Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 12, 2021

Their relationship started in one place and ended in another.

They exchanged profane insults. But they also enjoyed each others dark sense of humor, went to the ballet together, shared Jewish prayers and worked together to strengthen teacher pensions.

As mayor, Rahm Emanuel had a rocky relationship with Karen Lewis, then the president of the Chicago Teachers Union. It featured a seven-day strike and a record 50 school closings. They clashed, in part, because they were very much alike.

Lewis death was confirmed Monday after a long bout with brain cancer. She was 67.

Karen and I were strong personalities both of us. Strong-willed both of us. We had an appreciation of the arts. We had a passion for children and education. We loved each others sense of humor. Even in the most tense moments, we could make not only jabs at each other and laugh, but jabs at other people around, Emanuel recalled Monday.

There were tough words said on both sides and there was retraction on both sides. I learned a helluva lot from her. She has said the same. And in the learning from each other also came a lot of respect and admiration. When shes on the other side, shes as wily and smart and strategic and funny and thoughtful as they come. The truth of the matter is, we are much, much more similar than dissimilar.

The stage for their tempestuous relationship was set even before Emanuel took office in 2011.

Emanuel famously used profanity in an early confrontation with Lewis, infuriated her members by canceling a previously-negotiated 4% pay raise for teachers, then added insult to injury by persuading the Illinois General Assembly to raise the strike-vote threshold to 75%.

Chicago teachers were so incensed, 90% voted to strike the first in 25 years. They remained on the picket lines for seven days and got the better of the mayor when the strike was settled.

Emanuel has told associates if he could undo only one decision as mayor, it would be canceling the teacher pay raise. The move was seen as sheer arrogance. So was Emanuels pre-strike decision to force immediate implementation of the longer school day.

On Monday, the former mayor acknowledged his early mistakes turned Lewis into a strike-leading folk hero who might have denied Emanuel a second term if not for being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2014.

We dealt with two things. The financial books and the educational books were not in order. ... I made a pledge we were gonna have a full school day and a full school year and I made a pledge every child will get kindergarten. And I was gonna fix the finances. Those seven days were about those fights, Emanuel said.

But the way I went about it is totally is on me. ... We had to deal with the financials but I do own that it threw the relationship off.

After denouncing Emanuel as Chicagos murder mayor, Lewis underwent surgery even as her supporters collected signatures to get her on the ballot. She then threw her support to Jesus Chuy Garcia, who forced Emanuel into a runoff and lost.

Monday, Emanuel said he has no idea whether he would have lost to the charismatic union leader with a tongue and wit even sharper than his own.

Instead, he chose to focus on what they accomplished together after his 2015 re-election.

At first, he tried to negotiate a contract with the CTU that included the equivalent of a 7% pay cut for all teachers.

When Lewis couldnt sell it, Emanuel re-calibrated to end the 7% pension pick-up but only for new hires.

That convinced the Illinois General Assembly to give the Chicago Public Schools a $450 million cash infusion and bankroll teacher pensions going forward.

She and I came to an agreement in 2015 on major changes. And its not an accident that, because of those changes, that Chicago teacher pensions are one of the best-funded pensions between the state and the city of Chicago because of Karen Lewis and Rahm Emanuel, Emanuel said.

They worked a year without a contract until we could find both the political capacity to make the changes as well as the right type of changes. ... By 2015, the entire friendship, relationship trust level was on a different level.

Pressed again on whether a healthy Karen Lewis would have denied him a second term, Emanuel said, As she would say, `Thats nothing but Midrash. Its hypothetical. Its a story made up of the Talmud.

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Karen Lewis and Rahm Emanuel: Rocky relationship started in one place and ended in another - Chicago Sun-Times

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Posted By admin on February 9, 2021

A year later, the Jewish peace group Never Again Action highlighted a difficult history not taught in most schools, while linking Amazons practices directly to the tech industrys record of supporting human rights abuses. In a 2019 protest of the companys actions, the group organized a march from a Holocaust memorial in Boston to the Amazon offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[W]eve seen this before, said protester Ben Lorber, I had ancestors killed in the Holocaust.

As a relatively new tech company, Amazon is at a crossroads. Will the company travel down a familiar road taken by other tech behemoths who turned a blind eye to human rights and workers rights? Or will it opt for the unfamiliar path, refusing to sell its technology and services in support of human rights abuses while also taking a strong, affirmative stance for better workplace conditions and greater diversity within its ranks? In large measure, this decision will fall to the incoming Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Lorber and many others are pleading and protesting for the road less travelled.

In the spring of 2020, bowing to pressure from its rivals IBM and Microsoft, Amazon announced it would cease selling Rekognition to law enforcement agencies, but only for one year. The end of that year is coming up. In December, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, a large institutional shareholder, along with the Vermont State Treasurers Office, jointly filed a proposal calling on the worlds largest online retailer to curtail surveillance technologies like Rekognition.

But that investor proposal went further, asking Amazon to curb hate speech, increase diversity and improve workplace conditions. It was eerily prescient. Only several weeks later, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol showed Amazon had provided a safe haven for white nationalists to spew hate, organize and even plan their attack. By the time the social media platform Parler, used by many white nationalist groups, was taken down from the Amazon Web Services cloud, the damage had already been done.

