Essays and viewpoints

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay

Over and Done With

In 1917, many an ear caught the bars of “Over There,” a highly patriotic song by George M. Cohan. It was hard to overlook its popularity. It was never considered overdone; however, we can easily make a case for the overuse of “over” in our everyday speech.

We are desirous of having roofs over our heads; but to purchase the same, we may get in over our heads. Home costs are often over the top. Buying without doing due diligence may find you crying over spilt milk.

Don’t get the gambling bug; lean over backwards to avoid it. It may lead you into a situation where you are asked to fork over what you owe. If you do not, you may get a working over, which could then lead to you being hung over.

Have you ever been so surprised by an action that you could be knocked over with a feather? Maybe you were the one someone else put one over on. Well, if it is over and done with, there is no use in losing sleep over it.

It is no fun to be taken advantage of; when you realize that you have been run roughshod over, you know that the party’s over and vow that such a thing will happen again only over your dead body!

Do not wait until you are over the hill to fall head over heels in love. It is nice to have someone to make a fuss over. If that someone can skim over your faults rather than chew

them over, you will know that Sy Manello your wait is over for the love

Editorial Assistant of your life. Well, it is time to end this set of observations because I hear the zaftig woman warbling. (That means it is over because the fat lady is singing. I do wish you would remain a bit more with it!) Over and out.

opinion

To My Fellow Progressives: Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism

I’ve spent most of the last decade focused on grassroots organizing and capacity building inside the American progressive movement. From helping build the largest leadership development organization on the left, to launching a first-of-its-kind organization to mobilize male allies into the fight to protect and expand reproductive freedom, I’ve proudly helped elect progressive changemakers and pass landmark legislation.

I’ve done all of that as a Jew who wears a kippah in public, as someone who, statistically speaking, shouldn’t exist. My grandfather is one of the 10% of Polish-born Jews to survive World War II. Three million of his Jewish neighbors, and another 3 million across Europe, were packed into boxcars and sent to the slaughter, to gas chambers, to the ovens.

What I am is central to who I am. So when I saw the statement from the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Sunrise movement explaining its refusal to march in a voting rights rally with Jewish groups because they are “Zionists,” I understood immediately that it was deeply problematic. Not only did the decision have the potential impact of spreading anti-Jewish bigotry, but it also weakened our movement more broadly at a time when democracy, which is necessary to ensure civil rights, is under assault in America.

I also understood right away that, for many people, the anti-Jewish nature of the statement wasn’t so obvious. When moments like this arise, I get texts and calls from progressive peers across the country who ask: “Is this antisemitic?”

To answer the question, I begin by explaining what it means to be a Jew. Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. But Jewish identity is so much bigger and more diverse than religion. Some of us are deeply religious. Some of us are totally secular. All of us are Jews. We’re a people, not simply a religious community. Contrary to what most think, antisemitism is not anti-Judaism in its modern form (several hundred years). It’s anti-Jew. It’s not about how

Oren Jews pray, but rather about Jacobson JTA who they are and what they are accused of doing. Jews get attacked for supposedly controlling the world (governments, banks, media), for being disloyal to our home countries, for killing Jesus, for making up the Holocaust, for being greedy, for undermining the white

commentary

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Was One of a Kind

JOHN DOWNING/GETTY IMAGES/JTAS

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who passed away on Nov. 7, 2020, left a legacy that is well known: As chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, he led a renewal of vibrant Jewish life through the growth of Jewish schools and the revitalization of the London School of Jewish Studies; delivered erudite speeches, books and articles that inspired the United Synagogue and beyond by advocating a realistic, modern and yet uncompromisingly faithful view of traditional Orthodoxy; and served as a public intellectual whose wisdom was sought by politicians, academics, CEOs and other faith leaders around the globe.

