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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

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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: 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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Wish list

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor

With the end of the calendar year rapidly approaching, you probably have questions. I know I do. What happened to 2021? What happened during 2021? I realize we always feel like the year has gone too fast when we hit December, but it seems to be more intense this time. Will we look back 20 years from now and feel like this year simply didn’t happen? Or, here is a thought, do we become more mindful to notice it when good things do occur? Do we have anything to be excited about right now? I have a wish list for 2022. And when I say “wish,” I don’t mean I am going to sit back and passively hope for great things to happen. I believe wishes come with a job description. If we want things to happen, we have to be willing to do the work.

First things first: we are finally going to have that party we had planned for March 2020. Remember that? On Sunday May 1, from 4-7, we will finally celebrate our Centennial anniversary. We will host it outdoors in the Pavillion; it will look very different than what we had originally planned, but that should not hold us back. We could use some help and are looking for volunteers to assist us with a variety of tasks, like setup and cleanup, hosting and choosing the entertainment. If you think party planning is something you’d enjoy, please contact us by sending an email to avandekamp@jewishomaha.org. When we initially began to plan for this celebration, we never stopped to think we might have to cancel it. Yet, when we did, we did so fast: a yearand-a-half of planning was wiped out with 6 minutes’ worth of phone calls. Back then, we didn’t call it ‘canceling,’ we said we were merely postponing it. I remember thinking we would be able to have it in late summer, early fall. Thank G-d we can’t see the future; we would lose all optimism. Yet, optimism is what will pull us through. While there are still countless reasons to not plan anything (we don’t know what’s going to happen, people are reluctant to come, there might be another variant, what if it rains), at the same time, we really need to plan for future events. Partially that is because it’s the practical thing to do, considering all the community members who purchased tickets for the original event (did we really call it a “Gala?” Yes, we did). Partially because I think the only thing that’s stopping us from gathering outside is the weather, and we have a decent chance of that being nice on May 1. So please, put the date on your calendar, and wait for further details because we have lots to talk about. Next: we have started working on our 2022 Passover edition. For that issue, we are collaborating with the Institute for Holocaust Education. Any time we get to collaborate with another department or agency, it makes our work better and more meaningful. That is especially the case with the IHE; for those of you who aren’t familiar with our building, the Press has been neighbors with both the ADL/CRC and the IHE for a long time—we see

each other every day and the opportunity to create a special issue together excites us all. It is that kind of excitement we all need. The pandemic has been particularly challenging in that regard: it’s easy to become too still and too cautious. There comes a point when we have to remember what it feels like to be passionate about something, about anything. What gets you wound up, what makes your heart beat faster? Whatever it is, I hope you get to experience it. Soon, today. Let’s create some memories together in 2022. Next year, when December rolls around, may we all look back and remember many, many high points.

My Jewish ancestors owned slaves. That’s why I’m a rabbi for racial justice.