Meanwhile, workers at the company's warehouses continue to endure unjust labor practices. During a pandemic, when so many have turned to Amazon, these workers bear the brunt of increased demand without adequate protective equipment and working conditions to shield them from the virus. Many Amazon factory workers come from communities of color already ravaged by COVID-19.

Amazon has said it stands with the nationwide movement to identify and bring an end to systemic racism, yet it continues to face claims of racial discrimination, said a disappointed Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York state comptroller and trustee of the New York retirement fund.

Instead of welcoming this opportunity, Amazon appealed to the Securities and Exchange Commission to block these proposals from being voted on at its upcoming shareholder meeting. Its a strategic blunder and a tone-deaf response to attempts aimed at preventing the company from tragically following in the footsteps of another high-tech giant.

In the late 1920s, IBM, a newly minted company, and its audacious president, Thomas J. Watson Sr., threw its technological prowess behind the eugenics movement. Eugenics sought to further reproduction of blond, blue-eyed, fair-skinned individuals the so-called Nordic stock while eliminating the bloodlines of undesirables such as Blacks, Jews, Native Americans, Hispanics, the Irish, Italians, mixed-race individuals, LGBTQ+ people and the mentally and physically ill.

A major 1926 study by the Eugenics Record Organization on the island of Jamaica was at risk because eugenicists had no way of tabulating and reporting on so-called pure blood Europeans and their mixed-race offspring, whom together numbered in the millions.

But IBM did.

IBM engineers worked with the Eugenics Record Organization, headquartered in Cold Springs Harbor, New York, to design punch card formats for collecting, sorting, tabulating, printing and storing information on racial characteristics, allowing the organization to declare the Jamaica study a success in 1929 and announce plans for another, similar global project.

Four years later, Watson and IBM brought automated racial classification to Hitler and the Third Reich. Nearly every aspect of the Holocaust and the Nazi war machine was supported by punch card technology, courtesy of IBM. Each concentration camp had an IBM room, where punch cards held prisoners fates, down to the means of their extermination firing squad, gas chamber, oven or being worked to death.

With Germanys defeat, IBM turned next to South Africa, automating most aspects of apartheid. The company even designed specialized equipment to print the Book of Life passbook,carried by white and Colored South Africans,and the dreaded national identification card, which Black South Africans were forced to show on penalty of arrest. Then, after apartheid, IBMs use of technology to circumvent human rights returned to American soil. In 2005, the company used secret CCTV footage of unwitting New Yorkers collected by the New York City Police Department to improve facial recognition technology in order to discriminate based on skin color.

So when protesters in Boston said they had seen this before, they were deliberately connecting Amazons present to IBMs past, pleading that Amazon not repeat the mistakes of a previous generation. Some shareholders understood this and took up that call as well.

Workers rights within high-tech firms bear a similar dark history. In 1970, Black employees organized the National Black Workers Alliance of IBM (BWA) to demand the company hire more Black people, promote Blacks workers more equitably, provide Black employees equal pay and withdraw from apartheid issues similar to those being demanded by Amazon shareholders today.

BWA leaders were targeted with poor performance evaluations, denial of pay raises, accusations of violating company policy by disclosing pay and promotion data and, in one case, false allegations of sexual abuse. Many were fired, demoted or forced to resign.

BWA was fighting systemic racism that still exists at Amazon and other high-tech firms, where a majority of board and senior decision-making positions are held by white men. Less than 3% of high-level positions at high-tech firms are held by people of color. And this is not a pipeline problem. Qualified candidates can be found, if high-tech firms can find the will.

On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board ruled against Amazon, allowing workers at a Bessemer, Alabama warehouse to vote on unionizing. The SEC should follow suit and insist that shareholder proposals are also brought to a vote.

Jeff Bezos may be stepping down as Amazons CEO, but the problems identified by workers, protesters and shareholders remain. Martin Luther King Jr. said, the time is always right to do right. Yet companies like Amazon seem to operate as though that time never arrives; that profits are always more important than people, even in the wake of George Floyds death and calls for racial equity, synagogue attacks, four years of official lies supporting racial hatred and division and an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. King said it best. Now is the right time for Amazon to do right.

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Opinion | On human rights, Amazon is at a crossroads - Crosscut

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Posted By admin on February 9, 2021

(WXYZ) Racism. Bigotry. Hatred. Words that describe a festering problem in America and right here in Michigan.

It's always been with us through history, only now it's boiling over the surface.

So tonight, we wanted to show you some of the methods being used to teach a new generation acceptance and the tools of tolerance for people who are different.

America has seen its first Black president, the first Black and Asian female vice president, yet the day after Georgia elected its first Black and Jewish senators, we witnessed a violent and deadly insurrection at the Capitol building.

Here at home, a plot to kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was stopped in its tracks and we saw a storming of our state capitol.

But experts say long before these moments, however ugly in our history, domestic terrorism centered around racism was on the rise at a fever pitch.

In the last 4 years, the American Jewish community has experienced an increased level of harassment, vandalism, and even assault than in the past 40 years, says ADL Regional Board Member Mica Nodel.

So why such an uptick? Some experts argue it became okay to take the lid off the sewer.

With popular figures having a greater megaphone than ever and making it acceptable to say certain things out loud or even making it acceptable to present alternative facts, says Nodel.

Words matter and the hurtful ones are being learned by children.

