Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

(JTA) As one of the youngest Holocaust survivors, Eva Clarke has spent years telling the story of how her mother, weighing just 68 pounds, gave birth to her inside a concentration camp just a month before it was liberated.

But this spring, as COVID-19 shut down public life, Clarkes visits to schools and community centers in the United Kingdom came to a screeching halt, indefinitely, she recalls.

Earlier this month, she got a fresh audience when an RV pulled into her driveway in Cambridge.

Inside was Antony Lishak and a retrofitted interior that would allow her to tell her story safely, and for posterity, during the pandemic.

Lishak has spent years teaching about the Holocaust to young audiences using the real-life testimonies of Holocaust survivors and rescuers. Even before the pandemic, time was not on the British educators side.

First-person accounts, delivered live, have the strongest effect on the students Lishak is trying to reach, he said. But survivors are dying and the ones still alive find it more difficult year each to deliver the talks that he organizes for them at British schools.

The pandemic put these interactions on pause, costing him time that he couldnt afford to lose, Lishak said.

Finally, months into the pandemic, Lishak came up with a way around the impasse.

In recent weeks, he has been traveling across the United Kingdom in an RV that he turned into a coronavirus-proof mobile studio for Holocaust survivors whose testimonies he films right outside their homes.

A look inside the interior of the Learning from the Righteous mobile studio in London.(Learning from the Righteous)

I cant tell you what it looks like on the film, but its an ingenious idea, said Lili Pohlmann, a 90-year-old Jewish woman from London whom Lishak also interviewed this month.

Pohlman survived the Holocaust in Lviv, in what is now Ukraine, thanks to the bravery of Andrey Sheptytsky, a senior priest, and Imgard Wieth, a German civil servant. Pohlmann and her mother were the only members of her nuclear family who survived.

In these circumstances, of course, I couldnt have done it now at all, she said about the testimony she gave recently in the mobile studio. I unfortunately cant go out. So Im at home and I cant have anybody come in.

Its outside the box, but it means the work can go on, Lishak told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this month about the studio as he prepared to drive to interview Clarke inside his rented Volkswagen California Ocean camper, which he had fitted with a Perspex divider to keep the interviewees safe.

The van has heating, a pop-up coffee table for the witnesses, revolving front seats and enough space for Lishak to comfortably record with a wide-angle lens, he said.

Lishak, CEO of the Learning from the Righteous educational nonprofit, needs a portable studio because videoconferencing is logistically difficult for many elderly witnesses.

Some chroniclers of the Holocaust, including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, have turned to videoconferencing to record interviews during the pandemic. But Lishak said in-person interviews are preferable.

A live Zoom event is difficult to set up for many survivors, he said. But the real problem is that the medium isnt conducive to the content for the student audiences he aims to reach

An edited video testimony is a superior medium for a generation who are used to TV-quality presentation, he said.

Antony Lishak interviews a survivor inside his van studio, December 2020. (Learning from the Righteous)

In January, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Finchley Reform Synagogue, a funder of the mobile studio initiative and one of Londons largest Jewish congregations, will host Lishaks interviews on its website, ensuring they will reach thousands of viewers.

You can record Zoom sessions, but I doubt people will sit down and watch them as they would a well-edited testimony video, Lishak said.

Giving survivors a voice on International Holocaust Remembrance Day is a duty, he said. Its theme this year in the United Kingdom is Be the Light in the Darkness.

Clarke, a retired university administrator, is comfortable using videoconferencing software. But the interview she gave Lishak in her driveway in Cambridge on Dec. 14 was much more intimate, which of course helps tell the story.

Lishak said the intimacy that sets in during encounters with Holocaust survivors and high school students is a crucial factor in making them interested in the Holocaust. It made all the difference during his work at schools in impoverished neighborhoods in Manchester, he said.

Recorded interviews will not be as powerful as real-life encounters but are more effective than chaotic Zoom meetings, Lishak said. Its the best option we have right now.

In the future, he is planning to complement testimonial videos with a live video Q&A session. Lishak said hes also looking into expanding the studio into a larger mobile classroom that can stage face-to-face encounters with survivors and take them to relevant memorial sites in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Tribich, inside the van, offers her story of Holocaust survival, December 2020. (Learning from the Righteous)

That way, he said, the bus would drive up to the witness home instead of the other way around and visit a Holocaust heritage or memorial site during the same trip.

Clarke, 75, has spent the past 15 years telling her story and that of her mother, Anka Kaudrova, who died in 2013. Clarke weighed just 1 1/2 pounds when she was born at the Mauthausen death camp in Austria, where the Nazis had killed some 90,000 people, just one week before its liberation by the U.S. Army.

I find it extremely important to tell that story, which Ive sort of taken on after my mother died, Clarke said.

I tell my familys history out of a sense of commitment to her and to our society, to warn others of where racism can lead, said Clarke, who has visited hundreds of schools across the United Kingdom. It means so much to be able to carry on her work.

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This customized van is helping UK Holocaust survivors record their stories during the pandemic - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

Inside the Cliftonville synagogue

By Kathy Bailes and Jodie Nesling

A campaign to save a stunning Cliftonville synagogue from developers after it was put up for auction has been successful, largely thanks to an anonymous donation.

The resplendent building in Albion Road has formed an integral part of Thanets rich Jewish history but was recently put up on the market for 300,000 after years of closure.

Campaigner Francesca Ter-berg was one of a group of isle artists and educators of Jewish heritage to set up the Cliftonville Cultural Space CIC in a bid to buy the site.

