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The Jewish Press

(Founded in 1920)

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Annette van de Kamp-Wright

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Richard Busse

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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.

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Fake yellow stars

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor

Christian veterans’ protest outside Jewish politician’s home as pastor compares vaccine mandates to Nazis, one JTA headline read. Oh great, another one of those protests with the fake yellow stars and participants who think that by calling themselves victims, they will get sympathy. Do we really need another story about people comparing COVID19 measures to Nazism? We really don’t. And yet, we have to look. The article tells the story of church members in Ohio, who staged a protest outside the home of state Rep. Casey Weinstein. According to the church’s pastor, Jeff Tauring, “his church’s motivation for the rally was their opposition to vaccine mandates and other government public health policies, which he likened to Germany before the Holocaust. He added that it was the obligation of the church to speak out, much as it should have done against the Nazis in Germany. ‘Government is too big,’ he said. ‘We see the exact pattern that happened to the Jews in Germany in World War II, we see the exact pattern happening here. And so we feel like if somebody would have stood up for the Jews earlier, and it should have been the church, if they would have done that earlier … I’m not sure if the catastrophe would have happened.’” (JTA.com) There is so much to unpack here, I’m not quite sure where to start. There are no COVID-19 measures that can be compared to what the Nazis did, and it’s a sad world where that has to be spelled out. On the simplest level: mask mandates and vaccine requirements are meant to save lives, not end them. Being refused entry somewhere because you won’t wear a mask is not the same as having to hide in a cellar from soldiers (and a regime) who want to kill you. Having to show a vaccine card before you can enter a restaurant is not the same as dying in the gas chamber. I can go on, but why would I? The more bizarre idea of how protesting against COVID-19 measures equals ‘standing up for the Jews’ is harder to fathom. You’re using Nazi comparisons while protesting in front of a Jewish politician’s private residence. How can that possibly

convince anyone you would have stood up for the Jews during WW II? Let me speak an unpopular truth: sometimes when government gets big, it is a good thing. Wearing your mask during a pandemic is a good thing. Keeping your family, friends and neighbors safe is a good thing. What’s not a good thing is brainwashing your followers into thinking it’s okay to bring your Holocaust-imagery-abusing protest nonsense to a Jewish family’s front door. It’s funny, how we continue to have such trouble educating people about the Holocaust, yet the ignorance so often shows up in this context. Too many people don’t know enough about the Holocaust; they just know A group of men protest outside of Ohio Rep. Casey Weinstein’s home. Credit: Cleveland enough to pervert it. Jewish News Finally, claiming the Holocaust might not have happened if only everyone back then had acted like you, Pastor Tauring, is a pretty bold statement. I see your arrogance and I think you should ask yourself: is it perhaps possible that, instead, you could have made it even worse? Stop equating your situation with that of the victims of the Holocaust. Stop cheapening the memory of the six million. Stop using others’ pain for your own political gratification. It’s shortsighted, it’s ignorant, it’s irritating and never, ever acceptable.

Israel’s never-ending, and very human, ‘Who is a Jew?’ saga

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL

JTA Jared Armstong has an emotional story to tell, and he told it in an oped I edited last week for our opinion section. Armstrong made headlines recently when the Israeli government refused his application for citizenship. Armstrong, a recent college graduate from Philadelphia, says he grew up Jewish, as did his mother. His grandmother, he said, embraced Judaism as an adult. For all those reasons he was shocked when Israel rejected his initial application for aliyah, but he agreed to undergo a conversion with his rabbi, Rabbi Michael Beals, of Wilmington, Delaware. He completed a nine-month conversion course under Beals, a Conservative rabbi, and the rituals that normally seal a conversion. When he tried again to become a citizen under Israel’s Law of Return, he was again turned down. Armstrong suspects the government said no because they thought he only wanted to play basketball for a pro team in Haifa. Others note that his rabbi was Conservative, and that the Orthodox establishment that oversees most lifecycle and Jewish identity issues in Israel is adamantly dismissive of Judaism’s non-Orthodox streams. Armstong is also Black; who can say how his background played into the government’s decision. What was doubly painful about editing Armstrong’s article was noting his surprise and disappointment about a process that a lot of Jews in Israel and the Diaspora already know can be painfully but necessarily intrusive — or discriminatory, depending on your point of view. Armstrong is not the first Diaspora Jew to have his Jewish identity challenged by Israel’s gatekeepers. But sometimes it takes someone new to Jewish communal politics to make jaded veterans take notice. Close Israel-watchers know why Israel, and Jews, put up barriers to conversion and citizenship. It’s about identity. It’s about peoplehood. It is about theology. It is about politics. But as Armstrong wrote, “This was my identity we’re talking about here; my life they were doubting.” The “Who is a Jew” issues wax and wane as a communal priority; at the moment it appears to be waning. A coalition government in Israel that does not depend on the Orthodox religious parties to govern raised hopes among non-Orthodox Jews that the Orthodox grip on conversion and other identity issues might be eased. On the flipside, it may have eased Diaspora urgency about the issue. But some action is afoot. Today – literally today – an Israeli ministerial committee will consider a bill that widens the possibilities for conversion within Israel. Currently, the system is exclusively under the control of the Chief Rabbinate. The bill would allow Israel’s 150 municipal Orthodox rabbis to establish their own conversion protocols and standards, breaking the rabbinate’s monopoly on the process and ostensibly democratizing the process. The bill is supported by those in Israel, Orthodox and otherwise, who want to ease the process for many of the 400,000 or so people, mostly from the former Soviet Union, who qualify as citizens under Israel’s Law of Return but are not considered Jewish by the rabbinate under Jewish law, or halachah. Tani Frank, director of the Center for Judaism and State Policy at the Shalom Hartman Institute, discussed the bill during a webinar Thursday. He said the current minister of religious affairs, Matan Kahana, “understands that there is a problem when you present yourself as a Jewish and democratic state and you don’t allow different views of Judaism to be fulfilled through the conversion system.” The bill, which would increase autonomy for conversions among Orthodox rabbis, would not expand the possibilities for non-Orthodox conversions to be performed and recognized in Israel. In March 2021, the Israeli Supreme court ruled that Israel must grant citizenship to Jews who converted to Judaism in Israel under non-Orthodox auspices. The ruling did not, however, make them Jewish under halachah. That won’t change. Still, the liberal-leaning Hartman Institute, with feet in both Israel and the Diaspora, took a major part in shaping the new legislation. “We wanted to make sure that we are part of the legislative process, and we wanted to make sure it was safe being shaped in a manner that allows as many Jewish perspectives and views as possible and we wanted to make sure that liberal Judaism’s values

