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The Jewish Press

(Founded in 1920)

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Annette van de Kamp-Wright

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Abby Kutler, President; Eric Dunning, Ex-Officio; Danni Christensen, David Finkelstein, Candice Friedman, Bracha Goldsweig, Margie Gutnik, Natasha Kraft, Chuck Lucoff, Eric Shapiro, Andy Shefsky, Shoshy Susman 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: wwwjewishomaha.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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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.

A safe space?

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor

“A year after the filing of a federal civil rights complaint alleging an ‘unrelenting campaign of anti-Semitic harassment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,’ Shira Hanau wrote for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “the school is set to have a new dorm specifically for Jewish students. While the dorm is meant to be a place where Shabbat and kosher observance will be easier, it is also intended to be a response to the recent spate of anti-Semitic incidents on campus.”

In and of itself, a safe space in which to practice ritual and be unapologetically Jewish, it sounds attractive. Easier to clean during Passover and such. The laid-back feeling of a Friday afternoon that leads to shared Shabbat dinners. Being at least somewhat on the same page can help college students create their own family- I remember what that was like.

But: when it is in response to an alleged pattern of anti-Semitism, including swastika graffiti, vandalism at Jewish centers and harassment of Jewish and pro-Israel students, the narrative becomes a little ugly.

“If there’s one place on campus you want to be comfortable, it’s at least where you go to sleep at night,” Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, director of the Illini Chabad, said. He’s right, of course. And yet, the idea that Jewish students need their own building just to feel safe on campus makes me sad. Coming together and living together because you want to is an entirely different thing than doing so in response to hate. Is a space still ‘safe’ if it is specifically designed to let some people in but keep others out? Why do the Jewish students need to find safety in a separate building because others can’t contain their hate? Are you turning over the rest of campus to the anti-Semites, pretending everything is okay because the Jewish students are safe in their own building?

I’m overreacting, of course. No Jewish students are being forced to live in that building. It’s not a ghetto. And yet, the hint of separation doesn’t smell right.

Any time we respond to hate by retreating, by isolating ourselves and pulling away from those we should have a dialogue with, we do the world a disservice. We also make it easier for anti-Semitism to go unchecked. If there are those who think it’s okay to spray paint swastikas on buildings, what jokes do they make when nobody’s watching? What conversations take place when there is nobody there to object? If we want to fight the hate, shouldn’t we be present when that hate manifests? If we speak up at the jokes and inappropriate comments, we might be able to change the tone before it leads to vandalism and outright violence.

And maybe I’m just irritated that we still live in a world where ‘safe spaces’ are necessary. A world where I cannot trust that when our children go off to college, we can’t assume they will be just fine. If there is anti-Semitism on college campuses, there is racism, there is islamophobia, there is homopho-

A view of the entrance to the University of Illinois at at Urbana-Champaign Credit: Beyond My Ken/ Wikimedia Commons

bia and there is xenophobia, because I don’t believe that anti-Semitism ever operates in a vacuum. When one group experiences hate, others follow— it’s how those things work. What’s next, separate housing for every group that experiences hate? Where does it stop? How about we just demand that the haters behave better? One of the biggest learning opportunities at any university comes from the people you meet and interact with. Yes, that diploma and those grades are important, but the life lessons you gain from meeting people who are nothing like you is much greater. The safest space, after all, is the space where we can all be at home, no matter who we are, what we believe, or where we come from.

A shooter terrorized my favorite grocery store in Boulder. This simple Jewish prayer for dew is helping me mourn.