The 91-year-old building was no longer viable as a place of worship and the trustees of the Margate Hebrew Congregation had little option but to put it up for auction.

Despite lengthy negotiations the auction could not be postponed. However the campaign, launched last month, was inundated with support from the community, and allies nationally and internationally resulting in a successful outcome.

The team has worked tirelessly for the past six weeks to raise the money needed and now the future of the building is no longer in the balance, thanks to support from the anonymous benefactor who has bought the synagogue so that it can be transformed to an arts and cultural space for Cliftonvilles diverse communities.

The SOS Margate campaign gained huge celebrity backing from stars such as Miriam Margolyes OBE, Arnold Schwatrzman OBE- who was raised in Margate- Sir Ben Kingsley, Imogen Heap, Keith Bymer Jones and Steven Berkoff.

Local arts organisations and businesses put up SOS Margate posters in their windows; residents spread the word; and more than 300 people donated to the crowdfunder campaign.

Francesca said: The Cliftonville Cultural Space CIC will shortly take over the synagogue and consult with local residents, businesses and arts organisations to ensure that the new space is a welcoming meeting point for everyone. It will reflect Cliftonvilles cultural pluralism and bring people together through music, theatre, dance, exhibitions and food, as well as celebrate the rich history and diversity of the area past and present.

Fundraising will begin in early 2021 for the conversion which will start later in the year. The aim is to have the space open to the public by late 2022.

At the time of the synagogues construction in 1928 Margates Jewish community was buoyant with many hotels opened to cater for holiday makers. But there were still many obstacles to overcome before the first stone was laid.

A report in a local newspaper recorded that at the end of the war the community were very much depleted both financially and physically and the question had arisen as to selling the congregation effects.

Since 1910 the congregation had increased substantially with plans to build a synagogue but the Great War in 1914 changed everything as a sharp decline in numbers made the situation financially untenable.

Following an appeal to the Jewish Press, benefactor Joseph Jacobs cleared the congregations 200 debt which allowed Jewish soldiers to worship in Margate before heading to France many did not return.

At the stone laying ceremony in 1928, which was held at the Grand Hotel, the importance of the visitor economy was cited with tourists from London expected to support the fundraising initiative for the continued building work when they came to worship.

To contact the campaign email savecliftonvillesynagogue@gmail.com

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Anonymous benefactor assures success of Cliftonville Save Our Shul campaign - The Isle of Thanet News

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

NEW YORK There is a saying, Well-behaved women rarely make history.

Its a sentiment that underpins author Rachel Manekins new book The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia.

From the late 1800s until the eve of World War I, hundreds of young Jewish women living in Western Galicia, now Poland, fled their Orthodox, mostly Hasidic, homes to find refuge in a Krakw convent where some ultimately converted to Roman Catholicism. It wasnt because they were lovelorn, or because of overbearing parents, or even because they no longer identified with Judaism. Rather they fled because they wanted more: more room to voice their opinions and, perhaps most importantly, more education.

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Unlike Orthodox Jewish boys, who attendedcheders, traditional schools where only Jewish subjects were taught, Orthodox Jewish girls were sent to Polish primary schools as per the Austrian-Hungarian governments newly established mandatory education laws.

When they went to school for the first time, they discovered their intellectual capabilities were respected. It was a new experience not shared by their parents because their parents had never attended school, Manekin said in a Zoom call with The Times of Israel from her home in Jerusalem. It was an experience not shared by the men the parents sought to make arranged marriages for their daughters. Of course, the daughters found nothing in common with those people.

In time the Orthodox community in the region answered what became known as The Daughters Question with the creation of the first religious school for Orthodox Jewish girls. The school, founded by Sara Schenirer in 1917, seeded the ground for a worldwide educational movement of Orthodox Jewish elementary and secondary schools known as Bais Yaakov.

Rachel Manekin, author of The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia. (Courtesy)

An associate professor of Jewish studies at the University of Maryland, Manekin said she closely identifies with her books subject, having been raised in a heavily ultra-Orthodox Israeli town and attending a Schenirer offshoot as a child.

I cant deny its something personal to me. I grew up in Bnei Brak and attended Bais Yaakov. I dont consider myself a rebellious type, but when time came that a match was offered to me, I realized that was not the life that I wanted, she said. I couldnt find common language with many of them and I knew I couldnt stay there and be so different. However, unlike the daughters, my parents never gave me a feeling I was doing something wrong. They supported me with everything.

The following conversation was edited for clarity.

The Times of Israel: Why do you think this story is not so widely known?

Manekin: Im a historian of the Jews of Galicia and I make it a point to read everything that is published about this region and I never came across anything that tells the stories of these girls. As I researched, I found the [mainstream] press was actually full of stories about what was happening. The major Viennese newspaper the Neue Freie Presse constantly writes about those girls. There were even novels and plays about it. There were police investigations, correspondence with government officials.

There was so much documentation about it. I think it was suppressed, or isnt widely known, because it was embarrassing. The rabbinical leadership had done nothing about it and these were unpleasant stories about Hasidic, wealthy, powerful families.

The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia, by Rachel Manekin. (Courtesy)

You write about Jewish education being complicated, citing the Talmudic statement that whoever teaches ones daughter Torah is as if he taught her lechery, (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 20a) and its subsequent codification with Jewish law. Can you elaborate on that a little more?

The explanation I give has to do with the different educational paths for Orthodox Jewish boys and girls during this period. The 1873 Galician version of the 1869 Austrian mandatory education law required six years of schooling in state approved schools for both boys and girls, Jews and gentiles. Through political arrangements, the Orthodox leadership was able to keep their sons in religious schools.

