The Jewish Star

Shabbat Hagadol

April 12, 2019 7 Nisan, 5779 Vol 18, No 14

JEWISH

STAR

Serving LI’s Orthodox communities

President Donald Trump at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas on Saturday. Photo Ethan Miller for Getty Images

The

Metzorah

Trump’s Jewish jackpot

In Vegas, even some awkward words can’t break his bond with Jewish Republicans: P. 2

Bibi boasts ‘incredible’ win after a tight contest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared an “incredible victory” as emerging results for Israel’s general election on Tuesday showed Likud with a clear lead.

“This is an unimaginable achievement,” Netanyahu told jubilant supporters — who sang “Bibi, melech Yisrael” — at Likud Party headquarters in Tel Aviv in the early hours of Wednesday morning. “I believe that G-d and history gave the Jewish people another opportunity to turn their country into a strong nation and that’s what I’m working for,” he said.

Despite an emerging lead in the ballot results, Netanyahu recommended patience until the final results are in.

However, Netanyahu said that he See Election on page 5

Israeli rivals —and their wives — voted on Tuesday: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Sara, and Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz with Revital.

Haim Zach/GPO, Fenton/Flash90

Campus ‘Apartheid Week’ a stage for virulent anti-Semitic tactics

By Jackson Richman and Sean Savage It’s no secret that college campuses have become some of the most hostile environments for pro-Israel and Jewish students.

From BDS resolutions to anti-Israel speakers, young adults are often on the defensive for openly supporting Israel — or for simply displaying Jewish pride — on campus.

Then one week each year — last week — many campuses are transformed into hotbeds of anti-Israel events known as “Is-

raeli Apartheid Week” (IAW).

Beyond the now-routine pro-BDS and anti-Israel rhetoric, several campuses stood out for their activities, events and choice of speakers.

Harvard University’s undergraduate council voted to give $2,050 to the Palestine Solidarity Committee to add to their IAW a physical “Wall of Resistance,” sponsored by 14 students groups, including Harvard College Democrats, Palestinian speakers and a

student panel, reported the school’s newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.

The anti-Israel speakers included Princeton University professor and political activist Cornel West and Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired by CNN in November as a contributor for calling for “a Free Palestine From the River to the Sea.” “This openly anti-Zionist event frequently crossed the line into outright antiSee Apartheid on page 14

City tightens rules in vaxlax Brooklyn New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a public health emergency on Tuesday over the measles outbreak in Brooklyn’s haredi community.

De Blasio ordered unvaccinated people living in four ZIP codes in the Williamsburg neighborhood to get the vaccine or face fines of up to $1,000.

The order comes a day after the city’s Department of Health threatened to fine or even close yeshivas in Williamsburg if students who are not vaccinated against measles are allowed to attend classes.

There have been 285 reported cases of measles in Brooklyn’s Orthodox community since October, including 246 children, the health department said.

The areas covered by the order are where most of the city’s measles cases have originated. They are largely populated by haredi Jews.

“The measles vaccine works. It is safe, it is effective, it is time-tested … the faster everyone heeds the order, the faster we can lift it,” deBlasio said.

Numerous Orthodox rabbis and organizations have said that vaccinations may be halachically mandated.

“There are no legitimate religious grounds to oppose vaccination,” Rabbi Hershel Billet said in an email to his congregants at the Young Israel of Woodmere last fall. “There are very clear religious grounds to make vaccination of children obligatory! Herd immunity only works if everyone is vaccinated.”

In November, Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt, an assistant rabbi at YIW who is also chief of infectious diseases and hospital epidemiologist at South Nassau Communities Hospital., wrote in the Jewish Press that “there is absolutely no one who disagrees with the psak that a parent is required to remove one’s child to safety when a danger is present. Indeed, this is part of the basis for the halachic ruling of Harav Elyashiv zt”l who viewed normal childhood vaccinations as being an obligatory part of parental obligations.”

Some 465 measles cases have been reported in 19 states this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up from 387 the week before.

A Vegas honeymoon for Trump and GOP Jews

By Ron Kampeas, JTA LAS VEGAS — “Trump” was once a dirty word in this room.

Eight years ago, in the same building — Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian casino resort, the site of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference — Mitt Romney was the presumptive 2012 Republican presidential nominee, and he made it clear he wanted nothing of the tactics of the reality TV star from New York.

An RJC activist asked Romney if he would be less of a “gentleman” and maybe adopt the “scrappy” style of Donald Trump, who was eyeing a political future as ratings for “Celebrity Apprentice” were fading, and who raised specious questions about President Obama’s citizenship.

No, Romney said, he would not stoop to “innuendo” or even mention Trump’s name. It was an approach embraced by the RJC leadership, which went on to feed major money into Romney’s campaign.

Saturday at the Venetian was a different story. Trump, it is said, has remade the Republican Party in his image, and this weekend, in a hero’s welcome, he showed how much he had brought along the party’s once skeptical Jewish contingent. Both he and Vice President Mike Pence attended the conference to speak.

There were still awkward moments during Trump’s speech that showed what divides many Republican Jews from Trump. But more evident was what has brought them together: Trump’s eager embrace of his advisers’ hawkish pro-Israel policies.

No one in the room was more aware of the 180-degree turn the relationship has taken than Trump himself. At one point a man cried out “Four more years!”

“That guy who just said that — he used to hate me, can you believe it?” Trump responded, drawing laughs.

Some organizers also spoke out about the change. Former Minnesota Sen. Norm Cole-

Awkward Trump is no Omar or Tlaib Commentary by Jonathan S. Tobin or critics of the pro-Israel community and President Donald Trump, it was the ultimate “gotcha” moment. After months of having to listen to Jews and friends of Israel pointing out the anti-Semitic invective of the two pro-BDS members of Congress, support-

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man, now the RJC chairman, introduced Trump by saying, “There were some doubters in this room, and I was foolishly among them.”

Coleman then led the room in a parody of “Dayenu” by listing Trump’s tax cuts and his Israel-related actions, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and defunding the Palestinians.

Matt Brooks, the Republican group’s CEO, said Trump had earned the love in the room.

“There’s no question all the love that was felt in this room today and as Senator Coleman alluded to in his remarks, that was not the same situation, there were a lot of people who were not necessarily with the president during the primary process,” Brooks told JTA. “But I will tell you now from an RJC perspective in the Jewish community, the amount of support that this president is getting in the Jewish community is growing exponentially.”

Addressing Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the most generous donors to Trump’s 2016 campaign, who were present at the event, Trump said of his embassy move, “We got you something that you wanted, I can tell you, Sheldon

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April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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ers of Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) claimed that it was really Trump who was the anti-Semite.

What was their proof? Trump referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “your prime minister” when speaking to the annual conference of the Republican Jewish and Miriam, that is the most important thing, I think, that ever happened in their life.”

In describing the moment he told David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel who has longstanding ties to settlements, that he would recognize Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights, Trump said, “He was like a wonderful, beautiful baby. He said, ‘Do you really — you would do that, sir?’ And I said ‘Yeah, I think I’m doing it right now! Let’s write something up.’”

But people in the room pushed back when Trump bizarrely assumed they vote Democratic, like the majority of the rest of American Jews.

“How did you support President Obama, how did you support the Democrats?” Trump asked.

“We didn’t,” the crowd replied, twice.

There were other awkward moments during Trump’s speech.

As he did in his last RJC appearance in 2015, Trump on multiple occasions unsettled the crowd when he appeared to address an amorphous Jewish collective with allegiance to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that once owned factories and influenced trade policy. He described his asylum policy as “we’re full,” an echo of the pre-World War II policies that kept desperate Jewish immigrants out of America.

At least three additional times, Trump used the collective second person “you” in addressing the Jews in the room.

“I stood with your prime minister at the White House to recognize Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights,” he said.

That drew condemnation from the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Democrats.

“Mr. President, the Prime Minister of Israel is the leader of his (or her) country, not ours,” the AJC said on Twitter. “Statements to the contrary, from staunch friends or harsh critics, feed bigotry.”

A freshman Democratic congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minneota — whom Trump mocked in his speech — has come under fire from Republicans and fellow Democrats for her perceived invocation of the dual loyalty trope.

Trump also collectivized Jews as influential on trade policy in defending his introduction of tariffs. “Maybe you could explain that to some of your people who say ‘Oh, we don’t like tariffs,’” he said.

And he seemed to imagine a room full of one-time captains of industry frustrated by the 1990s NAFTA free trade deal that he has reviled. “Many of you people have factory and plants, they’re still empty,” he said.

The same generalizing of a sometimes hostile Jewish monolith cast a shadow over Trump’s first appearance before the RJC, at its 2015 presidential candidate forum.

“You aren’t going to support me even though you know I’m the best thing that will ever happen for Israel,” he said then. “You aren’t going to support me because I don’t want your money.”

The remarks made many Jewish Republicans, already wary of Trump for his lack of experience and his biased statements about other minorities, even more skeptical of his chances at the time.

Adelson waited until May 2016, when Trump’s nomination was all but certain, to board the Trump train and had to issue a public appeal to persuade fellow Jewish Republicans to join him.