LISA TRANK

JTA The day was cold, but not too cold — typical March weather for the Rocky Mountains. I was heading to Boulder to pick up one of our daughters from the University of Colorado. COVID had canceled their regular spring break, but she needed some time away from campus, so off I went. Her twin sister had opted to stay on campus. I stopped at the King Soopers in South Longmont, a town 12 miles northeast of Boulder. We’ve shopped at this store for the 21 years we’ve lived in this town. Many of the employees have been there the whole time, from the days when I’d push the bright red car cart with three kids to now, shopping for my husband and myself. This morning, I was picking up a few of our daughter’s favorite items — blueberries, Yerba Mate, fresh basil for the pesto I was planning on making for dinner that night. I arrived at her dorm and texted her. She scrambled in and we turned back toward home. She had an essay due and lots of studying for calculus and chemistry. She was excited to see our dog and sleep in her own bed. As we pulled off the Diagonal Highway, the thin stretch of road that connects Longmont to Boulder, my daughter said, “I got an alert. There’s an active shooter at the South Boulder King Soopers.” I drove the two or three miles home with a nervous pit growing in my stomach. I turned on my computer and proceeded to watch in horror. I called our other daughter. She was safe and very anxious. I began to make plans to head back to pick her up when a second area of Boulder was being investigated and shut down. I realized I couldn’t get to her. I told her to stay in her room. A few hours later, the extent of the tragedy was made public: Ten people, including three store employees and a Boulder police officer, were dead. Ten people killed in less than one hour. While shopping and working at a grocery store. Friends on Facebook who live in Boulder marked themselves “safe.” I received texts and calls asking if we were OK. I marked myself and my family “safe.” That was 10 days ago. My husband and I lived in Boulder for six years before moving to Longmont, and have shopped at that very King Soopers store many, many times. Our family has enjoyed celebratory brunches at a cafe located in the same shopping center, and we have friends who live in that area. One of our daughters worked at a grocery store last summer. Two days after the shooting, my husband and I brought our daughter back to campus. We arrived in Boulder at sunset, pink and orange clouds converging over the Flatirons. For the first time since the shooting, I cried. Brief, hot tears jutted down my cheeks. We took both girls to get something to eat, dropped them back at school and drove back to Longmont in silence. In the days that followed, I went through the motions and prepared for Passover. In the entry of our King Soopers were three simple flower arrangements on a folding table with a handwritten sign: “In their honor.” I bought daffodils, tulips and yahrzeit candles along with whatever was on my list. I went home, cooked soup and kugel, and set the seder table. The next morning, I received an email message titled “A Prayer for Dew.” I opened the email and read the prayer. I knew we prayed for rain on Sukkot, but dew on Passover? “Dew, precious dew, unto Your land forlorn …” When faced with such a huge sense of loss, especially for a quiet and connected community like Boulder, Sandy Hook, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and every place in our country hit by gun violence, we often turn to prayer for comfort and answers, as well as to honor those lost. I tried to pray, but the vastness of the grief caused

Dew drops on a leaf Credit: Getty Images by unmitigated gun violence is overwhelming. I had no idea where to start. Perhaps I could simply pray for a drop of dew. This morning, I woke up to snow dusting on grass that is trying hard to turn green and tulips pushing themselves out of the hard, cold earth. It’s not dew, but that will come. Spring is short in the Rocky Mountains. “Dew, precious dew to make the mountains sweet...”

Lisa Trank is a writer of Jewish children’s literature, personal essays and lifestyle articles. Her work has been published in Tablet, Kveller, Tiferet Journal and the Jewish Women’s Archive, among others. She is a member of the Society for Children Book Writers and Illustrators. She lives in Longmont, Colorado with a constant view of the Rocky Mountains.

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.

