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The Jewish Press

(Founded in 1920)

Margie Gutnik

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Annette van de Kamp-Wright

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Richard Busse

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Susan Bernard

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Lori Kooper-Schwarz

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Gabby Blair Sam Kricsfeld

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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.

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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.

European history lessons

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor “The number of antisemitic incidents recorded in the Netherlands,” Cnaan Liphshiz wrote for the JTA, “reached a 10-year high of 183 cases in 2021, a Dutch Jewish watchdog group said. The 2021 tally was a 35-percent increase over the previous year, said the Hague-based Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI. At least 72 of the incidents happened in what the CIDI, called “reallife” conditions, meaning in physical spaces and not online. Of those, 21 were acts of vandalism and three incidents were violent assaults.” While that may sound serious, the number 183 is nothing. This is a country of over 17 million people—so my first thought when I read the headline was: they probably only included reported acts of physical violence. But no, it includes graffiti, which pops up in shopping centers, on train cars and abandoned buildings and mailboxes and trashcans and electrical boxes and anywhere else where the spraypaint will stick. There is a Star of David combined with a swastika on a trashcan at the dog park right by my mother’s house. There is another one a street over by the nursing home. There is a third one on the street by my childhood home, on an electrical box. Granted, I haven’t been home in almost two-anda-half years, but I would bet good money they are all still there. Nobody bothers cleaning that stuff up. From growing up there, I know there are thousands of antisemitic slogans, scribbles and drawings. We’ve just learned to accept them as a fact of life. Also, there is a whole second language of soccer-related symbolism, which is hard to explain in one op-ed. In short, fans of the Amsterdam club use the Mogen David as a symbol, so sometimes that star shows up on the bus stop as a way to claim territory for your club. Weird, I know, but that’s what it is. Other times, it’s a declaration of hate. The question is, when is an ‘antisemitic incident’ something you just put up with, and when is it cause for concern? Here in Omaha, I would answer that question very differently than when I’m in the Netherlands. And I’ve tried to think of a way to explain that to non-Europeans. Why is it, that when I see a swastika at a Dutch bus stop, I feel irritated but I don’t report it? Why does it make me fearful here, but not there? Is it just because I grew up there, my family is there, and I feel safe because the place is familiar? But I’ve been in America for 25 years, half my life, certainly this is just as familiar as the place I stubbornly keep calling ‘home,’ even though it is no longer that. Maybe familliarity breeds passivity. Maybe, it is because when I’m here, I’m Jewish first, and Omahan second. But when I’m in the Netherlands, I am

Dutch first, and Jewish is not even a close second. There was so little Jewish life while I was growing up, it only began shaping my identity in marginal ways when I was in high school, and only through stories from family members. There was little left, so it felt like there was little to protect, perhaps. Simultaneously, reminders of the Holocaust are everywhere. Camps, tombstones, memorials, and endless plaques. Two minutes of silence on May 4th, Liberation Day on May 5th. The Credit: Daniel Lobo, licensed under the Creative Commons Holocaust education Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. my generation received, starting in first grade, was robust. Europeans should know better than to plaster these images everywhere, but we don’t. Perhaps it serves as a reminder that the way we deal with our history, right or wrong, is our decision, and not anyone else’s. There is not one answer. It is messy, because the war was messy—as is its aftermath. At the end of the day, we really do not know how to process our own recent history. As Europeans, we continue to stumble and make mistakes. Perhaps, as long as we don’t let it stop us from growing, accepting our imperfections in this regard is the best thing we can do.