This time, Trump’s history of invoking the very tropes that got Omar into trouble — that Jews buy influence, and that they are dually loyal to Israel — got a pass at the RJC. Halie Soi-

Coalition last weekend in Las Vegas.

It was enough to earn Trump rebukes from the Anti-Defamation League, whose CEO Jonathan Greenblatt went into scolding mode, saying, “Mr. President, words matter. As with all elected officials, it’s critSee Awkward Trump on page 15 fer, who directs the Jewish Democratic Council of America, watched Trump’s speech on C-Span and was stunned not to see any pushback.

“For them to decry anti-Semitism on the Democratic side when it was exactly the same references that they now applauded and welcomed back is baffling,” she told JTA. A source close to the RJC said that the leftward tilt of the Democrats, the rise of Israel-critical figures like Omar and Trump’s Netanyahufriendly policies make backing Trump an easy choice, despite the discomfort at times.

Notably, the RJC did not fill all the 1,500 seats in the room, even with bodies added from a social media call to Las Vegas-area Trump fans, Jewish and non-, to attend. A group that told JTA that they were Las Vegas Filipinos for Trump posed for photos in the conference hall, and some sported the red Trump kippahs that the RJC gave out.

The event drew top-flight politicians who benefited from Adelson’s political backing, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Brooks showcased ad campaigns that he said helped elect Republicans. Ari Fleischer, an RJC board member, said he saw opportunities for more wins in 2020, especially in swing states with large Jewish populations like Florida and Ohio.

Trump said Democrats were the party of bias.

“Democrats have even allowed the terrible scourge of anti-Semitism to take root in their party and their country,” he said, referring to Omar.

Omar was the absent star of the conference: Pence, House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California and New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, of Long Island, all referred to her at length.

The RJC also screened a video that said antiSemitism “is too often being led by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.” It singled out Omar, showing her photo next to text saying “congressional leaders employing disgusting anti-semitic slur” and a photo of the Tree of Life synagogue complex in Pittsburgh where a gunman killed 11 Jewish worshippers in October.

“The stakes could not be higher,” the narrator said. The alleged killer behind the Pittsburgh shooting was a white supremacist.

Brooks told JTA that the RJC did not intend to attach Omar to the Pittsburgh killing, or to play down the white supremacist threat. Trump, after the recent mass murder of Muslims in New Zealand carried out by a white supremacist who frequented the same online forums as the alleged Pittsburgh killer, said he did not see white supremacism as a growing problem.

At the end of his speech, Trump discussed the Pittsburgh shooting, but not the far-right extremism that fueled the violence.

Jewish Democrats scoffed at attempts to tar their party as posing the greater threat to Jews.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the Jewish chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, noted that Trump after the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, said there were “some very fine people” on both sides of that clash.

“The president needs to look inward when it comes to the rise of anti-Semitism in the country,” Schiff told CNN. Protesters with IfNotNow, the Jewish group that opposes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, interrupted the conference with a chant that subtly invoked the neo-Nazi rallying cry from Charlottesville, “Jews will not replace us.”

“Jews are here to stay, the occupation is a plague,” they said as security escorted them out.

Backgrounder by Clifford D. May A freshman member of Congress openly espouses bigotry towards Jews and Israel. Her fellow Democrats, with only a few exceptions, fail to forcefully condemn her words and views. Troubling, to be sure, but let’s remember: This gnarly tree grows in an old, luxuriant and global forest.

Examples? In Belgium recently, the annual Carnival parade included floats carrying oversized effigies of religious Jews — snarling men with big noses, sitting atop bags of money, one with a rat perched atop his shoulder.

UNESCO, a United Nations agency ostensibly established for and devoted to “the intellectual and moral solidarity of humanity,” recognized the parade as a cultural heritage event and declined to offer any criticism. The United Nations, of course, has evolved into an organization that discriminates against Israel with consistency and vehemence.

Also in Belgium, Mehdi Nemmouche, identified by the BBC as a “French-born jihadist,” was found guilty of murdering an Israeli couple and two staffers at a Jewish museum in Brussels five years ago. His lawyer had claimed the attack was actually “a targeted execution” by agents of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. He didn’t bother to present evidence.

Noted the BBC: “At one point, the defense even argued that Nemmouche could not be considered anti-Semitic because he wore Calvin Klein shoes — an apparent reference to Mr. Klein’s Jewish heritage.”

Violent crimes against Jews have been on the rise in Germany, France and Sweden. Britain’s Labour Party is led by Jeremy Corbyn, who last year attended an event by a group that calls Israel “a steaming pile of sewage, which needs to be properly disposed of.”

In Ireland, the parliament recently passed legislation, not yet enacted into law, to criminalize a range of business transactions with Jews in the West Bank, the Golan Heights and even the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. These are often said to be “illegally occupied Palestinian territories.”

A less tendentious term would be disputed territories. Israel took them from Syria (the Golan) and Jordan (the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including the Jewish Quarter) in the defensive 1967 Six-Day War. Israelis have given up land in the past and would undoubtedly do so again — if they were confident they would get peace in return, rather than missiles and terrorist tunnels, as has happened

Fascist demonstrators marching through Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 11, 2017, chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

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since they ceded Gaza in 2005. What other nation would not ask for that? What other nation would be criticized for doing so?

Jew-hatred is as old as the Judean Hills, predating even the rebellion of the Jewish nation against Roman imperialism and colonialism from 66 to 73 C.E. Among the punishments Rome inflicted: renaming the conquered Jewish territories. Syria Palaestina, or Palestine for short, derives from Philistia, land of the Philistines, ancient enemies of the Israelites (with Goliath the best-known). The Philistines were a seafaring people from islands in the Aegean who settled on Eastern Mediterranean shores in the 12th-century BCE. And no, those we now call Palestinians are not their descendants.

Jew-hatred has taken many forms over the subsequent centuries, including persecution and pogroms both in Europe and the Middle East. Jews have been despised based on religion and race, for their wealth and their poverty, as capitalists and communists. Jews have been disparaged as cosmopolitans and (in Israel) as nationalists.

Jew-haters may be Christian, Muslim or atheist. Some of the most destructive Jew-haters have themselves been Jewish

or of Jewish descent.

“Anti-Semitism” is a relatively new term of art, coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr, a German Jew-hater whose goal was to make clear that even Jews who convert and/or assimilate should be regarded as enemies conspiring against the German nation and the Aryan race.

In 1919, Hitler wrote of “rational anti-Semitism,” a doctrine whose “final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews altogether.” After coming to power in 1933, he initiated a boycott of Jewish businesses — a BDS movement, as it were. Eventually, Hitler managed, with extreme prejudice, to remove about 6 million Jews from Europe.

Today, Israel’s opponents seek to remove roughly the same number from the Middle East. Some advocates of anti-Israel boycotts, divestment and sanctions insist that’s not their intention. Anyone who believes that it’s possible to exterminate the Jewish state without exterminating the Jews living in that state would be well-advised to read up on what’s been happening in Syria, Yemen and Somalia, the bloodsoaked land from which Rep. Ilhan Omar and her family fled.

Or they could simply listen to the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran who make no attempt to disguise their genocidal intentions. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has called Israel a “malignant cancerous tumor” that must be “removed and eradicated.”

Yes, I know: Not everyone who criticizes Israel supports this “final solution.” But I see no reason to give those who call themselves anti-Zionists the benefit of the doubt.

Prior to 1948, the Zionist project was the re-establishment of a Jewish nation-state in part of the ancient Jewish homeland.

One could oppose that for many reasons. Since 1948, however, Zionism has come to mean support for Israel’s survival, its right to exist.

Those who oppose that are, at best, indifferent to the fate of the only thriving Jewish community remaining in the Middle East. In other words, to them, Jewish lives don’t matter.

That any members of Congress fit that description is troubling.

But let’s not forget: It’s an expression of an ancient and widespread pathology, one that has never been dormant for long.

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.

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‘Anti-Semitism’ is new, hatred of Jews is not

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Land for peace (and money)? Fuggedaboutit! michael calvo This is the first in a series. uring the 20th century, the Middle East conflict was seen as a territorial conflict, and was dealt with as such. British Mandate Palestine, which was to become the Jewish homeland, was divided so that Arabs could have their own land. But it did not solve the conflict.

After getting 75 percent of Mandatory Palestine, the Arabs still did not want a Jewish home.

Already in 1935, Muslim scholars had issued several fatwas prohibiting peace and normalization with Jews. In 1936, scholars of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University ruled that it was the duty of all Muslims to engage in jihad “to save Palestine.” In 1989, eminent Muslim scholars from 18 countries ruled that it was prohibited for Muslims to give up any part of Palestine.

Some 1,300 years after the conquest of the land in 636 by the Muslims, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, led the Great Revolt in 1936 that was repressed while the Jews continued to drain the swamps, as well as settle and rejuvenate the land. These events confirmed the words of the Zohar: that the deserted land would be given temporarily to the children of Yishmael for 1,300 years. No more.