RABBI BARRY H. BLOCK

JTA In The Social Justice Torah Commentary, Rabbi Brian Stoller describes a turtle-shaped dinner bell that his great-grandmother used to summon a Black butler to attend to her needs at the family’s Shabbat table. When I got to that line while editing the volume, I felt a jolt of familiarity: An identical bell served the same purpose at my own grandmother’s table. All of my grandparents and all four of my American-born great-grandparents hailed from the South, and social justice activism was not baked into my DNA. Yet unlike many “old” southern families, I was raised without glorification of the Confederacy. As a preteen, I only learned that both of my parents are descended from Confederate veterans because I asked. My parents, members of the Silent Generation, were not engaged in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. However, unlike most members of the privileged Houston Jewish community in which they were raised and in turn raised my sister and me, they opened their eyes to social injustice in the 1970s and exposed us to progressive thought and activism, rooted in Reform Jewish life. Then, a distant relative sent me a page of the 1860 Louisiana slave census, the first documentary proof for me that my great-great-great-grandmother, Magdalena Seeleman was a slaveholder. Magdalena Gugenheim Seeleman was born Dec. 25, 1810, in Zweibrucken, Germany. She first shows up in the U.S. Census in New Orleans in 1850. She is listed in the 1860 U.S. Census as living in the home of her daughter and son-in-law, Simon and Caroline Shlenker, in Trinity, Catahoula Parish, Louisiana. According to the list of parish slaveholders from June 22, 1860, “M. Seeleman” was the owner of a 29year-old woman described as “mulatto.” Simon is described as the owner of a Black woman, age 25. Simon’s brother Isaac was married to Caroline’s sister Charlotte; Isaac and Charlotte were my greatgreat-grandparents. Isaac and Charlotte are not on the list of slaveholders, but a document says Isaac received payment from the state of Louisiana for serving as a prosecutor of escaped slaves. In an advertisement dated April 10, 1861, Isaac “and Bro.” offer a “Negro” for sale; the “girl” is described as “young, healthy and acclimated.” The information is as horrifying as it is unsurprising. When I visited The National Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery in 2019, I found memorials indicting Catahoula Parish, Louisiana, where Seeleman lived, as the site of multiple racist terror lynchings. All five of the other counties and parishes where my family thrived during the lynching era are similarly accused there. At Montgomery’s Legacy Museum, I confronted a sign offering a reminder that many of the same families who were enriched by enslaving Black Americans continue to enjoy that prosperity today. Their wealth, inherited down the generations, cannot be separated from the enslaved human beings that their, that is, my ancestors oppressed to earn a generous living. Earlier in my career as a rabbi, not yet entirely aware of my family history, I did not focus on racial justice in my work, but rather on immigration reform, abortion rights and LGBTQ equality. I became outspoken to the point that, when I was seeking to leave my previous congregation for a new pulpit, a friend in lay leadership hoped that I would look in “blue states.” Instead, in 2013, I took the pulpit of Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I was truly awakened for the first time to the moral urgency of advancing racial equality in our nation. Founded in 1866 on the heels of the Civil War, B’nai Israel counts Confederate veterans among its earliest leaders, men who had risked their lives to maintain chattel enslavement of Black Americans. But the synagogue’s subsequent history shows how a commitment to justice can emerge even in places where racism and inequity might initially have been baked into its DNA. When I joined the congregation, members shared with me the storied legacy of the late Rabbi Ira E. Sanders, an early hero of the civil rights movement. During his first months in Little Rock in 1926, Rabbi Sanders lent his body to the struggle against segregation, refusing to move from the back of a

streetcar. He would go on to lead the integration of Little Rock’s public library. Later, congregants —

Charlotte Seeleman Shlenker (1838-1920), the author's great-greatgrandmother, was the daughter of Magdalena Gugenheim Seeleman, who showed up in the 1860 Louisiana slave census, left, as having owned a 29-year-old woman. Charlotte's husband, Isaac, offered a "girl"

for sale in an advertisement dated April 10, 1861. Credit: Barry Block women, in particular, including descendants of the Confederate soldiers who founded the congregation heeded Rabbi Sanders’ call to organize against segregation in public schools. Rabbi Sanders retired the summer I was born, a half century before my arrival in Little Rock. His predecessors and successors, along with their partners in lay leadership, established a legacy of social justice activism, calling on congregants and me to continue that critical work. Their legacy inspires my belief that, rather than solely focusing on the guilt and shame of historical sins, the best recourse is to take action to repent for and rectify them. As for the woman my ancestor enslaved, my distant cousin has been working to identify her, in the hope of locating descendants in order to offer at least some form of reparations. I do not know if we will ever be able to name her or her descendants. I dedicate The Social Justice Torah Commentary and any social activism I can muster to her memory. And I pray that the work we all do to advance social justice today may serve as tiny measures of atonement for the grievous damage caused by our nation, including my ancestors, to her and millions of Black Americans across four centuries and counting.

Rabbi Barry H. Block is rabbi of Congregation B'nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the editor of The Mussar Torah Commentary and The Social Justice Torah Commentary (CCAR Press, 2020 and 2021).

