Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 15, 2020

Rabbi Lazarow said usually there would be 1800 people at Saturday morning services, a choir of 30 people and six or seven people leading the main service.

This year will be "more bespoke" with clergy leading services from their homes, congregants watching online and only a pianist and four singers in the synagogue.

Synagogues say the pandemic has affected their finances, with fewer congregants paying annual memberships, and with no rent or venue hire income.

Rabbi Lazarow said income was down by 35 per cent this year and the synagogue looks like losing $400,000.

He stressed it wasnt because people were "disengaging or not valuing what were doing", rather that that they had no discretionary spending, after losing jobs or decreased incomes.

However, those able to contribute were being more generous "because they feel a responsibility to support others".

Rabbi Gabi Kaltmann said being Modern Orthodox, members of his synagogue, the ARK Centre in Hawthorn East, dont use electricity on holy days, including this Saturday, and so Rosh Hashanah services cant be live streamed for his congregants.

But at 4.30pm, before the Holy Day and sabbath starts on Friday night, he will lead a service on Zoom.

Rabbi Kaltmann said his own dinner this Saturday will involve "just me, my wife and our four kids" compared to up to 50 guests in previous years.

"The grand finals been called off thats what its like for us, with families not being able to celebrate together," he said.

Rabbi Daniel Rabin, of South Caulfield Hebrew Congregation, is among supporters of Project Shofar, under which on Sunday September 20, hundreds of volunteers will go out to street corners across Melbourne, to blow the shofars, or rams' horns that are traditionally sounded in synagogues to usher in the new year.

The aim of the project, for which the Rabbinical Council of Victoria has gained state government approval, is for every Jew to hear the shofar, while adhering to health guidelines.

It will run all day on Sunday September 20 in suburbs from Caulfield to Doncaster and Dingley.

Its part of the Rabbinical Council's Project High Holy Days, a community connection initiative.

Get our Coronavirus Update newsletter for the day's crucial developments at a glance, the numbers you need to know and what our readers are saying. Sign up to The Sydney Morning Herald's newsletter here and The Age's here.

Carolyn Webb is a reporter for The Age.

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Preparations under way for Jewish New Year - without synagogues and big dinners - Sydney Morning Herald

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Posted By admin on September 15, 2020

Moshe Lobel, Special to the USA TODAY NETWORK Published 10:44 a.m. ET Sept. 15, 2020 | Updated 10:45 a.m. ET Sept. 15, 2020

Rockland County Legislator Aron Wieder speaks about the issue of public and private school equivalency at Yeshiva Degel Hatorah in Spring Valley Feb. 26, 2019. The Journal News

I still get anxious this time of year. I havent been a student for some time, but its still difficult to shake that sense of dread when I see the back to

school ads or hear the yellow buses growling and hissing in the morning. Im probably not alone in that feeling particularly as weve been collectively trying to figure out how to provide children with a quality education during the pandemic. It has been challenging for parents and teachers to replicate the classroom experience at home, and we rightfully fear the impact that sub-par schooling will have on childrens development. While debating the logistics of reopening, weve all recognized that a standard, quality education is an essential priority.

But the basic standard of schooling that most of us take for granted is not the norm for everyone. For years long before the pandemic tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox students across greater New York have been receiving a low-quality, often outright neglectful, secular education with little oversight from the government. I was one of those students.

I grew up in a Hasidic family that spoke Yiddish at home. During early childhood, I lived in a mostly English-speaking community in New Jersey and attended a bilingual school. When I was seven, we moved to Borough Park, Brooklyn, and I started at the exclusively Yiddish-speaking Satmar school. About 90 minutes of secular studies were allotted at the end of the day, whichwe were told existed only so the school would qualify for government funding.

The front entrance of Yeshiva Talpiot on College Road in Ramapo. The Journal News file photoThe front entrance of Yeshiva Talpiot on College Road in Ramapo in March 2016(Photo: Seth Harrison/The Journal News, Seth Harrison/The Journal News)

We were taught that the English language was impure a necessary evil. Some of our English teachers barely spoke the language themselves. After long hours of religious studies, our teachers would be lucky if we sat in our seats, let alone learned something. We had outdated textbooks and perfunctory exams, but they were a formality rather than tools for real learning. I remember my seventh grade teacher expressing his goal for us as we neared the completion of our basic education: to make sure that wed be able to sign our own names on checks. Most Hasidic schools end secular education after eighth grade.

While not impossible, it is extremely difficult to succeed under these circumstances. I was lucky to speak English early on. I was a smart and studious kid who had the encouragement of an open-minded parent. I was curious and driven, taking in everything that expanded my limited world, whether Jewish or secular. But many of my classmates still speak in broken English and lack the skills and cultural awareness to succeed outside, or sometimes even within, their communities. I am the exception, and their experience is the norm it should not require exceptionalism for students to learn the basics.