As a 7th grader at a middle school in Birmingham, kids began making fun of Kennedy Banks hair.

Then a KKK photo from a school field trip began circulating.

I just remember it being very heartbreaking, she said.

She left the district in 10th grade.

A lot of people were very comfortable being openly racist and ignorant people were saying black lives don't matter, says Jodie Middleton, principal at Auburn Elementary School in Auburn Hills.

She says they've undergone cultural competency training.

It's deep work, we have to do that as educators in the building it's very personal work, Middleton says.

She says no one is lashing out and they are talking about what they are seeing.

I had a third-grader the day after the insurrection state to her class that she was really upset to see all of the angry people, she says.

Middleton says when kids are given the language to express their feelings they're better able to regulate their emotions.

Briana Murphy and Stephen MacGregor two teachers from Ypsilanti told me hate began invading their school.

These students, coming up behind these young ladies of color, waving a Trump sign shouting Trump, Trump, Trump, stuff like this, they said.

Paris Stinson, a student told us about the following incident.

Remember in 2016 the gorilla Harambe was killed at the Cincinnati zoo when a child fell into the exhibit. People would use that against the black girls at our school. They would just call us Harambe, they would do the grunts the walk they would do it to intimidate us.

But that was the last straw, and it was the students who approached asking for help.

They signed a huge petition called The Unheard Voices and when kids themselves are asking for something it was amazing to me we listened.

They ushered in the program "No Place or Hate" by the Anti-Defamation League.

I had some students actually come up and apologize.

I'm willing to have those courageous conversations and I think, if more teachers are willing to have conversations about race, then we can make a difference in our schools.

Their work was not just centered around race, but also gender and classism.

I think sometimes when you just hear what's happening at home that's when things like white supremacy wins because you think its the only way.

Finally, I asked why do you care so much.

I have to change the world to be a better place for my kids too.

The positive thing I learned from this story is this when teachers and young students have the tools to learn about someone who is different that bring true change for the better.

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Educators work against bigotry and racism in schools - WXYZ

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Posted By admin on February 9, 2021

An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of then-President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. Leah Millis/Reuters hide caption

An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of then-President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.

Editor's note: This story includes explicit language.

Nearly every day since insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, the list of those charged in the attack has grown longer. The government has now identified more than 200 suspects in the Jan. 6 rioting, which ended with five people dead, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

As Congress considers a presidential impeachment in response to the attack, those criminal cases provide clues to key questions surrounding the Capitol breach: Who exactly joined the mob? What did they do? And why?

To try to answer those questions, NPR is examining the criminal cases related to the Capitol riot, drawing on court documents, public records, news accounts and social media.

Jump to our database of individuals charged

A group this large defies generalization. The defendants are predominantly white and male, though there were exceptions. Federal prosecutors say a former member of the Latin Kings gang joined the mob, as did two Virginia police officers. A man in a "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirt took part, as did a Messianic Rabbi. Far-right militia members decked out in tactical gear rioted next to a county commissioner, a New York City sanitation worker, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist.

Still, NPR's examination did identify certain commonalities.

There were those with connections to extremist groups or fringe ideas. At least 13 defendants appear to have expressed support for QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory.

At least 10 of the defendants appear to have links to the Proud Boys, a far-right gang. The group was recently declared a terrorist group in Canada. Their values have been widely described as racist, misogynist, anti-immigrant and hateful against other minority groups.

At least four of the defendants have alleged ties to the Oath Keepers, which the Anti-Defamation League calls an "anti-government right-wing fringe organization."

The group is known to target and recruit current and former law enforcement officers and military veterans. At least three of the defendants are allegedly affiliated with the Three Percenters, another anti-government extremist organization.

This is a project from NPR's Investigations and News Apps teams. NPR's Tom Dreisbach, Dina Temple-Raston, Arezou Rezvani, Meg Anderson, Monika Evstatieva, Barbara Van Woerkom, Austin Fast and Emine Ycel contributed reporting to this project, and NPR's Connie Hanzhang Jin and Alyson Hurt built the database.

The presence of current and former law enforcement officers, as well as military service members and veterans, has especially alarmed government officials. NPR found at least 15% of those charged had possible ties to the military or to law enforcement.

Experts say there's little evidence that current or former members of the military are more susceptible to radicalization, but Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has called combating extremism in the ranks a top priority.

Lawmakers who support impeaching former President Donald Trump argue that he "incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol." There is some evidence of that in court documents: Some who allegedly stormed the Capitol explicitly said they were inspired by Trump.

"IF TRUMP TELLS US TO STORM THE F***IN CAPITAL IMA DO THAT THEN!" one defendant wrote. "I thought I was following my President," said yet another.

Most of the people charged in connection with the storming of the Capitol face allegations primarily related to breaching the building. But a smaller number face more serious charges and a greater threat of prison time if convicted.

Eleven are accused of committing conspiracy, one of the most serious charges brought. Twenty-five are accused of committing acts of violence, particularly against Capitol Police. At least 15 are suspected of causing property damage, such as breaking windows or doors to gain entry to the building. And 11 face allegations of theft, such as the man who was photographed carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's lectern or one woman who allegedly took a laptop from Pelosi's office.

Explore the database below.

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Capitol Insurrection: More Than 200 People Charged And What We Know About Them - NPR

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Posted By admin on February 9, 2021

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the RT network in 2015. Credit: http://www.kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0.