As for their daughters, they saw no problem in sending them to Polish public and private schools. In fact, many were proud of their daughters accomplishments. So, the boys grew up Jewishly educated and the girls Polishly educated. Since most Jewish girls were given only a very rudimentary Jewish education at home, this only widened the gap between them and their parents, who never attended Polish schools, and between the sexes. When time came for marriages to be arranged, many girls rebelled.

When time came for marriages to be arranged, many girls rebelled

Nowadays girls are taught a lot more in terms of religious studies. What I think still remains a problem is the fact that the path to higher education is often blocked. There are graduates of Bais Yaakov and seminary schools that attend college, but its still not the norm.

Your book makes me think about the fight for education many young women face today around the world. Did you think about that when you were working on this?

Yes, education was and is still a factor. We know its not just an issue for Jews; Afghanistan and Malala [Yousafzai] comes to mind.

In the book I tell the story of Anna Kluger, who had a passion for studying. Thats all she wanted to do. She completed her baccalaureate exam and enrolled secretly in university and later got a PhD at University of Vienna. Those stories about women who have an intellectual passion are not told. The guts she had to follow her dreams.

Runaway Jewish daughter Michalina Araten came from a wealthy Hasidic family and brought the issue of womens education to the spotlight. (Courtesy of the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw)

What surprised you most about the research?

I have a friend who inherited her grandmothers opera glasses. Her grandparents were from Krakow. The story in the family was that her grandfather was a Hasid but her grandmother would go to the opera, to lectures. She would dress as a proper Hasidic woman, but she did these things.

I think for us its difficult to understand because we expect harmony, everything has to fit, but life was full of contradictions for some women then. Im not trying to claim they werent very pious or that all the women were alienated from Judaism. Im saying that a growing number of women, because of their education, had their minds opened.

This was also the time that feminism was growing. The women go to lectures, to theater. There was a lot going on and women frequent these places. What else could they do in their free time? This sets up a clash between them and their families.

Did the fact of the young women seeking refuge in the convent exacerbate relations between Jews and Catholics at the time?

Yes, definitely. This is a period of heightened anti-Semitism in the Hapsburg Empire. There are excesses in villages outside of Krakow in 1898. Theres a book about it called The Plunder, that describes all of this. There is already some inter-religious tension.

This is a period of heightened anti-Semitism in the Hapsburg Empire

The Jewish press at the time refer to what is going on as abductions, but the Polish Catholic church was saying this was free choice of the young women. The demand by Jewish families and the police to search the convent for the girls also contributed to the situation.

The Felician Sisters convent on 6 Smolesk Street, Krakw. Photograph taken by Natan Krieger, circa 1890. (Courtesy of the Historical Museum of the City of Krakw, Department of Krakw Photography)

Can you tell us a bit about Sara Schenirer and her impact?

In a way she was one of the rebellious daughters.

When she was younger, she attended public lectures for women, as well as the theater. But she ultimately abandoned these youthful pursuits and threw herself into the work of educating Orthodox girls to accept and to celebrate their different status.

The only known photo of Bais Yaakov founder Sara Schenirer. (Public domain)

I see Schenirer as a religious enthusiast and an Orthodox ideologue who spearheaded a movement that was simultaneously a revolution in Torah education and a counter-revolution in womens education: a revolution in Torah education because formal Jewish education for Orthodox women was now finally and firmly established, but a counter revolution because the educational system she helped establish deliberately blocked womens path to higher education. Recent scholarship has focused on the revolution and not the counter-revolution.

What is the most important thing you want readers to take away from the book?

The history of women is the history of families, the history of communities, the history of the state. Its intertwined. If we dont include the histories of women, we miss a lot of what is going on in a society so knowing their stories lets us see society more fully.

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In 1800s Poland, Hasidic runaway girls spurred a Jewish school revolution - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

As the three highest-profile social media companies YouTube, Facebook and Twitter continue to take action to mitigate the spread of extremism and disinformation, Parler has welcomed the ensuing exodus of right-wing users. It has exploded in popularity, doubling its members to 10 million during the month of November although it is still dwarfed by Twitters roughly 330 million monthly active users.

With its newfound success, the site is contributing to the widening gap between the different perceptions of reality held by the polarized public. On mainstream social media, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the presidential election, and theories alleging crimes by the Biden campaign and Democrats are flagged as misinformation. On Parler, Donald Trump won in a landslide, only to have his victory stolen by a wide-ranging alliance of evildoers, including Democrats and the so-called deep state.

While it is too early to tell if Parler is here to stay, it has already achieved a reputation and level of engagement that has overtaken other alternative platforms. But along with its success comes the reality that extremist movements like QAnon and the Boogalooers have thrived in the platforms unregulated chaos.

Parlers origins

Parler was launched in 2018 and found its place as another niche platform catering to right-wing users who ran afoul of content moderation on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Its user base remained small fewer than 1 million users until early 2020. Other primarily right-wing platforms, especially Gab, had housed fringe and violent ideologues and groups for much longer than Parler. These included violent far-right militias and the mass shooter Robert Bowers.

Parler, in contrast, gained a reputation for catering to mainstream conservatives thanks to a handful of high-profile early adopters like Brad Parscale, Candace Owens and Sen. Mike Lee. As a result, in 2020 when Twitter began labeling misleading Trump tweets about possible fraud in absentee and mail-in voting, politicians like Ted Cruz embraced Parler as the next bastion for conservative speech.

