Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 31, 2020

It is a sign of our acclimation to the total implosion of Israeli politics that newsrooms across the country breathed a sigh of relief last week with the realization that Israel isnt headed for another round of elections at least not this year. Following a last-minute deal struck by MK Tzvi Hauser of the center-right Derekh Eretz faction, it looks as if Israeli citizens will only head to the polls in March 2021. Instead of elections every 19 months, well be voting every 23 months.

This is a crisis. And while it is dangerous, it carries with it the potential to shake up the political landscape. This is, after all, a crisis that has brought to the surface the deepest issues plaguing Israeli society.

Political instability is by no means an Israeli invention, but it seems that Israel is reaching a critical moment, at least when compared to parliamentary democracies across the world. Belgium hasnt been able to form a government for the past year and a half, yet it continues to be ruled by a minority government. Italy has seen almost 70 governments since World War II, yet the majority of government crises there did not lead to elections. Italians have only gone to the polls 19 times in the past 74 years. The shortest time span between four election cycles in Italy was nine years more than four times the rate in Israel currently. Compared to Israel, Italy is an island of stability when it comes to elections.

The same kind of instability plaguing Israel was a defining characteristic of Germanys Weimar Republic, but even then, the shortest period between four election cycles was between May 1928 and November 1932 more than four years. That certainly does not mean that we are on the path to Nazism, but it is difficult to deny the fact that the political system in Israel has lost both its footing and its ability to formulate a basic set of principles that the majority of the political actors at least if they are Israeli citizens can agree upon.

This is not an abstract issue from the realm of political science. The inability to reach some kind of agreement on these principles can be seen every single day in the governments simplest, most quotidian decisions regarding management of the coronavirus crisis, from vacillating between opening and closing down restaurants and color coding municipalities to arbitrary decisions such as preventing Hasidic Jews from making a pilgrimage to the holy city of Uman in Ukraine. Even the yearly budget has been taken hostage as part of the political crisis. The last time the Knesset approved the budget was in March 2018; only a political miracle will allow a budget to be approved before March 2021.

The central, though not the sole, player behind this process is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From the beginning of his second term in 2009, and especially since the formation of his right-wing government in 2015 and the beginning of the criminal proceedings against him followed by three successive election campaigns in 2019 and 2020 Netanyahu has systematically attacked all major bodies of the Israeli kingdom. The police, the State Attorneys Office, the courts, the legal advisers, the officials in the Finance Ministry, and even the army, not to mention the media and his political rivals. There is no body that has escaped the wrath of Netanyahu, his henchmen, and in the past year his son, Yair.

A demonstrator dressed up as Netanyahu in prisoner clothing seen standing alongside the Jerusalem Light Rail during anti-Netanyahu protests in the city, August 29, 2020. (Oren Ziv)

Netanyahu has undermined the concept of the civil servant, deeming it as nothing more than a cover for the so-called deep state and the shady groups whose whole purpose is to deprive the people with Netanyahu as their natural representative of their natural right to rule. Take, for example as Eli Bitan wrote in Local Call the restrictions proposed by Netanyahu-appointed coronavirus project coordinator Ronni Gamzu, which are consistently seen as a kind of deliberate attempt to undermine the prime minister.

The opposition to Netanyahus attacks on the kingdom was, in fact, the glue that held together the various ramshackle factions of the Blue and White alliance and was precisely what won it more than 30 Knesset seats in each of the last three elections. This was an achievement that even the historic Labor Party hasnt gotten close to in the last 25 years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Benny Gantz seen during a vote in the Knesset, Jerusalem, August 24, 2020, Jerusalem. (Oren Ben Hakoon/Flash90)

The opposition to Netanyahus attacks and ceaseless delegitimization of his opponents created the very conditions for an improbable coalition led by now Defense Minister Benny Gantz back in March, which would have run the gamut from the Palestinian Balad faction to hardline nationalists like Avigdor Liberman. That near coalition would have had the opportunity to replace Netanyahu had it not been for three members of Knesset who decided that their hatred of Arabs superseded their derision for a corrupt prime minister.

The opposition to Netanyahus attacks explains the behavior of Defense Minister Gantz, Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, and Justice Minister Avi Nisenkorn, who refuse to accept Netanyahus total authority in the current unity government. If in the past, Netanyahu could summon the likes of Tzipi Livni or Ehud Barak to create some kind of fictitious national consensus, today the prime minister does not even pretend to feign interest in such a consensus. Its either him or them. There is no middle.

As many have pointed out, decrying attacks on the deep state is not unique to Netanyahu. Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Victor Orbn in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and of course Donald Trump in the United States are part of the same populist current one that goes against the values of liberal democracy and strives for total democracy, in which the person elected can do what he wants, says Dr. Honaida Ghanim, a Palestinian sociologist and director of the Madar Center for the Study of Israeli Society in Ramallah.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a joint press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, at the Prime Ministers Office in Jerusalem, on July 19, 2018. (Marc Israel Sellem)

And yet there is a difference between Netanyahu and other populist leaders. While a leader like Trump, for example, presents himself and his political camp as an example of American perfection while attacking his rivals as corrupt and driven by evil, Netanyahu takes a different approach. Rather than presenting himself as pristine, Netanyahu prefers to claim that he is no more or less dirty than any other Israeli politician.