After 1967, “Land for Peace” was again considered a condition for resolving the conflict. For Israel, the 1993 Oslo Agreements and their territorial concessions were supposed to bring peace.

They brought death and suffering.

During the 25 years before the Oslo Agreements, “only” 254 people were killed in attacks committed by Palestinian Arabs. From the signing of the Declaration of Principles on Sept. 13,

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1993 to Sept. 28, 2000, in seven years, 256 civilians and soldiers were victims of Palestinian terror attacks. From Sept. 27, 2000 to Sept. 1, 2015, some 1,217 were killed (868 civilians), and 5,087 (4,737 civilians) injured. From Sept. 2, 2015 through April 14, 2017, 46 were killed and 56 wounded. And the attacks continue today. or Palestinian Arabs, the Oslo Agreements were the application of the PLO’s 1974 “step-by-step plan.” Few have ever considered that what Israel strives for — peace and normalization — Palestinians cannot deliver, nor that Israel will ever deliver what the Arab Muslims want: the disappearance of Israel and of the Jews in their own land.

New actors have appeared in the Middle East conflict, including the Iranian Mullahs (1979), Hezbollah (1982), Hamas (1987), Al-Qaeda (1988) and the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, 2006).

The conflict has been considered a territorial conflict by all states and dealt with as such, even

by Israel, and with a reasonable hope that a compromise over land would bring peace. The Trump administration seems to follow the same concept, while adding the sweetener of “billions of dollars.”

But a wider perspective of this conflict leads to the conclusion that because of misguided thinking, ideology and theology there is and will be, for the medium term, no peace in the Middle East.

Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are engaged in a jihadist religious conflict, a theological and metaphysical conflict with Israel’s Jews, however much the West may refuse to see it. The BDS movement and the resulting sudden rise in antiSemitism is part of this jihadist war against the Jews living around the world and in America, who is considered to side with Israel. It aims to

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delegitimize them and destroy the existing alliance between the United States and Israel.

American Jews have failed to realize Islamic propaganda under the guise of Palestinian human rights. They do not fight the aims of J Street, an Obama creation to support his actions and to weaken American Jewish support for Israel. They underestimated the effect of the Arab States’ investments and propaganda in American universities. They did not fight Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and other NGOs whose members might well be diagnosed as having “Stockholm syndrome,” unless they are unaware of the nature of the conflict. nderstanding the problem must begin by inspection of its roots. Palestinian leaders, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham), most of the Muslim states, the Iranian mullahs and government, whichever Islamic persuasion, share the same jihadist ideology, encapsulated in one sentence: “Allah is our goal, the prophet is our ideal, the Koran is our constitution, jihad is our way, and death for the sake of Allah is our aspiration.”

The Jews in Israel are not the only enemies to be destroyed. This ideology justifies the killing of Jews and infidels wherever they are found — from New York to Mumbai, Paris, Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Manchester and London; and as far away as China, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and the Philippines.

This jihadist war is also underway against the Americans and all “infidels”: Christians, Yazidis, Hindus, Buddhists and all those who do not believe in the “religion of truth,” i.e. Islam; and against those Muslims who compromise

Muslims cannot accept that the Jews did not convert to Islam.

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with such so-called infidels. Over time, the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim conflict with Israel was extended against the non-Muslim world, and all those Muslims who do not share their goal, ideal, constitution, way and aspiration.

You don’t have to be a prophet to foresee that, unfortunately, a radical backlash — as in the horrific Christchurch murders — is coming as a consequence of this jihadi war. uslims cannot accept that the Jews did not convert to Islam; that Christendom did not convert to Islam, nor that its conquests in Europe ended somewhere before Poitiers in France; that they lost Andalusia and some other lands they had conquered for Islam in Europe, in Asia and the Far East; and that they are now feel discriminated against and even persecuted in several countries as far away as the Philippines, China, Burma, Kashmir, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, Russia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

History has shown that to make an abstraction of the various complex dimensions of the Middle East conflicts leads nowhere. Nonetheless, world leaders and the media continue to deal with the Israeli/Palestinian/Arab/Muslim conflict as a territorial issue. They believe that if it could be resolved, Kumbaya peace and brotherhood would come to the whole world.

While the Trump administration has taken the right steps against the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, it seems that it has decided not to deal now with the real source of the conflict. His Oslo-style proposition, plus money, will again bring suffering for all — whether the Palestinians, the Israelis and the Muslims accept it or not. Any territorial compromise and a Palestinian state will be only a step towards Israel’s total destruction. Israel cannot take such risk. Land for peace and billions of dollars will not change Koranic fervor and will not bring peace.

Michael Calvo is the author of The Middle East and World War III: Why No Peace?

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Continued from page 1 has spoken to a number of right-wing party heads and that “nearly all of them” have declared they will support him to form the next government.

An emotional Netanyahu said that he intends to be a leader of all Israelis.

“The next government will be a rightwing government,” he said. “Yet I intend to be the prime minister of all Israelis, right and left, Jews and non-Jews alike.”

Early exit poll results put the Blue and White candidate, Benny Gantz, ahead and the former IDF chief of staff declared himself the victor before Netanyahu spoke.

“Yes, friends, I will be the prime minister of everyone and not just those who voted for me. No one from a party that is not ours should worry. We all need to think about how we can work together, how we can bring everyone into the discussion,” Gantz said.

Paper ballots, each sealed in an envelope, were being counted throughout Tuesday night and into Wednesday. The votes of soldiers, prisoners, hospital patients, poll workers, on-duty police officers, and Israeli diplomats and officials working overseas are not counted until the day after the election, which in past elections has led to some shifts in the number of seats for parties. In the last election, those special ballots added up to over 280,000 votes, according to Haaretz.

Israel does not have absentee ballots for citizens who live abroad or who are out of the country on Election Day. The upstart Zehut, a quasi-libertarian and nationalist party headed by former Likud lawmaker Moshe Feiglin, did not appear to pass the electoral threshold, despite predictions that it would be an important piece of a coalition. The party supports completely legalizing marijuana.

By Marcy Oster, JTA The head of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, told a congressional committee that the New Zealand mosque shooter was a “left-wing” terrorist, basing his assessment on the killer’s discursive 74-page manifesto.

Klein testified on Tuesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism.”

“The New Zealand mosque murderer was actually a left-wing self-described ‘eco-Fascist’ who also published a manifesto praising Communist China as ‘the nation with the closest political and social values to my own’,” he said.

Experts on white nationalism believe that the Christchurch gunman’s overarching motive for carrying out the massacre was the threat he perceived to whites rather than any economic philosophy, and say he likely threw multiple red herrings into his manifesto to sow confusion. The killer, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, also said he was inspired by the black conservative commentator Candace Owens, who testified at Tuesday’s hearing. No mainstream analyst has suggested that Owens inspired the killer.

In the manifesto, Tarrant called President Donald Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”

Klein, a Trump supporter and longtime opponent of a Palestinian state, made a point of rejecting claims that Trump’s rhetoric has contributed to a rise in white nationalist violence in the United States.

“The Tree of Life synagogue massacre perpetrator was a neo-Nazi who hated President Trump for not being anti-Semitic, called Jews in the Trump administration a ‘kike infestation’ and also hated anti-Trump Jews,” Klein said.

The alleged Pittsburgh killer depicted Trump as controlled by Jews, but Trump’s critics say the shooter acted on the belief that Jews were organizing a migrant invasion of the United States. That

ism in our country,” Tlaib wrote.

“As usual, Tlaib resorts to name calling without any facts,” said Klein in a statement to the Daily Wire. “I know what unbridled hate looks like firsthand as I lost nearly all of my family in Hitler’s Holocaust.” Klein was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany.

“Tlaib knows what hate looks like as she put a sticky note over Israel on a map in her office and called it Palestine and she wrote for Louis Farrakhan,” he added.

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, “Tlaib also supports BDS. Tlaib testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing discussing promotes anti-Semitism more hate crimes and the rise of white nationalism. Zach Gibson/Getty Images than almost any other member of Congress that I’ve ever known.” belief was fueled in part by the unsubstantiated Meanwhile, YouTube disabled the comtheory, advanced by Trump, that the Jewish bil- ments on a livestream of the hearing after it lionaire George Soros funded the migrant caravan. was flooded with racist and anti-Semitic com(Officials associated with Soros denied that he or ments, CNN reported. his charitable organization provided support.)

Alexandria Walden, counsel for free exKlein also said that the media misreported pression and human rights at Google, which the context behind Trump’s claim that there owns YouTube, testified at the hearing. Facewere “fine people on both sides” at the far-right book also was represented. rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 “This just illustrates part of the problem we’re that resulted in the death of a counterprotester. dealing with,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Judiciary Klein seemed to reference an explanation Committee chairman, said during the hearing. of Trump’s remarks recently popular among Eileen Hershenov, senior vice president for his supporters that the president was referring policy at the Anti-Defamation League, told the broadly to those who want Confederate monu- hearing that a “driving force for the resurgence ments removed and those who oppose removal. of white supremacy is the role of social media However, in his remarks, Trump referred mul- in enabling this hate to spread.” Hershenov also tiple times to the marchers in Charlottesville. A said that there has been a rise in polarizing and white national group obtained the permit for the hateful rhetoric on the part of candidates and march, where participants chanted anti-Semitic elected leaders. and racist slogans, and hoisted Nazi flags.