Earlier: New York state review of private school/yeshiva instruction to keep going

I switched to a slightly more liberal yeshiva for high school, but the school actively discouraged college attendance and even had a record of withholding transcripts from college applicants. I wanted more, so I sent a last-minute appeal to join a modern Orthodox school for the 12th grade. While senioritis plagued most of my classmates, I eagerly took everything in, amazed at the depth and range of study. This is what I had been fighting for my whole life.

From left, Stephen White and Jennifer Bohman hold signs during a press conference urging the public to comment to NY State Education department in support of new "substantial equivalency" regulations that will ensure every child in Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox yeshivas receives the education they are entitled under state law in New City Aug. 23, 2019. (Photo: Carucha L. Meuse/The Journal News)

But it was too late. I failed out of college in my second year. I just wasnt prepared. I was still smart many things came with ease and I never stopped being curious. But I ultimately lacked the foundational skills to succeed in a mainstream school.

I struggled to find my footing after college. It was difficult to forge a path without a degree, but after a series of personal and professional crises, I have now developed a wonderfully satisfying career in the arts as an actor, filmmaker and musician. Interestingly, the Yiddish language helped spawn my acting career. I still love and cherish my mother tongue and cultural identity.

I worry for the thousands of students in my community who are experiencing the same educational neglect that I did. Ultra-Orthodox schools in Rockland County, New York, where I live now, have long been criticized for their shortcomings in non-religious studies. Secular education should not feel like a threat to culture and faith. They can, and should, exist alongside one another. Providing a basic education is a human right, and it is time for New York state to step up and protect that right for every child.

Moshe Lobel is an actor, filmmaker and musician who lives in Monsey, New York.

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We must end educational neglect in ultra-Orthodox schools. Here's why | Opinion - The Journal News

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Posted By admin on September 15, 2020

KIEV: Hundreds of Hasidic Jews including children, who have sought to travel to a pilgrimage site in Ukraine, are being held up at the countrys border with Belarus due to coronavirus restrictions.Tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews travel every Jewish New Year to the town of Uman in central Ukraine to visit the tomb of Rabbi Nahman, the founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement.This year the Jewish New Year is celebrated September 18-20.The pilgrims set off even though last month the Ukrainian and Israeli governments called on Hasidic Jews not to travel to Uman, a town of 80,000 people, this year, fearing a spike in coronavirus infections.Kiev has banned foreigners from entering the country until late September.On Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the situation at the border with the head of the state border guard service, Sergiy Deyneko, his office said. Ukraine had full control of the situation, it added.In Belarus, strongman Alexander Lukashenkos office said he had told officials to provide assistance to the pilgrims, accusing Ukraine of shutting its borders and leaving hundreds of people in neutral territory.The Belarus Red Cross Society said the pilgrims did not have enough resources to ensure their basic needs and assistance was being provided, particularly to parents with children, the elderly and people with disabilities.As of Tuesday morning, 690 pilgrims were at the Ukrainian-Belarusian border and hundreds more were expected to arrive, Kiev said.We expect that three charter planes some 600 foreigners will arrive in Minsk, Deyneko said, referring to the capital of Belarus.He said up to 1,000 people were expected to arrive at the border near Ukraines northern Chernigiv region, while in the northwest up to 700 were expected near Zhytomyr region and up to 1,500 people near Volyn region.Officials have put up a roadblock 700 meters from a checkpoint in the Chernigiv region and deployed aircraft and drones to monitor the border, Zelenskys office said in a statement.The Ukrainian authorities have been in touch with the Israeli embassy in Kiev and the pilgrims are receiving water and kosher food from local Jewish organizations.Separately, the border guard service said people waiting at the border were still trying to enter Ukraine even after having received explanations and were fully aware of the entry restrictions for foreigners.Rabbi Nahman is one of the main figures of Hasidism, a mystical branch of Judaism that appeared in the 18th century and which developed in particular in Poland and Ukraine.Ukraine has reported more than 159,000 cases of coronavirus and over 3,200 fatalities.Israel is set to impose a three-week lockdown there from Friday, to try to counter a surge in coronavirus infections.

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EU: Greece-Turkey crisis talks might include other nations - Arab News

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Posted By admin on September 15, 2020

The Rabbis of the Talmud have instructed that a fence be built around the Torah, meaning that we should set for ourselves limits well within the Torahs bare minimums so that people do not inadvertently transgress them. From this has come the concept of Marat Ayin (seen to the eye, whereby certain activities, though technically not in violation of the Torahs commandments, are discouraged because an uninformed observer might conclude mistakenly that such activities are acceptable, or that the person who engages in such activities is transgressing the rules.

Marat Ayin is often invoked in the context of a religiously-observant Jew entering a non-kosher restaurant to use the restrooms or some purpose other than to eat treif food. Though not a violation of halakhah, an uninformed observer might come to (A) believe that the restaurants food is in fact kosher; or, perhaps worse yet, (B) believe that the restroom user is in fact violating the dictates of the Torah, particularly if the restroom user is known or purports to follow the halakhic dictates.