This is particularly noticeable when it comes to his personal conduct. He does not deny, for instance, that he received cigars and champagne in the form of bribes, but rather claims that the likes of President Shimon Peres or Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did the exact same thing. He does not deny that he goaded Shaul Elovitz, owner of the Bezeq telecom group and the Walla! news site, into giving him flattering coverage, but rather claims that this has been accepted practice at the popular Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper for decades. He does not deny that he has a conflict of interest when determining who will be the state attorney conducting his trial, but rather claims that the Supreme Courts judges themselves have transformed the very notion of conflict of interest into common practice. As his ship sinks, Netanyahu is taking everyone down with him.

This tactic isnt simply reserved for Netanyahus personal behavior. One could see it around the passing of the Jewish Nation-State Law in 2018. Netanyahu did not deny that the law privileges Jews and discriminates against Palestinians, he simply claimed that this form of discrimination has always been at the heart of the Zionist project, inscribed in its very Declaration of Independence.

His support for Trumps Deal of the Century, for annexing of parts of the West Bank, and for the peace agreement with the United Arab Emirates can also be read as part of the same playbook. Just as the left viewed its support for a final-status agreement with the Palestinians as a matter of practical benefit rather than of moral compulsion, so too is Netanyahu building Israels status in the Middle East on the basis of its strength. From the moment the two-state solution was adopted, bastardized, and imposed on Palestinians by the Zionist left, Netanyahu had no difficulty in adopting it and giving it his own interpretation.

This tactic makes it very difficult to try and create a set of common values that is acceptable to society, since any of those values is immediately perceived as an excuse to prevent the rule of the right. This is one of the reasons why Israel, more than other countries in the world experiencing a rise of populism, finds itself in almost complete political paralysis.

But there is something even deeper at play here. Consciously or unconsciously, Netanyahus criticism of the kingdom echoes the criticism by Palestinian citizens and the radical left regarding practices Israel has used since its inception. When Netanyahu claims that the courts and the media are biased, that democracy here is an illusion, that land ownership is unjust, that Mizrahim face discrimination Palestinians and the radical Jewish left cannot help but nod their heads in agreement. This is exactly what they have been saying for at least 72 years; now the prime minister is adopting these very claims.

Israel, since its inception, has been built on an intricate array of racial hierarchies and privileges. This system was originally intended to ensure Jewish supremacy and Palestinian subordination, but it has also had a profound effect on the entire social, legal, economic, and political structure of the country, including among Jewish citizens, particularly between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. The occupation and apartheid that accompanied it has only served to deepen this racial hierarchy. Meanwhile, the Jewish Israeli political center established a judicial system, civil service, and media that managed to create a semblance of a functioning kingdom, while building a consensus, albeit fragile, around this faade.

People protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on August 27, 2020. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

Netanyahu, with his lack of restraint, is dismantling these institutions one by one, thereby shattering that consensus. In doing so, he is releasing all the sludge that has been accumulating for at least seven decades. Deliberately or unintentionally, he is mucking out the stables.

This may be a very dangerous moment. Removing the democratic faade from the Israeli kingdom could have profound negative repercussions for the countrys citizens and even more so for the non-citizens under its control. The rise of Naftali Bennett-style fascism is certainly a possibility should Netanyahu be forced to retire. Yet at the same time, we are being presented with an opportunity. The Balfour protests are largely a result of the current crisis; once the political system is completely stuck, it is only reasonable for people to take to the streets.

If the young people demonstrating in Jerusalem understand that for Israel to be truly democratic, it is not enough to remove Netanyahu, but rather that the entire regime between the river and the sea must be rebuilt on foundations of justice and equality, then perhaps, somehow, Netanyahus assault on the kingdom will be remembered in a positive light.

This article was originally published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

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Netanyahu is dismantling the Israeli 'kingdom' and that's a good thing - +972 Magazine

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

The NYPD is asking the publics assistance identifying the following individual depicted in the attached surveillance video and photo regarding an assault that occurred in Willliamsburg.

The NYPD tells YWN that at round 6:00AM on Tuesday, August 25th, a 46-year-old female victim was walking at the southwest corner of Division Avenue and Rodney Street, when an unknown individual approached from behind, picked up the victim and slammed her onto the sidewalk. The individual knelt beside her and repeatedly punched the victim in the face and body. The individual attempted to take the victims pants off as she was dazed laying on the sidewalk, before fleeing the scene on foot on Division Avenue towards Keap Street. The victim sustained severe head and body trauma, EMS responded to the location and transported her to Brooklyn Hospital were she is in a medically induced coma.

The suspect is described as an adult male, light complexion, with a full beard. He was last seen wearing a yellow hooded sweatshirt, dark colored pants and red sneakers.

Surveillance video, taken from the incident, is attached.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPDs Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at http://WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, or on Twitter @NYPDTips.

All calls are strictly confidential.

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Woman Badly Assaulted In Heart Of Williamsburg Hasidic Community [VIDEO & PHOTO] - Yeshiva World News

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo threatened on Thursday to step in to prevent large weddings - particularly in Brooklyn's Hasidic community - if New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio fails to do so.

If the mayor is not doing any enforcement actions, then the state will, Cuomo told a news conference, according to the New York Post.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

(Photo: AFP)

Weve had superspreader events in New Rochelle with the Jewish community, weve had them in the Catholic community. The virus does not discriminate by religious or racial lines, right? This is an equal-opportunity situation. So we police it in every circumstance.

Cuomo's comments come after de Blasio announced 16 new cases last week in Borough Park, home to the citys largest Hasidic population, with several connected to a large wedding.