“I implore you and all public leaders to On the evening before the hearing, Rep. consistently call out bigotry and extremism at Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., tweeted that Klein and every opportunity,” she said. “We all have a reOwens would be testifying at the hearing. sponsibility to make clear that America is no “Both have elevated hate rhetoric and extrem- place for hate.”

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Russia sees itself as the ‘final judge’ in Syria

By Yaakov Lappin, JNS Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been engaged in a flurry of discussions recently, at least some of which are likely tied to Iranian activities in Syria.

The meetings come in the shadow of recent reports of a major Israeli airstrike on March 28 targeting an Iranian weapons’ warehouse near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which reportedly resulted in large blasts and casualties.

Russia leads a pro-Assad military coalition in Syria, of which Iranian forces are a central part of. Yet it also maintains a deconfliction channel with Israel to avoid unintended clashes between its air force and the Israeli Air Force, both of which are active in the Syrian arena.

Putin has also attempted to play the role of mediator between Israel and Iran, seeking to douse the shadow war raging between them on Syrian soil. Israel, for its part, is determined to disrupt Iran’s plan to turn Syria into a war front against it.

Netanyahu flew to Moscow for a meeting with Putin just five days before Israel’s April 9 elections. The meeting might have been tied to Russia’s assistance in retrieving an Israeli soldier who went MIA in 1982, but might not have been limited to that topic. On April 1, Netanyahu and Putin held a phone conversation to talk about “military cooperation issues,” according to the Kremlin, as well as “pressing bilateral issues,” and “the situation in the Middle East region.”

On Feb. 27, the two leaders met in Moscow to discuss Syria. Netanyahu said during that meeting, the two sides reached an agreement on how to coordinate between the militaries. They also apparently agreed on a goal of getting “foreign troops” to leave Syria, according to Netanyahu.

While Russia will not be able to satisfy everyone, it does understand that it will need to leave each side with “half of its desires,” Professor Uzi

by the official Syrian Arab Army. However, that didn’t stop Israel from reportedly striking such targets when it detects them.

Itzchakov stressed that Iran’s decisions in Syria cannot be disconnected from Tehran’s wider geopolitical ambitions, or from internal power struggles that are raging inside the Islamic Republic.

He cited a visit in March by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to neighboring Iraq as an example of this linkage. The goal of that visit was to develop an economic corridor to bypass biting American sanctions, said Itzchakov.

Yet the visit also boosted the prestige of Rouhani, who is facing major criticism at home from the rival conservative bloc and the Islamic Republican Guards Corps (IRGC).

“The economic corridor Iran wants in Iraq is tied to its desire for an economic corridor to Lebanon and its ties to Syria. One cannot separate these things,” said Itzchakov.

In addition, Iran has been able to build up armed forces in all of these countries—Iraq, Syria and Lebanon—and has turned them into deeply influential political forces in Iraq and Lebanon. Iran plans to do the same in Syria.

But the element responsible for this activity is mainly the IRGC and General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the overseas Iranian Quds Force unit, which is competing with Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, for control of Iran’s regional policies, said Itzchakov.

Out of this internal rivalry emerges the story of Iranian activities in Syria, he added. “The IRGC’s power as a decision maker in geopolitical, economic and diplomatic areas is rising,” he said.

The internal power struggle is making “Iran more sensitive to Syria,” said Itzchakov. “Even when done in opposition to the popular wishes of the Iranian people, the IRGC makes its own decisions, including in Syria. The IRGC wants to set the agenda.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a wreath-laying Amos Ben Gershom/GPO ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow on May 9, 2018.

Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, told JNS. To achieve this, Moscow gets every actor to spell out “what is really important to it, and here, Israel has an opportunity to define the range and perimeter of Iran’s actions in Syria,” he added.

“In general, this is a new situation that the region is not used to. The Russians are managing this game with many bargaining chips, and Israel will have to adapt itself to the new rules of the game.”

Iran’s activities in Syria tied to internal power struggles Doron Itzchakov, a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, agreed that the current situation

is good for Moscow.

“The Russian interest is to position itself as the ‘final judge’ in Syria, and this situation, in which Netanyahu runs to Putin and the Iranian side runs to him, is comfortable for them.

They are comfortable with being the balancing scales,” he said.

Iran, for its part, will be closely monitoring Israel’s contacts with Russia and adapt its policies in Syria accordingly. “The Iranians will be watching out for Russia’s policy in Syria, to see how they need to change their tactics. Iran has no plan of releasing its grip on Syria, but it changes tactics so as not to lose momentum,” stated Itzchakov.

On recent example of how Iran has adapted its takeover efforts in Syria is by embedding its military personnel and weaponry into sites run

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Airbnb will not ban Judea-Samaria rentals ber was abject discrimination against Jewish users of the website,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the president of Shurat Hadin, said in a statement. “Whatever one’s political view, discrimination based on religious affiliation should never be the solution.”

In a statement posted to its website Tuesday, Airbnb said it will donate any profits from the West Bank to humanitarian groups. It also will apply the same policy to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two disputed territories adjacent to Georgia, and evaluate its listings in other disputed territories.

Airbnb has yet to announce where it will donate the profits.

“We understand the complexity of the issue that was addressed in our previous policy announcement, and we will continue to allow listings throughout all of the West Bank, but Airbnb will take no profits from this activity in the region,” the statement reads. “Any profits generated for Airbnb by any Airbnb host activity in the entire West Bank will be donated to non-profit organizations dedicated to humanitarian aid that serve people in different parts of the world.”

Airbnb said in its statement that it does not support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel.

“Airbnb has always opposed the BDS movement,” the statement reads. “Airbnb has never boycotted Israel, Israeli businesses, or the more than 20,000 Israeli hosts who are active on the Airbnb platform. We have always sought to bring people together and will continue to work with our community to achieve this goal.” —JTA

THE JEWISH STAR April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779

In a reversal of a 2018 policy announcement, Airbnb will not remove West Bank settlement listings from its website.

The policy change came in a court settlement Monday between the vacation rental company and a dozen American Jewish plaintiffs who had sued the company. A copy of the settlement obtained by JTA says that Airbnb will now allow rentals in both Palestinian areas and Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

“Airbnb takes no position on the Host-Plaintiffs’ claims, or others’ claims,” the court settlement reads. “All listings for accommodations located in the Affected Region [the West Bank] will at all times be permitted on its platform, subject to applicable laws, rules, and regulations.”

Airbnb announced in November that it would remove some 200 rental listings in Judea and Samaria because it contended that the settlements “are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.” The movement to boycott Israel saw the decision as a victory.

But Airbnb never actually removed the listings. And about a week after the decision, the Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center, a pro-Israel organization that rganized the suit. The suit was filed under the Fair Housing Act, which was meant to prevent discrimination against minorities in the United States. Because Airbnb is based in the United States, it must adhere to the act in all its listings worldwide.

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By Ben Sales vidual’s family.

“Anyone that doesn’t want to go to A group of Satmar Hasidim cut the election, we are like paying them personal checks to religious Israelis off,” he said. “Someone who has only who committed to not voting in Tuesone child will get less. Someone who day’s election. has 10 children will get more. It’s The campaign has been aiming based on the need.” to essentially crowdfund a total of The remaining $8 million will go $12 million. Satmar sees the modern to haredi Orthodox schools and other State of Israel as fundamentally ileducational institutions in Israel that legitimate and boycotts any recognirefuse funding from the government. tion of it — including participation in Fried says that beyond ideological the elections. opposition to the state itself, haredi Satmar opposes the state because it schools are wary of accepting governis against the establishment of a soverment funding because they feel it will eign Jewish country in the Land of Ismake them beholden to the governrael before the coming of the Messiah. ment’s educational requirements, like Yoel Fried, one of the campaign a core curriculum. organizers, said that every day legisla“If you take money from the tors sits in Knesset, Israel’s parliament, government, what happens down they are breaking 100 Jewish laws. the road is that they start to dictate “Everyone who votes has a part in forming the government of the State A haredi man stands behind a voting booth before casting his ballot in your curriculum, specific things you should learn in the schools,” he said. of Israel, that doesn’t believe in God, Israel’s general elections in Bnei Brak on April 9.

Amir Levy/Getty Images “And since you’re taking their money, that doesn’t believe in the Torah,” Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud.) you’re bound by their laws.” Fried said Fried said. “We feel that we’re holding Teitelbaum’s fierce rhetoric doesn’t make him a similar initiative in 2015 raised $3 million. them back from breaking the commandments.”

To raise the money, a group called Taharas In a speech last week, Rabbi Zalman Teitel- an outlier: An advertisement for the campaign, baum, one of the two grand rabbis of the Sat- posted by the Twitter account @NewsInSatmar, HaKodesh, a biblical term for ritual purificamar movement, accused Israeli haredi Ortho- called the Israeli government “uprooters of To- tion, will hold a rally on Thursday at Arthur dox politicians of murder for partnering with rah and haters of religion” who pose a “terrible Ashe Stadium, the tennis arena in Queens.

