Essays and viewpoints

Huge sports news! Michigan beats an Ohio team! Enjoy that headline now because that’s the last time you’ll see that sports headline for the remainder of the year. Ooh, admittedly with the college football season now upon us, that was a really cheap shot from this Spartan alum at Wolverine faithful. Yes, Michigan did defeat Ohio, but it was on the famed Little League baseball diamond in Williamsport, Pa. On Sunday, Aug. 29, Taylor North, our state’s representative in the 2021 Little League World Series, defeated Hamilton Ohio’s West Side squad 5-2, to capture our state’s first title since Hamtramck captured the crown in 1959. And, boy, was our current depressing news cycle in need of a healthy dose of a feel-good story.

I mean, seriously folks, can you possibly imagine a sports team that actually hasn’t been capable of winning a championship in 62 years? Ooh, admittedly with the pro football season now upon us, that was a really cheap shot at our Detroit Lions whose current championship drought stands at 64 years.

COVID restrictions forced most of Taylor’s 16-game tournament schedule to be played without family members in attendance. Still, over a 23-day stretch away from home, these courageous kids defeated champions from seven different states.

It takes me back (cue theme music from the film Field of Dreams) to the days when my old 1960s Camp Tanuga softball teams traveled up north in the back of a stake truck to play teams from Camp Walden, Maplehurst and Sea Gull. Win or lose, we always stopped at a Dairy Queen on the way back.

My Little League career wasn’t as notable. The two things I remember most were, one, panicking each time I stepped into the batter’s box praying I wouldn’t be nailed by some 12-year-old’s wildly inaccurate fastball. And two, our manager taking us to an A&W Root Beer stand after any game that we turned a double play in. Who knew ice cream would play such a dominant role in my baseball career?

I did go on to enjoy some “success” as an adult softball player. I was the winning pitcher for Drakeshire Bowling Lanes in the 1978 Southfield Parks & Rec Men’s Class B Softball Championship. After getting the last out, our catcher, Jeffery, charged the mound and picked me up like Bill Freehan famously picked up Mickey Lolich after clinching the ’68 Series against the Cardinals. Too bad smart phones didn’t exist to capture how goofy we looked.

Yes, baseball is in my blood. That’s why I cherish the Little League World Series tournament. (Cue theme music from the film The Natural.) Each year, it allows us the throwback thrill of enjoying our national pastime in its purest and most innocent form. Teams competing without the benefit of sign stealing, foreign substances being applied to pitched balls or testing positive for performanceenhancing drugs. Although, to be completely transparent, one Taylor player, 12-year-old Gavin Ulin, stunned the audience during an in-depth ESPN interview when he admitted to profiting off of “grass.” “I cut lawns in my spare time,” Gavin said. “I got 10 lawns a week. … I like that

Alan cash.” Muskovitz He said he makes $35-40 per lawn. That’s a street value of up to $400 a week from his “grass” business. Oh, there is one thing he probably won’t be cutting any time soon — his now nationally recognized mullet haircut that hangs below his cap. This kid was “Taylor-made” for a great story. I’m writing this prior to the big championship parade and celebration that was scheduled for last Thursday in Taylor’s Heritage Park. Hopefully, there, the players made up for the most notable error they made during their championship run when the squad attempted, but misfired, in dumping a cooler full of Gatorade over the head of their beloved manager Rick Thorning after the last out secured their title. It will be exciting to check back in a few years to see if a Taylor Little Leaguer has made it to the big leagues. It has happened. Trenton-born Steve Avery, 51, dawned a Taylor Little League uniform back in the 1980s and went on to become an All-Star pitcher for the Atlanta Braves in the early 1990s and appeared in four World Series. Avery even had a short pitching stint in Detroit. But to this year’s Taylor North squad, Avery’s biggest stop in baseball no doubt was when he visited the team’s practice prior to their Great Lakes Regional Game. Three cheers to Taylor North on being Little League World Champions! I only wish I could’ve been in the celebratory locker room to watch the players douse themselves with juice boxes.

Alan Muskovitz is a writer, voice-over/acting talent, speaker, and emcee. Visit his website at laughwithbigal.com, “Like” Al on Facebook and reach him at amuskovitz@thejewishnews.com.

Any notion that the worst days of Islamist terrorism are long behind us was brutally shattered at Kabul Airport on Aug. 26, as a terrorist bombing ripped indiscriminately through Afghan civilians and U.S. and other foreign servicemen trying to complete the desperate evacuation of thousands of people for whom Taliban rule represents the most terrible fate.

Gen. H.R. McMaster, a former U.S. national security adviser who served as deputy commander of the international force in Afghanistan, put it succinctly in the hours that followed the bloodshed in Kabul.

“Maybe this moment is the time that we can stop our self-delusion that these groups are separate from one and other and recognize that they are utterly intertwined and interconnected, and what we are seeing is the establishment of a terrorist, jihadist state in Afghanistan,” McMaster, a visceral critic of the U.S. withdrawal strategy pursued by both the Trump and Biden administrations, observed in a BBC interview.