[Analogous principles are to be found in modern laws of Western nations. For example, there are numerous American statutes and regulations which require that government officials and employees avoid not only conflicts of interest, but even the appearance of a conflict of interest, in carrying out their official duties. In the courthouses, jurors are commonly instructed to not speak, even in passing conversation, with lawyers in the cases they are hearing; indeed, early in my legal career I and my group of newly-admitted attorney colleagues were advised by a judge at an orientation session to not even make eye contact in the courthouse hallways with jurors on the cases we were trying.]

Marat ayin is playing into how Israeli society is coping (or failing to cope) with the CoronaVirus. Imprimis, public notice of social distancing rules violations by high government officials (up to and including the Prime Minister and the President) has impeded the efforts to control the spread of the COVID-19.

The operation of the marat ayin dynamic in this WuFlu epidemic can be illustrated by comparaing and contrasting two events in Haifa last week. One event, the wedding of the Seret Vizhnitz Rebbes granddaughter (which finally took place following some earlier COVID-related postponements), apparently did not fully comply with the distancing rules, but, more notably, was attended by Deputy Education Minister Meir Porush. The other Haifa event was a large party of secular participants in apparently more egregious violations the rules.

The deputy education minister attended a wedding that took place last night for only a few minutes. The deputy minister calls on the public to conduct themselves according to and obey the Health Ministrys instructions, said a statement from Porushs Knesset office. The statement leaves many issues open.

Firstly, what is meant by only a few minutes? The degree of proximity that constitutes close contact warranting self-isolation is defined by the Health Ministry as a distance of less than two meters and for at least 15 minutes. Though it theoretically is possible to pay a courtesy call to a wedding for less than 15 minutes, one must take the notion that Porush in fact actually limited his attendance to only 15 minutes cum grano salis in light of the size of the wedding, Porushs political position, and the social stature of the wedding hosts. It is unlikely that a perfunctory social appearance at my own sons recent wedding affair, attended by fewer people, could have been completed within 15 minutes.

Even stretching to the limits of credibility by accepting that Porushs wedding attendance in Haifa was in fact only a few minutes, Porush, being a political creature who is familiar with the political deal-making processes, should have anticipated the possibility that his presence at the affair would be difficult if not impossible to conceal, and that his political opponents might use it against him and his allies. For reasons of marat ayin, Porush should not have shown up at the wedding at all.

Indeed, the improbability of his public explanation gives a hollow ring to his appeal to the public to conduct themselves according to and obey the Health Ministrys instructions. Having gotten himself into the predicament, a well-publicized apology would have gained him far more credibility than his only a few minutes explanation.

The Haifa police seem to be taking a greater interest in the hassidic wedding than in the secular revelers. The apparent double standard is certainly not lost on much of the populace, but it is part and parcel of the marat ayin operation. Unlike the party revelers, the wedding attendees would have the world believe that they fastidiously adhere to Jewish law and Torah commandments. Indeed, Haredi, the very term by which they refer to themselves, implies that they tremble in fear of violating Gds commandments; moreover, Porushs political party calls itself the United Torah Judaism party. Seen to the eyes of the police enforcers are people who are failing to live up to the more stringent standard to which they self-purport.

[As noted in a previous TOI blog posting, I have significant reservations about using terms such as Haredi or ultra-orthodox because men who wear a black hats but who submit false claims for government funds, bribe government officials (including bribes to cover for insurance fires in which responding firefighters are injured), commit tax fraud, and/or cheat on their wives are not more religious than I, and using such terms only perpetuates The Big Lie that they are.].

The prospect of an overload to the healthcare system from a precipitous influx of Corona patients is real, and poses a danger to all patients, even those not directly infected by the COVID-19 virus. If, for example, the only available ventilator for a Corona patient is one taken from a hospital operating room, such would preclude the appropriate anesthesia to be availed to a patient undergoing surgery and effectively shut down the operating room.

One question the government regulators should be addressing is what will happen if groups having disproportionate COVID-19 infection rates are seen to the eyes of patients who are denied treatments (and to the eyes of such patients families) as recklessly violating the social distancing regulations? Especially when the examples set by the leaders of these high-infection groups are seen to the eyes as willful and malicious. Especially if talks of defiance increasingly become the norm in diverse segments of society.

Born in Philadelphia, Kenneth lived on Long Island and made Aliyah to Israel.Professionally, he worked as a lawyer in the USA (including as an attorney for the Internal Revenue Service), a college professor and an analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense. He's also a writer and a traveler.

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Seen to the Eye | Kenneth Ryesky | The Blogs - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on September 15, 2020

Photo Credit: Aviram Shani / Nature and Parks Authority

The hatzav, or drimia, is a deciduous plant, growing from bulbs. Each bulb has one to several leaves that are often dry by the time the flowers open. The inflorescence is in the form of a raceme, with one to many flowers. At least the lower inflorescence bracts have spurs. The individual flowers generally last for only one to two days and have white to yellowish-green or brown tepals that are either free or joined into a basal tube. The tepals often have a darker central keel. After fertilization, an ovoid capsule forms with several seeds in each locule. The seeds are black and winged.

