Life cycles

BAT MITZVAH

AUDREY MEYERSON

Audrey Meyerson, daughter of Jamie and Troy Meyerson will celebrate her Bat Mitzvah on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022, at Temple Israel. Audrey is a seventh grade student at Westside Middle School. Audrey is in Westside Connection Show Choir, SNJ Center Stage Show Choir, plays soccer for Sporting Nebraska Football Club and basketball for Westside. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her friends and family. For her Mitzvah Project, Audrey volunteered for the Jack Meehan Kickball tournament, a fundraiser for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and The Hope Squad, a peer to peer suicide prevention program. She has two sisters, Ainsley and Aiden. Grandparents are Penny Endelman and the late Randy Endelman, and Deenie and Larry Meyerson. Great-grandparents are the late Peggy and Chris Krasne, the late Lois and Bob Endelman, the late Sonia and Irving Forbes, and the late Helen and Leo Meyerson. Meet new friends at J Days

J Day is a new program at the JCC geared towards retirees or anyone looking to meet new friends to play games (like bridge, mahjong, dominoes, etc) and enjoy lunch with. It takes place the sec-

ond Tuesday of the

month from 10 a.m. to noon. Now is the time to register for the Dec. 13 J Day! Every month we get lunch from a new location and do various activities. Lunch, drinks, activities – all are included! Children over 18 and grandchildren are allowed with guardian. Call 402.334.6452 or 402.334.6426 to register.

Select Tuesdays, 10 a.m. – noon For Dec. 13 please register by Dec. 6 cost: $25 per person | registration code: 16-1213

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

To the Editor, I would very much like to thank the ADL for sponsoring my recent talk in Yiddish and English and the Jewish Press for successfully promoting it. And I would very much like to thank Tim Zweiback for conceiving of the idea of a gallery in my parents' honor.

Best,

ROBERT EISENBERG Visit us at omahajewishpress.com Online antisemites see opening

ASAF ELIA SHALEV

JTA Online extremists emboldened by Kanye West’s recent antisemitic diatribes and by Elon Musk’s pledge to loosen content moderation policies on Twitter after taking control of the social media platform this week have launched a new hashtag campaign targeting Jews. “Now that Elon is taking over Twitter it’s time to finally put our skills to use,” wrote an anonymous user on 4chan, the hatefilled online forum. The 4chan user called on others to use the hashtag #TheNoticing while posting antisemitic content on Twitter, especially messages harping on the Nazi-inspired idea that Jews control the world through hidden machinations. The resulting wave of hateful content on Twitter over the past two days was highlighted by actor Seth Rogen, who is Jewish. He tweeted about the hashtag campaign to his 9.4 million followers on Oct. 28. “Anyone want to see how much anti-semitism is thriving right now, just check the hashtag #TheNoticing,” Rogen wrote. Given Twitter’s importance as a global social media platform used by world leaders, media figures, and celebrities, Musk’s takeover of the company is being closely watched. Many in the Jewish world are bracing in particular for changes that could lead to the further spread of racist and antisemitic ideas online. The head of the Anti-Defamation League said Musk’s willingness to welcome Kanye West, the rapper who was suspended this month for antisemitic posts, back to the platform was worrisome. Musk engendered controversy in the lead-up to his acquisition of the company when he vowed to end what he sees as practices of censorship on the platform. In a message to investors, however, he appeared to soften his stance. He said that free speech needed to be balanced with rules that would ensure Twitter is “warm and welcoming to all.” Musk said his goal was to “have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He added that Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Still, some Twitter users, including Jewish ones, said they are planning to leave the platform or at least that they expect it to become less hospitable or pleasant for them.

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LOCAL | NATIONAL | WORLD Finding friends in Budapest: Part 2

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor They are built all over Europe: the memorials to the victims of World War II. Yes, it was a world-wide war, but so many victims fell on this continent, that there’s barely a town or village that doesn’t have its own tragic history. The details may vary, but the gist of the story is often the same. In that sense, Budapest is no different than Amsterdam, or the Provence, or Brussels. When Jenn Tompkins and Leigh Chaves journeyed to Budapest, a portion of their visit was dedicated to touring memorial sites. They saw statues, plaques, artist renditions of shoes, which you saw in this paper last week. In Europe, these memorials are often tricky. Memorializing victims of a foreign power is easy. There is a bad guy, and it’s not you. It’s the Nazis, it’s the German invasion, and rarely is there emphasis on how the German leadership could only do to the Jews what they did with local support. It’s hard to memorialize antisemitism among one’s own population. Hungary is not alone in that. “The plaque by the shoe memorial didn’t match the story our guide told us,” Jenn said. “We heard the Hungarian government did not want to ‘waste’ bullets on the Jews, so they tied everyone together, shot one or two people and pushed everyone into the river.” Conceived by film director Can Togay, he created the memorial on the east bank of the Danube River with sculptor Gyula Pauer to honour the Jews who were massacred by Fascist Hungarian militia belonging to the Arrow Cross Party in Budapest during the Second World War. The plaque states “To the memory of the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross Militiamen in 1944-45.” It does not mention Jews. Why is that? A quick Google search tells us that “Most of the murders along the edge of the River Danube took place around December 1944 and January 1945, when the members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party police (“Nyilas”) took as many as 20,000 Jews from the newly established Budapest ghetto and executed them along the river bank.” According to Offbeat Budapest, “Estimates on the total number of Hungarian Jews killed in the Holocaust vary because of changes in Hungary’s borders before, during and after World War II, and because many survivors remained abroad. There were 825,000 Jewish people in so-called Greater Hungary before the deportations began in March 1944, and the consensus is that more than 500,000 were killed.” In addition to the Shoes on the Danube, there are a number of other memorials in Budapest. The Emanuel Tree is located behind the Dohány Street Synagogue. The weeping willow memorial has the names of 30,000 Hungarian

Holocaust victims inscribed in the tree’s metal leaves. The Tablets of Stone in front of it are symbolically stripped of their content. American actor Tony Curtis — whose father, Emanuel Schwartz, was a Hungarian Jew — provided the funds for the memorial. A Holocaust Memorial can be found at the Faculty of Arts of the Eötvös Loránd University. This subtle memorial, which opened to the public in 2014, consists of a narrow, barely noticeable bronze strip running along the brick walls of the university. The plate lists the students and teachers who died in the Holocaust. Jenn and Leigh also visited the remains of the ghetto’s wall at 15 Király Street. In November 1944, most Budapest Jews were herded into a ghetto, enclosed by today’s Király, Kertész, Dohány, and Rumbach streets inside the Jewish Quarter. Here, several thousand people died before the Soviet Army liberated Above: Remains of the Ghetto’s Wall, right: Jenn and the ghetto in January, 1945 (some of the vicLeigh at the Partnership Summit in Budapest. tims are buried in the garden of the Dohány Street Synagogue). A small section of the ghetto’s wall still stands to serve as a reminder. The wall is inside the courtyard of a private apartment building, but there’s a hole on the entry door, so you can peek in or wait until a resident comes or goes and opens the door. There are other places, and the evidence is there; so are the stories—but barely. Hungarian Jewish memories of the Holocaust almost disappeared. It is the current generation who will continue to unearth their own story and keep it front and center, while rebuilding Jewish life and identity.