The 2020 election

In the weeks before the Nov. 3 election, the big social media sites took steps to mitigate election-related extremism and disinformation. Twitter rolled out labels for all mail-in ballot misinformation and put a prompt on tweeted articles to encourage people to read them before retweeting. Facebook blocked QAnon groups and, later, restricted QAnon-adjacent accounts pushing SaveTheChildren conspiracy theories. Facebook also began prohibiting holocaust denial posts. YouTube labeled and blocked advertising for election-related fake information, though it left in place many conspiracy theory-promoting videos.

These actions continued in the wake of the election, especially as mainstream conservative politicians and Trump pushed the false claim that Biden and the Democrats committed large-scale voter fraud to steal the election. Consequently, millions of users migrated to alternative platforms: Gab, MeWe and, in particular, Parler.

Users flocked there because of the promise of a site that wouldnt label false information and wouldnt ban the creation of extremist communities. But they also moved because Republican politicians and well-known elites signaled that Parler was the new home for conservative speech. These include commentator Mark Levin and Fox host Sean Hannity.

Promoting racism, anti-Semitism and violence

Parler has only two community guidelines: It does not knowingly allow criminal activity, and it does not allow spam or bots on its platform. The lack of guidelines on hate speech has allowed racism and anti-Semitism to flourish on Parler. My research center has spent several years building an extensive encyclopedia of far-right terminology and slang, covering niche topics from the spectrum of white supremacist, neo-fascist and anti-state movements. We have studied the ways that far-right language evolves alongside content moderation efforts from mainstream platforms, and how slang and memes are often used to evade regulations.

We have monitored far-right communities on Parler since March and have found frequent use of both obvious white supremacist terms and more implicit, evasive memes and slang. For example, among other explicit white supremacist content, Parler allows usernames referencing the Atomwaffen Divisions violentlty anti-Semitic slogan, posts spreading the theory that Jews are descended from Satan, and hashtags such as HitlerWasRight.

In addition, it is easy to find the the implicit bigotry and violence that eventually caused Facebook to ban movements like QAnon. For example, QAnons version of the blood libel theory the centuries-old conspiracy theory the Jewish people murder Christians and use their blood for rituals has spread widely on the platform. Thousands of posts also use QAnon hashtags and promote the false claim that global elites are literally eating children.

Among the alternative platforms, Parler stands out because white supremacists, QAnon adherents and mainstream conservatives exist in close proximity. This results in comment threads on politicians posts that are a melting pot of far-right beliefs, such as a response to Donald Trump Jr.s unfounded allegations of election crimes that states, Civil war is the only way to drain the swamp.

Behind the scenes

Parlers ownership is still kept largely secret. However, the few pieces of information that have come to light make Parlers spike in popularity even more concerning. For example, Dan Bongino, the highly popular right-wing commentator who published a book about the deep state conspiracy theory and frequently publishes unverified information, has at least a small ownership stake in the company. CEO John Matze has said that the ownership is composed of himself and a small group of close friends and employees.

Notably, conservative billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, are investors in the platform. Rebekah Mercer helped co-found it with Matze. The Mercers are well known for their investments in other conservative causes, including Nigel Farages Brexit campaign, Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica. The connection to Cambridge Analytica has, in particular, alarmed experts, who worry that Parler may harvest unnecessary data from unwitting users.

Parlers privacy policy doesnt put to rest concerns about user privacy, either: The policy says that Parler has permission to collect a vast amount of personal information, and gives its members much less control than mainstream platforms over what that data can be used for.

Parlers future

Parlers fate will hinge on what its members do over the next few months. Will the company be able to capitalize on the influx of new users, or will its members slowly trickle back to the larger platforms? A major factor is how Trump himself reacts, and whether he eventually creates an account on Parler.

Having catered to a right-wing audience and allowed hate speech to thrive on its platform, Parler is also at the whims of its user base. Parlers main competitor, Gab, similarly attempted to capitalize on concerns about unfair moderation against conservatives. However, Gabs expansion came to a halt after Bowers mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Bowers had been posting anti-Semitic and violent content on the platform, and the revelation resulted in PayPal, GoDaddy and Medium banning Gab from their services.

Online extremism and hate can lead to real-world violence by legitimizing extreme actions. Parlers tolerance of hate, bigotry and affiliation with violent movements opens the possibility that, like Gab, one or more of its members will commit acts of violence. Although it is hard to know how Parler will grow in the future, my research suggests that the extremism among its user base will persist for months to come.

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Pure hate finds a home: How Parler became the social media platform for millions of Trump supporters - Milwaukee Independent

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

These days, Im a little bored.

The boardwalk is my lifesaver. Im two blocks from the boardwalk. I can walk to Coney Island if I want to. I go alone. I have some friends here. We used to play canasta once a week. But when Covid arrived, my daughter insisted, You cant sit in one room! So I talk on the phone. I read. The grandkids call in by Zoom. I also do a little bit of Zoom lecturing for the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

I keep very busy, and it helps me a lot. I am trying not to give up. But what is getting me down is that I am losing a year. And this bothers me terribly. Im 87 years old, and I lost almost a full year.

Im doing everything I can to stay connected, to make an impact. So even now, amid Covid, I tell my story to schools and to audiences the museum organizes for me, by Zoom.