are being considered,” said Frank. There will be strong opposition to the bill, which touches both on political power and some heartfelt concerns about Jewish unity. Defenders of the current system say a single standard for conversion leaves no confusion in the minds of adherents about who is and who isn’t a member of the tribe.

Jared Armstrong, left, took part in a Birthright Israel

trip in 2021. Credit: Jared Armstrong

Opponents say it consolidates religious and political power in the hands of the few, and narrows the possibilities of belonging to the Jewish people. Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of Israel’s Religious

Zionist Party, recently flew to Europe to meet with

Orthodox leaders. He was trying to drum up opposition to proposed changes to Israel’s religious status quo, from conversion to the agreement for non-Orthodox worship at the Western Wall. (Britain’s Board of Deputies, a Jewish communal organization, called him a “disgrace” and told him to go home.) The bill won’t change anything for Jared Armstrong. It is meant mainly to help current citizens who are part of the Zionist enterprise become part of the Jewish people. But who knows: maybe allowing “as many Jewish perspectives and views as possible” will become a habit.

Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor in chief of The

New York Jewish Week and senior editor of the

Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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.

EFREM EPSTEIN AND RABBI ERIC WOODWARD

JTA The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States can be dated in many ways. The first confirmed case was Jan. 21, 2020. In Jewish communities, the Purim holiday, that year observed starting March 9, was a dividing line between our old lives and our new ones. For many, everything became real on March 11, when travel shut down, Tom Hanks tested positive and the NBA suspended its season. But there’s another marker baked into Jewish tradition that hasn’t been discussed — and it provides a perfect opportunity for commemorating the earth-shattering change that we have all experienced. On that first Shabbat after everything shut down, as synagogues switched to Zoom or held no services at all, we read Parashat Ki Tisa, the Torah portion in which God gives Moses the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai, while down below the Israelites, fearing that he will not return, turn to idol worship. In the seventh and final section of the Torah portion, Moses dons a masveh — a veil or mask — to ease the anxiety felt by peers awed by his “radiant” visage. This weekend, we read Ki Tisa again, marking the liturgical two-year anniversary of the shutdowns. Liturgy gives Jews a framework for processing and recalling our shared experiences. During the last two years, we have celebrated and grieved; we have moved and settled; we have had good moments and others perhaps we wish we could take back. And we know that even as the pandemic appears to wind down, its long-term social effects are here to stay. So last spring, the two of us — a layperson and a rabbi — came together to discuss an idea brought by a close reading of the seventh aliyah of Ki Tisa. We saw that Moses’ decision to don a mask had obvious resonance with pandemic life. It still does, perhaps even more than ever. We have worn masks to protect ourselves, but also to protect others around us. We know that by wearing a mask, we create a climate in which we can safely and comfortably constitute a community. We realized that our communities could remember the start of the pandemic — and all that it brought with it — through the resonant image of the mask that Moses wears. And we realized that the annual repetition of the Torah could make that commemoration a yearly event. We call our ritual Aliyat ha-Masveh, the aliyah of the mask, in which a person who has displayed courage, compassion and care — the attributes of Moses and the frontline worker — could be honored. For now, it probably makes sense for communities to honor pandemic heroes: health care workers, educators, policy makers. But over time, communities that adopt Aliyat ha-Masveh might find themselves recognizing other ways that their members take on responsibilities to ease the pain and anxiety of others. This would be a powerful result of the last two years of pain and fear. This ritual doesn’t have to take place inside synagogues. This Shabbat is a perfect moment — one of several opportunities we will have together in the coming weeks — for Jews to take some time to reflect on the changes of the last two years. Where have we been surprised by our growth? Where have we become more ourselves? Where are we stronger? As we reflect, we can practice holding ourselves tenderly, with care, courage, and compassion — something that may have felt out of reach during this difficult time. In the Torah’s telling, Moses puts the mask over his own face to show humility and concern for others. Although we will (hopefully) eventually set aside physical masks, we will always have chances to show our concern and care for others. Honoring this section of the Torah with a special aliyah can help us to do that.

Efrem Epstein is a tech industry marketing profession in New York City who is also on the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention’s Faith Communities Task Force and the founder of S’fatai Tiftach: The Baalei Tefilah Forum.

Rabbi Eric Woodward is the rabbi of Beth El - Keser Israel Synagogue in New Haven, Connecticut.

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.

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