The common hatzav can be found everywhere in Israel and its main use in antiquity was the demarcation of lands and plots since the bulb of the plant is durable and may remain underground even after the plant is uprooted, and blooms again the following year.

The Talmud suggests the hatzav was used by Joshua to mark the different plots he awarded the tribes of Israel because its roots go straight down and the plant does not invade the area around it, making it an impartial divider (Beitza 25:2).

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The Hatzav Is Blooming Everywhere in Israel, It Must Be Autumn - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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Posted By admin on September 15, 2020

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 approaches 200,000, and an upcoming presidential election lays bare Americans ugliest partisan divides and tribal impulses. Its also a somber anniversary the 9/11 attacks took place 19 years ago today. Everything feels overwhelming right now.

KCRW checks in with someone whos been a calming and reassuring presence throughout these and other crises. Steve Leder is the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple and author of More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us.

KCRW: We last spoke in late March. How have you been doing in these past six months?

Rabbi Steve Leder: Like most, I have my moments of despair. And I occasionally drift into catastrophizing the future and have to work hard at pulling myself out of that. But ... this pandemic has forced me, and I hope many of us, to stretch our capacities for adaptation, for leadership, for empathy, far beyond anything I could have imagined before this thing began.

How have you grown spiritually?

This might sound odd coming from a rabbi, but I have fallen in love again with the wisdom of the sages of the Talmud and the Torah. They knew a good deal more than we about living through perilous and uncertain times. There is no aspect of it that they did not consider very thoroughly and carefully and deeply. And I find myself going back again and again and again to the writing and thinking and teaching of a group of scholars and sages who frankly lived during a time when life was always precarious and uncertain, when they had no reason not to expect that they would die from some strange frightening disease or flood or fire or murder, robbery, thuggery.

These were ordinary daily occurrences in the lives of people who lived 2000 years ago. And they developed an entire belief system to manage their lives and find meaning within all of it. And so for me spiritually, it's been a kind of reembracing of that wisdom.

What are some of the things the sages have said that youve found particularly relevant for today?

First of all, there's so much conversation about darkness as metaphor. Let's take for example, the 23rd Psalm. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of darkness, I shall fear no evil." Two things have occurred to me about that verse. The first is the poet telling us we walk through this valley, we don't stay in it forever. That all things pass, and this too shall pass. And as trite and cliche as that sounds, I find it very comforting.

The second thing about that metaphor is if you think about a shadow, no matter how long, no matter how dark, a shadow is proof of light. You cannot have a shadow unless the light is still shining. It may be obstructed, in this case by a pandemic, but it still shines. It may be obstructed by our grief, by our feelings of loss, by our feelings of deprivation. But these feelings are really proof of our love of life, and the light that still exists. So in that sense, very, very comforting to me.

In another sense, you know that the high holy days are coming for Jews. And we recite this prayer, which is a kind of litany of terrible things that could happen to us and how we are supposed to respond and live during perilous times. And that prayer ends with three remedies to living through times like this.

The first is to really double down on our relationships with the people who matter. The second is to tend to our spiritual lives [and] tend to self care. And the third is to serve others. These are the ways we live through, walk through this valley of the shadow of darkness and come back out into the light.

Being in a community means being with other people, but everyones in separate living quarters now and theyre social distancing. How are you negotiating that?

I'm communicating every week with what I'm calling my Shabbat message, which I send out every Friday afternoon. I started writing it when I thought stay-at-home meant two weeks. I said, I'll write a couple of articles for the congregation. Well, now I'm writing the 26th this afternoon.

So I send out a sermon every Friday afternoon. We are doing worship services online every Friday evening, every Saturday morning, every Saturday night. And people are getting used to it.

Although we miss the energy of being with other people, it has enabled people who would not get into traffic on a Friday afternoon to come to the synagogue the ability to participate and connect and be moved by these insights and this wisdom from our tradition. So in some way, the pandemic has created greater access, not less.

We all have to make a decision. We either focus on the piece that's missing, or we focus on the beauty that remains. And I am very much encouraging people to stay focused as much as possible on the beauty that remains.

There's this concept in theology called the negative bonus. Think about a sculpture for a moment. A marble sculpture began as a block of marble. And the beauty of the sculpture was always within that block of marble, but it wasn't revealed until the sculpture removed things.

I see the pandemic that way. It has removed, taken things away from us. And I'm not for a moment trying to dismiss the pain and suffering in what has been removed. But at the same time, when we remove certain things from our lives, it leaves some very beautiful things behind. And it creates the room, the vacuum for beautiful things to emerge.

Now that I'm no longer running around on the 10 and the 405 [freeway] all day, I have more time to write, to think, to meditate, to pray, to walk. I'm discovering beauty in my neighborhood I never knew existed. I'm meeting neighbors whose names I never knew and frankly avoided before the pandemic. Im spending more time with my wife and children, and more time with myself in a good way, in a thoughtful way.

So I think this is very much about focusing on the beauty of what remains and not on the missing piece.