De Blasio was sharply criticized recently for seeming to come down much harder on members of the Jewish community for congregating at large gatherings - including funerals.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

(Photo: AP)

The New York Post also reported Wednesday that several wedding halls in Borough Park continue to host large Orthodox weddings, despite the bans on gatherings of more than 50 people, with people entering through side doors and windows covered with paper.

The rising number of cases led several branches of the Jewish emergency medical services organization Hatzalah to issue warnings after it saw an increase in calls from people reporting COVID-like symptoms.

This raises concerns that if the numbers continue to grow it will affect both the timing of schools' reopening for the fall semester and also in-person High Holy Day services.

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NY's Cuomo vows action against Hasidic Brooklyn weddings over virus concerns - Ynetnews

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

There has recently been some speculation that the human population, or at least some segments of it, may already have had sufficient COVID-19 infections to achieve the protective effect of herd immunity. There are also new studies using computational modeling that suggest that the population levels of immunity needed for broad protection are lowerthan the most common estimates of 60-66% immune. While these new and hypothetical constructs of infection-acquired herd immunity show useful directions for the future of public health research for both COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, there are still too many unknowns to use these numbers to design active health policy.

As I wrote earlier this year:

Many hard hit communities, such as the Hasidic community in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklynand other urban neighborhoods in London and Mumbai, have already had a substantial number of infections within distinct spatially contained groups, leading people to speculate that they may have established a protective level of immunity within these areas. In addition, many researchers have developed mathematical models of the outbreak and have come up with values lower than the typical estimates of the population needed for herd immunity for COVID-19, ranging from about 43% to as low as 10-20%.

The classical calculation of herd immunity is based on the infectivity of the virus in question, definedby the mathematical expression, 1-(1/R0). R0 (R-naught) is the basic reproductive number of the virus, which is an indicator of how easily an infection is transmitted. This is an estimate of the number of secondary cases generated by an infectious individual at the start of a novel outbreak, when the rest of the population is susceptible. There are many difficulties in estimating R0 during an active outbreak, resulting in some wide variations in estimates over time anddata coming from different geographic locations. Early WHO estimates turned out to be too low, but the most widely used estimates R0 for SARS-CoV-2 now remain at around 2.5 to 3, meaning that one infectious person will infect 2.5 to 3 others. The calculated estimate based on a R0 of 2.5 to 3 results in 60-66% percent of people needing to have immunity before there is any herd immunity effect for the population.

Herd immunity helps reduce the likelihood of disease transmission from infected individuals to non-immune individuals. Immunity can be acquired from vaccines or, in many cases, previous infection and recovery from the infection.

U.S. Government Accountability Office on Flickr.

A mathematical model recently published by Tom Britton and colleagues in Science suggests that because population groups vary by factors including age and rates of social activity and contact, herd immunity could established through illness and recovery with only around 43% of the population,instead of the 60% required using a classical model assuming an R0 of 2.5.

While this type of mathematical model for herd immunity is theoretically interesting since it attempts to capture contextual factors and elements of population heterogeneity, it is still too early to be directly applied to public policy. Our current knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is incomplete, including a lack of information about how we may develop immunity and how long immunity will typically last.Mathematical modeling isalso based on broad assumptions that are often untested in the real world. Much more research is needed before we know if these new ideas about herd immunity should be applied to public health interventions and planning.

There are generally two broad categories of infectious disease models: mechanistic models, which use scientific understanding of disease dynamics and human behavior, and statistical models, which rely only on patterns in the data

U.S. Government Accountability Office on Flickr.

The most striking example of how fast our understanding can change is the recent confirmation of a reinfection with a second case of COVID-19 after four and a half months in Hong Kong.Unlike earlier reports of reinfection, which were mainly anecdotal, this case was confirmed based on viral genome sequencing, showing that the second infection was from a genetically distinct strain. This suggests that reinfection is an important possibility and that immunity acquired through illness and recovery may last only months. This new case adds additional elements of uncertainty to Britton and colleagues model, since the authors state that their current model was designed based on the assumption that infection with and subsequent clearance of the virus leads to immunity against further infection for an extended period of time.

Reinfection and the typical duration of immunity are not the only uncertainties. It also remains unclear to what degree immunity is antibody-mediated versus cell-mediated, whichkinds of antibodies are most important, whether immunity might prevent future disease or only make reinfections less severe, and whether prior exposure to common cold coronaviruses offer any protection. Immune response also may depend on characteristics beyond age, including biological sex and individual genetic variation, and other factors. The data available is often incomplete, meaning that mathematical models may be based on biased samples; underreporting of data has been high, and areas without sufficient testingdo not provide adequate data.

There are also a number of difficulties inherent in using the basic reproductive rate to predict disease spread, and it is difficult to disentangle the basic rate R0 from the actual transmission rate (Rt), which is impacted by changes in behavior and in population immunity over time. If done properly, all of the measures meant to control the virus, including lockdowns, social distancing, business closures, travel bans, mask wearing, and contact tracing, will reduce the transmission. While this is a good thing for the publics health, it makes the data collected ambiguous: has disease transmission has been slowed by public health measures, or is it waning naturally?

Current estimates suggest that a person infected with COVID-19 will, on average, pass the virus to 2-3 other people.

United Nations COVID-19 Response on Unsplash.