The event will celebrate the campaign and the Israel’s government, which has encouraged danger projected onto future generations.”

In the campaign total of $12 million, ap- schools that refuse state funding. Fried expects drafting haredi men into Israel’s army.

“They took part in the murder of Jewish proximately $4 million will go to haredi indi- 50,000 people to attend, with ticket prices souls and were built up by evildoers,” Teitel- viduals who abstain from voting on Tuesday. To ranging from $360 to $5,000.

“In general, Satmar wants to get more powbaum said, according to B’hadrei Haredim, an get the money, the individuals had to drop off Israeli haredi news site. “That’s how they want their ID cards with representatives of the cam- er,” said Rabbi Moshe Klein, a spokesman for paign earlier this week: It’s impossible to vote the event. “And the way they want to do it is to build themselves.” by funding … yeshivas and institutions who (Two haredi parties are represented cur- in Israel without presenting an ID card.

Fried estimates that 35,000 people will re- won’t go vote and who won’t take any money rently in the Knesset: the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism and the Sephardi Shas. They cur- ceive money, an average of more than $100 from the government and who will publicly anrently hold a total of 13 seats in the 120-seat per person, though he says the amount of each nounce that they have nothing [to do] with the body and sit in the governing coalition of Prime check will differ based on the size of the indi- Zionist state government.”

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By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA AMSTERDAM — Anywhere else in Europe, a muscular cartoon character named Max the Matzah would have amounted to little more than an inside Jewish joke.

But in the Netherlands, where matzah for many non-Jews is a household item yearround, Max became an unlikely hit with the general population. Since his creation about 15 years ago as the unofficial mascot of the Children’s Museum of Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter, Max has proven popular beyond the country’s 40,000 Jews.

Max is a frog-eyed figure whose head, rising straight from the waist of a pair of green trousers, is a round matzah. His beefy bear arms wouldn’t look out of place on a Marvel superhero.

He was born in the early 2000s as a drawing designed by the Israeli artist Ram Katzir and Petra Katzenstein, the manager of the Jewish children’s museum, which is the only one of its kind in Europe.

Since then, Max has been made into thousands of puppets by the museum. He stars and acts as a guide in the animated films accompanying the displays at the children’s museum, which receive about 20,000 visitors each year.

He has been featured on taxicabs as part of the museum’s advertising campaign and on tens of thousands of boxes of Hollandia, the matzah factory in the Netherlands located in the eastern city of Enschede. (It is largely thanks to that factory, which used to be owned by Jews, that matzah became so popular here.)

In 2010, Max received his own comic book, published by the museum and currently available in children’s libraries across the country.

On the 10th anniversary of the children’s museum, in 2017, Max made appearances with the Netherlands’ best-known host of a children’s television show, Siemon de Jong. The museum

also made a Max rap video that year, cementing the cartoon’s status as Dutch Jewry’s undisputed ambassador to children.

Max would not have resonated with large numbers of children anywhere else in Europe, according to Katzenstein.

“If you don’t know what a matzah is, then you just don’t get it,” she said. In the Netherlands, however, “on Easter, everyone eats matzah, even though they don’t really know what matzah means for us Jews.”

Katzenstein said this makes matzah — and Max — a good place to start teaching about the Jewish tradition and history.

Which is why Max has an elaborate backstory.

He lives in a dollhouse in the attic of a Dutch Jewish family called the Hollanders with other members of his multicultural family of pastries, including one chocolate chip variety.

Max is related to Benny the Bagel, Ayalah the Challah and Gita the Pita, among others.

The family’s story, told in animated videos at the museum, “actually tells the story of the Jewish Diaspora,” Katzenstein said.

Not surprisingly, Max is a smashing success with Jewish families here, many of whom have the puppets at home. Max features annually in the Passover display of this city’s main Jewish kindergarten, Simcha.

The parents there appreciate how Max’s own character is an attempt to approach the vulner-

ability of Jews throughout the ages as well as their determination, though Zionism, to limit it by returning to their ancestral home.

“He’s brittle and vulnerable on the one hand, but strong and robust on the other,” Katzenstein said.

In one of the rap songs composed for Max, he sings: “Don’t want to end up in chunks, I got boxing trunks, I added some kicks and I’m now good and fit.”

The boxing reference is no coincidence. Before the Holocaust, Jews like Max Baer, Daniel Mendoza and Samuel Elias were among the sport’s star athletes in Europe.

The Dutch author Piet Mooren, in his 2002 book “The Narrow Margins of the Multicultural Society,” wrote that Max the Matzah reminded him specifically of Ben Bril, a Dutch Jewish boxing champion who survived the Holocaust.

“This modern-day David underwent a multicultural transformation in the prominent comic book figure Max the Matzah,” Mooren wrote.

Max’s many layers — metaphorically speaking – have led to fans far beyond the Jewish community and the museum’s visitors.

In 2017 de Jong, who hosts the longrunning children’s show “Abel’s Cakes,” appeared with Max in a billboard and matzah box campaign celebrating the museum’s 10th anniversary. De Jong, whose partner is Israeli, also hosted a matzah decoration contest at the small

kitchen of the children’s museum, where visitors can make challah and matzah.

On his show, de Jong bakes a cake with a child as they discuss dilemmas in the child’s life.

One guest told about his father coming out of the closet. Another was an orphan whose mother committed suicide.

“The conversations can get pretty deep,” de Jong said.

In one episode, de Jong hosted an Arab child who declined to eat from the challah they just baked because “that’s how the Jews poisoned Arafat,” de Jong recalled.

“It showed me that there is a lot of work that needs to be done,” he said.

Katzenstein said an equally shocking conversation with a child prompted her to create the museum she now runs.

She was working at the time as a guide in the main Jewish museum, which is now one of five adjacent institutions comprising Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter. The complex receives about 380,000 visitors annually and includes the Portuguese Synagogue and the National Holocaust Museum.

“The girl was shocked to discover I was Jewish,” Katzenstein recalled. “When I asked her why, she told me, ‘I thought all the Jews had died.’”

Katzenstein’s young interlocutor wasn’t that far off. The Nazis and their collaborators killed 75 percent of the Netherlands’ 140,000 Jews – the highest death rate in Nazi-occupied Western Europe.

That meant that outside Amsterdam, “Dutch non-Jewish children no longer can visit the homes of Jewish ones,” Katzenstein said. “This is part of the reason we designed the children’s museum to resemble a Jewish home, so it would serve that purpose.”

But, she added, “We needed to find a host.

And I think Max does a great job.”

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THE JEWISH STAR April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779

Dutch ‘matzah man’ fame extends beyond Jews

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April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

Finishing up prep for Pesach by making extra Kosher Kitchen

Joni SChoCKett

Jewish Star columnist

A

s I write this, we are almost two weeks from Passover, and panic is setting in. It moves in at this time of year and leaves after the last Seder dishes are put away. There is just so much to do, and no matter how much time there is it seems as though there is never enough. And yet everything gets done.

I have one counter area Pesach ready. I have made my soup stock, beef stock and two batches of kuglettes, as my family has dubbed them. All are in the freshly cleaned and emptied downstairs freezer. I guess I should feel more than ready, but, alas, I know that when the time gets closer, I will worry about what is and is not done.

Pesach preparation anxiety seems to be universal among my friends who change their homes over for Passover. We commiserate over Facebook and the phone, support each other, and give pep talks and comfort and love. It is reassuring to know that so many are doing exactly what you are doing, and it’s fun to compare notes, and lists, and guest numbers, and, of course, recipes. We are a sisterhood of women — all trying to ensure a kosher Pesach with delicious food. I feel blessed to have such a community, and I hope you all have one, too.

Even with all this support and friendship, there are always unforeseen stressors, like lastminute food mishaps or last-minute guests. I have often had as many as eight unexpected, yet welcomed, guests at my Seder table. When that happens, I am left trying to add to the menu without looking like I have just tossed something together. I want these guests to feel as important as those I invited a month before, so I always make something that will expand without additional stress. These potato and vegetable kuglettes are an example. I make about 50 of them before the holiday and freeze them. If extra guests arrive, we just take a few more out of the freezer. We eat the rest through the week.

As we head into this meaningful time of year, I wish you all a minimal amount of stress.

You will get it all done. I will get it all done.

My grandmother did it with a stone sink, an icebox, a hand chopper, and fish in the bathtub. She fed over 25 at each Seder. My mother did it with less than four feet of counter space and tables that crossed a hallway into the living room, making it impossible to open the front door more than a few inches. (We always said that we hoped Elijah was skinny.) And I can only imagine how my great-grandmother did it in a shtetl in Belarus with no running water.

I wish you all a zissen Pesach, a sweet holiday, filled with family, friends and joy!

GF Potato, Leek and Shallot Kuglettes (Pareve) I make these in advance, pop them in a freezer bag and freeze for a few days. Before baking, I brush with safflower oil to make them crisp.