IVY HUMBARGER

This piece originally appeared in Alma, 70 Faces Media’s feminist Jewish culture site. Content warning: anti-Japanese slur. The term “Jewish American Princess” has been debated within Jewish communities for as long as it has existed. Many bemoan it for perpetuating sexism and negative stereotypes of Jewish women, while others have argued that despite these origins, there’s a power in embracing the moniker. But as a Jew of Japanese descent, I’m here to say the much larger problem comes from the acronym used in its place: JAP. There needs to be a conversation about the dangerous and violent history of the racist slur “jap,” and why Jewish people should not want to co-opt this word. For those unaware, “jap” is a racial slur used against Japanese people. World War II-era America best showcases the dangers of this hateful word. As we all know, the war brought much suffering to many groups of people. And while America claims to be the hero that saved the world, the assertion often ignores or justifies its treatment of the Japanese. In Japan, America dropped devastating bombs on civilian cities that resulted in 225,000 deaths, which is likely an underestimated count, according to UCLA. Stateside, the U.S. government deported Japanese Americans — fellow citizens — to Japan, as bargaining chips to trade for American prisoners. In 1942, the U.S. government forcibly relocated and incarcerated some 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were natural-born citizens. These people were ripped from their homes by the government and placed in makeshift internment camps in the desert on the West Coast. They had no trials and nobody to save them. In 1942, Gen. John DeWitt, commander of the Western Defense Command, said, “A Jap’s a Jap. It makes no difference whether the Jap is a citizen or not.” That same year, Col. Karl Bendetsen of the Wartime Civil Control Administration said, “I am determined that if they have one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp.” The homes and businesses of Japanese Americans were destroyed, looted and vandalized. The word “japs” was everywhere. Spray-painted on homes, on the front page of newspapers, on signs and posters. People protested the presence of Japanese people in America in the streets and from the comfort of their homes. Businesses put up signs banning Japanese from entering the premises, saying “No japs allowed.” These were innocent citizens, many of whom came here for the “American dream.” Like many Jewish immigrants who came to the U.S. at the turn of the century, the Japanese came for opportunity, for the chance at greatness, yet America did what America always does. This history is America, and it is the history of my heritage in this country. This is not a history that you can ask Japanese people to forget. Jap is not just a word; it’s a searing symbol of hate. Growing up with a Japanese relative in metro Detroit, I was very familiar with the use of jap. It’s been hurled at me, and I’ve felt the pain that the term evokes. My grandfather was born in Okinawa, Japan, sometime in January 1953, with the name Susumi Kise. As a baby he was put up for adoption at the Yonabaru orphanage in Naha, Okinawa. There is no documentation of his parents, whether they were alive or dead when he was brought to the orphanage. He was adopted as a young child by an American family stationed on the island and spent three years waiting to immigrate to the United States under the Refugee Relief Act. Upon his arrival in the U.S., he became the youngest-ever naturalized citizen in Detroit and the first person for whom the Michigan city ever waived the oral oath. Despite how incredible of a headliner this situation was — a poor abandoned Okinawan orphan rescued by an American soldier from a war-ridden, desolate island — the novelty of the story quickly wore off. My grandfather was brought overseas to a racist America that hated him and saw him as a traitor while still seeing themselves as his savior. He was brought to an America that less than 10 years before bombed his country and locked up his people in the desert. He faced endless racism throughout his life — was bullied as a child in school, experienced discrimination from employers, endured harsh xenophobia from my white grandmother’s family when they announced their relationship and intention to have children, or as they said, “interbreed.” When people use the slur jap, they’re using it against my grandpa, against his people and against everything they have ever been through. And that causes me immense pain. The first time I ever saw the term JAP used to signify Jewish American Princess was from a Jewish person on Twitter. Initially I thought I had stumbled across another Jew of Japanese descent. I mean, who else would use this slur so lightly? Upon reading their profile I realized they weren’t Japanese at all, and I became very concerned and confused. I had to resort to googling “Jewish JAP” to find the meaning. I was shocked and disappointed to see that Jews online were lightly using a slur as an acronym. This experience was so isolating and hurtful as I began to feel unsafe in the online Jewish community. I have desperately tried to gain the attention of Jews online to warn them of this slur, and to beg them to stop using it, but it has always been to no avail. While many Jewish people see using this acronym as a lighthearted substitute for a long-winded phrase, those unaware of the Jewish meaning may look at this and see a racial slur, as I and many fellow Japanese people do. No matter how many times I see it used as Jewish American

A woman enjoying the skyline at dusk Credit: Getty Images Princess, I cannot separate it from the hate word that was used to vandalize Japanese-American homes. Even if we as Jewish people have an alternative meaning, or think, “Well, that’s not what I mean,” remember it doesn’t matter whether you mean to use a slur or not. It matters that you’re using it, and it matters to the people who are harmed by it. Jewish people understand all too well pain and suffering, being othered and singled out, and we should never subject others to that feeling. It is especially important as a diverse people who span the world that we as Jews work hard to be as inclusive as possible. A good start is to analyze our actions as Jews and see how language such as JAP is divisive and especially harmful to Jews who are Japanese or of Japanese descent. Jewish women want to reclaim Jewish American Princess? I support that. But please, for the love of God, take the extra five seconds and spell out the phrase. As Jews, it’s the least we can do.

Ivy Humbarger is a Jewish food worker of Ashkenazi and Japanese descent. She is currently studying forensic pathology in Detroit, Michigan.

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.

