Voices

The Jewish Press

(Founded in 1920)

Margie Gutnik

President

Annette van de Kamp-Wright

Editor

Richard Busse

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Susan Bernard

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Lori Kooper-Schwarz

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Gabby Blair

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Mary Bachteler

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Jewish Press Board

Margie Gutnik, President; Abigail Kutler, Ex-Officio; Danni Christensen; David Finkelstein; Bracha Goldsweig; Mary Sue Grossman; Les Kay; Natasha Kraft; Chuck Lucoff; Joseph Pinson; Andy Shefsky and Amy Tipp. The mission of the Jewish Federation of Omaha is to build and sustain a strong and vibrant Omaha Jewish Community and to support Jews in Israel and around the world. Agencies of the Federation are: Community Relations Committee, Jewish Community Center, Center for Jewish Life, Jewish Social Services, and the Jewish Press. Guidelines and highlights of the Jewish Press, including front page stories and announcements, can be found online at: www.jewishomaha.org; click on ‘Jewish Press.’ Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Board of Directors, the Jewish Federation of Omaha Board of Directors, or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole. The Jewish Press reserves the right to edit signed letters and articles for space and content. The Jewish Press is not responsible for the Kashrut of any product or establishment.

Editorial

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The Jewish Press welcomes Letters to the Editor. They may be sent via regular mail to: The Jewish Press, 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154; via fax: 1.402.334.5422 or via e-mail to the Editor at: avandekamp@jewishomaha. org. Letters should be no longer than 250 words and must be single-spaced typed, not hand-written. Published letters should be confined to opinions and comments on articles or events. News items should not be submitted and printed as a “Letter to the Editor.” The Editor may edit letters for content and space restrictions. Letters may be published without giving an opposing view. Information shall be verified before printing. All letters must be signed by the writer. The Jewish Press will not publish letters that appear to be part of an organized campaign, nor letters copied from the Internet. No letters should be published from candidates running for office, but others may write on their behalf. Letters of thanks should be confined to commending an institution for a program, project or event, rather than personally thanking paid staff, unless the writer chooses to turn the “Letter to the Editor” into a paid personal ad or a news article about the event, project or program which the professional staff supervised. For information, contact Annette van de KampWright, Jewish Press Editor, 402.334.6450.

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The Jewish Press (USPS 275620) is published weekly (except for the first week of January and July) on Friday for $40 per calendar year U.S.; $80 foreign, by the Jewish Federation of Omaha. Phone: 402.334.6448; FAX: 402.334.5422. Periodical postage paid at Omaha, NE. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Jewish Press, 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154-2198 or email to: jpress@jewishomaha.org.

We are everything

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor “She may not have meant to,” Gabe Friedman wrote for the JTA, “but Whoopi Goldberg waded into a charged discourse that has polarized the Jewish community — and those who seek to discriminate against them — for centuries.” The comment in question (plus the aftermath) about the Holocaust not being about ‘race’ but about ‘white people killing other white people’ struck a nerve. The problem is, Jews cannot be boxed in as just one race. We come in all shades and colors. We’re like Joseph’s coat. Another problem is that for Black people in America, race is a painful and complex topic, and the Black community has to own the majority of the discourse surrounding it. Uncomfortable for Americans who aren’t Black, maybe, but so be it. Also, Whoopi’s comments may have been awkward, but she is not the enemy-so let’s not treat her as such. Then, just as this story was gathering steam online, I read an article about the latest PEW study, ‘Jewish Americans in 2020,’ which was released in May of 2021. Like all community studies, it categorizes its subjects to a fault, which is, I think, something we have to be aware of when processing the results. ‘Orthodox’ and ‘non-Orthodox,’ ‘cultural,’ ‘young,’ ‘intermarried’ and ‘Nones’ are all boxes we are squeezed into. Do we have children and if so, how many? Do we go to shul or do we feel Jewish without being religious at all? Do we eat Jewish food for its cultural value, or do we keep kosher? In short, the question PEW asks over and over is “Who are we?” And if we have paid attention at all, we should know by now that this is not a question we can find a simple answer to.

The reason for that is: we are many things. Even if we look at only the American section of the Diaspora, we are many races. We are many cultures, we have all the passports and we speak all the languages. We eat different kinds of ‘Jewish’ food, we sing different songs, we vote for all the candidates, we have all the different opinions and impressions of Israel. We, as Jews, do not fit one box and to imply that we do does us injustice as a people. We are simply Jews, no more, no less; to categorize us is to separate us. An Orthodox Jew can also be a cultural Jew. It is possible to be non-Orthodox and never miss a morning Minyon. You can be a Black American Jew, a Hispanic American Jew, a Chinese American Jew. Call us all white and you disregard all the Jews that are various shades of beige and brown. And that is a larger portion that you think. When you put us in boxes, you disregard the fact that many of us fit more than one; we may have one foot in this box and another one in that box. Maybe we belong in five different boxes, or ten. And what if we fit no box? It makes us no less Jewish.

