Voices

The Jewish Press

(Founded in 1920)

Margie Gutnik

President

Annette van de Kamp-Wright

Editor

Richard Busse

Creative Director

Susan Bernard

Advertising Executive

Lori Kooper-Schwarz

Assistant Editor

Gabby Blair

Staff Writer

Mary Bachteler

Accounting

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: 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.

Editorial

The Jewish Press is an agency of the Jewish Federation of Omaha. Deadline for copy, ads and photos is: Thursday, 9 a.m., eight days prior to publication. E-mail editorial material and photos to: avandekamp@jewishomaha.org; send ads (in TIF or PDF format) to: rbusse@jewishomaha.org.

Letters to the Editor Guidelines

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.

Postal

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.

Be the miracle

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor Just as I was ready to write a nice op-ed about giving to the Annual Campaign, something disappointing happened. On Monday, Nov. 22, I came to work to find the latest issue of the Catholic Voice on my desk. Like the Jewish Press, the CV is a communitybased paper and it has been published in the Omaha diocese for 118 years. I usually just glance at the front page; I don’t actually read much of it, but I like to keep it around in case I want to consult with anyone on their staff. We serve a very different audience, but underneath the skin, we are the same. As a highly localized community paper, we face the same challenges and experience the same conundrums. “This issue,” it said on the front page, “is the final one being published in printed form.” Inside, editor Dan Rossini explains what brought the CV to this point, which is a combination of decreased advertising income and the lingering effects of the pandemic. It’s heartbreaking to see a publication that has served its readers for 118 years disappear. Yes, Northeastern Nebraska Catholics will be able to get their news online, but we all know it is not the same, no matter how optimistically we may spin it. It’s impossible not to take it personally whenever another small paper goes under. I cannot count how many we’ve lost over the past decade. And yet, here we still are: our smallbut-mighty Jewish Press that continues week after week, is somehow hanging in there. There is a very specific reason for that: you. So, back to that Annual Campaign plug: because you all give so generously to our Jewish Federation of Omaha, the Jewish Press can continue to print as well as maintain a robust online presence. The

question so many other communities, both within the Jewish world as outside of it, have asked: do we continue to fight and print, or do we go online only? I believe it is the wrong question. It is not an ‘either-or’ issue; it should be both. If we genuinely want to engage as many members of our community as possible, we cannot rely on the internet alone. We have to do both, and we have to do them equally well. That means funds need to be allocated to our print edition (which, let’s face it, hasn’t seen a profit in recent history) so those who need to hold a tangible lifeline in their hands can find it in their mailbox. For those of us who live online, the news needs to be at our fingertips. The website needs to be updated as often as our skeleton staff can handle. The thought of leaving even one reader behind is unacceptable. We are not in this business to make a profit; we are in it to build and maintain relationships. I know many of you have already pledged generously to the 2022 Annual Campaign. If you haven’t yet, I would like to ask you to do so soon. You don’t need to do it for the Press alone; we are but a small part of the whole. Campaign allows us to connect, have programming, support our agencies, the synagogues, Jews in Israel and more. From the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home to the Early Learning Center, this campus provides us with a permanent home, where we can always feel welcome. Looking back on the past 22 months, at everything that’s happened, I cannot help but think it is a little miraculous to walk into the building and see community members partake in programming, work out, or drop off their kids. Coming together.

However, bricks and programming—essential as they are—are only part of the equation. The real miracle is you. Please continue to be that miracle, and make your pledge to the Jewish Federation of Omaha’s Annual Campaign today.

Alex Edelman’s new comedy show raises contentious questions about Jewish identity. He says that’s the point.