There are also speculations that the amount of virus a person contacts impacts the severity of illness (this is known asa dose-response relationship), potentially explaining why masking is effective. It is still unclear to what degree seasonality plays a role in transmission, and more research is needed on the exact mechanisms of virus spread and persistence in the air and the role of indoor conditions such as humidity, temperature, and ventilation. Finally, once a vaccine becomes available, it will impact herd immunity, though the results will depend both on the effectiveness and the distribution of any future vaccines as well as whether people are willing to get the vaccine at all.

Throughout this pandemic, the concept of herd immunity has been frequent fodder for wishful thinking. Some countries, including Britain and Sweden, attempted to rely on herd immunity rather than implementing broad control measures. Now Britain has reconsidered this plan, and Sweden has sustained much larger spread of the disease and greater number of deaths than its neighbors.

In the United States, wishful thinking about the virus disappearing on its ownhas delayed needed intervention and prompted premature reopening. Pandemic control measures have many unpleasant side effects, and herd immunity can be an appealing concept for those who seek reassurance that the world will eventually return to normal, but our best way forward requires an understanding that conducting quality research and applying it effectively to policy take time and a great deal of work.

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Don't bank on herd immunity to save us from COVID-19 - Massive Science

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

With a vision of Bible prophecies deeply embedded in his heart, and with God on his side, Rabbi Ezekiel Ben Aharon is single-handedly putting into play an end-times project to convert the entire Muslim world to faith in the God of Israel. After an hours discussion with him on the phone, Im beginning to wonder if his plan just might work. The Hasidic rabbis ultimate goal? Prepare the way for the return of the Messiah.

Rabbi Aharon, or as I like to call him, the Apostle to the Muslims, is training emissaries to go forth from Jerusalem to bring the word of God to the 350 million Muslims in the Middle East and around the world, in Arabic. Each and every people group on earth has a job to do, he told me in an exclusive interview for Israel Today, and it is the Jews job to bring Gods Torah (word) to the nations.

The rabbi is preparing disciples for their mission in his new Arabic language yeshiva (school for Jewish studies) located in

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Exclusive Interview With God's Apostle to the Muslims - Israel Today

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

He created a series of 12 songs and music videos, each combining his past experiences hope and inspiration for the future.

By Joseph Wolkin, World Israel News

Musician and songwriter Aryeh Shalom is telling his story of religious awakening and personal struggles in a unique way, combining the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov with Broadway.

Shaloms Exile And Redemption: A Neo-Hasidic Rock Opera debuts on Oct. 13 on Amazon Prime. His first song of the rock opera, A Little Peace In Our Time, will be released on Sept. 15.

This is no ordinary rock opera. It details Shaloms life of trauma, a pair of divorces, manic depression, his mothers death and his journey to finding the truth in Judaism.

Exile And Redemption teaches us that no matter what challenges we may face in our lives, God is with us and we are never alone, Shalom said.

The challenges themselves have a purpose and are meant to make us stronger and more empathetic human beings. Even if we feel that we have made irredeemable mistakes, Gods unconditional love is unwavering and we are always given the chance to rise again and find forgiveness. This struggle and our ability to choose is our greatness and the purpose of our existence both individually and collectively.

Shalom has faced plenty of trials and tribulations throughout his life. But no matter what happened to him, he sought solace in music.

He created a series of 12 songs and music videos, each combining his past experiences with hope and inspiration for the future.

I always found Hasidic stories to be really powerful, Shalom said. Originally, the album was meant to be a conceptual album exploring those essential ideas, which brought me back to Judaism. Some of the music is inspired by the relationships Ive made along the way.

Shaloms two divorces deeply influenced the creation of Exile and Redemption. His first marriage had some intense moments.

When youre becoming observant, one of the things you look forward to is having a traditional family life with Shabbos guests and singing around the table, he said. Losing my kids like that, even though I didnt lose them completely, really broke me.

His first manic episode came while he was studying at a yeshiva in Jerusalem. After going back to America, he found his path back to success and meaning.

What better way to share my music and give it a platform through stories, Shalom said. It wont be enough to have just one music video. Each song needs to have its own platform.

In Philadelphia, Shalom has worked with people in their 20s and 30s as part of The Chevra Social Club for the past 18 years.

He grew up attending a Solomon Schechter School and Camp Akiba before eventually going to Israel on a teen tour. Shalom was so inspired by the trip that he went back to the land of milk and honey post-high school in the middle of the Gulf War. He was studying in London at the time, but while hanging out with his grandfather in Florida, he knew it was time to go to Israel.

Like any typical Jewish mother, she went to the Army Navy store and bought me a gas mask, he joked. But when I landed at the airport, they were handing out gas masks.

Gas mask or not, he was off to live on a religious kibbutz. By the end of the six-month program, he had, what he calls, an awakening. As he started to ask more questions, the staff directed him to travel to Israels capital, Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem, he went to the Heritage House hostel. He fell in love with the city.

When I first got to the Heritage House, I met Rabbi Meir Schuster and I had a lot of questions, Shalom said. He said, Have I got a program for you. It was the Aish Discovery seminar.

By the conclusion of the course, Shalom did some deep soul searching around the streets of Jerusalem. But he went back home, becoming part of the hippie counterculture, as he described.

However, he couldnt stay away from Israel for long. He headed back to the Holy Land, studying at Aish HaTorah for three and a half years to become a rabbi.

It was such an intense period, he said. I was going through this revival. I needed something and I found it cathartic, so I turned to music.

Shalom grew up playing the cello, participated in youth orchestras and even took part in musical theater. It was only a matter of time until he would return to his roots.