And the other thing that's so important that I'm talking to people about is hope. We can live without many things. We can live without going to the restaurants, going to the movies, getting our haircut, getting our nails done, getting on airplanes. We can live without many things.

We cannot live without hope. We have to remain hopeful. This is going to end. The bottom is not falling out of the world. And that is so important to embrace. We always say life is short, but it really isn't true. Life is long, and our lives are long enough for us to get past this, and to grow from it, and to create more beautiful lives going forward because of the lessons that we are learning through this pandemic.

And I'll just share one other thought with you, which a friend of mine who had cancer three times, three different cancers, shared with me. I asked him, What have you learned in this third cancer? What did you learn in the first two cancers that will help you in this third cancer? And he said, Well, one of the things that cancer taught me is that time flies even when you're not having fun.

Can you believe that it's been six months since we spoke in March about this pandemic? Can you believe that? It's staggering to me. Time flies even when you're not having fun.

We're going to get through this. We're going to be okay. And in some ways, we're going to be better than we were before, not in all ways. And again, don't misunderstand me. In no way am I saying that the lessons we're going to learn in the changes we are making are worth the suffering. I am merely saying they are not worth less. Let's make something of this. Let's not come out of this empty handed.

Written by Amy Ta and Danielle Chiriguayo, produced by Brian Hardzinski

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LA rabbi reminds everyone to focus on beauty that remains amid fires, COVID, 9/11 anniversary - KCRW

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Posted By admin on September 13, 2020

Three months after George Floyds murder in Minneapolis, thousands are still marching in American cities to decry police brutality and racial injustice. Asymmetric confrontations between heavily armed police officers in protective gear and unarmed civilians particularly Black people and people of color have become an almost daily occurrence.

Even as these protests have become a feature of American life in 2020, the images coming out of them invoke another asymmetric conflict that between Israel and the Palestinians. Despite their different histories, the Palestinian and Black American predicaments have some common features: both groups lack full political rights and adequate representation, are subjected to daily state-sponsored violence, and have been physically segregated by a host of legal and illegal techniques. These affinities have long been recognized by Black activists, scholars, and politicians from Angela Davis to Marc Lamont Hill, Michelle Alexander to Jamaal Bowman.

Yet pointing out these connections at Black Lives Matter protests has brought out a tension for liberal Zionists and mainstream American Jewish groups including those who identify as feminist. Caught between their universal ideals of social justice and their affinity with Zionism, feminists within the American-Jewish establishment are grappling with moral contradictions that the current political moment has laid bare.

This is not the first time that American-Jewish progressives have found themselves struggling to reconcile their conflicting values. The 1967 Six-Day War and the newly imposed occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, and the Sinai forced a similar moral quandary among American-Jewish feminists of the 1970s and 1980s, just as second-wave feminism was at its peak.

At the UNs First World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975, a group of feminists passed a declaration recognizing the experience of women in dealing with unequal treatment. They expressed hope that the declaration would allow them to become natural allies in the struggle against any form of oppression in which they included Zionism, racial discrimination, and apartheid. Jewish feminists felt betrayed: Betty Friedan, co-founder of the National Organization of Women, complained that the conference had turned into a debate over geopolitics, while founding editor of Ms. magazine Letty Cottin Pogrebin said the declaration cynically co-opted a feminist event for anti-Israel activity.

Inauguration ceremony of the World Conference of the International Womens Year at the Juan de la Barrera Gymnasium, Mexico City, 19 June 1975. (UN Photo/B Lane)

As Palestinian women shared first-hand accounts of their experience under occupation at womens conferences during the late 1970s and early 1980s, feminists started to see Palestine through a broader historical lens and began to recognize the similarities with other anti-colonial struggles. But it was Israels 1982 invasion of Lebanon that forced Jewish feminists to reckon with the tension between the ethno-national ethos of Zionism and the universalist spirit of the womens movement.

While some feminists of Jewish background (Nira Yuval-Davis and Ellen Cantarow) struggled with Zionisms colonial aspects, more visible Jewish feminists such as Friedan and Pogrebin dogmatically asserted the compatibility of their feminism and their Zionism. In a 1982 Ms. magazine article, Anti-Semitism in the Womens Movement, for example, Pogrebin argued that Zionism is simply an affirmative action plan on a national scale.

Betty Friedan photographed in her home, Washington, D.C., 1978. (Lynn Gilbert/CC A-SA 4.0 International)

Friedan, meanwhile, linked the struggle for womens liberation to those in South Africa and Vietnam, but refused to extend this to Palestinian liberation. Egyptian feminist Nawal al-Saadawi wrote about the humiliation she experienced when Friedan approached her as she was about to speak at the 1985 World Conference on Women: Please do not bring up Palestine in your speech, Friedan whispered in al-Saadawis ear, this is a womens conference not a political conference.

Jewish feminists further decried anti-Zionist sentiment among their sisters as a crisis of antisemitism in the womens movement. In that same Ms. magazine piece, Pogrebin wrote that she had no tolerance for anti-Zionists even if they are feminists, and called anti-Zionism tantamount to anti-Semitism because the political reality is that its bottom line is an end to the Jews. Pogrebin did not explain this equivalence, nor did she explain why anti-Zionism is genocidal.