“And all of us will be at much greater risk as a result.”

His underlying argument is that talking up divisions between the Taliban and fellow Islamist fanatics — such as ISIS-K, the Afghan branch of the Da’esh terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria that carried out the Kabul Airport bombing — elides the point that these groups are united in their fundamental worldview. On the ideological front, the late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s promise of a war against “crusaders and Jews” still holds firm, which means terrorism against Western interests and Western targets,

most of whom will be defenseless civilians. It also means, for those unfortunate enough to live under the direct rule of the Islamists, that ordinary Muslims will continue to be their principal and most numerous victims. The “intertwined” connections described by McMaster inside Afghanistan Ben Cohen can be seen in the region

JNS more broadly. At the same time that the Taliban have conquered Afghanistan, Iran has appointed a new cabinet composed of men with a direct, personal role in terrorism, torture and other systemic violations of human rights, all of whom have

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extensive connections with Iran’s regional proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In the past, many analysts have scorned the contention that there could be a strategic connection between the austere Sunni Islam adhered to by the Taliban and the Shi’ite millenarian Islam that defines the Tehran regime. It is also true that the Taliban and the Iranians have come to blows in the distant past, as evidenced in the Afghan city of Mazar-iSharif in 1998 following the kidnapping of a group of Iranian diplomats by Taliban fighters.

Even so, what unites them is, in the last analysis, more important than what divides them. Taliban delegations have visited Iran on at least two occasions this year, in January and in July, with the outgoing foreign minister Javad Zarif recently praising their “noble … jihad against the foreign occupiers.”

In part, the Iranians are simply betting on the right horse, correctly deducing that further conflict with the Taliban is unnecessary given that the Taliban are once more the masters of Afghanistan. But more significantly, they share the common goal of banishing the United States and its allies from the region, including the State of Israel and, one assumes, those conservative Gulf Arab states that have made their peace with the Jewish state.

Which brings me back to Iran’s new cabinet. It is not surprising that the Islamic Republic’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi — a sadist who, as a regime prosecutor in the 1980s, supervised beatings, rapes and mass executions of prisoners — would appoint a bunch of thugs to his cabinet. But what is alarming is the silence of Western states on the unmistakable message that this cabinet sends. For this is not an occasion to defer to the principle of not commenting on political appointments in other countries.

Iran’s new defense minister is Ahmad Vahidi, who is returning to the post for the second time in his career, having previously occupied it during the term of the Holocaust-denying former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The vice president for economic development is Mohsen Rezaei, a fierce devotee of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, and the commander for 17 years of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Both Vahidi and Rezaei are fugitives from justice — specifically, for their roles in the July 1994 Iranian-sponsored bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, the bloodiest act of antisemitic terrorism in more than half a century, in which 85 people lost their lives and more than 300 were wounded. Both of them were among the subjects of six “red notices” that were issued in connection with the AMIA atrocity by Interpol, the international law-enforcement agency, in 2007.

More than a quarter of a century after the AMIA bombing, Vahidi and Rezaei sit in Tehran, secure and stony-faced, serving a daily reminder that justice has never been delivered to those who died or lost their loved ones on that terrible morning in Buenos Aires.

Poking the international community in the eye by placing two terrorists in the cabinet isn’t the ultimate goal here, though. Like all authoritarian states, the Iranian regime enjoys political theater, bloodthirsty rhetoric and the grandstanding that goes with it, but these are a means to an end. Vahidi and Rezaei are in the cabinet because there is a job to do, and Raisi — and behind him, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — has judged that they are the right men to do it.

Across the Middle East and the Islamic world, extremist regimes and terrorist groups are rejoicing in the fact that the U.S. presence and reputation in their region is a shadow of what it was just 10 years ago. They are not wrong; the options of America are largely restricted to diplomacy and sanctions. In that light, there is no reason for the Biden administration to continue its talks with the Iranians in Vienna over their nuclear program unless it wants to look even more gullible in the eyes of America’s Islamist adversaries.

It also needs to review the existing sanctions on Iran and extend these where necessary. Should Vahidi or Rezaei surface as official guests of a U.S. ally — Turkey being the obvious example — then the United States should make its displeasure known.

None of these moves can be said to be gamechangers. But they speak to the lack of a broader vision for the Middle East on the part of successive U.S. administrations, save for the ambition of getting out of the region as quickly as possible. As McMaster reminded us amid the carnage of Kabul Airport, the region won’t let us go so easily.

SCREENSHOT/JNS

Ben Cohen is a New York City-based journalist and author who writes a weekly column on Jewish and international affairs for JNS.

“Hebrew Free Loan cares for our community as if we were members of a large, extended family,” said Megan Topper.

Despite feeling as if she wasn’t deeply interconnected with the Jewish community in her youth, Megan went on to become a dedicated Jewish professional, sparked by her college job teaching second grade at a Hebrew school, and further fueled by her college education loans.