But can his contribution to modern Jewish thought be easily summarized? As a dedicated disciple, I would never even attempt such a thing. But I can offer this. The colloquial term for a leading rabbinic sage is gadol, meaning, simply, “great.” With the rise of ultra-Orthodoxy, the word today evokes aged men garbed

in monochrome, surrounded by devotees and making pronouncements from their insular enclaves. But the intricate discussions of Jewish law of which these men are experts were described by Maimonides, the 12th-century scholar, as a dvar katan (small matter), reserving the phrase dvar gadol (great matter) for discussions of the nature and purpose of Creation. A scholar must, Maimonides insisted, master the small before the great, for if the former makes up the framework of everyday Jewish life, it is the latter that establishes the ultimate value and meaning of existence — what we would call philosophy. If one follows Maimonides’ argument, the so-called gedolim of today would be better termed ketanim, “small ones,” for they only concern themselves with Jewish law. The title “gadol” should be reserved for a rabbinic scholar who is not only steeped in Jewish law, but also able to understand and address the deep questions of life: Why are we here? What is our purpose? How can we make a difRabbi Raphael ference? A true gadol can speak to the religiously Zarum minded as well as to those of little or no

JTA faith. A gadol can translate ancient Jewish

Jonathan Sacks, seen as the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, circa 2000.

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wisdom into contemporary insight and realistic policy.

To my mind, only Rabbi Sacks has earned the title of gadol in recent times.

ENGAGING THE WORLD

Rabbis today, like the clergy of other religions, have been compartmentalized as the leaders of the faithful only, with little to say in the public square. The sad result is that many rabbis now perceive themselves in this limited way too. But Rabbi Sacks always championed “a Judaism engaged with the world.”

He was able to speak to all people, using a language anyone could understand and that could move them to action. He was at home in the beit midrash, the Jewish house of study, and in the academy, but he learned to be most at home in the community. Toward the end of Morality, his final book, he writes:

“I had the privilege of studying with some of the greatest philosophers of our time, yet I learned more about morality in my years as a congregational rabbi than I did at Oxford and Cambridge, and I did so by conducting funerals.

“As a young rabbi in an aging congregation, I often did not know the deceased personally, so I had to ask relatives and friends what they were like and what they would be remembered for.

“No one ever spoke about the clothes they wore or the cars they drove, the homes they lived in or the holidays they took. They spoke about their role in their family, their place in the congregation and its activities, the good deeds they did, the causes they supported, the voluntary work they undertook and the people they helped.

“It is not what we do for ourselves but what we give others that is our epitaph and that ultimately floods life with meaning.”

The loss of Rabbi Sacks is felt most acutely by British Jews proud that such a great thinker and rabbi emerged from their ranks. Yet his influence spread across the oceans to the entire Jewish world, and well beyond the Jewish community. He began as a rabbi in a small synagogue, then he became the chief rabbi of Anglo-Jewry and, in his later years, a rabbi to global Jewry as well as to some of the most influential people, both Jewish and nonJewish, on the planet.

INSPIRING OTHERS

I am not fond of hyperbole, but I honestly wonder if we will ever see his kind again. He was a genuine gadol, a Jewish voice heard by all, a rabbi in the widest sense of the term.

But he is not the last true rabbi, because of the other great focus of his life: leadership and empowerment. I am just one of thousands of men and women for whom he is a crucial inspiration, who have built their leadership upon his principles. His many books line our shelves, and his deep belief in us compels us to continue his legacy.

No one can fill his shoes, but I am sure he would prefer that we fill our own. He would always say, “Education is not what we do, it is who we are.” Rabbi Sacks was not the last true rabbi, precisely because he was a true rabbi to the last.

Rabbi Raphael Zarum is dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, where he trains teachers and lectures in modern Jewish thought. This article is adapted from “The Last Rabbi,” an essay in The Jewish Quarterly, Issue 246, November 2021, and is used with permission.

Bring

Danny Home!