The first song I wrote was for my sisters birthday, who was living on a kibbutz in the north, he said. It was helping me process this revival.

Now, he is sharing his story with the hope of inspiring others. The rock operas 12 songs are meant to do exactly that.

If you were to sum it up in one phrase, in the song Human Becoming, it illustrates the trials and tribulations that I went through, Shalom said. When you become observant, you think youre going to have the perfect life with a perfect wife. Thats not what lifes all about. Judaism is a great tool to help you overcome your challenges, but because you live a traditional lifestyle doesnt mean you wont have any challenges.

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Neo-Hasidic rock opera, Exile and Redemption, may be first of its kind - World Israel News

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

Parashat Ki Teitzei is filled with rules. Rules about who we are and who we should be. Rules about how to build a just society. Rules about how to punish people who transgress the bounds of that society. Rules upon rules upon rules. In fact, there are over 70 mitzvot in this Torah portion.

In the midst of all of these laws about paying laborers and how to plow your field, comes this gem of a rule about parenting:

Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents: a person shall be put to death only for his own crime. (Deuteronomy 24:16).

This might not look like a parenting mantra at first glance, but its actually some incredibly deep and profound advice.

There is so much pressure on parents these days to raise their children the right way. In our modern global society, where information travels instantaneously across the world, the options feel infinite. And the arguments for each option are even stronger. Breastfeeding or bottle-feeding. Cry-it-out or co-sleep. These debates have torn the internet apart and caused parents themselves to come apart at the seams. As if the fourth trimester werent hard enough already.

But these overwhelming options are all outgrowths of the modern era. Back in the time of the Torah, there wasnt a parenting guidebook. Learning how to be a parent was something that happened over time. Families lived in larger clans, and there was always a baby or small child who needed to be cared for, often by their older siblings. There was no guidebook, and no need for one.

These days, as families live further apart from each other, there isnt as much hands-on learning about how to raise children. It wasnt even recently that the word parenting even entered the wider culture, though the Merriam-Webster Dictionary cites its first use in 1918. So parents have to figure much of it out on their own, and the pressure is enormous. They are responsible not only for ensuring their children live to adulthood, but also for making them into good people. Its like turning carbon into a diamond.

With this level of pressure, its a breath of fresh air to learn that parents are not responsible for their childrens sins. The pressure is off. Of course, parents can and should work hard to raise their children to be good people. But ultimately, the responsibility to be a good person belongs to the child.

Later in the Bible, in the book of Proverbs, this is stated even more clearly: Raise up a child in the way he ought to go; he will not swerve from it even in old age. (22:6) In other words, the work of child-rearing isnt about raising the best child ever, but about raising a child in the way they ought to go, to be their own best self.

Theres a well-known Hasidic story in which Rabbi Zusya has died and appears at the gates of heaven, worried about what God will say to him. Will God berate Rabbi Zusya for not being more like Moses, or Solomon, or David? Instead, when God appears, God asks: Why werent you Zusya?

It is a parents most important job to help their children be themselves. Jewish tradition, in its infinite wisdom, allows this for all of us, even as it also allows for mistakes and learning and growth.

The pressure of modern parenting doesnt leave a lot of room for error. But the Torah gives parents that space. The Torah understands that parents may fail. They may not be perfect. Their children may not be perfect. It grants space for honesty, communication, love, and trying again, even when we fail. And after weve tried and tried again, we are only accountable for ourselves.

Ki Teitzei gives us some profound modern parenting advice: the space to make mistakes. What an incredible relief.

Empower your Jewish discovery, daily

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Sins of the Father - My Jewish Learning

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

Glorias job as adomestic worker was hard enough before the pandemic hit.

We were forced to clean the floors on our knees. It made me feel humiliated, says Gloria, a36-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant who arrived six years ago in New York, where she works as ahousecleaner. (Gloria is undocumented; In These Times is using apseudonym to protect her identity.) The economic needs have forced me to perform ajob that Iwas not expecting to find here.

Gloria eventually refused to kneel down to clean the floors, despite her fear of being sacked from the job and the language barriers. Now, the pandemic has imposed another burden on domestic day laborers like her. Domestic workers and their advocates say that the Covid crisis has caused wages to drop and work to dry up, and has left already vulnerable workers even more exposed to exploitation.

The pandemic caused an immediate dip in Glorias pay. With work even more precarious than before, she was forced to accept lower wages. After earning $13 or $14 per hour before Covid hit, Gloria says, we have to work now for meager wages, for $10, $11, $12 per hour, even though our job is tough and considered essential.

Gloria usually works for Hasidic Jewish families in Brooklyn, some of whom refused to wear protective equipment in her presence, at least during the beginning of the pandemic. She did not receive protective gear herself.

As aday laborer in New York, Gloria has no legal recourse to denounce abuses. She is far from alone: unlike other workers who, regardless of immigration status, are protected by federal and state laws, the vast majority of Americas 2.5 million domestic workers are explicitly left out of these protections.

Domestic workers live in the legacy of slavery, and this legacy continues to shape the sector today, said Allison Julien, co-director of the New York Chapter of We Dream in Black and afounding member of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), during an August 13 video-conference to commemorate Black Womens Equal Pay Day.

Government leaders deliberately carved out domestic and farmworkers from any law that could protect their rights, Julien added.

Domestic workers were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act because Southern senators refused to grant equal protection to aworkforce made up largely of black women. That legacy is alive and well today.