The Jewish feminists of the 1970s and 1980s admirably advocated for the reproductive and economic rights of women. But they also set a precedent for avoiding the genuine tension between committing to inclusive causes such as equality, justice, and democracy, and to exclusive Jewish nationalism. They instead went on the defense, dismissing criticism of Israel and its policies against Palestinians as an affront to their Jewish identity.

At the time, the future of Israel-Palestine was still an open question for Jewish feminists. The assumption strongly reiterated by the Israeli government was that the newly-imposed occupation would be short-lived. More than 50 years and over 200 settlements later, that assumption of impermanence no longer holds.

These developments have not prevented many present-day liberal Zionists from agonizing over the integration of Palestine into the progressive movement. Back in the 1970s and 80s, Friedan and Pogrebin could plead ignorance as an excuse for their benevolent view of Israels intentions. But in the intervening decades, liberal Zionists and mainstream Jewish groups have continued to resist Palestines connections to the most urgent struggles of the day including the Black Lives Matter movement, which the majority of these groups support.

Police officers fire tear gas in St.Paul and Minneapolis during protests following the killing of George Floyd, May 28, 2020. (Hungryogrephotos/Wikimedia)

In an effort to adjust their messaging to the tide of public opinion, some liberal Zionist groups have coopted or made space for the BLM movement as a key cause for progressive Jews, but in the process have misrepresented the movement and translated its lessons in a fashion that does not fully challenge Israels oppression. This avoidance has necessitated a variety of strategies to distance the Palestinians from BLM from a Union for Reform Judaism leader calling BLM a Jewish value while asserting that harsh anti-Israel views were unrepresentative of the movement, to the Anti-Defamation Leagues insistence that it is antisemitic to note the similarities between American and Israeli violence against people of color.

This latter approach by the ADL is mirrored by Zioness, a self-proclaimed feminist group that describes itself as unabashedly progressive and unapologetically Zionist. Launched by the far-right Lawfare Project in 2017 in response to accusations of antisemitism at the Chicago Dyke March and on the part of the Womens March leaders, Zioness effectively levies its supposed feminist credentials to squash criticism of Israel.

Thus in its recent activists guide, released at the height of the George Floyd protests, Zioness treats the comparison between the plights of Palestinians and Black Americans as an anti-Semitic trope. In an accompanying op-ed, Zioness head Amanda Berman, a former Lawfare Project employee, calls the comparison deeply troubling and argues that messaging about Zionism and Jews in BLM protests is clearly designed to push us out of our organic political home on the left essentially invoking the reactions of Friedan and Pogrebin decades before.

Even J Street, the liberal counterpoint to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which centers opposition to the occupation in its pro-Israel agenda, has struggled in its response to some of the progressive movements criticisms of Israel. In the wake of the 2016 Movement for Black Lives platform, which characterized Israel as an apartheid state and accused it of committing genocide against Palestinians, J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami called the section misleading and unhelpful and suggested the platforms authors were misusing an ill-fitting framework of a different conflict from a different time and place. The pressure from Jewish institutions may have made its mark: the 2020 Movement for Black Lives is rumored to have been purged of any mention of the Palestinians.

J Streets anodyne support for the most basic Palestinian demands is not itself wholehearted. The key policy issue that divides liberal Zionists today is whether the United States should continue to provide Israel with military aid to the tune of nearly 4 billion dollars a year and J Street is wavering on the matter. Frustrated members of the organizations youth wing have already issued two letters since last year imploring the group to throw its support behind attaching tangible consequences to Israels occupation.

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami speaks at the 2019 J Street National Conference, October 28, 2019. (Courtesy of J Street)

But these attempts to keep J Street relevant have failed, even as the threat of annexation gave the lobby the opportunity to make its most consequential intervention yet. In the end, all that Ben-Ami had to offer was a sternly worded condemnation of Israels annexation plans, warning that it would hurt the U.S.-Israel relationship and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Like Jewish feminists four decades ago, liberal Zionists and mainstream Jewish institutions in America today fail to reckon with their inherently conflicting values. That does not mean that a humane and democratic vision of Jewish nationalism is impossible: Peter Beinart, who recently spoke out in support of a binational version of the one-state solution, takes the moral analogy between Black and Palestinian lives as a given. He draws on a common theme in African-American writing to make a point about Israel-Palestine: just as white people who hurt Black people end up hurting themselves, so do Jewish people corrupt themselves when they deny Palestinians their freedom and humanity.

The binational pillar of Beinarts vision raises many questions, however: Why force citizens of this state to choose between two separate nationalities? Why not let different groups retain their identities and institutions within a multicultural society? Nonetheless, Beinart makes an intellectually honest and critical attempt to grapple with the tension between both his Jewish and progressive values. In doing so, he has become an exception among many of his fellow liberal Zionists, whose overwhelmingly alarmist response has presented his views as an existential threat to the Jewish people. In the end, the burning issue for most liberal Zionists is not the tragedy of Israels occupation or its treatment of Palestinians, but the Sisyphean task of shielding their Zionism from the consistent application of their other, universal values.