Mariupol, one of Putin’s main targets in Ukraine, once sheltered a great yeshiva

HENRY ABRAMSON

JTA Barring a miracle, Mariupol, the beleaguered industrial center in eastern Ukraine, may henceforth be known only as the city that bore the brunt of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine’s independence and its people. But the city also has a rich and often tragic Jewish history, shaped by conflict and the efforts of previous generations to preserve their lives, faith and culture in the face of brutality. One such story starts at the beginning of the 20th century, not in Ukraine but in Lithuania. Perched on the western edge of the Russian Empire, the Lithuanian town of Panevezys (pronounced Ponevezh or Ponevich) was home to some 7,000 Jews, roughly half the total population. The town boasted few amenities, but chief among them was the yeshiva established in 1909 by Liba Miriam Gavronskii, widowed daughter of the wealthy tea magnate Kalonymus Wissotsky. Rabbi Yitshak Yaakov Rabinovich (known as Reb Itsele Ponevezher, 1854-1919) was its first head, or rosh yeshiva. The yeshiva flourished, but it faced an early threat to its existence with the outbreak of World War I. Seeking to undermine the Russian war effort, the Germans directed a Yiddish-language proclamation to the Jews of the Russian Empire, promising them full emancipation and equal rights once the Romanov dynasty was toppled. Already distrustful of his large Jewish population, the notoriously antisemitic Tsar Nicholas II ordered a brutal expulsion of Jews from the borderlands region to the interior of the Russian Empire. The Yeshiva of Ponevezh was forced to relocate, first to Ludza in nearby Latvia, and then once again to Mariupol. Before returning to reestablish itself in independent Lithuania in 1919, the yeshiva would spend the remainder of the war years in Mariupol. Why Mariupol? The great distance from the front lines certainly factored in the thinking of the rosh yeshiva, but Mariupol had developed a reputation as a haven for Jewish settlement. In 1791, the port city was added to the Pale of Settlement, the region of the Russian Empire designated for Jews. By 1847 just over a hundred Jews had established homes in Mariupol, participating in the Black Sea trade. It became a destination for Jews looking for economic opportunity and those fleeing the overcrowded regions of Lithuania and Belarus. By the end of the 19th century, the city was home to over 5,000 Jews, constituting 16% of the population; the 1926 census records 7,332 Jews in Mariupol, or 18% of the city. The expanding, dynamic Jewish community of Mariupol — disturbed only by riots associated with the 1905 revolution — came to an abrupt end with the Nazi invasion. Mariupol’s Jews were rounded up and shot by Einsatzgruppen on a single dark day — Oct. 18, 1941 — as part of the horrific “Holocaust by Bullets.” As for the Lithuanian yeshiva that was sheltered by Mariupol in World War I, it went on to establish itself as one of the greatest institutions of Talmudic study during the interwar years. In 1939, however, war came to Panevezys again, with both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany invading Lithuania. Under the leadership of Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman (1888-1969), the yeshiva continued to function under Communist rule despite the fact that he was trapped outside the country, with students moving from one synagogue to another until the Nazis took over in June 1941 and murdered them all, together with most of Rabbi Kahaneman’s family. In 1944, Rabbi Kahaneman reestablished the Ponevezh Yeshiva once again — this time in B’nai Brak, in what would become Israel — with seven students. Amazingly, it has grown to reclaim its reputation among the most prominent institutions of higher Talmudic education in the world; at 98, its current rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, is regarded by many as the spiritual leader of the “Lithuanian” non-Hasidic stream of haredi Orthodoxy.

After the Holocaust, Jews slowly trickled back into Mariupol, which in 1948 was renamed Zhdanov by the Soviets after the sudden death of Andrei Zhdanov (1896-1948), long rumored to be Joseph Stalin’s presumed successor (his son also married the Soviet dictator’s daughter). By 1959 over 2,000 Jews lived in the city, but only constituted about 1% of the total population.

Since the 1990s, when its roof collapsed under heavy snow, all that remains of the The Choral Synagogue in Mariupol, Ukraine, is the

brick facade and foundations. Credit: Wikimedia Commons With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city reclaimed its original name of Mariupol in 1989, and became part of newly independent Ukraine shortly thereafter. The heroic presence of the ChabadLubavitch movement in Mariupol, as in many formerly Soviet communities, supported the tiny Jewish population that remained after most of them emigrated to Israel in Operation Exodus — when Jews escaped the crumbling Soviet Union more than three decades ago — and continued to serve even through the Russian invasions of 2014 and 2018. Now, in the midst of the invasion of 2022, Chabad and others are working to evacuate as many of them as possible.

Henry Abramson is a specialist in Jewish history and thought who currently serves as a dean of Touro College in Brooklyn, New York.

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.