Heres what I say: I was born in 1933 in a small town called Chodorow, now Khodoriv, about 30 minutes by car from Lvov, now Lviv, in what was then Poland and is now Ukraine. We lived in the center of town in my grandfathers house. The Russians occupied the town from 1939 to 1941, then the Germans from 1941 to 1944. My father was well liked in town by Jews and non-Jews. One day in early 1942, one of the guys came to him and said, Moshe, its going to be a big killing. Better find a hiding place. So my father built a place to hide in the cellar. My grandfather didnt want to go. He was shot in the kitchen; we heard it.

Not long after that, the Germans said they were going to relocate the remaining Jews to the ghetto in Lvov, so my father and my aunt searched for someone to hide them more permanently. They found Stephanie, who had a house on the main street with a garden and a barn. She had known my parents their whole life. My father built a wall inside the barn and a hiding place for nine people, where we slept like herrings. It was just four feet by five feet. Pigs and chickens were on one side, and we were on the other: my parents, my aunt and uncle, my maternal grandmother and four children, ages 4, 6, 8 and 12.

Eventually, with the help of Stephanies 16-year-old son, they expanded the space a bit and added a way for the kids to look out. That is where I spent the next two years. I always think of the son when I get down, because when Stephanie was scared to keep hiding us, he insisted we stay.

We had lice. We had rats. But every day in the barn was a miracle. Im not a regular person. Im a miracle child. Most of the Jews of Chodorow never returned.

So when the coronavirus came, I thought, Im a miracle. I will make it. I have to make it.

During the war, we didnt know if we would make a day. I didnt have any freedom. I couldnt speak loudly, I couldnt laugh, I couldnt cry.

But now, I can feel freedom. I stay by the window and look out. The first thing I do in the morning is look out and see the world. I am alive. I have food, I go out, I go for walks, I do some shopping. And I remember: No one wants to kill me. So, still, I read. I cook a little bit. I shop a little bit. I learned the computer. I do puzzles.

I still sometimes feel that I am missing out. A full year is gone. I lost my childhood, I never had my teenage years. And now, in my old age, this is shortening my life by a year. I dont have that many years left. The way we have lived this year means I have lost many opportunities to lecture, to tell more people my story, to let them see me and know the Holocaust happened to a real person, who stands in front of them today. Its important.

I am scared that I am not going to be in the shape I was a year ago. When this started in March, one of my grandchildren, who lives in New Jersey, went to Maine with his wife; they never came back. They have a baby boy now, and I have only seen him on Zoom. This child will never know me. Thats a loss.

Some of what Im missing is so simple. I have a male friend I know from synagogue. We would take a trip, if we could, by car. To anyplace! I would go to Florida. Maybe even go to Israel for a couple of weeks. But not now. So, again, this has shortened my life. That is my biggest complaint.

I understand the fear people have, and I understand you have to take care.

But there is no comparison of anxiety, of the coronavirus, to the terror I felt when I was a child. That was a fear with no boundary. This is going to end, and I am already thinking, planning where I am going first, what I will do first, when this ends.

Toby Levy is a retired accountant and a volunteer docent for the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

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Opinion | The Holocaust Stole My Youth. Covid-19 Is Stealing My Last Years. - The New York Times

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

OPINION: Tigard and Southwest Portland's state representative reflects on 11 years in the Oregon House.

As my time as your state representative for House District 35 winds down, I want to express my sincere thanks to all of the citizens who sent me back to Salem for the past 11 years. It has been an honor to represent you.

When I was appointed in August of 2009, I felt that I could make a difference for the citizens in Tigard and Southwest Portland.

I was raised in Southwest Portland. Went to grade school in Multnomah and graduated from Wilson High School, so I knew the area. I have lived in Tigard since 1989 and been involved in the community for the past 20 years. Little did I know that what I did in Salem would make what I coin as "a quiet difference."

I have always been concerned with student nutrition ever since a former student of mine got kind of sheepish at a reunion and felt he needed to apologize because when I had him as a sophomore, I loaned him lunch money and he had not paid it back. Ever since then, I worked so students would not feel that way.

Since then, Oregon has become one of the leaders in school nutrition programs. A few years back, we picked up the cost for reduced lunch because families were having trouble even picking up that cost. I am so proud that one of the biggest budget items in the Student Success Act was for school nutrition, with the goal of universal breakfast and lunch.

I am also proud of an action that at the time just seemed right, but drew national attention, when I shut down the horrific testimony of a Holocaust denier at a hearing when I was chair of the House Education Committee. I went to school with friends whose parents were Holocaust survivors, and I could not let this happen. I was quiet but to the point with this gentleman.

During this time of political turmoil and hurtful words, please remember that most of the legislators are trying their best to represent the people who elected them. There are good people in Salem. Sometimes we just disagree, but doesn't mean I can't call them friend.

Thank you for the privilege of serving you. It is one of the greatest honors of my life.

Margaret Doherty is state representative from House District 35, including parts of Tigard, Metzger, Garden Home and Southwest Portland, serving since 2009. A Democrat, she lives in Tigard.

You count on us to stay informed and we depend on you to fund our efforts.Quality local journalism takes time and money. Please support us to protect the future of community journalism.

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Doherty: Goodbye and thank you to constituents - Pamplin Media Group

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

Charles Cloughen Jr.| Guest Columnist

I was 22 years old when I decided to take a road trip with three friends from Berkeley Divinity School in New Haven to Selma, Alabama. Today, as Maryland and the nation leave a terrible, bad, no-good year behind on the road to 2021, I hope everyone will take to heart what I learned back in 1965.

It was a Sunday night, March 7, and in those days most people were at home watching TV. A big movie was on, Judgement at Nuremberg, about the Holocaust and the moral culpability of Germans in that horror. Shortly after the film started, ABC News interrupted with a breaking report from Selma, Alabama.