Domestic workers are entitled to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, but they do not have the right to form unions and are not covered by federal anti-discrimination laws. Employers are not obligated to provide safe working conditions or protective gear for workers.

Nine states and the city of Seattle have versions of a domestic workers bill of rights, although most of them lack enforceable frameworks, according to Polaris, anonprofit that operates anational human trafficking hotline, conducts research and promotes policy changes.

New York has adomestic worker law, but people who work less than 40hours aweek cannot access its benefits. Day laborers like Gloria, who are hired by the day or by the hour, are similarly excluded from the laws benefits, as are undocumented people.

Black and undocumented domestic workers have been disproportionately affected by these exclusions, compounded by the current health emergency and the resulting economic recession.

A survey conducted in May and June in Massachusetts, Miami-Dade County, and New York by the Institute for Policy Studies and NDWA found that, in the wake of the crisis, 70% of the Black immigrant domestic workers surveyed had either lost their jobs (45%) or received reduced hours and pay (25%). Black undocumented workers were nearly twice as likely to be terminated than documented workers (64% compared to 35%).

Domestic workers plight can be seen every morning on the corner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where dozens of them gather to get ajob for the day. Its alittle vignette of the reality women migrant workers face in this country, says Ligia Guallpa, co-executive director of the Workers Justice Project (WJP), agrassroots organization.

Before the pandemic, 40 to 50 women laborers showed up every morning. Now, Guallpa says, that number has climbed to between 70 and 80. You can imagine that employers now have abigger advantage. They know that the need is greater for workers, she says.Apart from competing for work with 80 other laborers, these women are now forced to accept whatever the employer offers $10 or $8 per hour.

Trafficking goes up

The vast majority of domestic workers are immigrants, which makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and labor trafficking when employees are forced to remain on the job through threats, violence or other forms of coercion, or brought to acountry through fraudulent means.

Andrea Rojas, director of Strategic Initiatives at Polaris, says that this is aform of modern-day slavery. This situation, she adds, sends the very dangerous message that since these workers have been excluded from protections granted to other work categories, they are less valuable.

Polaris registered 8,000 labor trafficking cases in the U.S. from 2007 to 2017, the highest number of which involved domestic work. The pandemic has coincided with aspike in referrals to the organization.

The number of trafficking cases (both from sex and labor trafficking) handled by the Polaris hotline increased by more than 40% in the month after the lockdowns in the U.S. compared to the prior month from approximately 60 to 90.

New York state has experienced asimilar trend. The New York State Trafficking Victim Referral Process processed177 referrals between January and June, a70% increase over the same period in 2019.

Domestic workers have often been left to their own devices and the mercy of employers.

We are talking about foreign workers who often do not know the language, who are isolated and without their safety networks, Rojas explains. Theres also apower imbalance, she adds, when low-paid laborers work in wealthy peoples houses.

Even workers who arrive in the U.S. with visas as nannies or au pairs receive a know-your-rights brochure that makes them responsible if they become labor trafficking victims, according to Polaris.

Without legal protections, civil society groups and international organizations have launched initiatives to reduce domestic labor exploitation. Polaris and the NDWApromote acode of conduct for employers and aprogram to train anyone who hires aforeign domestic worker for the first time.

The WJP offers employers the chance to hire domestic workers under secure conditions for both parties. According to Guallpa, the conditions include a $20 per hour minimum wage and arequirement that employers give their workers protective equipment.

Without these programs, and the generosity of some employers, Gloria says she would not be able to navigate the current crisis.

We pay our taxes but have been excluded from all government aid, she says. We have to keep on risking our lives for very littlemoney.

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A Direct Legacy of Slavery, Domestic Worker Exploitation Is On the Rise In the U.S. - In These Times

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

Former Womens March, Inc. leader Linda Sarsour said in an Aug. 26 appearance on a YouTube channel that right-wing Zionists have allied with white nationalists to smear her.

Nomiki Konst, host of The Nomiki Show, argued that there is a powerful arm of right-wing AIPAC interests that have worked to smear Sarsour, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

This is coming from the right wing, Konst said to Sarsour. This is not coming from normal Jewish Americans even Israelis, frankly this is from the right wing. So can you clarify just like, where you actually stand?

Sarsour replied: Where this comes from is the alignment of right-wing Zionists with the white nationalists, and its such an unlikely allyship because the white nationalists are in fact very unapologetically anti-Semitic and the root of white nationalism is anti-Semitism. Thats why, for a lot of people, they get confused when they see the very staunch pro-Israel folks align with white nationalists, with the Republican Party, with Donald Trump.

Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Abraham Cooper said in a statement to the Journal, I am always amazed by the level of chutzpah when anti-Semites want to tell the Jewish community what constitutes an anti-Semite and anti-Semitism. HypocriteSarsour says that right wing Zionists hate her but she is the self anointed gatekeeper who bars left wing Zionists from the Womens movement.

Sarsour also said that new groups have emerged as a front for AIPAC, like the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and others that are trying to rebrand themselves as Democrats who are progressive on other issues except for this issue of Israel-Palestine and were onto them.

DMFI President and CEO Mark Mellman said in a statement to the Journal, These fact-free allegations from Sarsour are outrageous lies, but they are far less important than the vile antisemitic statements for which she is infamous.