Journalist Danny Fenster, before his captivity, wearing a Detroit Pistons cap

The Detroit Jewish News urges the community to continue raising awareness for Huntington Woods native Danny Fenster — a journalist who has been unjustly held without cause and without specified charges for 165 days

by a military regime in a gruesome prison in Myanmar (Burma).

The family is looking for people to create portraits of Danny that can be shared on social media at https://bringdannyhome.com/pages/gallery.

You can also support Danny at:

BringDannyHome.com fenster-verse.tumblr.com facebook.com/groups/1164768597279223.

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay

My Superior (Wis.) Jewish Genealogy: From Historic Baseball Diamonds to Bob Dylan

WIKIPEDIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

‘New’ mishpachah: Cincinatti Reds left fielder Morrie Arnovich and singer Bob Dylan.

I’m a singer by name and by trade. I am neither a sports fan nor an expert on the subject. But this summer, after seeing the Associated Press report that “no practicing Orthodox Jewish player has made it to the big leagues,” I challenged sports journalists to recognize the most observant Orthodox Jew to have played and won the World Series, Morrie Arnovich.

I never imagined the article about my hometown heroes from Superior, Wis., would have led me to discover Morrie was also my blood relative.

I didn’t know why I cared so much about Morrie Arnovich. After the Forward published my article, I heard from journalists and sports fans who questioned my research and politely cast doubt on Morrie’s religious observance, as well as from some of his family who had thanked me for correcting the record.

While I was able to accurately answer most questions in the spirit my father, a reference librarian, would have, I was surprised to discover that Arnovich, like the recently drafted Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jacob Steinmetz, actually did play in some games on Shabbat and other holy days while he was in the major leagues. But Arnovich still proudly considered himself to be an observant Orthodox Jew.

As I dug even deeper, I found that, according to the oral history delivered by his first cousin, Rabbi Alex Hyatt (originally Arnovich), in the Litvak shul Agudath Achim in Superior, the strictest observance of Shabbat — shomer Shabbos — was especially required of the chazzan. This tradition had gone all the way back to his hometown of Wilkomer, Lithuania.

I intentionally avoided questioning any of the players’ claims to Orthodoxy. But from these conversations with family, journalists and critics, I learned that while Rabbi Hyatt undoubtedly expected everyone to observe the Sabbath, he also recognized the reality of ministering to a remote industrial town where Jews worked for non-Jewish businesses and could not always be shomer Shabbat.

Morrie’s father was a gas station attendant and his family observed to the highest extent that they could under

the circumstances. But Rabbi Hyatt had to require at least the minimum requirement of the chazzan being shomer Shabbat from all of those who observed in the community. I also learned that prior to 1950, far fewer Jews were shomer Shabbat than today, including the Orthodox. Labor laws eventually allowed for a twoCantor day weekend and Orthodox Daniel Jews later made greater efforts Singer Times of Israel to encourage universal Shabbat observance.

ZIMMERMAN’S BLUES

Responding to my last article, one journalist felt that the crossroads between Bob Dylan and Civil War hero Gen. John Henry Hammond’s family, Superior’s founders, was the most interesting part. In the last year of his life, my father helped to research David Engel’s acclaimed 1997 book, Just Like Bob Zimmerman’s Blues. It was Gen. Hammond’s grandson, music producer John Henry Hammond II, who was key in launching Dylan’s career.

The first chapters include many details on Dylan’s Jewish upbringing in Minnesota, just accross Duluth Harbor from Superior, Wis.

Superior’s Jewish community was founded by the Kaners who also were from Wilkomer. Many of them went by the first name Shabsie, a Yiddish name. There were so many Shabsie Kaners in Superior, they had to distinguish them by their street name or other distinguishing characteristics: “Shabsie Downtown,” “Shabsie Connor’s Point,” “Shabsie the John Kaner,” and so on.