Peaceful Black marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge were being gassed and clubbed by white police officers. All they wanted was equal voting rights. Watching Selmas Bloody Sunday on TV was like watching George Floyds eight minutes and 46 seconds on your cellphone today a moment of searing clarity that screamed do something! Me and my three seminary buddies jumped into a Renault at 5 a.m. in the morning to answer Martin Luther Kings call white clergy were needed to join the protests in Selma.

We actually werent clergy, we were just seminary students, but there we were, a couple of white guys heading to the Deep South. We didnt actually understand what we were getting ourselves into until we stopped overnight at Tuskegee University in Alabama. There we saw firsthand some of the casualties from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, young Black men with bandaged heads, arms in slings and bruised faces limping about the traditionally Black colleges dining hall.

By the time we arrived at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma and joined other Black and white protesters, I was feeling, for the first time in my life, fear. We were told to wear coats and ties to the march the next day. Women were to wear dresses or skirts because we wanted everyone watching at home on their TV sets to know we werent bums, we were decent Americans who just wanted equal voting rights.

Before we left the church we were also told to remove the dome light inside our car so that snipers would be less able to shoot us at night.

The next morning we walked from Brown Chapel A.M.E., two-by-two on the sidewalk, to the mayors home while singing, We Shall Overcome. We knew we were bound for jail and perhaps worse.

That day I slipped into the middle of the walkers. I did not want to be first. When we arrived in the mayors neighborhood, hounded by white counter protesters, the police started arresting people and loading us into school buses.

They had arrested everyone in front of me, and there I was singing We Shall Overcome. The then public safety commissioner, Wilson Baker, walked over to me, with the TV cameras recording the moment, and said in his best Southern drawl, Young man you shouldnt be down here on no picket line, you should be up north taking singing lessons. Then he had me arrested and I spent a night in jail and was released the next morning. I marched back to Brown Chapel.

Im glad I took that road trip. That road trip changed me just like Selmas protests changed America. But as we all know, the journey to justice isnt over.

If our challenges in 2020 have taught me anything, its that the right to vote is precious and powerful. So in this New Year, please join me in our march to a more perfect union. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020 is already drafted. It sits, like a silent conscience, in the halls of Congress, waiting for legislators to hear that clarion call do something! In 2021 lets get that bill passed and make history once again.

The Rev. Charles Cloughen Jr. is an Episcopal priest who has served in Maryland for over two decades. An author and speaker he has published One Minute Stewardship, among other books. Email: ccloughen@episcopalmaryland.org.

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The lesson of 2020 and 1965: The right to vote is precious and powerful - Milford Daily News

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

(JTA) Many of my fellow rabbinical students and friends are enthusiastic about a new strategy for elevating womens voices in Torah study into the beit midrash this fall.

The Kranjec Test named for Danielle Kranjec, the Jewish educator who created it holds that collections of texts known as source sheets must include at least one non-male voice. Its the Jewish studies equivalent of the well-known Bechdel test for film, in which movies pass if they include two women having a conversation about something other than men, and it quickly gained currency among my colleagues.

On paper, I perhaps ought to have leapt at this new framework. I have been committed to womens Torah study since I spent summers during high school studying at the Drisha Institute, one of the first institutions in America to open the doors of Talmud study to Orthodox women, and I wrote my undergraduate thesis on finding new modes for feminist Talmud study. Im currently blessed to spend my days immersed in full-time Torah study as a rabbinical student, and questions of what feminist and queer Torah are and ought to be are at the forefront of my interests.

And yet I balked.

My reservations were primarily practical. My current Torah learning involves intense study of Jewish law, and for the course of Jewish history, the vast quantity of received wisdom on areas like kashrut and Shabbat simply has not included writing by people other than men. I worried that adding texts in those areas to meet the Kranjec Test would amount to tokenism at best.

My instinct was to look at the absence of non-mens voices with clear eyes. Yes, its a canon written by men! That problem cant be solved, I thought, by pretending thats not the case.

I am not the first to point out that the problem is not a failure to include existing voices in the Jewish canon but the fact that these voices dont yet exist. Rabbi Becky Silverstein and my teacher Laynie Soloman made this argument in their response to the original article proposing the Kranjec Test. Some of my Orthodox women friends argued that meeting the test would require turning too often to texts from outside the traditional rabbinic canon. Rabbi Michael Rosenberg framed that criticism, which he ultimately argues against, in his writing about the Kranjec Test, as Does such a source sheet send the message that Torah is for men, and supplementary materials are for non-males?

I also had another concern: Learning Torah as a queer woman is already at times hard, and teaching it can be harder. There are the inevitable moments of hurt and alienation that come from loving a vast body of wisdom that was not created by people who share some of my most fundamental experiences. Along with that comes the workaday burden of sexism I face as a young woman trying to hold the attention of a classroom: interruptions, a student implying that Im unqualified and the whole genre of experience so familiar to so many of us.

Should I now make that process even harder by also taking extra time and energy to seek out a source I otherwise would not have and try to integrate it into my work? Is this not an additional ask for those of us who already strain so much for our Torah? And, on another level, would my voice as the teacher then be made invisible? After all, I was contributing to the Torah I offered by putting it together and teaching it, and I am a woman: Did I really need to put another non-man on the source sheet on top of that?