Sarsour went on to tell Konst that shes against a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Just by looking at a map of that region, there is no way to have a two-state solution with the types of settlements that have [been] built and the way in which the land has been divided up, Sarsour said. I believe in a one-state solution. I believe in democracy. I believe that Jews and Palestinians, that those who live in that land can live under one democracy where we all can participate, where we can all have access to high quality education [and] health care, where theres no apartheid, where theres no separate bus lines for Jews and Arabs, where we could really live in a society [where] were integrated, where people in our community can be judges and lawyers and they can be in parliament. Thats what I believe.

Sarsour also expressed support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, arguing that its a tactic, its not an organization. They used it in the civil rights movement with the Montgomery [Ala.] bus boycott, we used it to stand up against South African apartheid, and now we are in 2020 using it to stand up for the rights of the Palestinian people, which again live under military occupation funded by our U.S. taxpayer dollars.

She went on to accuse Israel of human rights violations for its treatment of the Palestinians and said that shes also critical of Saudi Arabia and China for their respective human rights violations.

If you are a dictator, if you are a nation that engages in human rights violations, I will say what I need to say and I will do whatever I need to do to help, Sarsour said. I cant be the spokesperson for every justice cause, but you would think that as a Palestinian that people would expect these views from somebody like me. These are by default mainstream views in the communities that I come from.

So when the Biden campaign wants to condemn these views and say that they do not belong in the Democratic Party or that they reject them as representatives of the Democratic Party and the Democratic ticket, what you in fact are saying is that you condemn the views that my communities hold, which means you condemn my communities and are saying that people who are pro-BDS, people who support Palestinian human rights, are not welcome in the party.

On Aug. 18, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign condemned Sarsour after her appearance on a Muslim Delegates and Allies Virtual Assembly panel during the Democratic National Convention a day earlier. Middle East Eye reported on Aug. 23 that the Biden campaign had apologized for the comments against Sarsour in an off-the-record phone call with Arab and Muslim activists.

However, Biden senior adviser Symone Sanders told CNNs Jake Tapper that the Aug. 23 call was to affirm Vice President Bidens unshakeable commitment to working with Arab, Palestinian and Muslim Americans and to standing up against anti-Muslim prejudice, and to make clear that we regretted any hurt that was caused to these communities. We continue to reject the views that Linda Sarsour has expressed.

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Sarsour Says 'Right-Wing Zionists' Are Aligning With White Nationalists to Smear Her - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on August 29, 2020

Houses are seen in the Israeli settlement of Itamar, near Nablus, in the West Bank, June 15, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Ronen Zvulun.

At least 500,000 Israelis live in territories won in the 1967 Six-Day War, and possibly a great deal more than that. They reside everywhere from cities to small towns to tiny hilltop outposts, and represent a diverse and complex society-within-a-society that is far more difficult to understand and describe than most outsiders realize.

Despite several setbacks, such as the 1982 evacuation of Yamit and the 2005 Gaza disengagement, the settlement movement has been, for the most part, a remarkable success story. Over the past five decades, it has gone from a loosely-organized non-governmental social phenomenon to a highly-institutionalized and politically-powerful voting bloc, one that is in equal measure loved, hated and feared by much of the rest of Israeli society.

And for those of us who view the movement with skepticism at best and open hostility at worst, it is time to admit that. Whether we like it or not, the settlement movement has won. It has populated the land, seized the hilltops and achieved political and social legitimacy. The only question for the rest of us is, what do we do about it?

The first step, one imagines, is to give the devil his due. For many Zionists, opposition or even simple ambivalence toward the settlement movement is not easy, because there is in fact so much we agree on. All Zionists, of whatever political stripe, more or less believe that the Land of Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, that Jews have the right to return to and live in any part of it, that they have the right to do so as an independent and sovereign people and that this is true whether the rest of the world likes it or not.

August 28, 2020 10:24 am

There are, moreover, the simple facts of history: whether or not the Arabs or the world care to admit it, Judea and Samaria was the heartland of the ancient Jewish kingdoms; it is integral to the Jewish peoples biblical inheritance, replete with sites of the utmost sanctity to us, from Hebron to Josephs Tomb; and our presence there is as indigenous as one could possibly imagine.

To have these pieces of our history and for Jews, history is essentially what we are in our grasp and then contemplate letting them go, probably forever, is a deeply-wrenching experience.

One must also admit to those aspects of the settlers that are, in fact, quite admirable. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has a great many students from the settlements, and while I was studying there, I came to know quite a few of them. They were all universally-good people, and nothing like the knit-kippah-wearing, machine-gun-toting fanatics of popular legend.

The settlers, moreover, for good or ill, are people of considerable integrity. They are willing to put their lives in danger for what they believe in, and it is wrong to dismiss this kind of sincerity out of hand.

But this sincerity is also troubling. It is not per se admirable to act on ones beliefs. Indeed, once politics enters the picture, it can be deeply disconcerting to argue with settlers, especially the true believers among them. They are often terrifyingly sure of themselves, and sooner or later the entire argument descends into them waxing poetic about the San Remo Resolution and then insulting you as a coward or a self-hating Jew. This is by no means always the case, but it happens often enough to leave a bad taste in ones mouth.

And this is particularly frustrating because there is no question that there are very legitimate reasons to be skeptical of and even hostile toward the settlement movement.

First and most obvious, there is the fact that essentially the entire world considers the settlements illegal. The answers the settlers usually give to this are a) the settlements are not illegal, and b) who cares what the world thinks anyway?