Tugging on that thread, I learned that Bob Zimmerman was given the Hebrew name Shabtai to honor his grandfather Benjamin David Solemovitz (Stone), whose Russian patronymic surname was taken from his greatgrandfather, Sholem Karon. Shabtai is the Hebrew form of Shabsie in Yiddish, which means “a child of Shabbat.”

The Shabsie name was carried down in the family for generations from Dylan’s sixth great-grandfather, Girsh Shabsel Karanovich. The Karanovich family became the Karons, Kaners, Canners, etc., and the Arnovich rabbis were all cousins who had encouraged one another to escape Russian pogroms in the solace of Superior.

My father never could have discovered this in his day. His research as a librarian preceded the internet. It was before the digitization of countless genealogical records, digital

genealogy websites, social media and DNA testing, which is all continuing to advance and change how we conduct research and make genealogical connections.

HUGE FAMILY TREE

My connection was made by accident, only after I’d posted a tongue-in-cheek question on Facebook about the possibility of Zimmerman’s surname originally being Zemerman. It was a cute midrash, perhaps designating a singer instead of a carpenter. One of my cousins reading my post insisted I immediately get in touch with Ian Levine, a renowned British DJ and record producer who has researched his Kuklya family obsessively for 26 years, organized family reunions with thousands of confirmed Kuklya descendants, and is about to publish a massive 2016-page Kuklya Encyclopedia.

My cousin believed that we were related to Ian. After Ian and I analyzed our DNA and confirmed our blood relationship — and checked to be certain it corresponded with the work he and I had done separately on our trees — he welcomed me warmly as family.

In Ian’s work, I was absolutely astonished to see my great-grandfather and many tens of thousands of other ancestors.

There, just one generation beyond the reach of my own research, I learned that my second and third greatgrandfathers had married Karanovich daughters, and I discovered the same Girsh Shabsel Karanovich is also my sixth great-grandfather. Bob Dylan, Morrie Arnovich, the Singers — we are all cousins descended from the same Karanovich and Kuklya families in a long lineage of rabbis going back to Rashi and beyond.

DETROIT ROOTS

My father, Barry Singer, was born in Detroit in 1936 and was an only child. His father had died when he was 2 years old, and he was raised by his mother’s cousins of the Oppenheim family. He graduated Wayne State University before making aliyah prior to 1967’s Six-Day War. He married in Israel and eventually returned to the U.S. and settled in Superior. His father’s brothers and sisters and their descendants who had remained behind in Lithuania were brutally murdered by Lithuanian Gen. Jonas Noreika and his followers during World War II.

My father had searched for his family his entire life. Now, I’ve discovered he was never alone. Superior had mysteriously beckoned to him just as it did his ancestors.

Maybe that’s why it bothered me so much when the press snubbed Morrie. And maybe that’s why I care so much about the preservation of Superior’s history.

Turns out: Morrie is family, after all. And Superior’s history is my history.

Originally from Superior, Wis., Daniel Singer, a graduate of the University of Michigan, is the cantor of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. To read Cantor Singer’s previous article, visit forward.com/scribe/473521. Cantor Singer can be reached at dsinger@swfs.org.

CORRECTION

In “‘EPIC’ Changes for NEXTGen Detroit’s Annual Big Event” (Oct. 28, page 28), the co-chair of the EPIC event should have been identified as Andrew Sherman.

STORY Our STORY Our

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PURELY COMMENTARY

continued from page 4 race and subverting people of color (among other things).

We’ve been blamed for plagues, famine, economic hardship and war. Whatever major problem a society has, Jews have been blamed for it. None of those things has anything to do with religion.

Criticism of Israel or opposition to it isn’t necessarily antisemitic. Harsh criticism of Israeli government policy may make us uncomfortable but isn’t antisemitic. But the Sunrise DC statement wasn’t about policy. By attacking “Zionist organizations” in a voting rights coalition and saying that they can’t participate in in a coalition that includes them, Sunrise DC basically said it won’t work alongside Jewish organizations (or Jews) that believe the State of Israel has the right to exist.