BEN SALES

New York Jewish Week via JTA If you click through Twitter, you may come upon a list of some 250 accounts called “Jewish Nat’l Fund Donors.” But it’s safe to say that no one on the list has ever given any money to the actual Jewish National Fund, an organization best known for acquiring land and planting trees in Israel. That’s because the list is made up exclusively of antisemites and was created by Alex Edelman, a Jewish comedian. He chose that name, he said, “just because it annoys people when they’re added to the list.” “It’s actually a pretty diverse group of people,” Edelman, 32, told the New York Jewish Week. “The sad thing is this list used to be several hundred people longer, but Twitter has actually done a good job for the last couple years.” Edelman, a comedian who has appeared on latenight TV is also an amateur tracker of online antisemites in his spare time. That hobby led him to attend a meeting of white nationalists in New York City in 2017 — a story that forms the core of his latest solo show, Just For Us, which opens off-Broadway on Dec. 8. But even as the show tells the story of that meeting, Edelman emphasized that Just For Us isn’t about antisemitism — it’s about what it’s like for Ashkenazi Jews to navigate whiteness in America. “Broadly, it’s about, What does it mean to be a Jew in a space that’s not Jewish?” he said. He added later, “Everyone focuses on the white identity people at the center of the meeting, these racists. Maybe this is revealing, but the show’s about me. They [the white nationalists] are entirely secondary to me talking about how I feel about myself.” Negotiating the boundary between Jews and non-Jews has always been an undercurrent of life for Edelman, a Modern Orthodox Jew who attended Jewish day school in the Boston area and studied for a year in an Israeli yeshiva. Appearing on the late-night show Conan in 2018, Edelman told the crowd, “I’ve never had bacon. I’m that kind of Jew... I’ve tried cocaine, but I’ve never tried bacon.” (“Jews either love that joke, or they’re upset by it,” he told me. On a video of the performance, you can hear an Israeli in the crowd yell “Good for you!” in Hebrew.)

Alex Edelman, a Modern Orthodox standup comedian who was the head writer last year for Saturday Night Seder, is now performing a show centered on the time he attended a white nationalist meeting.

Credit: Stephanie Augello Edelman has managed to make food a recurring theme in his exploration of what it means to be Jewish in a country and world that is overwhelmingly not. We met at Sable’s, a classic New York City deli on the Upper East Side that probably qualifies as one of the most Jewish places ever (cf. the “Jewish rye bread” sold at the counter and a menu heavy on both smoked fish and pastrami). But Edelman said that he tries to visit delis in every place he performs, whether it’s Denver, L.A. or Indianapolis. “You can find a deli almost in any city,” he said. “I’m a bit of a snob. But when you’re on the road, you take what you can get, and they’ve got Dr. Brown’s cream soda and a decent tuna sandwich, and I’m all for it.” He’s excited to perform Just For Us,” which premiered at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2018 and later, he said, “took a nap” for the pandemic. This is its U.S. premiere. Tellingly, he feels that the show is just as relevant after three years in which the experience of antisemitism has changed significantly — from the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting to the antisemitic rhetoric that accompanied the 2020 election to, most recently, antisemitic tropes in debates over COVID vaccines. “At the core of this show is the conversation about Judaism and, in particular, my Judaism and its relation to whiteness. That is a huge part of the show, and that has not changed,” he said. “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t think antisemitism is ever going out of style.” Edelman is also excited to perform the show in front of an audience that will presumably have a substantial number of Jews, which is a rarity for him. He got his big break in 2014, when he was named Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, and has done a fair amount of work since then in the U.K., which has seen an ongoing antisemitism controversy plague its political system for the past several years. In 2019, Edelman made a four-minute documentary about antisemitism for the BBC, in which he manages to cover an impressive amount of ground — from summarizing historical tropes about international Jewish conspiracies to describing the discomfort Jews often feel when they’re buttonholed by people asking their opinion on Israeli policies. “Is it frustrating to have to do a documentary for the BBC where you explain that Jews are people?” he said. “I have lots of patient conversations with people about Jews and Judaism because I am, to some people, the most Jewish person they’ve ever met... I don’t view it as part of my job but I do view it as part of my personhood.” “My favorite thing to do is argue and discuss and have discourse,” he said. “When people ask me what my favorite thing about Judaism is I always say it’s discourse. It’s not a fun answer. People want bagels. People want me to say it’s bagels, but it’s not.”

This story was edited for length. To read the full interview, go to www.omahajewishpress. com.

