic, I get emails from Jewish readers that are angry, disappointed or sometimes simply baffled. Israel is the political entity through which the Jewish people exercises its natural right of self-determination and control over its own fate, said one typical recent message. How is singling out the Jewish people to deprive it of those rights not antisemitic?

To answer this question fully would take more than a single column, but I want to make a brief attempt, because lately, in reaction to the grotesque suffering in Gaza, two ugly, intertwined trends are gaining steam. Well-intentioned opponents of Jewish nationalism, some Jewish themselves, are being falsely smeared as antisemites. At the same time, antisemitism is cloaking itself in anti-Zionism, with people spitting out the word Zionist when they really seem to mean Jew.

My own views on Zionism are ambivalent and conflicted. Im a secular Jew with no particular attachment to Israel, spiritual or otherwise, though I also recognize that my ability to hold myself aloof from the country is enabled by the great privilege of an American passport. I think the idea of Israel as a colonial entity that will eventually be dismantled is a malign fantasy most Jewish Israelis dont have anywhere else to go but I also recognize that the countrys creation cant be disentangled from the dispossession of the Palestinians.

Yes, as Zionists often point out, Palestinians were far from the only people made refugees as maps were redrawn in the wake of World War II. After Israels creation, more Jews were uprooted from Arab and Muslim countries than Arabs expelled from their homes in historic Palestine. It is not Israels fault that some of its neighbors kept displaced Palestinians as stateless refugees rather than integrating them as full citizens. But I could never blame a Palestinian for thinking it obscenely unfair that I have a right to return to a country to which I have no family connection, while Palestinians who lost their homes in 1948 do not.

I also understand why many Jews, the survivors of millenniums of attempts to destroy them as a people, put their need for national self-determination above other, competing values. But one neednt hate Jews to make a different moral calculus.

Right now, the relentless growth of settlements in the West Bank has created a one-state reality on the ground, although one in which people have very different rights and freedoms depending on their ethnic and religious background. There are people of good will who think the way out of this insupportable situation lies in the fight for equal democratic rights in a single state for everyone living in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish-Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish-Palestinian equality, Peter Beinart wrote in Jewish Currents in 2020.

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Opinion | Where Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism Do and Dont Overlap - The New York Times

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