Life cycles

IN MEMORIAM

DAVID JUSTIN SHERMAN

David Justin Sherman passed away on Oct. 24, 2021 at age 44 after a brief battle with cancer. A graveside service was held on Oct. 27, 2021 at Temple Israel Cemetery, 6412 N. 42 St.

He is survived by son, Aaron; former partner, Susan Long; parents, Michael and Patty Sherman; sister, Ali; nephews, Isaac and Noah; friend, Nichole Williams, loving family and friends.

David attended Westside High School and University of Northern Colorado. He enjoyed playing guitar, canoeing in the Boundary Waters, skiing in Colorado, Jeeps and writing in Hebrew. He was a prankster, followed by his trademark Sherman grin. Most of all, he loved his son.

Memorials may be made to Friedel Jewish Academy, 335 S. 132 St, Omaha, NE 68154.

Greece’s top court rules against ritual slaughter

CNAAN LIPSHIZ

JTA The highest court in Greece has ruled against allowing ritual slaughter, fulfilling fears that some Jewish leaders voiced last year after the European Union’s top court ruled in support of such bans. Last December, the EU’s highest court upheld the bans imposed in regions of Belgium against slaughtering animals for meat without stunning them first. The ruling meant that slaughter in accordance with Jewish law, which requires animals be conscious when their necks are cut, would be prohibited in those regions, as it is in some other parts of Europe. Greece’s top court did not cite that ruling in its decision Tuesday on a petition filed by the Panhellenic Animal Welfare and Environmental Federation, according to the Greek news site Protothema. But Jewish watchdogs who have been monitoring bans on ritual slaughter across the European continent said the connection was undeniable. The bans on kosher slaughter, or shechitah, are part of a struggle across Europe between animal welfare activists and Muslim and Jewish community representatives. In recent years, anti-immigration activists and politicians who are unhappy about the immigration of Muslims in Europe have joined the debate A similar fight is unfolding around nonmedical circumcision of boys, or brit milah in Jewish tradition.

Israeli and American rabbis: ‘take climate change seriously’

SHIRA HANAU

JTA Rabbis in the United States and in Israel called on the leaders of their countries to take the issue of climate change seriously ahead of a gathering of world leaders to address the issue. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet will attend the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which began in Glasgow, Scotland Oct. 31. A group of major Israeli Orthodox rabbis, largely from the Modern Orthodox community, wrote a letter calling on Bennet to treat climate change as a matter of the utmost importance in a letter Friday. They called climate change a matter of worldwide “pikuach nefesh,” invoking the Jewish legal term for the requirement to preserve life, a requirement which overrules nearly all other commandments in Jewish law. “This issue today touches the preservation of life worldwide, in the full meaning of the words,” the letter states. The letter was signed by a group of 20 influential rabbis in the Modern Orthodox community in Israel, including Rabbi Yuval Sherlow, Rabbi David Stav, and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, according to Israeli news site Makor Rishon. A separate call to action was made last week by a group of American rabbis and other religious leaders in the form of a prayer, modeled on the traveler’s prayer, for Biden. The prayer, composed by Rabbi Daniel Swartz, who serves as executive director of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, reads in part: “Through your blessing, may the President lead the world to take the swift, ambitious actions needed to protect this common home, Your Earth, so that future generations inherit a just, sustainable, and bountiful world. May generosity triumph over greed, and may all the leaders gathered at COP26 stand in solidarity with the poor and vulnerable.” The prayer was delivered to the White House and signed by a number of well-known American rabbis, including Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, head of the Rabbinical Assembly; Rabbi Sharon Brous, rabbi of IKAR in LA, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, founder of the Shalom Center, and Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, vice president of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, who was arrested last week at a climate protest in New York City.