On the first, the aforementioned San Remo Resolution usually enters the picture. This 1920 international agreement, the defenders of the settlements claim, established the entirety of Mandatory Palestine, including Judea and Samaria, as the site of a future Jewish state. As such, Israel is the only rightful sovereign over the disputed territories.

The problem with this is that it simply isnt true. The resolution sets no borders as to what constitutes Palestine, only saying they may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers. This was effectively done by the UN in 1947, which allocated the West Bank to an Arab state. One could argue that the Arabs refusal to accept it makes it a dead letter, but this certainly does not establish Israel as the sole rightful sovereign over the West Bank.

As to whether we should care what the world thinks, there is no doubt that on certain occasions we definitely shouldnt. The mere fact that the entire world thinks something does not make it true. Indeed, if history has proven anything, it is that the Jews can be right and the entire world wrong. Nonetheless, Israel is part of the international community, and what that community thinks does matter, if only because it is a simple fact, a reality we cannot avoid.

So, in deciding whether we should care about what the world thinks or not, we must evaluate the consequences of not caring, and whether it is worth it. For the true believers among the settlers, of course, the answer is obvious the land was given to the Jewish people by God, and therefore nothing could be more worth it. For the rest of us, we can be forgiven a certain doubt toward such a claim.

And this question of God leads us to what is, to me, the most troubling aspect of the settlement movement: its messianic ideology. While many if not most settlers are not extremists on the subject, there is no question that the primary motivating force behind the activism that drives the movement is a ferociously messianic passion, the belief that the settlement of the land is the harbinger of the messianic age and the more settlement there is, the closer comes the apocalypse, the perfection of the world.

There is no doubt that messianism, like all fanatical ideologies, is not per se a bad thing. In the right circumstances, it has enormous revitalizing powers. It can be what Eric Hoffer called a miraculous instrument for raising societies and nations from the dead an instrument of resurrection.

Indeed, much of the power of secular Zionism is derived from the messianic urge, however distanced it may be from formal religion. As the arch-secularist David Ben-Gurion once said, Without messianism we cannot live.

But there is a very dark side to messianism. At its most extreme, it ceases to be revitalizing and becomes horrifically destructive to both others and especially to oneself. In the Bar Kokhba revolt, it led to the final annihilation of ancient Judea and a 2,000-year-long exile. Under Shabtai Tzvi, it came close to destroying traditional Judaism. And as the great scholar of the Kabbalah Gershom Scholem observed, by releasing the enormous explosive energies of messianism, Zionism opened the question of whether or not Jewish history will be able to ensure this entry into the concrete realm without perishing in the crisis of the messianic claim.

It is here that we must face the settlement movement at its worst. While the majority of settlers are not messianic fanatics, the movement has given birth to some terrible horrors, such as Baruch Goldsteins slaughter of 29 innocent Muslims in 1994, and the Kahanist ideologues of Hebron and Kiryat Arba. At its extremes, the settlement movement rejects Israeli democracy itself, and proposes a theocratic state in which, for example, the Palestinians will be reduced to the status of a ger toshav, which is to say, tenth-class citizenship of a type completely unacceptable in a modern society.

This brings us to the final and perhaps fatal flaw in the settlement movement: Its view of the Palestinians. Despite the settlers best efforts, the West Banks population remains overwhelmingly Arab and this is not likely to decisively change anytime soon. For the most part, the leaders of the settlement movement simply refuse to address this issue in any realistic way. Most of them think, one imagines, that everything is in the hands of heaven and God will somehow work things out, but for those of us facing the prospect of someday being forced to become a Jewish minority in an Arab state due to sheer weight of demographics, this is not a comforting thought.

All of this being said, however, we must return to a simple incontrovertible fact: The settlement movement has won. It has established itself as a permanent presence in the West Bank. To some extent at least, it has become an integral part of Israel, as the movement has always wanted. The settlements are not going anywhere, and we must make some kind of peace with that.

Where, then, do we go from here?

It seems to me, as a strong skeptic of the settlement movement, that the task at hand is to accept the settlers victory and work to restrain their excesses. The imperative now is to prevent the worst-case scenario, which is that the line between Israel proper and the disputed territories will be erased, and Israel forced to become either an Arab state or a tyrant in our own land.

Obviously, this has practical aspects, such as containing settlement growth and preventing the establishment of new outposts. But there is another struggle that is in some ways more important: a struggle of ideas on the question of messianism. Not between messianism and anti-messianism, because to some extent, all Zionists are messianic. Rather, it is a battle between two different kinds of messianism: a messianism of resurrection versus a messianism of apocalypse.

This is a struggle between two competing visions: one that desires a world in which the reawakening and revitalization of the Jewish people in a Jewish state is enough, and one that is willing to see that state and its people potentially destroyed if that is what is required to fulfill the messianic promise. One of these messianisms is partial, the other is absolute. One can live in the real world, the other cannot. And if there is anything that Zionism desires above all, it is for the Jews to live in the real world.

The settlement movements apocalyptic messianism has given it immense energies and led to extraordinary accomplishments. There is no point in denying this. But we who wish to see Israel survive as a Jewish state must now assert our own messianic claim. A claim for a partial messianism that concentrates on building the Jewish state that actually exists, embracing and even loving its imperfections, rather than potentially destroying it in favor of the perfect one that will never exist. We must insist on resurrection rather than apocalypse. This will not be easy, but accepting the settler movements victory may be something like a beginning, and I believe the time for that beginning is now.

Benjamin Kerstein is a columnist and Israel Correspondent for The Algemeiner.

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