In the middle of all this thinking, I looked around and realized I had unwittingly been adhering to the Kranjec Test without meaning to. At my yeshiva, we start each day of Zoom learning with a 10-minute dvar Torah on the parsha from a student, and every other Tuesday it was my turn. The first time, I posted to Facebook looking for specific sources about the few verses of Lech Lecha I was planning to speak on. A friend recommended a recorded sermon from a woman teacher, and her Torah was exactly the insight I had been seeking. Two weeks later, preparing to teach my 10 minutes on Chayei Sarah, I was at a loss looking at the commentaries on the page of my Chumash. I turned to the bookshelf behind me and pulled out a book of essays on the parsha, and again the crystallizing insight I needed came from a woman.

After that, I committed to myself that each turn I had to teach on the parsha, I would include the voice of someone who was not a man in my dvar Torah. I made this commitment gently, tentatively every time I told myself, Well, Ill see what I can find, and if it becomes too hard, I wont hold myself to it. And every time I was able to turn up exciting, fresh Torah with minimal difficulty.

The parsha is doubtless the easiest area in which to find Torah teaching from women and other non-men. Thank God, there is such a wealth of weekly divrei Torah by people of all genders across every stream of Judaism, and the weekly parsha is an area where even Orthodox women have been recording their teaching for decades now. But what this gentle, experimental commitment taught me was not just that it might be easier than I thought to find this kind of Torah on the parsha, but that I felt different when I sought it out.

Nothing I learned mitigates the structural concerns that Silverman and Soloman crucially point out, and however far behind mens Torah written womens Torah is, the Torah of trans and nonbinary people and of Jews of color and disabled Jews has been even more limited. This is, as Rosenberg points out in his article, not just bad for Jews but bad for the Torah. The Kranjec Test is insufficient to solve that problem, which is one that all Jews who care about the Torah should put our attention and resources toward.

But what I was not considering when I felt so much resistance to the Kranjec Test was what it might feel like to regularly learn and teach Torah from people who reminded me of myself in a deep way. I have always been blessed, in many spaces and for much of my life, to learn Torah often from women and sometimes from queer teachers as well in frameworks that taught me I was its inheritor and part of the vast conversation of the Jewish textual tradition. I felt close to the Torah, and like I had every right to learn and teach it. I would have told you I was extremely well-adjusted when it comes to learning texts almost exclusively by men.

But when I started to regularly learn and teach written Torah from people who were not men, something in me almost imperceptibly began to feel different. Its hard even a few months in to find the words to capture the different kind of settledness I feel in my chest when I give a dvar Torah that includes a Torah insight from someone like me. I thought that I was as close to the Torah as I could ever get, but I was wrong.

The Kranjec Test made me realize that I am unsatisfied by accepting the absence of womens voices in Jewish law and other subjects as a historical reality. Being alive to that absence instead of just pushing past it has made me more aware of who I am when I learn Torah, less willing to brush aside my own experiences and needs. I am less willing to accept the inevitability of whos not there making me more aware that Im there myself.

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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I resisted the call to include non-male voices every time I taught Torah. Then I tried it. - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

San Francisco attorney Ray Bernstein could have been a swashbuckling trial lawyer, winning big cases and raking in big bucks. But that would have required a taste for the blood sport of litigation, and that just wasnt him. He was much happier on the faculty of the Santa Clara University School of Law, or offering up insights during Torah study at his S.F. synagogue, Congregation Shaar Zahav.

Bernstein died on Dec. 18 from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident. Though he set off riding with a friend and was wearing a helmet, there were no witnesses at the moment of the accident, which took place Dec. 3 in the Marin Headlands. He was 56.

Theres a quote in the Talmud, noted Shaar Zahav past president James Carlson. When the righteous are born, no one notices, but when they die, everyone feels it. And thats really been true for Ray. People have been coming forward and expressing how much he meant to them.

Bernstein had a sterling legal resume, starting with his winning the moot court competition at Yale University Law School when he was a mere first-year. Though he served as a trial lawyer for a time, it was as an associate law professor that he found his true calling.

His colleagues at Santa Clara paid collective tribute to him in a statement. Those of us who had the privilege of working and teaching with Ray at Santa Clara Law loved him for his kindness, his wit, and his determination to make the world a more just place, they wrote. He spent his career working on behalf of students, colleagues, clients, and causes he believed in. We miss him deeply.

Over his career, the Detroit native won numerous Bar Association awards for his pro bono work for the homeless, and for other volunteer efforts. Not all of it was legal in nature; Bernstein also dedicated time and energy to his synagogue, participating in Torah study and coaching bnai mitzvah students.

When he was scheduled to deliver a Friday drash [Torah interpretation], there was a sense that everyone was paying attention, Carlson recalled. They listened to Ray because his approach to the parashah of the week was unique, insightful, funny, and he made you think about it in a very different way.

Bernstein was a law student at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, when he met his closest friend, fellow attorney Susan Mizner, about three decades ago. They fell in love and became partners. Mizner moved to California in 1988 to attend Stanford University Law School, and Bernstein joined her a year later.

Bernstein, assigned female at birth, transitioned in 1997. Earlier, as a queer couple at Stanford, Bernstein and Mizner successfully changed university policy to recognize domestic partnerships.

Once settled in the Bay Area, Bernsteins legal career took off. After serving as a clerk for a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, he served as senior staff attorney for its Criminal Research Division. Still, Mizner recalled, the job did not suit his gentle constitution. He hated litigation, he hated conflict, Mizner said.

He had one case against the Catholic Church for the way they covered up pedophilia. I remember him coming back from discovery one day in tears because he had seen that they had taken this priest who was abusing young boys and moved him to an orphanage in Mexico, a place with no parents to stand up for the children.