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Zionism split the women's movement in the '70s. Will it do the same to BLM? - +972 Magazine

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Posted By admin on September 13, 2020

Israeli model May Tager, holding an Israeli flag, poses with Dubai-resident model Anastasia Bandarenka, holding an Emirati flag, during a photo shoot for FIXs Princess Collection, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sept. 8, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Christopher Pike.

JNS.org Israel-haters must not be very happy these days. All of a sudden, the big lie that nourished their anti-Zionist venom for so long is slipping away.

For more than 50 years, diplomatic geniuses kept telling the world that the key to peace in the Middle East is to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The convenient corollary was that the solution was in Israels hands, which kept the Jewish state constantly on the receiving end of global condemnation.

This brilliant maneuver sought to camouflage the plain truth that the deepest ills of the region have absolutely nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinian conflict.

Consider just a few: centuries of conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims; brutal dictatorships that have led to general misery and despair; a predatory Iranian regime seeking domination of the region; civil wars in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen; the rise of terror groups like Islamic State; and a gross absence of civil liberties that results in the routine jailing of dissidents.

September 13, 2020 4:11 am

When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011 and millions poured out onto the streets to demand those very liberties, many of us thought the big lie would be exposed. After all, what were these desperate protesters demanding if not the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities that their Arab and Muslim brethren already enjoyed in Israel?

Turns out it took a little longer about nine years.

One cant overstate the paradigm shift represented by the decision of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to go public with its open relationship with Israel. Here is the dreaded Zionist enemy, the scapegoat exploited by countless dictators over the decades to distract from their own failures, being publicly legitimized and validated by a powerful Arab nation.

No wonder Israel-haters are unhappy. Their lie is crumbling. The Zionist state is suddenly turning into a source for solutions and hope rather than hatred.

For anti-Zionist groups like the BDS movement, this is a disaster in the making. How can they continue to undermine Israel if Arab countries announce that its good for the health of their societies to do business with the Zionist state?

You can bet they wont stop trying. They will be helped by ever-eager peace activists who will continue to parrot the worn-out mantra about the importance of ending Palestinian oppression and resolving the Palestinian conflict.

But if these peaceniks look a little deeper, they will realize that the conditions for resolving the conflict are actually better now, when corrupt Palestinian leaders no longer hold a veto on progress in the region. That veto gave these selfish leaders an incentive to maintain a lucrative status quo, one that nourished their victim status while leaving Israel as a dark force worthy only of boycotts and condemnations. Without that veto, maybe they will focus more on what is good for their people.

After all, it wont be easy to push for boycotts of Israel now that some Arab countries are itching to do the very opposite. These countries will reasonably ask: Why not emulate the UAE and take advantage of Israeli innovation in areas such as desalination, cybersecurity, medicine, food security, renewable energy and, not least, defense against common threats?

This is the nightmare of Israel boycotters everywhere: the rise of a Zionist Spring in the Middle East.

As long as the big lie prevailed, the global BDS movement had the field to itself, throwing poison on the Zionist idea. On college campuses across America, it has been so successful that the mere mention of the Z word has become controversial.

As more college students show pride in their Zionist identities, we can expect the BDS movement to double down on its anti-Zionism. Their foot soldiers will do all they can to suffocate any chance of a Zionist revival. They will continue to use the Palestinian cause to malign Zionism, even though their movement has always been about bashing Israel rather than raising Palestinians.

But now, they will have a major new force going against them Arab states that want to follow the UAE. These states have the credibility to expose the big lie and reveal a simple truth: Israel is not the enemy of the Arab world and has plenty to offer its Arab neighbors to help improve peoples lives. No one not even the Palestinians can call that a lie.

How ironic if, in the end, it is Arab countries seeking real peace and real hope that will create a Zionist Spring.

David Suissa is editor-in-chief and publisher of Tribe Media Corp and Jewish Journal. He can be reached at [emailprotected] This article was first published by theJewish Journal.

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This Is the Time for a 'Zionist Spring' - Algemeiner

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Posted By admin on September 13, 2020

The political shocker from Israel this week is that Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who ran against Benjamin Netanyahu as the great hope of liberal Zionists in the United States, has now shifted to Netanyahus right urging the prime minister to continue building settlements all over the West Bank. The Jerusalem Post says this puts Gantz on the side of the annexationists against Netanyahu, who has suspended plans to annex.

Gantzs move shows once again that the only way to get ahead in Israeli Jewish politics is by going right, backing expanded Jewish settlement of the Jewish homeland. And remember, Israeli law says that only the Jews have the right to self-determination in the land.

No one in Israeli Jewish politics is talking about a two-state solution.

The destruction by Israeli leaders of self-determination for Palestinians has put pressure on liberal Zionists to choose which is more important, liberal values or Zionist ones; and two months ago Peter Beinart made a bombshell declaration that he is for one democratic state in Israel and Palestine, which would mean the end of the Jewish state. Beinart was attacked by liberal Zionists because he was undermining their position, that it is possible to preserve the Jewish democracy by separating populations of Palestinians and Jews (some day nobody knows when).