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Blending Witchcraft and Jewish folklore

RACHEL ROMAN

JTA Occult practices and totems are a mainstay of Halloween season, and sage bundles, altars and crystals are an increasingly trendy way to dabble in divination and witchcraft. But the spooky supernatural world also has a long history in Judaism, and modern “Jewitches” are encouraging the connection — though their practices often slightly differ from their non-Jewish contemporaries. “I do not burn sage,” said Zo Jacobi, who runs Jewitches, a popular blog and podcast that deep dives into ancient Jewish myths and folkloric practices. The sage-related ritual of “smudging,” an Indigenous ceremony popular among modern witches for cleansing a person or place of negative energy, “is not a Jewish practice,” she said. “But Jews had crystals. Actually, they were called ‘gems.’” Jacobi and her peers are revitalizing ancient Jewish practices of witchcraft, which have been seeing something of a revival as of late. Far from having an uneasy relationship with magic practitioners, Judaism — or at least Kabbalistic strands of it — has long embraced them. Jacobi, based in Los Angeles, studies those gems’ role in Jewish ritual, along with the connections between assorted other magical artifacts and Judaica. Eight shelves in her home are filled with books on Judaism as well as Jewish magic, witchcraft and folklore. Her studies have revealed the historical ways that items like gems have been used in Jewish magical correspondences. Like healing crystals, gems are meant to protect and heal based on their properties, according to Midrash (Numbers Rabbah 2:7). For example, sapphire was thought to strengthen eyesight. “It’s in a medieval text called the Sefer Ha-Gematriaot,” Jacobi said. “But even if we go to the Torah, we see crystals on the breastplates of the kohanim (high priests of Israel).” Many Jewish rituals today have their roots in warding off demons, ghosts and other mythological creatures. When we break glass at a wedding, scholars say, we’re not just remembering the destruction of the Temple; we’re also scaring off evil spirits that may want to hurt the bride and groom. Likewise, ancient Jews believed that the mezuzah protected them from messengers of evil — a function parallel to that of an amulet, or good-luck charm. “The mezuzah is absolutely an amulet,” said Rebekah Erev, a Jewish feminist artist, activist and kohenet (Hebrew priestexx, a gender-neutral term for “priest” or “priestess”) who uses the pronouns they/them and teaches courses on Jewish magic out of a studio in Olympia, Washington. “I consider it to be a reminder of the presence of spirit, of goddess, of shechinah [the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God]. Much of magic is about reminding ourselves that we’re all connected and that everything is alive and animate.” The moniker “Jewitch” itself is controversial within the

group. Erev, who first heard the term while attending a 2014 “Jewitch Collective” retreat in the Bay Area, says they don’t care for it today. “I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing,” they said, even though they do consider both witchcraft and Judaism to be major tenets of their life. Cooper Kaminsky, a Denver-based intuitive artist and healer, concurred that the portmanteau was “revisionist” to some, but added, “Many, including myself, are empowered by identifying as a Jewitch.” Historically, as Judaic practices grew more patriarchal, women were exempt from studying the TalmudZo Jacobi runs Jewitches, a popular blog and podcast that deep dives into ancient Jewish myths and folkloric practices. Credit: @Vlasta/Getty Images and Torah. They knew little Hebrew, so they created their own prayers in Yiddish, used herbal remedies and centered their religious practices around the earth. Erev mirrors these customs by creating magical rituals, like meditating on cinnamon sticks during the month of Shvat, hearkening back to how cinnamon trees in Jerusalem scented the land during the harvest. “There’s a Kabbalistic idea of making oneself smaller for creation to emerge. Connecting with a cinnamon stick is a simple ritual. The cinnamon folds in, and the bark contracts in on itself,” Erev said. “Sometimes contracting inward can give us space to emerge and create.” The goal of many “Jewitch” educators and practitioners, they say, is to shine a light on rituals that have been forgotten or buried for self-preservation. Jacobi believes that many folkloric practices died out following the 13th-18th centuries because, at the time, Jews were viewed as demonic witches.

This story was edited for length. Please find the full article on our website at www.omahajewishpress.com.