We can ask ourselves ”Who are we,” as many times as we like; I have no problem with the question. The answers, however, need to be as diverse as we are as a people. The rest of the world would like an easy category to shove us in, but that doesn’t mean we have to cater to them. One of the most beautiful concepts for the Jewish people is that “a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.” There is no test, there is no value in checkmarks, there is no wisdom in asking ourselves what kind of Jew we are. We are Jews, and that is that. So no, the Holocaust wasn’t about ‘white people killing other white people.’ It was about boxing Jews in, quite literally. It’s still happening, and it is high time to put a stop to it.

When I recall my father Elie Wiesel, my shame about these Olympics only deepens

ELISHA WIESEL

JTA On Feb. 4 my world was shaken. It hit me, as though it were a fresh wound: My father, Elie Wiesel, was really gone. It hurt terribly when he died over five years ago, on July 2, 2016. But I also found peace and awakening as I grieved. I had this sense from the very moment he passed that he would be with me always. Through his dreams for me, I felt that as long as I lived, he would too — as would my ancestors. This feeling deepened over the years that followed. My year of Mourner’s Kaddish ended and I still found myself drawn to Shabbat peace, to morning tefillin, to the intentionality of a minyan gathered to pray, to the stories of our people in ancient texts. I felt the wholeness of history, of the chain of which he had always wanted me to feel a crucial part, which he so keenly felt himself. And although I miss him daily, I unfailingly find that thinking of him makes my footsteps feel sure. But on Friday I had to stop and catch my breath as I realized the depth of my loss, our loss. Because that day was the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and millions were tuning in to the opening ceremony. Most of the world didn’t seem to know, or care, that the host country is hosting a pageant of “peace and friendship” while simultaneously terrorizing its Uyghur minority. The Chinese government’s systematic oppression of the Uyghurs, a Muslim group in northwest China, is not the Holocaust. But although we may not have seen this particular movie, we know the genre. I have heard the painful testimony of Uyghur dissidents, who manage to get the word out despite a media clampdown that makes it almost impossible for the Western press to report on the facts. Forced internment camps target people for thought crimes and racial affiliation. Medical data suggests that forced sterilizations are taking place among this targeted racial group. Families have been forcibly separated and threatened into silence. Just like in 1936, the International Olympic Committee is unwilling to push the issue. And our community is mostly silent. I saw 100 or 200 brave souls rally on a rainy Thursday last week in Times Square. In the gray neon light, the young leaders called on each other and passersby via megaphones whose batteries could not keep up with the urgency of the message: Turn off the Olympics, and close the concentration camps in Xinjiang. It should have been the whole city turning up to honor their message. I know now that we have failed my father in this regard. He did not fail us. He spoke of how he always felt he had to answer to the dead: Did he do enough? And yes. He did. He was there to speak up against atrocities in Darfur, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda. He tried with everything he had to tell us. And all the words he spoke and wrote could not change the fact that five years after his death, 1 million people are reportedly in concentration camps, because of their race and religion, in the grip of a totalitarian regime — a regime honored to host the world’s nations, on a global television platform that packages sports with advertising. Today’s culture of workplace activism is highly developed. In corporations and small businesses across the United States, Black Americans and their allies, for one, showed with emotion how cries against police brutality could be heard in board rooms and executive suites. But are men and women of conscience reaching out to their managers at the corporations that sponsor the Olympics? Are voices inside corporate America respectfully but insistently calling for company conversations about their responsibility when they hear survivors’ reports of genocide on the part of the Chinese government? If they are, they are not making themselves heard. There are brave leaders, like Steve Simon of the Women’s Tennis Association, who canceled a lucrative tournament in China when the WTA’s demands for player Peng Shuai’s safety and freedom

went unanswered. Natan Sharansky and Bernard Henry-Levi, two leading Jewish intellectuals, signed an ad in the New York Times, organized by me and paid for by the Elie Wiesel Foundation, urging a protest of the Beijing Olympics; Jewish organiza-

A large Olympic ring logo is seen inside the stadium during the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb

4, 2022. Credit: Fred Lee/Getty Images tions across the denominational spectrum have spoken up for the Uyghurs; and Jewish World Watch is trying to generate widespread action around the issue. But they are still too few. I fear that China’s statesponsored capitalism has silenced us through our greed. My father believed passionately that speaking up mattered, especially to the victims. Have I, blessed to live in this country which stands for freedom, done enough? “Shame on Xi Jinping,” shouted the determined young people in Times Square on Thursday night. And I think: Shame on me, if we can’t find some way to help. Shame on us.