Well, Benny Gantzs collapse has shaken another liberal Zionist to reconsider the program. Michael Koplow writes at the Israel Policy Forum that Israeli politics make it is absurd for Americans to maintain the claim that the large numbers of settlers on the West Bank are not an obstacle to a peace deal, and the real obstacle is that Palestinians must accept the Jewish right to have a Jewish state in the Jewish historical homeland. Koplow writes frankly:

[E]ven if that was the view of every Palestinian on earth, permanent settlements everywhere would still prevent the conflict from being resolved in a way that the Palestinians can and will accept.

Gantzs shift has angered Koplow, a longtime Israel lobbyist in a centrist-liberal organization. He says the politics of Israel show that the settlements are here forever. And flexing his own power, Koplow says he wants the American Jewish community to open the discourse to include a one-state outcome.

There is an absolute contradiction between separation into two entities and keeping every settlement in place until the end of time.

Those who are honest about this will acknowledge that these things are inherently contradictory and adopt one of three positions: maintain the traditional posture on settlements [Israel keeps only settlement blocs] as the only path toward a viable two-state outcome, support a one-state outcome because the fact of settlements renders two states no longer possible, or argue that the hurdles posed by confederation are more easily overcome than the hurdles posed by dealing with settlements.

Koplow hints there that his position will be confederation, thereby preserving the Jewish state. Still, this is a remarkable shift on his part.

He has particular remorse for the role of the American Jewish community, including himself, for holding the bag for Israel, as it destroyed the two state solution.

The American Jewish community has long embraced the idea that while settlements are problematic, they are not the core problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I believed that too.. In a world, however, in which Israeli leaders pledge that not one brick of one settlement will ever be dismantled, no matter how isolated or far flung, and that not one Israeli will ever be asked to move, even with compensation, that belief is no longer sustainable

Koplow has surely been influenced by Beinart and the next generation of anti-occupation Jews (IfNotNow). But his shift shows the pressure that is growing inside the Jewish community against a happy lie: that it is possible to carve two ethnically-distinct states out of the small territory.

This communal pressure has yet to bear political consequences. While it is true that even congresspeople noticed Peter Beinarts bombshell collapse back in July, the Democratic Party leadership are still enforcing adherence to the two-state delusion so as to prevent a divisive discussion here of the reality: Israels apartheid and unending human rights violations against a captive population.

Koplows shift is another indication that discussing the reality is inevitable. Then Democratic politicians will come under pressure from the progressive base to support sanctions against Israel. And bipartisan support for Israel, as it exists, will no longer be the rule of U.S. politics.

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Another liberal Zionist is going wobbly Mondoweiss - Mondoweiss

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Posted By admin on September 13, 2020

For the first time in the history of the Zionist movement, the 38th World Zionist Congress (WZC) will convene online via a special broadcast center in Jerusalem.Seven hundred twenty delegates and observers from over 30 countries will participate in the 38th World Zionist Congress that convenes for three days, on October 20-22. The sessions will take place in the afternoons, synchronized with time zones in Israel, North America, Latin America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.During the Congress, whose theme is Mutual Responsibility and Aliyah to Israel, elections will take place for the leadership positions of the National Institutions the World Zionist Organization, Keren Kayemet Le Israel (Jewish National Fund-JNF), and Keren Hayesod.Current issues on the world Jewish agenda will be deliberated, including the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on Jewish communities worldwide; preparation for a wave of immigration to Israel as a result of this worldwide crisis; battling growing antisemitism, settlement development in Israel, and more.Due to the coronavirus pandemic and the cessation of air travel, the executive of The World Zionist Organization decided to convene online. The World Zionist Congress (WZC) has taken place since 1897 and has never been canceled except on two occasions during both world wars. Despite the limitations caused by the coronavirus, modern technology allows for the WZC to convene online.All the participants will be connected online through their own digital devices directly to the deliberations, lectures, panels, and voting at the Congress that will be broadcast live worldwide through an innovative online platform of the Jerusalem International Convention Center (Binyanei Hauma).Delegates and observers will be able to communicate directly with each other using this platform.The WZC is a public event of representatives of Jewish Zionists worldwide. The WZC is the supreme legislative body of The World Zionist Organization, and is a type of worldwide Jewish "legislature." cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });Delegates to the World Zionist Congress are elected representatives from their respective Zionist Federations across the globe, international Zionist movements, Jewish organizations and Jewish religious movements that are members of the World Zionist Organization as well as representatives of the Zionist political parties in the Knesset.Delegates to the WZC deliberate current events relating to the Zionist agenda, set the budget and constitution of The World Zionist Organization (WZO), and elect officials to the movements institutions, such as the Zionist Executive and the Zionist General Council that oversees the operations of the Zionist movement.

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For first time in history, the World Zionist Congress to convene online - The Jerusalem Post

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