JULIA GERGELY AND SHIRA HANAU

JTA and New York Jewish Week The morning after the Centers for Disease Control recommended a COVID-19 vaccine for children 5 and older, the Abraham Joshua Heschel School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side had news for parents. By Feb. 1, 2022, the school announced, all children eligible for the vaccine must be fully vaccinated. “Heschel’s policy has been and remains that all eligible members of our in-school community must be vaccinated against Covid-19,” wrote Head of School Ariela Dubler in an email to parents. Ten miles away in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, the administration at another Jewish school, Kinneret Day School, waited longer before communicating with families about the new vaccines — then delivered a somewhat different message. “We strongly encourage parents to vaccinate their children,” the school’s top three administrators wrote in an email to parents, underlining that sentence for emphasis. But, they added, “until the FDA gives long-term approval for the vaccination we will stop short of a full mandate.” The contrasting approaches to the new vaccines come nearly a year after vaccines for adults first became available and after more than 18 months of vexing pandemic-related decisions for Jewish schools. Children are required to be vaccinated against a host of diseases to attend schools all over the country. But state health authorities haven’t yet added COVID-19 vaccines to the list, leaving it largely up to individual public school districts and private schools to make the call. Many public health experts say it’s not yet the time for sweeping mandates, citing the fact that vaccine adoption is historically most effective when people are first given a chance to opt in. American Jews may need less of a push than others. They had the least COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy of any religious group in the United States according to a July survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. And in the days surrounding the pediatric vaccine’s approval last month, Jewish parents posted online about how they eagerly anticipated their children’s inoculations — and even prepared prayers to accompany them. Capitalizing on that excitement, Jewish institutions across the country, including day schools, were some of the first to arrange on-site vaccine clinics and photo opportunities. At Beit Rabban Day School in Manhattan, students could get their first shot on site Nov. 14 during an event in which teachers helped children say Shehechiyanu, the blessing recited upon reaching a new milestone, as they received their

shots. Afterwards, kids were treated to a rooftop party with cupcakes and an art station where they could make their own pom pom coronaviruses. Beit Rabban’s policy is that all students and staff must be vaccinated against COVID-19 within 60 days of their eligibility. Not all Jewish day school parents are rushing to get their children vaccinated; parents in two different states told JTA that they knew about a family leaving their children’s school over vaccination expectations. The landscape is particularly different in Orthodox communities, which tend to be more right-wing and where misinformation about the pandemic, including false claims about the vaccines’ effect on fertility, has spread widely. Vaccination rates in many haredi Orthodox neighborhoods remain among the lowest in New York City, and when the city recently mandated vaccines for all employees at private schools, including yeshivas, haredi Orthodox leaders immediately objected. Parents at yeshivas, which have not widely enforced masking or distancing and in some cases operated in person when that was barred, say they have had no communication at all about COVID-19 vaccines for their children. Across the country, a few non-Orthodox schools schools are setting hard and fast vaccine requirements. Like Heschel in New York City, Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital is requiring children to be vaccinated by Jan. 31; that’s the school attended by the children of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump until late last year, when the family withdrew amid tension over its noncompliance with COVID-19 guidelines. But other schools that have expressed excitement about the vaccines aren’t yet requiring vaccination as a condition of enrollment — or have signaled that they may not in the near future. At Hannah Senesh Community Day School, a nondenominational school in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, administrators have said vaccines will be required for children — but they have not yet set a vaccination deadline. Two miles away, Luria Academy, a nondenominational school in Prospect Heights, held vaccine clinics on campus. But administrators there know that the school enrolls some families that are apprehensive or outright skeptical of the vaccines. A parent at New York City’s Shefa School, which serves Jewish children with disabilities, said the stakes attached to the school’s decision around whether to require COVID-19 vaccines felt high. “If you didn’t want to get a vaccine at Heschel, you could find another Jewish school in the city without a mandate,” said the parent, who asked for anonymity because of a personal policy against speaking on the record about her children. “It’s not the same for Shefa students.” But she said she thought most families would choose vaccination regardless of what the school requires, both because they want to protect their children’s health and because they are ready for the life that vaccination promises, so long as another wave or variant of COVID-19 doesn’t upend everything yet again. “It’s not having to quarantine, it’s being able to travel and see family in Israel,” she said. “ It gives the kids so much more freedom.”

This story was edited for length; to read the full article, please visit www.omahajewishpress.com.

A child holds a sticker she received after getting a COVID-19

vaccine in Novi, Mich., Nov. 3, 2021. Credit: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images

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