4 medium to large onions, finely chopped 1 cup leeks, finely chopped, white and light green parts only 1/2 cup chopped shallots, about 3 to 5 shallots 1-1/2 lbs. Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled 2 lbs. russet potatoes, peeled 1 bunch scallions, finely chopped 4 extra large eggs 2 Tbsp. potato starch 1 to 2 tsp. kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1/2 tsp. each baking powder and baking soda.

Vegetable or safflower oil Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Generously grease 2 or 3 12-cup muffin tins or use paper liners generously sprayed with non-stick spray.

Peel and finely chop the onions using the “s” blade of a food processor. Pieces should be about 1/8 to 1/4 inch. Scrape into a large mixing bowl and cover to avoid the onion fumes.

Slice the leeks and add to the bowl of the food processor. Pulse several times to chop the slices. Scrape into the bowl with the onions.

Peel the shallots and add to the bowl of the food processor. Pulse to finely mince. Scrape into the bowl.

Cut the scallions, green and white parts, into half inch pieces. Place in the bowl of the food processor and pulse to finely chop. Scrape into the bowl.

Change to the shredding disc and shred the potatoes. Place in a new large bowl. Take handfuls and squeeze out as much liquid as possible.

Add the potatoes to the bowl of onions and re-

peat until all the potatoes have been added to the bowl. Mix well to evenly distribute the onions, leeks, shallots and scallions.

Add the eggs and mix thoroughly. Add the potato starch salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.

Add a teaspoon of oil to each muffin cup. Add a spoonful of the potato mixture and fill the cup just to the top. Place in the oven and cook until deep golden brown, about 30 to 45 minutes. Let cool and remove from the muffin cups using a plastic spoon. They should pop out easily. Place in a freezer bag and freeze until needed.

To reheat, line a large rimmed baking sheet with foil. Place the kuglettes on the pan close together. Brush lightly with safflower oil and bake until crispy, about 25 to 40 minutes. Makes 24 to 30 pieces.

GF Broccoli, Cauliflower and Vegetable Kuglettes (Parve) 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil 3 large onions, finely chopped 2 bunch scallions, white and green parts, finely chopped 5 cups very small (1/2 inch) broccoli florets 5 cups very small (1/2 inch) cauliflower florets 6 large eggs 1/4 cup GF matzah cake meal 1/2 cup finely minced fresh parsley 1/4 cup finely minced fresh dill 2 to 3 tsp. salt, to taste 1 tsp. pepper Optional: Add chopped red or green pepper, chopped mushrooms, pre-cooked asparagus or diced carrots, chopped baby spinach leaves, baby kale leaves, chopped leeks, garlic or any other veggies you like. (Not zucchini — too much water.)

Top with toasted chopped almonds or walnuts.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Generously grease 2 12-cup muffin tins. (Have an extra 6-cup tin available.) Set aside.

Process the onions and scallions in a food processor until finely chopped, but not minced.

Heat a large skillet and add the olive oil. Add the onions and scallions and sauté until lightly golden. Scrape into a large bowl and add the rest of the ingredients.

Mix until completely blended. Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes to thicken slightly. Spoon into the prepared tins and place in the oven. (You may have enough mixture for another 2 to 6 kuglettes.)

Bake until deeply golden, 60 to 70 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool before removing. Let cool completely and place in a plastic bag or wrap each in plastic wrap. Freeze and use as needed. Makes 24 to 30 kuglettes.

Mocha Meringues (Pareve) 3 large egg whites 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 tsp. white vinegar 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract 2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder 2 tsp. instant coffee or espresso powder 1/2 cup finely chopped bittersweet chocolate or mini-chocolate chips or chocolate sprinkles Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking trays with parchment paper. Set aside.

Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on medium until soft peaks form.

Add the sugar, one tablespoon at a time until stiff peaks form. Add the vinegar, vanilla, cocoa and the coffee and mix well.

Remove the bowl from the stand and add the chopped chocolate. Mix with a spatula to evenly distribute the chocolate. Place same sized dollops of the batter, a bit less than 2 inches in diameter, on the parchment lined cookie sheets and place in the oven.

Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes. Turn the oven off and open the oven door slightly. Let cool for about an hour undisturbed. Makes about 30 cookies. (You can make 60 small cookies and make sandwiches by placing a dollop of the melted chocolate between two cookies.)

Optional: Drizzle lightly with melted chocolate. While the cookies are still on the parchment, melt about 2 oz. semi-sweet chocolate in the microwave. Dip the tines of a fork in the chocolate and wave the fork over the cookies so the chocolate makes thin drizzles over them.

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The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

Pesach panic begins Who’s in the Kitchen

JudY JoSzeF

Jewish Star columnist

A

nd so the Passover countdown begins. I have to admit, I do get a little kick out of listening to people panic about preparing for Pesach before Purim even arrives.

Every now and then I check into online foodie groups, and I’m amazed at all the people who have eight days of recipes and meals already printed out two months in advance.

Granted I’m a party planner, caterer and personal chef, and I can work almost as quickly as I speak. So I do have an advantage over others who don’t have as much experience, but I still think the mass hysteria is a bit much.

To the person in the foodie group who asked “Is it too early to prepare mashed potatoes on a Sunday for a Friday night?” — yes, yes, yes. It is way too early. Actually, preparing mashed potatoes on a Thursday night for Friday afternoon is too early. Get a grip!

You’re going to survive. Just breathe.

If anyone should panic, it should probably be me. I catered a large party on Saturday night two weeks before Pesach, so I couldn’t do very much before that. I did take a day off from prepping for the party to clean out my pantry and fill it with all the dry goods. I planned on doing a lot of stuff Sunday, the day after the party, but since I hadn’t slept for a few days I decided to rest and go full force on Monday.

I koshered both of my ovens and switched over the baking section of my kitchen. I bought all of my meats: chickens, veals, ribs, roasts, et cetera. I also bought all of the dairy items except for milk. A little heads up to you people out there: all the cream cheese, butter, cottage cheese and eggs are going to be the same products the day before Yom Tov as they are now.

They’re all in your store already, so you might

as well buy them now. The only things I have left now are fruits and vegetables.

Did I mention that I usually don’t cater that much over this holiday, because I make Pesach and have lots of sleepover company, so I usually don’t have time to take orders? I did it as a favor two years ago because someone had back surgery and asked if I could cook for them. I felt bad, so I did. Then she told a friend who told a friend and I prepared for three families that year, and said I would never do it again … until last year, when I did.

This year would be different, I told myself.

Then a friend called. She was having back surgery, and asked if I could prepare for her. It was months before Pesach, and I could organize my time, so I accepted, but that was it. I would put my foot down if anyone else called.

Fast forward to last week. I was catering a large party two weeks before Pesach, I had to do my own Pesach prep, had a bad bout of sciatica and a scheduled oral surgery. I visited the rheumatologist on Monday who put me on a regiment of prednisone to alleviate my sciatica so I could make it through the party and hopefully Passover. Tuesday I had the oral surgery, Wednesday I spent 10 hours setting up the house where the party would take place. Wednesday night I was up until 5 am preparing assorted mini pastries and cakes. Thursday was more setup and shopping for all the fruits, veggies and other items I would be cooking and prepping — alas, no sleep except for an hour Thursday night. Friday was a whirlwind of cooking, prepping, and transferring lots of food over to the party house.

About two hours before Shabbos my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number and almost didn’t pick up. It was a friend of one of the people I was catering for, for pesach. She said she had just found out about me, and was it too late to order some items?

The little voice in my head shouted “No! No no no, you cannot take any more orders! Just say no, you can do it! Put your foot down!”

The voice was right. I was going to explain

Be creative when garnishing.

that I had to turn down any additional orders.

But somehow, I heard myself say that I didn’t have the time to talk right now, but I would send her a list of what was available on Sunday.

So much for putting my foot down. I’ll have to see a doctor about it.

So to those of you who are panicking, just think about me, and you’ll feel better.

Here’s a great cake for Passover and yearround. It’s amazing when made with butter and heavy cream, but if you want to make it pareve, margarine is not really the margarine it is year round. Try to make this as one of your dairy desserts.

Flourless Chocolate Cake Ingredients Cake 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp.) unsalted butter or margarine

3/4 cup granulated sugar 3 large eggs 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder Ganache 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips 1/2 cup heavy cream or non-dairy whipping cream Preheat the oven to 375 F. Lightly grease an 8-inch round cake pan and line it.

Melt the chocolate and butter or margarine until both are soft, then stir until chips are fully melted. You might have to return to the heat again to make sure the mixture is smooth.

Add the sugar, then add eggs, and beat till smooth. Lastly, add the cocoa and mix just to combine. Do not beat again. Transfer the batter into the pan.

Bake for approximately 25 minutes. The surface of the cake might crack a bit, but that is normal. It will be covered. Remove it from the oven, and cool for 10 minutes.

Slide a knife around the edges to loosen the cake from the pan and turn over onto your serving plate. Loosen the edges of the pan with a table knife or nylon spreader, and turn it out onto a serving plate.