It wasnt long before Bernstein joined the faculty at Santa Clara. He really loved teaching, Mizner said. That was very much his calling.

Though identifying as a lesbian for years, Bernstein recognized a deeper truth and began the process of transitioning to male. It was always the right thing for him, Mizner added. He had no question that it was exactly what he wanted to be doing.

The two would separate but stay family, as Mizner put it, and her son Jonathan grew up close to his Uncle Ray. Bernstein, who attended Jewish day schools as a child, helped bring Mizner and her son closer to Jewish observance and activism at Shaar Zahav.

He was a very typical Jew in wrestling with the concept of God, Mizner said, but he was also the gentlest Jew. I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who renounced religion. [Ray] would very gently answer my questions. I became much more observant because of him.

Bernstein was an avid amateur painter and enjoyed cycling. According to those closest to him, his primary passion was helping others.

I dont think you will find a person who experienced [from Ray] any anger or harsh words or meanness or gossip, Mizner said. He took seriously the need to repair the world.

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Law professor Ray Bernstein, 56, dies in bike accident - The Jewish News of Northern California

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Posted By admin on January 4, 2021

TheTorah columnis supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.VayechiGenesis 50:14-21

Great is peace, said Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel, for even the ancestors resorted to a fabrication in order to make peace between Joseph and themselves (Genesis Rabbah 100:8). Praise and rabbinic sanction for speaking falsely? How can it be?

Here at the end of Genesis, the sons of Jacob appear to have reestablished familial harmony. But with their fathers passing, the brothers fear Josephs revenge for their earlier, murderous intentions. And so, they tell a lie.

They brought a charge to Joseph, saying, your father left this charge before his death, saying, Thus shall you say to Joseph: please I beg of you, forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, though they inflicted harm upon you (Genesis 50:16-17). They weep, and in a scene of extraordinary tenderness, Joseph extends absolute grace to his once wayward kin. He comforted them, and spoke straight to their heart (50:21).

Since the Torah has no record of Jacob saying anything of the sort, the charge is read as an acceptable contrivance by the brothers. In a tradition that places such a high value on truth, this is puzzling indeed.

Keep far from falsehood! exhorts Exodus 23:7. Truth is the seal of the Holy One! we read in the Talmud (Shabbat 55a). And the prophet Zechariah commands The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies, neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth (Zephaniah 3:13).

In the spirit of Rabbi Simeon, Rav Ilai also said, a person may tell a white lie for the sake of peace (Yevamot 65b). But not only a person, as we learned back in Genesis 18. There, God bends the truth for shalom bayit, peace in the home, when He reframes Sarahs laughter about the prospect that she could have a child with Abraham. She wonders: Will I have pleasure with my husband so old? (Genesis 18:12). In the very next verse, God asks Abraham, Why is Sarah laughing, thinking Am I really going to bear a child when I am so old? In the deliberate misquote, God preserves Abrahams dignity and calls out Sarah for her lack of faith in one masterful stroke.

These two occasions of intentional obfuscation one Divine, one earthly illustrate with profound artistry the capital T Truth that life isnt a series of clear-cut, all-or-nothing situations.

Relationships require consideration of others and preservation of the self. Nuance, finesse and maybe even a little subterfuge may be necessary to preserve a delicate balance of peaceful coexistence.

In another lifetime, I sat with college friends at a late-night coffeehouse. The question arose: Is it ever permissible to tell a lie?

One beloved friend insisted it was never acceptable truth must be told no matter the consequences. Despite my boundless admiration for her, I disagreed, especially regarding a persons feelings, and ones own privacy.

I discovered much later that the Talmud had beaten me soundly to the punch. Besides the famous dispute between Hillel and Shammai regarding whether a bride should be praised for her beauty irrespective of the truth (Hillel said yes, Shammai said no), tractate Bava Metzia 23b-24a goes even further. There, the rabbis teach that a righteous person never lies except in three instances tractate, purya and hospitality. Tractate suggests that a modest scholar may claim unfamiliarity with a text so as not to boast of his learning.

Purya is disputed. Rashi translates it as bed, meaning that a scholar may bend the truth if questioned about his intimate married life. Later commentators, scandalized that such a question could ever be asked, read purya as Purim, allowing a scholar to fib about how much alcohol he had imbibed on the holiday. (Im with Rashi on this one, because we have records of students who did look, sometimes in a very intrusive way, to their rabbis for guidance in the bedroom.)

Hospitality permits a pious person to misrepresent the reception she has been given, either to embellish the truth to protect the hosts feelings if the offerings were a little less than or to scale back the truth if a review that is too glowing would overwhelm the hosts capacities!

Im often asked how true I hold the stories of the Tanakh to be.

I believe they are based on real people, about whom wonderful stories were woven, or on real events, personalized by marvelous characters to whom we can relate. Hopefully, in many cases its both.

In an era where truth is frighteningly under siege, I am solidly convinced of the great Truths that Judaism teaches and cling to the self-evident truths of the Torah and our traditions more than ever.

As Genesis concludes, Joseph dies and is embalmed in a coffin in Egypt, where the Israelites will be similarly entombed during the long, dark night of bondage and suffering that is coming. Because they banded together, even with a white lie paving the way, they could meet the painful times ahead as one family.

As the new secular year dawns (and, please, may it be better than the last), may we overcome the terrible fissures of our time, bend a little for one another and face whatever may be coming next as one people and one country, united for a common, marvelous cause of shalom

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Let's head into the new year in a new frame of mind - The Jewish News of Northern California

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