On the eve of former President Donald Trumps second impeachment trial in the Senate, a Russian government-affiliated media outlet that worked to help Trump win in 2016 opened an account on Gab, a social media network popular with people who believe the false conspiracy theory that Trump won again in 2020. The Russian network RT started posting on Gab just as the US Senate was to begin weighing Trumps impeachment on the charge that he incited the deadly riots at the US Capitol last month by urging his supporters to fight back against a stolen election.

In one of itsfirst posts, RT trashed an ad by the Lincoln Project, an organization started by anti-Trump Republicans, writing, CONVICT TRUMP SAVE AMERICAwell, the Lincoln Project already has! The Russian network called the Lincoln Project ad beyond cheesy, adding, Oh, boy! You can almost smell their fear that Trump might come back with a bang. In another post, RT reports on a right-wing radio host who was recently suspended from Twitter for violating the platformscivic integrity rules, which are meant to prevent elections manipulation. While Social media clamps down on so-called Domestic terroristsit is still allowing the likes of [Iranian supreme leader] Ayatollah Khamenei to have a global voice, the post reads.

Onepost criticizes an FBI disinformation expert as a fantasy fiction writer. Still another quotes a right-winger banned from Twitter, The Gateway Pundit CEO Jim Hoft, as saying, you cannot challenge anything about the 2020 election, and yet there are still individuals who are challenging the 2016 election.

Gab claims to be a platform for free speech and it has long sought to appeal to conservatives and even extremists like white supremacist Richard Spencer who either dislike mainstream sites like Twitter or have been booted off them for promoting hate speech or disinformation. The site maintains a placeholder account for Trump in the hopes that he will join Gab after being booted from other social networks. The accounts description says it posts email messages from Trumps office and has an archive of his tweets. Twitter banned Trump after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol in which a horde of Trump-supporting white supremacists and other militants overwhelmed Capitol security, beat police officers, and terrorized lawmakers who were forced into hiding spaces.

One group on Gab, Stop the Steal, has 162,000 members, according to the site. The groups name references a call to action popular among people who believe Trump actually won the 2020 election. Facebook, on the other hand, has been removing posts that reference that false conspiracy theory. Another Gab group called QAnon, is devoted to the conspiracy theory that a deep state of Democratic pedophiles has been working against Trump. It has 153,500 members, according to the Gabs metrics. Facebook and Twitter have both worked to remove QAnon content in recent months.

In 2017, after Russian government-backed operatives orchestrated a multi-pronged attack on the 2016 US presidential election that involved hacking Democrat Hillary Clintons campaign as well as a vast social-media disinformation operation, the US national intelligence directors office released a report describing RT as playing a pivotal role in Moscows effort to help Trump. The report accused RT of conducting strategic messaging for the Russian government and undermining viewers trust in US democratic procedures. The networks content was widely viewed on social media, where its YouTube videos, for example, were viewed a million times a day, according to the report.

The rapid expansion of RTs operations and budget and recent candid statements by RTs leadership point to the channels importance to the Kremlin as a messaging tool and indicate a Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the US government and fuel political protest, the report reads.

Since 2016, RT has continued to depict US society as though it were teetering on the edge of collapse, torn apart by forces such as racism and political oppression. A recentanalysis by Princeton Universitys Empirical Studies of Conflict program found that RT worked harder than other another foreign networks to expose the seams in US society, publishing on last summers protests in Portland, Ore., at a much higher rate than the network Al Jazeera, for instance.

Many stories on RT are thin. The Princeton study found that with a reporting staff perhaps just a quarter of the size of Al Jazeeras, RT put out twice as many English-language stories between June and October. RTdoes not seem to be putting much time into its reporting, the researchers wrote in the Bulletin.

On Gab, RT will find a reportedly swelling audience for its content, including plenty of people ready to believe the worst about mainstream institutions. In mid-January, Gab claimed to have gotten 2.3 million new users in a matter of weeks. After the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit focused on countering extremism and anti-Semitism, accused Gab of hosting some of the plotters behind the Capitol riots and called for an investigation, Gab posted a response saying the network had been working with law enforcement and removing violent threats from the site in the lead up to Jan. 6. Gab CEO Andrew Torbas Jan. 13 statement said the Anti-Defamation League should instead investigate Facebook, where the protests were actually organized. Ahead of the riots, Facebook and Twitter did provide a critical platform to Trump and his disgruntled base to discredit the elections, but have clamped down since then on the kind of conspiratorial content still flowing on Gab.

Like Parler, a rival conservative social media site which was forced offline before reappearing as a static webpage after the Capitol riots, web services providers have tried to push Gab offlineso far unsuccessfully. The site has continued to grow, a fact RT seems to have taken note of.

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As Trump's impeachment trial begins, the Russian network that helped him in 2016 taps his supporters on Gab.com - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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Posted By admin on February 9, 2021

Text Messages is a column sharing wisdom from the weekly Torah portion produced with The Jewish Week.

(JTA) America faces challenges we have not seen in generations. Deep elements of resentment and radicalism are set on tearing apart the fabric of the nation. Our ability to argue with humility is gone, crossing partisan divides is a dire proposition and violence is seen by too many as a necessary political remedy to return to basic principles.