THE RIGHT TO EXIST

For the average Jew, Zionism has become simply the idea that Israel has the right to exist, rather than an embrace of the policies of its government. The Zionist movement got its name in the late 19th century, but it really put a label on a 2,000-year-old yearning to return to the native land Jews were violently forced out of (in an act of colonization). That yearning grew over time as we failed to find sustained peace and security elsewhere, including in Europe, North Africa and the broader Middle East.

That’s why when people attack Zionists, we hear “Jews.” We hear them saying that the 80-90% of Jews who believe Israel has a right to exist are unacceptable, and that Israel, a country that came into existence with the vote of the international community and today is home to 7 million Jews, must be ended.

Why is that antisemitism? First, it singles out Jews when most people believe Israel has the right to exist. (In fact, 85% of the general public in America believes the statement “Israel does not have a right to exist” is antisemitic, according to a survey released this week.)

Second, it seeks to deny Jewish people the right to self-determination by erasing our peoplehood and connection to the land.

Third, it declares that a national movement for Jews is uniquely unacceptable, while at the same time advocating in support of another national movement.

Fourth, it divides Jews into good and bad. Only those who oppose their own national movement can stay. Only Jews who reject Zionism are allowed. Replace “Jew” with any other group and ask if that would be acceptable.

Even if you forswear coalitions with anyone, Jewish or not, who thinks Israel is legitimate, that still denies the Jewish people’s right to self-determination. It says that Jews must be a perpetual minority on this earth subject to the whims and bigotries of the societies they live in. For thousands of years Jews tried that and failed to find permanent refuge — which, fairly or not, is part of the reason most Jews believe in the right to, and need for, national self-determination in some portion of a contested land.

PROGRESSIVES’ BIGOTRY

Sunrise DC wasn’t interested in the nature of their shunned Jewish allies’ support for Israel — even though each of the three groups, like most Jews in America, have advocated for a Palestinian state and for an end to policies by the government of Israel that harm the Palestinian people, including, but not limited to, the occupation of the West Bank.

Ultimately, only Jews get to define who and what we are and what antisemitism is. Too often in progressive spaces that right is denied to Jews. Instead, to justify their own positions, some rely on Jews whose voices, while relevant, are far from representative on the question of what constitutes antisemitism. If someone ignored the voices and lived realities of 80-90% of any other minority group, most progressives would quickly recognize that as an act of tokenization to shield biases (or worse). Some who identify as progressive feel it’s OK to use the word “Zionist” to attack others, claiming that the word is not about Jews. I encourage everyone to go on far right-wing message boards on occasion. Once there, you’ll see how white supremacists typically call Jews Zionists. The prominence of the word, in connection with claims that they control the governments and are trying to replace white “patriots” with Black and brown “interlopers,” will stun you.

While there is plenty of room for criticism of Israeli government policy, there should be no room for the exclusionary, reductionist and dehumanizing language of white nationalists in progressive discourse on the topic, or the denial of the right for Jewish self-determination on this earth.

I believe in standing up for those who are attacked for the crime of being who they are as much as I believe in standing up for Jewish life. For me, this work is personal.

Not because every issue affects me directly. But because I feel like I owe it to my grandfather. To Jews who were murdered and never had a chance to live. To my peers here who face systemic racism and bigotry.

And yes, because I believe “Never Again” isn’t just a slogan to hope for, but rather a mission to fight for.

Members of Sunrise DC TWITTER/JNS

Oren Jacobson is the co-founder of Project Shema, which helps Jewish students, leaders, organizations and allies explore the difficult conversations surrounding Israel and antisemitism. Previously, Oren served as national chapter development director for the New Leaders Council, growing NLC into the largest social justice-focused leadership development organization in America. He holds a master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Chicago, a master’s in Economics and Policy Analysis from DePaul University and an MBA from Regis University.