Writing poetry helps me process the unspeakable evils of the Holocaust

MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT rial to the millions who have none. A collection of these writings, self-pity, Andreas Rapaport was the author of his own eulogy, JTA “Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen,” is being published this month his own Kaddish: Andreas Rapaport – lived sixteen years. AnNot long after the gruesome reality of the Holocaust had burst by Kelsay Books to coincide with Yom Hashoah, the Jewish day dreas Rapaport – abandoned, alone, afraid. Andreas Rapaport onto the world’s consciousness, the philosopher and social of remembrance for Holocaust victims on April 8, and the an- – hungry, in pain. Andreas Rapaport – gas-filled lungs. Antheorist Theodor Adorno famously observed in 1949 that writ- niversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. dreas Rapaport – incinerated, black smoke, ashes. ing poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric — “nach Auschwitz For me, conceptualizing my poems is often simultaneously In “Under Your White stars,” Avraham Sutzkever, the Yidein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch.” a refuge and an escape. An escape from the realm of conven- dish poet of the Vilna Ghetto, wrote, “Stretch out to me Your Less well known but equally insightful was Adorno’s subse- tional human experience into a parallel internal reality. And a white hand. My words are tears that want to rest in Your quent conclusion, expressed in a 1966 radio address in Germany, refuge where amorphous phantasmagoric thoughts and im- hand.” It is the beginning of a monologue addressed to God that Auschwitz itself constituted nothing less than a “relapse ages emerge sufficiently from their nebulous twilight to allow that never turns into a dialogue because there is no response. into barbarism.” Against a “murderous calm” that permeated the precarious Adorno understood that the Shoah’s calcu- existence of the ghetto’s inhabitants, the narrator writes: “I run lated, systematic savagery was an absolute de- higher, over rooftops, and I search: Where are You? Where?” viation from the fundamental norms of The poems written by Sutzkever and other poets in the civilization and civilized behavior. To be valid, ghettos and even in the Nazi death and concentration camps anything written or said about the Holocaust, were their way of refusing to become dehumanized, of defying whether in poetry or prose, must first and fore- their oppressors and remaining sane in a world gone mad. most encapsulate and reflect its barbaric Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the night of Aug. 3essence. Aesthetic sensitivities and considera- 4, 1943, a little boy named Benjamin was separated from his tions must yield to the undeniable absolute evil mother and sent directly into a gas chamber with his father that sparked and perpetrated the genocide of and grandparents. European Jewry, requiring us to absorb and try Benjamin was my half-brother. Even though my mother to come to terms with the unprecedented, the rarely spoke about him, I know that she thought of him every unfathomable and, above all, the inexplicable. day of her life. Since her death in 1997, Benjamin has contin Perhaps the most cogent context for this in- ued to exist within me. I see his face in my mind, try to imagexorable immersion into the unknown was Barbed wire fence against a dark sky Credit: Getty Images ine his voice, his fear as the gas chamber doors slammed shut, given by my late teacher and mentor Elie Wiesel, who ex- me to express them, however inadequately, in words. his final tears. If I were to forget him, he would disappear. plained in his essay “A Plea for the Dead” that “Auschwitz sig- We need poems, songs and parables. We need a Kafkaesque, And I write about him so that my grandchildren, and their nifies not only the failure of two thousand years of Christian morbid language of dreams and nightmares to be able to pen- children and grandchildren in turn, will remember Benjamin civilization, but also the defeat of the intellect that wants to etrate the nocturnal universe of Auschwitz and Birkenau, of as well. My poems are my legacy to them. find a Meaning – with a capital M – in history. What Treblinka, Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen, of Belzec, Chelmno, Menachem Z. Rosensaft is associate executive vice presAuschwitz embodied had none.” Sobibor and Terezin, of the Warsaw Ghetto, Transnistria and ident and general counsel of the World Jewish Congress And yet, despite all these flashing yellow lights, I, the son of Babyn Yar. and teaches about the law of genocide at the law schools two survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen who was born A sparse inscription on a Birkenau barrack wall forces us to of Columbia and Cornell Universities. He is the author of three years after the end of World War II in the displaced per- identify with its author without knowing anything else about "Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen." sons camp of Bergen-Belsen, long ago turned to expressing my- him: “Andreas Rapaport – lived sixteen years.” Aware that he The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of self in poetry. Over the decades I have tried to give voice to the was about to die, a Jewish teenager tried to leave a sign, a the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its dead in my poems, to comfort ghosts, and to provide a memo- memory of his existence on earth. Without pathos, without parent company, 70 Faces Media.