With all the uncertainties around us climate change, public health crises, economic instability, political extremism and polarization, conspiracy theories and a breakdown of societal trust we dont always know how to engage or how to lead in any given moment.

Of course, we dont have to accept this. And indeed, Jewish tradition and wisdom can guide us in profoundly different directions that bring about healing and, most importantly, a sense of humility. We can live with humble uncertainty and yet also with fervent moral conviction.

This weeks Torah portion, Parshat Yitro, provides us with a profound question: Why do the Ten Commandments, which begin with the phrase I am the Lord your God, use the Hebrew word Anochi (which means I) instead of the more common Ani (which also means I)?

For generations, this grammatical and philosophical question has intrigued Jewish scholars.

To help create a foundation for this question, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Ishbitz, known as the Mei HaShiloah, suggests that the extra letter in Anochi signifies the chasm between what we know and what we think we know. This is the central point of Jewish revelation: Even that which we know so deeply, we only partially know.

More critically, getting to truly know God requires us to put aside our egos.

The Reform teacher of Jewish mysticism Rabbi Lawrence Kushner writes about another place where Anochi is used rather than Ani: In Genesis 28:16, when Jacob awakens from his famous dream and says, Surely there is God in this place and I [anochi] did not know:

This simple extra I leads R Pinhas Horowitz, the author of a Hasidic commentary on the Torah, Panim Yafot, to an important insight. It is only possible for a person to attain that high rung of being able to say, Surely God is in this place, when he or she has utterly eradicated all trace of ego from his or her personality, from his or her sense of self, and from his or her being.

The space of prayer in which we connect with the most expansive spiritual consciousness is actually a tool for cultivating compassion and empathy. In focusing on divinity, we abandon our self-centeredness and find a new center in everyone and everything else beyond us.

For another view, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib (the Sefat Emet) writes:

The simple meaning of this is that the land of Israel is the place where one surrenders ones senses and desires (will) to Gods will All externals must be abandoned for the sake of seeing Gods will. Only then is it revealed to a person To this end we must continually surrender our knowledge that which we understand with our minds.

Shall we embrace the I of Anochi, or will we seek to embody the I of Ani? We know we must rescue religious fervor from fundamentalist fervor and epistemological arrogance and return to a place of awe and questioning if we hope to restore a Jewish worldview of humble allyship rather than arrogant supremacist ideologies. We are left humbled seeking to move from ego to a place of godliness.

So must we be left alone and lost without any way to know, act or speak? The neo-Hasidic teacher and late leader of the Renewal movement, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, wrote in Journey Beyond Knowledge:

A real question comes from (admitting) Eini yodea I really dont know. The admission of not knowing is the prelude to redemption and revelation. So, Moshe Rabbeinu himself said: We wont know with what we shall serve God until we get there. (Exodus 10:26)

Instead, we are awakened to postmodern responsibility. We are called to act when we dont know what is right. We are called to lead when we dont have certainty. We are called to pray when we know not Who we pray to. We are called to community when we are uncertain about who we must stand with at the given time.

We may know more later than we do now. And yet, we must still act and we must still respond, even with our uncertainty. Michael Fishbane writes in Sacred Attunement about what it means to be in a sacred covenant and to our ability to process obligation within new moments of uncertainty: We can accept it, or we can deny it. But nevertheless, we are expected to respond to it.

And as we learn from Parshat Yitro, we dont have to make all moral decisions and lead by ourselves. There is holiness in collaboration, in bringing people together and in building community rather than shunning it. As Moshe learns from his father-in-law, Yitro, we have an innate ability to build community, share leadership and walk together and were not truly able to be our best selves when we try to do everything by ourselves.

Including more voices in our work and conversations also enables us to expand our spiritual consciousness. Alone, at Sinai, we are struck down by lightning in our smallness. Together, at Sinai, we are humbled but united in a bold, albeit uncertain, holy mission to repair the world.

The challenges we face are not insignificant, and the right path is not always clear. But let us reject the ego, cynicism and radical skepticism that move us away from courageous action. Let us reject fundamentalism that arrogantly offers us pure truth and certainty of conviction. Let us, together, choose a middle path that is modest and imprecise, yet morally robust.

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

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Parshat Yitro: Want to fight injustice and build community? Start with humility. - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on February 9, 2021

Obituaries are supported by a generous grant fromSinai Memorial Chapel. This page will be updated throughout the week. Submit an obituaryhere.Mordechai Rindenow1957-2021Rabbi Mordechai Rindenow

The world has lost one of its brightest lights with the indescribably woeful passing of Rabbi Mordechai Rindenow.

The year was 1978 when Rabbi Rindenow, with his wife and two young children, aged 18 months and 4 weeks, drove across the country in answer to the call to teach at the Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy in San Francisco. And there he stayed for years, forming loving friendships with his students. It was a matter of course that Rabbi Rindenow would be found at many of the most important life passages of his once-upon-a-time students now grown to adulthood.

He was a direct descendant of the founder of the Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty, and his own love of Torah was self-evident at every step and contagious with every glance. But he brought so much more to everyone in his life than formal Torah education. His very gaze was healing. His laughter was a reminder that happiness could easily be shared. His smile was his signature welcome. Never judgmental, everyone felt graceful in his presence. His LKHA students, his adult education students, his friends and, yes, even strangers he would sometimes greet on the street were all important to Rabbi Rindenow.