To make the ganache glaze, combine the chocolate and cream and heat in the microwave or on the stovetop until the cream is very hot, but not simmering or boiling. Stir until the chocolate is completely melted and the ganache is smooth.

Let cool a bit, then coat the top and sides of the cake.

Cake is ready to serve when the ganache is firm, about 2 hours.

Festive Pesach table, with hints of east and west

By Ethel G. Hofman, JNS According to a Pew Report, almost 70 percent American Jews — secular as well as observant — attend a Passover Seder to read the Haggadah and recount our flight from Egyptian slavery to freedom.

Of course, food is another highlight of the Seder, and much of the celebration revolves around specific foods and prohibitions.

Although Ashkenazi Passover dishes are heavy on matzah, eggs and dairy products, which were easily available in Eastern Europe, these traditional dishes can be lightened with fresh fruits and vegetables, in tune with contemporary dietary recommendations. In contrast, Sephardic Passover dishes are light and lively, heavy on fresh produce, exotic spices and zesty seasonings — all part of the ancient Mediterranean diet.

At the Hofman house, the first seder features an Ashkenazi meal with dishes that have been adapted to add generous amounts of fruits and vegetables. The second night features a Sephardic meal, definitely more appealing to the diet-conscious. Consider serving fish along with the traditional brisket or chicken. Instead of salmon, look for steelhead trout. It looks an awful lot like salmon, but it’s not; it’s softer and flakier. Don’t try to divide it into neat portions; just spoon into pieces.

Native to Alaska and the West coast, it’s one of the healthier types of fish with plenty of lean

protein and omega-3 fatty acids. Just make sure you buy farm-raised, as wild steelhead is an endangered species, depending on where it’s from.

The recipes below do not include kitniyot.

Happy Passover!

Sephardic Apricot-Cherry Charoset (Pareve) Ingredients: 1 cup dried apricots, cut up 1/4 cup dried cherries 3 large dried peaches (about 4 ounces) cut

in chunks 1/4 cup walnuts or pecans 2 Tbsp. packed fresh mint leaves 3 to 4 Tbsp. sweet wine 2 Tbsp. honey or to taste Directions: Place dried fruits in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Let stand 30 minutes or so to soften. Drain well. Place in a food processor and pulse to chop coarsely.

Add the nuts, mint, 3 tablespoons wine and honey. Process to chop finely. Transfer to a bowl.

Add more honey or wine as desired.

Place in serving bowl, cover tightly with saran wrap and refrigerate. Serve at room temperature. Makes 2 to 2-1/2 cups.

Springtime Vegetable Soup (Pareve) Ingredients: 1 Tbsp. olive oil 1/2 medium sweet onion, sliced thinly 1 medium green zucchini (about 1-1/2 cups), cut julienne 1 medium yellow zucchini (about 1-1/2 cups), cut julienne 3 medium tomatoes, snipped coarsely 1 cup shredded carrots 1/2 cup grated parsnip 1/4 cup snipped fresh dill, packed 1/4 cup snipped fresh parsley, packed 6 to 7 cups vegetarian broth (substitute chicken to make a meat soup) See Pesach east and west on page 15

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14

Fighting anti-Israel hostility at our colleges jerome ostrov

T

o most people, BDS is the campaign to boycott Israel for the purpose of highlighting the plight of Palestinians.

Were it this simple, honest people might disagree on the merits of such a campaign.

However, the well-documented statements of the movement’s founders (and many of their successors) reveal its true intent: the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state. On college campuses, this can be discerned from the oft-heard chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

How did this come about? How did the only thriving democracy in the Middle East become so vilified on college campuses?

The answers are many, and it’s tempting to look solely to Israel’s status as occupier. But more is at play. In the progressive environment that pervades today’s academic world, power is often equated to oppression — and both Israel and the Jewish community are seen as powerful.

From the perspective of those groups within academia who see themselves as history’s mistreated figures, dialogue with the powerful is problematic. On the one hand, most college students and their teachers support free speech.

But just as many oppose speech that, to their ears, smacks of oppression. This tug of war often tilts against speakers whose message is seen as hurtful — an understandable, if not always appropriate, reaction.

Unfortunately, for campus constituencies who only see Israel as occupier and oppressor, it also means that pro-Israel speech is viewed as unacceptable and its advocates racist.

T

hus, campus organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) take the view that there can be no dialogue with lsrael’s defenders, lest such dialogue lead to “normalization” of the pro-Israel point of view.

As one academic known for provocation has put it, dialogue cannot take place if it “humanizes” the Israeli people. Carried a step further, this attitude also translates to pro-Israeli speakers being shouted down — a practice that occurs with regularity on today’s college campuses.

How does all of this affect our Jewish college-age students? Some students with modest backgrounds in Judaism and Israel may not be affected at all. Others, who arrive at college with a strong connection to Israel but also strong progressive views, may find themselves torn. They may have to choose between supporting Israel and being ostracized, or rejecting a core part of their identity in order to gain acceptance as a progressive.

This quandary may be less of a problem on larger campuses, where Jewish students can disregard in-your-face annual events such as “Israel Apartheid Week.” However, as time goes on, students will find it difficult to avoid the anti-Israel drumbeat even at larger schools. The recent unwillingness of two University of Michigan teachers to write letters of recommendation on behalf of two students who wanted to study in Israel is a case in point.

On smaller campuses, such as the Claremont Colleges in California, where the Pitzer faculty voted to dissociate itself from a study-abroad program with the University of Haifa, anti-Israel behavior can not only be devastating, but also seamlessly morph into anti-Semitism. The irony is that the University of Haifa’s inclusiveness,

with a third of its students non-Jewish Arabs, would be the envy of many an American university seeking to build minority representation. t Pomona, another Claremont College, one student was quoted as saying that even going to Shabbat services was being derided as a political statement. At Oberlin, a liberal arts college in Ohio favored by progressive-minded Jewish students, a group of more than 90 alumni published an open letter calling upon Oberlin’s president to end “the concerted hostility toward Israel on campus,” and stating that such hostility “fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students.” Sadly, the beat goes on at many other revered small colleges.

What can be done to influence the debate and make Jewish students more comfortable?

Here are a few pointers.

From a myriad of sources, prospective students can learn about campus attitudes towards Israel even before applying. Once on campus, there is strength in numbers. On many campuses where SJP and like-minded elements of the intersectional spectrum are active, Jewish students far outnumber the most vocal of Israel’s detractors. At schools such as Columbia (where one professor recently wrote on his Facebook page that “Every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world just wait for a few days and the ugly name of ‘Israel’ will pup [sic] up as a key actor in the atrocities”) and Rutgers (where one teacher spread the blood libel that “young Palestinian men … were [being] mined for organs for scientific research”), antiIsrael hostility from certain faculty departments, as well as student organizations, is unremitting.

Yet Jewish life at these institutions — al-

A

Dialogue cannot take place if it ‘humanizes’ the Israeli people.

though not without its discouraging moments — is thriving, owing to the large size and resilience of the Jewish student bodies. Rutgers alone enrolls more than 6,000 Jewish undergraduates.

At other schools with large Jewish populations, size can be used creatively to demand dialogue and defend against attacks on pro-Israel speech. ut the fight against campus hostility towards Israel should include all of us. Just as Oberlin’s alumni wrote the school’s president to object to the debilitating anti-Israel environment on campus, other influential alumni and alumni groups can do the same. I know countless alums who are concerned about antiIsrael fervor and anti-Semitism at their alma maters. Now is the time for them to speak up.

Most importantly, Jewish campus leadership is essential. On many campuses, Israel’s detractors have taken over the student governments, positioning themselves to introduce, if not enact, BDS resolutions. Jewish students need to enter the fray and involve themselves in student government, even though for some the effort may be painful and the end may not immediately be in sight.

Finally, for Jewish students who arrive on campus passionate about Israel, they must possess both a background and tool kit with which to work. For the lucky ones, both of these can be obtained at the dinner table. For others, more is needed.

That’s where community organizations, such as local federation chapters and national advocacy organizations, come into play, with courses designed to prepare Jewish high school students for what they are likely to encounter at college.

And for many, Jewish summer camp can provide a solid Judaic grounding in an uplifting and memorable environment.

Jerome Ostrov is the author of Finding the Right School in the Era of BDS and Intersectionality.

B

Apartheid Week…

Continued from page 1 Semitism, including conflations of Zionism with ‘white supremacy,’ and enthusiastic chants to free Palestine ‘from the river to the sea,’ which is commonly understood as a call for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state,” CAMERA campus coordinator Zac Schildcrout told JNS. “These radical ideas that demonize Jews are bigoted and should be passionately countered by the Harvard community.”

The funding came from the student government’s Grant for an Open Harvard College that subsidizes “compelling interests,” which include “mental health, race, culture and faith relations, sexual assault and harassment prevention, social spaces and financial accessibility,” reported the Crimson.

A student representative said the Palestinian initiative falls under the “race relations” section.

A number of Jewish students at Harvard spoke out.