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL

JTA In the autumn of 1965, a New York Times reporter met in a Queens luncheonette with Daniel Burros, a chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in New York State. The reporter, McCandlish Phillips, had a difficult subject to bring up with his racist and deeply antisemitic interviewee: He found out that Burros’ parents were married by a rabbi, and that Burros himself appeared to have been raised and bar mitzvahed in an Orthodox Jewish home in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens. “Are you going to print that?” Burros asked. When Phillips said he would, Burros threatened to kill him. Burros did not carry out that threat, but the story ends in violence: After reading the article that ran on Oct. 31, State Klan Leader Hides Secret of Jewish Origin, Burros shot and killed himself. The story of the Orthodox Jew turned self-hating Klansman is often brought up in journalism classes as a case study in disclosing what a subject would prefer to keep hidden. Burros had put himself out there as a public figure, and his biography – and his secret – were considered fair game. Neither of the top Times editors at the time – A.M. Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb, who co-wrote a book about Burros – expressed any qualms. “He was who he was, he did what he did, and I no more would feel guilty of saying that a certain person robbed a bank,” Rosenthal once told an interviewer. “Was I happy that he killed himself? Of course not. I did not feel that we had done anything but the appropriate thing. It was he who was misappropriating his life, both in what he was doing and how he chose to end it. There were other ways he could have ended it – he could have quit!” I thought about the Burros case last week, after the Washington Post ran an article about the far-right Twitter account Libs of TikTok, in which reporter Taylor Lorenz named the woman who had been running the account anonymously. Among other things, she noted that the woman, Chaya Raichik, is an Orthodox Jew. Critics of the article, mostly on the right, accused Lorenz of harassing and “doxxing” Raichik – that is, revealing personal information about someone who appeared to prefer anonymity online. Lorenz’s defenders – mostly on the left – said the reporter was just doing journalism, and noted that Raichik herself was in the business of posting videos by obscure LGBTQ activists and gay-friendly teachers, who were then held up for ridicule and harassment in the right-wing ecosphere. Lorenz’s editor defended her reporting methods, saying they “comport entirely with the Washington Post’s professional standards.” Raichik, the statement added, “in her management of the Libs of TikTok Twitter account and in media interviews, has had significant impact on public discourse and her identity had become public knowledge on social media.” The Post’s statement itself comports with how most mainstream journalists would have handled the story: With her 700,000+ followers and demonstrable impact on the right-wing media and even pending GOP legislation, Raichik’s identity and background were ripe for disclosure. Jewish Twitter had a separate beef with Lorenz, however, with many asking how Raichik’s Orthodox background was relevant to the story. The Coalition for Jewish Values, an organization of rightwing Orthodox rabbis, said that “identifying the Twitter user as an Orthodox Jewish woman placed her at heightened risk of physical harm.” But if identifying someone as Jewish subjects them to antisemitism, that seems to be a bigger and more insurmountable problem than any one journalist can address or avoid. It assumes, without evidence, that antisemitism has become so pervasive that living and identifying publicly as a Jew has become an existential risk. And it clashes with an ethos of Jewish pride and self-confidence that educators are trying to instill in Jewish schools and camps, and no doubt in the synagogues to which many of the Washington Post’s critics belong. Jews are visible and assertive in public life, and in almost every occupation you can think of. Jews are overrepresented in activist spaces where the arguments are impassioned and sometimes unhinged. They don’t live as marranos. It’s not clear why Raishik deserves special handling, especially when she has willingly placed herself at the white-hot center of our national argument. Of course, I work for a Jewish media company whose job it is to report on Jewish accomplishments, scandals and curiosities. It is no surprise that I always find the fact of someone’s Jewish background interesting and relevant. And I can undersand why Lorenz thought so too: Religious beliefs are a major element driving politics these days, no more so than on the right, where faith and policy align when it comes to activism around abortion, LGBTQ issues and pandemic restrictions. Observers have noted how Orthodox Jews, unlike the largely liberal, non-Orthodox Jewish majority, have increasingly embraced the Republican Party and Donald Trump in recent years. This is great news for groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition, and community leaders in Brooklyn and other Orthodox enclaves have hardly been shy about their turn to the right. The same trend also alarms some within and outside Orthodoxy. “The fact that Chaya Raichik is a orthodox Jewish woman is 100% relevant to the Libs Of Tiktok story,” said a writer who tweets as @EvelKneidel. The Orthodox connection between faith and right-wing politics is a subject worth exploring. And that is exactly how my colleagues at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency treated the information that “Libs of TikTok” was run by an activist who identified herself as Orthodox. In a thoughtful article, Ron Kampeas reported on politics in the Orthodox community, and discussed whether Raichik is representative or an outlier. Putting Raichik’s religious background in that context gave us a window into how to understand the present political moment and the roles all sorts of Jews are playing. The fact that a right-wing Twitter activist is Jewish is hardly as juicy as the oxymoronic tale of the Jewish Klansman. Still, I see why Lorenz included the fact. And I only wish, instead of the brief mention, she had offered a fuller exploration of its relevance to the story at hand.

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.

The logo of Libs of TikTok, a right-wing twitter account that posts and ridicules TikTok videos and social media posts from LGBTQ people and other

progressives. Credit: Twitter

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