Given his love for humankind, his talent for understanding what drives peoples conduct, his innate sympathy and his desire to see others doing well (and his degrees in psychology from both Columbia and Fordham universities), it is no surprise that he came into his own as, in addition to a revered teacher, a beloved psychologist.

His own children? Yes. Many of them brought into this loving Rindenow family. Although he knew a great deal of joy in his life, he endured the most dreadful sorrow a parent can suffer, the death of a child. His son Shlomo tragically died in Israel in an IDF training accident in 2016. Six of his children had already moved to Israel.

He and his wife, Mindy, made aliyah four months ago to live out their lives in Israel. He was still young, vigorous and looking forward to each new day with his usual helpings of glee.

Rabbi Rindenow has been laid to rest next to his cherished son Shlomo. He is survived by his treasured wife Mindy, his adored children Abbi, Yocheved, Akiva, Baruch, Nachum, Bayla, Moshe, Gamliel and Jeffrey David Tower, and a generous abundance of beautiful grandchildren.

He has been taken from us too soon, and we grieve as a united group that spans generations and countries. But gone? Never. He will be forever entrenched in the hearts of everyone who was blessed by knowing him.

There will be a Zoom memorial service on Sunday, Feb. 21 at 10 a.m. PST (San Francisco), 1 p.m. EST (New York) and 8 p.m. Israel time. For login information, email rabbirindenowmemories@gmail.com.

If you have stories or photos to share, please send them to rabbirindenowmemories@gmail.com.

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Deaths for the week of Feb. 7-13, 2021 J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on February 9, 2021

Pitcher Josh Wolf, 20, was drafted by the New York Mets in 2019 as the 53rd pick-the highest ever from St. Thomas High School. He won the Michael Freedman Award for Outstanding Jewish Male High School Athlete of the Year from The Jewish Sports Heritage Association.

The Texas native got a package of more than $3 million and the announcement was made by Jewish former Met Art Shamsky. Last month, Wolf was traded to the Cleveland Indians in a package for phenom Francisco Lindor. In a phone interview, the 20-year-old talks about fulfilling his dream, the time he messed up at his bar mitzvah, how much of his family is from Israel. and why he wants to do what Jewish players havent done.

What was his Bar Mitzvah like?

I was a little nervous. It was intimidating/ I was doing my Torah portion at the Kotel and I can read Hebrew. But I lost my place for second then I rebounded.

How many times has he been to Israel?

Eight. A lot of my family is from there.

First big purchase?

Well, it wasnt a purchase. I leased a Mercedes AMG 63 S. I was told with cars, its better to lease.

On being the only Jew at a Catholic High School.

It was definitely weird. Just at the beginning when I was a freshman, some kid in the locker room said get that kid in the showers but I know he was an idiot and he is probably doing nothing with his life right now. He wasnt representative of the school. Other than that one time, everyone was nice to me, the people and teachers were great and there was never any anti-Semitism. Its a great high school and I had a great time and I want to thank all my coaches and teammates.

Childhood idol?

Definitely Sandy Koufax.

Would he pitch on Yom Kippur if it was the World Series and the Indians needed him?

No. My fathers side is Orthodox so out of respect from my family and my religion I wouldnt.

How he feels about being a Jewish role model.

I feel like that will be big for me. Even though there are Jewish players, they dont show enough pride. Once I get to the Major Leagues I want it to be known that Im Jewish and I want to inspire more Jews to play baseball. For me, if I had the opportunity to play for Team USA or Team Israel (in the World Baseball Classic) Id play for team Israel. I want to be a good role model for Jewish kids.

On deciding to go pro instead of to Texas A & M

My agent, Bobby Witt Sr. and I had a (dollar) number in mind and if we got that number I was gonna turn pro.

What his diet is like

I have to eat, eat, eat. I waver between 162 and 170 pounds and Im 62 so Id like to get to 180.

Favorite food

Shwarma.

Is he single?

Yeah.

Whats he looking for?

Im not trying to get distracted right now but I do want to eventually marry a Jewish girl. I need someone who has got a good head on their shoulders and has a good plan for the future. My Savta will have to approve. But right now, Im focusing on baseball.

On dealing with wealth and fame

Its nuts to graduate high school in 2019 and suddenly you have all this money. But whats bigger than that is that Im a pro baseball player and Ill soon face the guys I saw on TV. Im gonna stay focused, work hard and not do anything to stop me on my path. Some people I wasnt really friends with have hit me up, but you expect that.

The batter hes looking most forward to facing

Mike Trout.

On whether it all seems real to him yet

Its a little surreal. But God has given me the talent and Ive worked very hard. I dont take for granted that what many kids dream about has happened to me.

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20-Year-Old Jewish baseball phenom eyes stardom in Cleveland - Forward

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Posted By admin on February 9, 2021

From sex work and rape, to being a lesbian loving a feminist man, to being disabled and a motherless orphan, Andrea Dworkin smashed through the barriers before her as only the most radical revolutionary feminist would, and Martin Duberman has given this to her: her due. (@JohnStoltenberg / Twitter)

Of all the luminaries that graced second-wave feminisms, Andrea Dworkin was certainly one of the most verbally abused and perhaps the most misunderstood. In some ways, she was also most bravedespite Robin Morgans sweet pet name for her as cream puff and her personal horror of bugs.