Elisha Wiesel is the son of Marion and Elie Wiesel.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

MATT NOSANCHUK

Editor’s Note: Due to an editing error, this op-ed as originally published included language that the author did not approve. The following has been corrected. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency apologizes for the error.

JTA Last week, Amnesty International released a 280-page report calling Israel an apartheid state and charging it with crimes against humanity, including atrocities against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Such claims have been made before, usually over vociferous objections from supporters of Israel. Predictably, the report unleashed harsh criticism from the Israeli government and from voices throughout the American Jewish community. Much of the criticism, including the statement issued from my organization, the New York Jewish Agenda, focused on the report’s language, terminology, omissions and conclusions, which called into question Israel’s very legitimacy as a homeland for the Jewish people. For example, we noted in our statement, Amnesty International’s report concludes that Israel has employed a system of apartheid within its borders since the nation was established in 1948. As an American Jewish organization uniting liberal Zionists who are passionate about Israel and hold a deep commitment to promoting their Jewish values here at home and in Israel, we share the anger of many in the Jewish community regarding the excesses of the report, especially during this time of growing concerns about the rise of antisemitism and authoritarianism in the United States and around the world. At the same time, we believe in the necessity of a more nuanced response beyond that anger. We must look beyond this report’s controversial legal conclusions and examine the difficult realities of Israel’s 55-year occupation of the West Bank, its control of the Gaza border, and the unfulfilled promise of full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. It’s not just Amnesty International that has documented this in detail: Numerous Israeli NGOs and the U.S. State Department have warned about the many costs of occupation. These realities cannot be ignored – not by those who live in Israel, nor by those of us who support Israel here in America. I have traveled to Israel numerous times over the past 46 years, including spending a year there during college. I have seen first-hand the harsh realities of the occupation and felt the dream of a peacefully shared society for Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel slipping away. I have also observed how the lack of Palestinian equality corrodes Jewish Israeli ideals of a democratic, just, and secure state. Like so many others, especially many younger American Jews, I find it increasingly difficult to see those ideals in the current state of Israel. What matters most are the realities of life on the ground for Jews and Palestinians, not the labels – however controversial – that one puts on them. The categoric condemnation of the Amnesty International report by many in our community avoids grappling with the ongoing control and denial of rights

that Palestinians in the occupied territories and (to a lesser degree) in Israel experience day in and day out. This unsupportable reality — with no moral, logical or politically feasible endgame — must change. It threatens to bring about the end, one way or another, of a democratic homeland for Jews. In just the past few weeks, Palestinian families were forcibly evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. An 80-year-old Palestinian-American man, Omar Assad, died of a heart attack after being detained, handcuffed, blindfolded and abandoned in the cold by soldiers who apparently had no good reason to detain him. This ongoing Israeli coalition debate over the construction of a yeshiva in Evyatar, an illegal West Bank outpost, demonstrates the continued push by the settlement movement to take over more land in the West Bank and the apparent unwillingness of the government decision-makers to stop them. For each one of these examples, supporters of Israel invoke

Credit: Jewish Telegraphic Agency Illustration others in which Israelis were targeted by Palestinians. They all become part of competing and irreconcilable narratives on both sides of the conflict. We can continue down the rabbit hole of one-sided recriminations—with no good end in sight— that has defined this decades-long conflict. Or we can focus our energies on supporting efforts to build a better future for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Imagine if those of us who care deeply about safeguarding a democratic homeland for Jews in Israel expended as much effort fighting for greater justice in Israel and an end to the occupation as we spend responding each time someone condemns Israel: We could help make a real difference in transforming the situation. We must stop allowing outside critics to define the conversation and limit our voices. While a just, negotiated two-state solution to the conflict feels remote at this time, we don’t need to limit our activism and voices to defending Israel in the face of harsh criticism. Many Jews and Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis – with support from many American Jewish organizations – work together every day to build trust and seek consensus around common issues. In our increasingly polarized and siloed world, we too often hear only voices with which we agree and ignore or condemn the rest. It does not have to be this way. We know many in the New York and American Jewish communities share our feelings about the conflict. Like them, we remain committed to standing up for our values. This requires acknowledging that there are difficult realities on both sides. We can wait for the next report and the ensuing round of statements and recriminations, or we can raise our voices in support of building bridges of understanding and a shared society. The choice is ours to make.

Matt Nosanchuk is a lawyer and the president and cofounder of the New York Jewish Agenda. A network of pluralistic and diverse Jewish leaders in New York City and State, NYJA advocates for key domestic priorities, supports a democratic Israel, and combats antisemitism. Matt served as the liaison to the American Jewish community in the White House during the Obama-Biden Administration.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

REAL ESTATE