JESSICA RUSSAK-HOFFMAN

JTA “Why does everybody hate us?” My son Izzy asked me this question after a man with a machete attacked Jews at a Hanukkah party in Monsey, New York, in 2019. Izzy was 12 years old when he flopped onto the couch, kicked up his feet and asked the question no Jewish parent wants to hear. I spoke to him about the history of antisemitism, how it’s always irrational, and how when we’re hurt for being Jewish, we need to be even more outspoken in our Judaism. That to really be a “Bear Jew,” like the Nazi-hunting character in the revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, we stand up and fight back with pride. As Elsa says to Jojo in Jojo Rabbit, “There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God.” So when the antisemitic comments started to pour in after a TikTok video of Izzy laying tefillin went viral earlier this month, he was somewhat prepared and, sadly, unsurprised. A few weeks ago we went to New York for a wedding and stayed with my sister Melinda Strauss, who shares videos about Jewish life and kosher food with over 420,000 followers on her account My Orthodox Jewish Life. Some of her followers had asked to see a video of someone putting on tefillin, the black box and leather straps used by Jews in their weekday morning prayers. When she saw Izzy about to daven, she asked if she could film him as he wrapped the tefillin around his head and arm. Izzy and his aunt joked all the time about her TikTok and how if he ever stayed at her house, he’d want to be featured, so he gladly obliged. At first the comments were a combination of sweet and curious. Some people thanked her for sharing the beauty of her faith, and some wanted to learn more about tefillin. A week or two went by. And then Izzy wandered into the living room with a halfsmile on his face. “Mom, I’m famous,” he quipped. He told me there were over 3 million views and he’d scrolled through over 2,000 comments and found... lots of antisemitism. He sat down next to me. I opened the app and looked through it with him, mocking the really dark comments that included: “That’s it! To the gas chamber.” “Should of died in the gas chamber.” “Gas them allllllll.” “Yo! Hitler is behind you.” “I snitched on u to the Germans.” “Zey are in ze attic.” We also made jokes about the Jesus-specific comments that included: “Does he have to wear that to apologize for killing Jesus?” “Repent and believe in Jesus Christ!” “When do y’all crucify Jesus? Ah. Wait. Y’all already did that.” Izzy’s sense of humor is perfectly suited to this classic Jewish coping mechanism of mocking antisemitic accusations. I recently read Sholom Aleichem’s The Bloody Hoax, and laughed with recognition at the description of Jews coping with a blood libel accusation by having faux-Talmudic debates about the halacha, or Jewish law, of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for matzah. (Halacha does not deal with this issue because it is not part of Judaism, despite what antisemites throughout history have said.) It is almost a rite of passage to be welcomed into this centuries-old tradition of using humor to respond to the irrational accusations the world throws our way. The comments included plenty of judgmental cracks accusing Izzy of being brainwashed, and those were the ones that bothered him the most. Because while he’s used to hatred against Jews, he can’t understand why anyone would think it’s wrong for a Jewish kid to be brought up keeping Jewish practices. “I’m not indoctrinated. I’m Jewish,” he said with frustration. I’m kvelling with pride. But I’m also angry. Izzy doesn’t feel unsafe or shaken in his Jewish identity. He knows his parents have his back, that we keep him physically safe and protected. And he isn’t surprised that there is antisemitism, not even at 14. And that is why I am angry: As a mother and as a Jew, I am angry that Izzy was not surprised, and I am angry that this is the norm. I am angry that TikTok allows antisemitism to thrive in videos and comments, and rarely takes down reported videos — with notable exceptions being videos created by Jews that were bombarded with false reporting from antisemites. Melinda’s account has been suspended on multiple occasions

The comment section of Melinda Strauss’ TikTok account filled up with antisemitic remarks after she posted a video of her nephew Izzy, above, putting on a

set of tefillin. Credit: TikTok/Montage by Grace Yagel for videos about Shabbat and keeping kosher. I am angry that I have to help my children develop their coping mechanisms. I am angry that even though we managed to report and successfully remove a couple of the most vile comments, more have replaced them. The TikTok of Izzy laying tefillin now has more than 8 million views and over 13,000 comments. And yet I cling to a tiny glimmer of hope, thanks to the nonJews in the replies defending Jews and defending Izzy. And to Bear Jews everywhere, laying tefillin every morning and refusing to cower.

Jessica Russak-Hoffman is a Seattle-based author represented by Emerald City Literary Agency. For more information, visit www.jessicarussakhoffman.com.

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.

SENIOR LIVING