From childhood to deathbed, Martin Dubermans new biography of Andrea Dworkin gives her justice: Her lifes work, her lived experience, and the feminists and foes who attacked her are carefully stitched together in historical context and granular detail through letters, publications and the sympathetic voice of Duberman. Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist as Revolutionary is an admiral treatise on Dworkins life and work, including unusually rare glimpses of intimate moments.

Dworkins two main targeted causes were fighting violence against women and violent pornography that subjugated women for profit, although she also worked to understand the Jewish heritage: from the Holocaust to the Kibbutz to the militarization of Israel, particularly as acted out against Israeli and Palestinian women within the broader fight between the two peoples.

In twelve chapters, Dworkins work and life unfolds in her own words: letters where she kept both the letter she received, the copy of the letter she wrote, and her own writing. Her understanding of the Holocaust began in Hebrew school in Camden, N.J., and was further cemented into her thoughts when she witnessed an aunt, in a private moment, revealing the anguish she had suffered in the Holocaust.

Bennington College honed Dworkins political sensibilities for female equality and a pacifist social order, and strengthened her writing abilities. Her acute sense of fairness and empathy guided her through the political spectrum via her own experiences, despite her horrified response to those experiences. She wrote, I was equally afraid of everything, so that nothing held a special terror and no action that interested me was too dangerous (p. 16).

When she returned to the states from Europe where she had lived in abject terror as a battered wife and prostitute, it was the mid-seventiesthe womens movement had taken off. Dworkins accrued understanding of the sex industry and the anger her personal experience had stirred propelled her into the sex wars where she went up against notable feminists. Dworkin and attorney Catherine MacKinnon championed a policy that would allow women, children, and trans men abused by the sex industry to sue for damages.

Duberman explains, The basic concept was that pornography was a sex discriminatory practice that violated womens civil rights through coercion, trafficking, and other sex-based violations (p. 173). Dworkins fight against pornography continued off and on for at least a decade from the early 80s to the late 90s.

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Condemned by many including the male left, Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine (whom Dworkin sued) and prominent feminists, including Adrienne Rich and Dorothy Allison, Dworkin continued writing, promoting her books, and her political commitment to the anti-pornography movement. She was often marching and yelling through the bullhorn: Hey, hey, ho, ho, pornography has got to go! (p. 202).

Even as she vigorously rejected the contempt hurled at her during this time period, events and insults took their toll. Duberman sums up this time in her life eloquently:

Her anger alone propelled her from place to place. At age 42, with five substantial books behind her, Andrea had become increasingly well-known, thanks to a trail of brutal, demeaning reviews, more as a figure of derision than esteem.

On one level, she had faith in the originality and acuity of her work and was able to ascribe some of the belligerent derision which had greeted it to its innovative nature. But no one is that immune to persistent mockery; besides, despite all her public bravado, shed carried with her from childhood the constant and torturous aspersions cast on her character by a distraught and ill mother. As she acknowledged to herself early in the year, I have never felt so little confidence in myself or in my chosen way of life. Its gotten to me.

Ahead of her time in the gender questionalthough words and conception then were different than todaysDworkin was thankful for a loving relationship and eventual marriage with a gay feminist man, John Stoltenberg, also a political writer. Stoltenberg is, as Duberman and Dworkin discussed early on in 1974 at the feminist/gay alliance, a Revolutionary Effeminist, a term for men more female than male.

Duberman notes,Back then shed also been way ahead of the cultural curve in insisting that there were not two genders but rather many, predicting that we will discover cross-sexed phenomena in proportion to our ability to see them (p. 161).Their sexual relationship included Stoltenberg continuing to have sex with men, as long as no one was brought home, Dworkin noted. They would later count themselves lucky to have dodged the bullet of the AIDS pandemic with sighs of relief.

In the early 2000s, during the first real vacation Dworkin allowed herselfa trip to Paris, a date rape drug was slipped into a cordial she was having in the hotel courtyard, and she was violently raped. Among the questions people had at the time, the worst response was the scurrilous one: Who would rape her? The faulty notion that no one would rape a fat harridan (as she had been described) was finally put to rest by the #MeToo Movement during the past few years. The #MeToo chorus dignified and lifted up Dworkins powerful writing about womens bodies being violated like conquered territory.

Andrea Dworkin died an early death in her fifties. Dubermans poignant words best tell the story:

On April 8, 2005, Andrea, retiring for the night, complained of feeling unwell. The next morning, when John went into her bedroom to check on her, she didnt seem to be breathing but was still warm. He tried to rouse her, but she was unresponsive. At some point during the night, an autopsy would later reveal, Andrea had died of acute myocarditisheart inflammation. The shock was all the more profound because of late all signs had been pointing upward. John was desolate, unable for months to put his feelings down on paper.

Of the many writings Dworkin left behind, most revolutionary were the writings of her life story itself. Having lived and fought for the things she believed in, she has left a legacy of work about people who live on the margins, herself included. From sex-work and rape, to being a lesbian loving a feminist man, to being disabled and a motherless orphan, Dworkin smashed through the barriers before her as only the most radical revolutionary feminist would, and Duberman has given this to her: her due.

Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist as Revolutionary by Martin Duberman is available now.

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"Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist as Revolutionary" Gives the Groundbreaking Feminist Her Due - Ms. Magazine

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Posted By admin on February 7, 2021

On Monday, Rudy Rochman, a bombastic, keffiyeh-wearing Zionist activist, will debate famed academic Noam Chomsky.