Megan, now Director of Philanthropy and Sustainability at Jewish Hospice and Chaplaincy Network, was on staff at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit when she and her husband, Aubrey, had an issue with the exterior of their home.

“Several strips of siding came off the house during the winter, and we found that the siding as a whole was in poor shape and exposing our house to interior damage,” Megan said. “Fixing it was a large job and a completely unexpected expense that would have wiped out our savings. I was discussing it with co-workers, one mentioned her positive experience with Hebrew Free Loan, and there was the answer.

“Our home repair wasn’t a tragic situation, but HFL treated us as if mitigating a potential issue was just as important as an emergency. This organization helped my family without judgement and with deep kindness, as if they knew us.

“I have found that our Jewish community is a real gift and a treasure,” Megan said. “It’s beautiful and powerful to be surrounded by people who, even though they are relative strangers, will unite to have your back.”

www.hfldetroit.org • 248.723.8184

Community donations help Hebrew Free Loan give interest-free loans to local Jews for a variety of personal, health, educational and small business needs.

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Having only been to Israel once in my life as a baby, I was thrilled to receive the opportunity to return 17 years later. The anticipation leading up to my summer CTeen trip was high, having joined numerous Zoom sessions to learn more about Israel, its history and culture.

I felt a strong sense of excitement, passion and commitment to take on this new experience. Due to the scary situation going on in Israel weeks prior to my departure, I was worried the trip might get canceled, but thankfully it didn’t; nor did COVID really impact the trip.

Even though this feeling of uncertainty was present, I knew deep inside that no matter what we as Jews encounter, we will continue to persevere and find ways to visit our homeland. Many say that when a Jew visits Israel for the first time they feel like they have finally come home. My dad told me this before I left, and he was so right. I felt this feeling numerous times throughout the trip. I felt it in different ways and learned new things about myself and my Jewish identity. A moment I will never forget from the Heritage Trip to Israel was Friday night as the sun was coming down. The Kotel was flooded with Jews from all backgrounds, all there for the same reason, which is that special moment to connect with God before Shabbat. We all took our moments to connect, some of us even using a bit of Israeli chutzpah to make our way to the Wall. Once my group finished praying, we decided to start singing. We formed a big circle and started singing songs that many people know no matter where they are from. It started with my group of 40 and quickly expanded to other teen groups joining, tourists and locals. The energy was high, and the smiles were wide; everyone was jumping, dancing and singing. The unity felt that night was amazing while being surrounded by so many other Jews. Another very special and personal moment during my trip to Israel and reaching the Kotel was the phone call I got just before praying at the Wall. The call was from my mom, who let me know that finally she has been cured from a life-threatening illness. I carried her tiny note to the Kotel, knowing she is probably praying for health and good news from her doctor. I wanted to pray for her successful recovery. Her call was my magic moment, my blessing.

As our trip ended, I left with an extra amount of love for Israel, new friendships and the biggest smile on my face. Getting to see different areas and meeting Israelis opened a new door of feelings and joy knowing that we as Jews are all truly connected and have this beautiful homeland. And yes, there were moments during stories and visiting historic sites where I was amazed or horrified by what had happened or is happening; but, in the end, we as a Jewish people continue to fight for our people and land and show lots of love to Israel. The sense of unity is comforting. Lastly, I learned more things about myself and how to better my community

Inez back at home. Additionally, I Mundrian learned leadership skills like when my group hiked Masada — some of the group couldn’t make it down but instead of being bummed out about having to wait, we made light of the situation and decided to play Israeli music and have a dance party to pass the time. Honestly, even on our bus ride we still made a blast out of it. No moment was a boring moment. I could tell anyone who is considering a summer teen trip to Israel: You’ll meet new friends for a lifetime; you will learn more about yourself and your Judaism; and you’ll have the best summer, leaving you with endless memories that you’ll want to share back at home. RootOne and CTeen made it possible because without their support I might not have been able to go. Eternally grateful.

Inez Mundrian is a high school senior in Ann Arbor who traveled to Israel this summer with CTeen, one of 20 providers of RootOne trips to Israel. RootOne provides subsidies to make the trips more accessible and includes pre- and post-trip learning and community engagement experiences for teens.

B’nai David Cemetery, 9535 Van Dyke Ave. in Detroit, will be open for visitors Sunday, Sept. 12, from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Visitors are welcome to stop on Marjorie Street (at the southern border of the cemetery) to see the urban garden David Goldman has built on nine lots.

Goldman purchased the lots from the Detroit Land Bank Authority to help clean blight and give back to the neighborhood that B’nai David cemetery has been a part of since 1898.

“As always, I thank those who have donated to B’nai David Cemetery in the past,” Goldman said. “We are working diligently toward a sustainable model that provides grounds-care in perpetuity.”

Expenses run about $7,000 a year for grass cutting. This does not include the repair of fallen headstones, fencing and asphalt patching, etc. Donations are welcome and needed. Please consider giving. Tax deductible donations can be sent to: Friends of B’nai David, 4540 Cherokee Lane, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48301