Its a mismatched and bizarre pairing: a world-renowned linguist whose ideas on Zionism and the state of Israel have shaped leftist discourse for decades versus a glorified college activist whose works include the YouTube videos Avatar Jewish Connection and Breaking Down Seth Rogens Internalized Anti-Semitism.

The fact that this event is happening at all demonstrates the unfortunate success of Rochmans approach to activism, which stands in contrast to traditional Zionist advocacy. Organizations like the Jewish National Fund, AIPAC and the Zionist Organization of America have historically adhered to a limited ideology that has gone largely unchanged for seven decades, one that sells Israel as a post-Holocaust bastion of security for the Jewish people and a perpetual underdog. They see the role of American Jews as being to uncritically support Israel, both financially and politically.

And many of them still wrongly identify support of Israel as a shared issue with those on the left.

There was substantial support for Zionism on the American left around the time of Israels founding. But after the 1967 Six Day War, which saw Israel occupy the Golan, West Bank, Gaza and Sinai, Israel increasingly ran afoul of growing anti-colonial sentiment among those on the left. But to more traditional American Zionists, it was not Israel that changed, but the left itself. Unwilling to adjust their ideas about Israel as it gained power, their arguments for unfettered support of the country increasingly failed to resonate with new generations growing up in a world where Israel was an occupier, not a victim.

Rochman represents a new approach: He is part of a growing wave of Zionist activists that aim to appeal to a younger audience by mimicking forms of activism that are already popular in leftist circles. By blending historically leftist language about indigeneity and solidarity with the hasbara of clickbait Zionism, Rochman and his ilk have created a form of activism engineered to appeal to the liberal tendencies of a younger Jewish audience.

But Rochmans ideology centers on the notion that Jews deserve a voice in discourse about indigenous rights, and that denying them that is antisemitic. He claims that the Jewish people are indigenous to Judea, the Biblical name for part of what is today part of the state of Israel. He has stated that Zionism is the most successful indigenous liberation movement that has ever existed.

That position is a canny twisting of true Indigenous rights movements, which exist everywhere from Australia to the United States and seek to gain recognition for the suffering of native groups. As in many places, the Palestinian cause centers around the issue of dispossession at the hands of Europen colonial powers in their case, Britains decision to carve out part of Mandatory Palestine as a Jewish state. Zionism, on the other hand, echoed those European colonial movements.

This new face of American Zionism is deeply connected to the peculiar position of younger American Jews. American Jews aged 18-29 are substantially more progressive than their parents, particularly when it comes to Israel.

We witnessed the development of Rochmans ideology and influence as his classmates at Columbia University. As leaders in left-leaning groups like J Street and IfNotNow, we watched as Rochman founded Students Supporting Israel, a group notorious for its almost comical pro-Israel antics, which included flying a plane over campus during Apartheid Week with a banner that read HEBREW LIBERATION WEEK. One of Rochmans earliest experiments with indigeneity discourse was his highly memeable Indigenous Peoples Unite event, for which he brought together speakers from a variety of indigenous groups with the purpose of validating his belief that Israelis, or Israelites, as he referred to them, were indigenous to the Land of Israel.

Rochman, who began a quasi-career as an internet celebrity after leaving Columbia in 2018, is not alone in making this argument. Hen Mazzig, a frequent speaker on the college campus circuit and Israeli Zionist activist, uses similar tactics. In Oct. 2020, he authored an op-ed in Newsweek entitled, Are Jews Indigenous? Heres what a Native American Jew Thinks. He quoted Mahrinah von Schlegel, his interviewee, as saying that Jews are not only indigenous to Israel we are indigenous peoples.

Part of whats surprising and paradoxical about Rochman and Mazzigs brand of activism is that it simultaneously attempts to appeal to young American Jews and to distance Israel from the U.S. Rochman has said that he doesnt support the U.S.s involvement in Israels politics and places blame for the conflict at the hands of the imperial powers. Last fall, Mazzig shared an Instagram post referring to English as an imperial language in Israel. Both these examples run counter to the arguments of establishment voices like AIPAC and the ZOA, whose very existence is predicated on the need for a close relationship militarily and financially between America and Israel.

Adopting the lefts language is simply a way to fool progressives into thinking that up is down and supporting the Israeli government is supporting human rights, said Morriah Kaplan, national spokesperson for IfNotNow. Aside from being a false equivalence, the appropriation of indigenous identity and experience is deeply offensive and disrespectful to indigenous communities around the world. Rochman takes it a step further, presenting himself as the newest Great Communicator, able to reach across a seemingly intractable political divide and unite Israelis and Palestinians. In one video, Rochman tells a Palestinian man that youd be surprised as to how much we actually agree.

At a time when many Ashkenazi Jews are examining how race factors into their identity, normalizing the notion that Jews are indigenous to the land on which Israel was founded in the same way as other indigenous peoples is deeply irresponsible. The Chomsky debate will likely be more of the same, but will also dangerously legitimize this ideology.

Jonah Goldman Kay is a writer based in New Orleans whose work has appeared in The New Republic, Politico and The Paris Review.

Sylvie Rosen is an outdoor educator based in California.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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The bad faith behind Zionist activists latest try to win the left - Forward

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