“One of the speakers slated to come, Omar Barghouti, has said that he supports the euthanasia of Zionism,” said sophomore Gabriel Dardik. “Really, it makes me feel unsafe that this kind of person could come here.”

Barghouti co-founded the BDS movement.

‘About abolishing the Jewish state’ IAW held on campuses and at venues throughout the world is largely coordinated and supported by the BNC (BDS National Committee), a Ramallah-based coalition in part made up of U.S. and E.U.-designated terror organizations such as the Popular Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The first Israel Apartheid Week was held in Canada in 2005 and co-organized by Al-Awda, which became part of a coalition that is part of the BNC today. The BNC serves as the Palestinian arm of the BDS movement and helps to coordinate international BDS efforts. It operates the website BDSmovement.net that serves to educate and update readers on its activities. As such,

despite messaging that IAW is a grassroots movement, the campaign is, in fact, largely guided from above by the terror-led BNC, which decides on the exact message, creates relevant hashtags and serves as the central source of information propagated during each IAW. For example, IAW’s official handbook, published on IAW’s website, activists instructs activists to contact Ana Sanchez, the International campaigns officer at the BNC for assistance. The handbook also recommends protest tactics, preferred activities, speakers and workshops. Further, it directs readers to the anti-Israel hashtag used by IAW’s activists worldwide, such as #IsraeliApartheidWeek and #StopArmingColonialism.

At Emory University in Atlanta, in correspondence with Emory Eagles for Israel’s “Israel Week,” mock eviction notices were found outside of dorm rooms, stating the dormitory would be demolished in three days, apparently by the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter to teach a lesson about “the destructive policy of Israel, toward Palestinians,” which includes Israel’s razing the homes of terrorists and their families.

Such eviction notices is a tactic for antiIsrael groups on college campuses. In 2014, they appeared at schools such as Binghamton University, Harvard University, Northeastern University and New York University.

At Brooklyn College, a flyer for IAW was circulated by SJP that suggests the entire Jewish state lacks legitimacy: “Come check out our recreation of the apartheid wall set up by settler-state Israel between occupied Palestine and current Palestinian territories,” it states.

“Note carefully the words in the flyer,” says CAMERA Fellow Aliyah Jacobson, who heads the CAMERA on Campus-supported group Bulldogs for Israel at Brooklyn College. “This isn’t about creating a Palestinian state; it’s about abolishing the Jewish state. It assumes the whole land is occupied, which suggests Israel shouldn’t exist at all.”

The poster for Israeli Apartheid Week.

Columbia University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter has been accused for creating an anti-Semitic poster to promote “Israel Apartheid Week.”

Columbia SJP/Facebook

“What SJP’s really calling for is the elimination of a 70-year-old member country of the United Nations,” said Jacobson.

‘Exposing support of violence’ To combat SJP’s anti-Israel campaign, Jacobson’s group held a counter protest last week.

“There are a number of different approaches to handling IAW on campuses, but we Bulldogs for Israel believe that facing the lies and exposing incredulous support of violence must always be included in the strategy,” said Jacobson.

Columbia University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter was accused for creating an anti-Semitic poster promoting IAW.

Facebook

“This kind of repugnant caricature of Jews is a sore reminder of blatant anti-Semitism from the dark ages of medieval Europe, when antiSemitic propaganda depicted Jews as satanic consorts and an incarnation of absolute evil,” posted Columbia Students Supporting Israel on Facebook. “Physically, Jews were portrayed as menacing, hirsute, with boils, warts and other deformities, sometimes with horns, cloven hoofs and tails. It is extremely painful to see that the same rhetoric is being used on the campus of an Ivy League university in the United States.”

SSI sent an official complaint to Columbia officials against SJP for displaying “blatantly distasteful and anti-Semitic imagery.”

Columbia SJP further defended the depiction.

“Real anti-Semitism is a serious problem in this country, and we should spend our time addressing that instead,” they told Fox News. “It’s harder to combat anti-Semitism if we falsely conflate criticism of Israel — a state that has policies that impact real people’s lives — with an entire people. Supporting Palestinian rights — and the rights of all people — goes hand in hand with fighting anti-Semitism.”

In addition to SJP, “Israel Apartheid Week” at Columbia is being sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace.

At the end of the day, CAMERA president and executive director Andrea Levin told JNS: “The question is what the Jewish community is going to do to meet this accelerating, intensifying challenge.”

JonaThan S. ToBin still laboring under the misapprehension that all American Jews are ardent backers of the Jewish state.

While Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel of the Bronx claimed that no one tell Irish Americans that the prime minister of Ireland was their “Taoiseach” (prime minister in Gaelic), in fact, he knows very well that in previous generations when that community was deeply engaged in the struggle for Irish independence and its aftermath, that wouldn’t been considered out of place in New York politics.

As for his inappropriate use of the phrase “you people” when talking to Jews (or any other group), Trump ought to cut it out. But in the world of New York real estate and the Queens in which Trump grew up, this kind of talk was routine and rooted in a sense of assumed ethnic solidarity—not “dual loyalty,” let alone anti-Semitism. ore to the point, his loose talk notwithstanding, Trump is a proven friend of Israel. Indeed, he is arguably the most ardent supporter of Israel to sit in the White House since it was reborn in 1948. While his critics can claim that his language encourages anti-Semites, does it not occur to them that his actions regarding Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, accountability for the Palestinians, opposition to appeasement of Iran or his close personal ties to the Jewish people, including a Jewish daughter and grandchildren, speak a lot louder to Jew-haters than a few stray phrases?

Perhaps the only people in the world who don’t know that Trump is a friend of the Jews

M

Continued from page 12 2 tsp. lemon-pepper seasoning or to taste Directions: In large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat.

Add all the remaining ingredients. Bring to boil.

Reduce to simmer. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes, or until veggies are softened. Serve hot. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Sweet and Zesty Passover Kugel (Pareve) Ingredients: 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut in chunks 1 medium baking potato, peeled and cut in chunks 2 Granny Smith apples, unpeeled, cored and cut in chunks 4 oz. plus 2 Tbsp. margarine, melted 10-oz. package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry 1-1/2 cups bagged shredded carrots 1/2 cup canned crushed pineapple, welldrained 1/2 cup raisins 1/2 cup matzah meal 1/3 cup sugar 1/3 cup frozen orange-juice concentrate, thawed Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9-inch square baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.

Coarsely chop the potatoes and apples in the food processor. In a large bowl, place potatoes, apples, about 1 stick melted margarine and all remaining ingredients. Stir to mix well.

Spoon into prepared baking dish. Drizzle with remaining margarine.

Bake in preheated oven for 1-1/4 hours, or until firm and nicely browned. If browning too quickly, cover loosely with aluminum foil.

Serve warm or at room temperature. Serves 10 to 12.

Za’atar Baked Steelhead Trout (Pareve) Ingredients: 2 to 2-1/2 lb. fillet steelhead trout 3 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice 1 tsp. kosher salt 2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper 1 Tbsp. za’atar 2 Tbsp. finely snipped parsley Directions: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place steelhead trout fillet on prepared baking pan. Sprinkle all over with lemon juice, salt, pepper and za’atar.

Bake in preheated oven for 18 minutes.

Cooked when a knife is inserted and flakes are opaque. Before serving, sprinkle with parsley.

Serve hot, warm or even at room temperature.

Serves 8.

Sweet Fruit Ratatouille (Pareve) Ingredients: 1-1/4 cups pineapple or apricot preserves 3 Tbsp. orange juice 1 tsp. potato starch 1/2 tsp. cinnamon 2 15-oz. cans tangerine sections, drained 1 pineapple, peeled, cored and cut in 1-inch cubes 1 cup blueberries 1/4 cup pistachio halves or slivered almonds (optional) Directions: In large saucepan over medium heat, stir together the preserves, orange juice, potato starch and cinnamon. Stir constantly until melted and combined. Bring to boil. Cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat. Fold in the tangerines, pineapple and blueberries. Transfer to a serving bowl.

Just before serving, scatter pistachios or slivered almonds over top. Serve at room temperature. Serves 8.

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Continued from page 2 ical for you to avoid language that leads people to believe Jews aren’t loyal Americans.”

Liberals who have been chafing at the criticism they’ve endured because Democrats let Tlaib, and especially Omar, off the hook for public expressions of anti-Semitism after the GOP had disciplined one of their own, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), for years of hateful speech, saw this as another example of how hypocritical conservatives give Trump and other Republicans a bye for the offensive rhetoric they use.

Israel-haters, like the staff of the left-wing publication The Intercept, also pounced, claiming that while Trump had made a direct accusation of dual loyalty that was blatantly anti-Semitic, Omar and Tlaib had merely criticized members of Congress and others for pressuring them to be loyal to Israel.

Please.

Trump was guilty—and not for the first time—of speaking words that no experienced politician would think of using and which could possibly be misconstrued. But the context here is everything. That’s true both for the president and the two pro-BDS members of Congress.

While the ADL was right to say that Trump shouldn’t have said what he did and that “words matter,” we should all know by now that the president doesn’t agree about the need for precise speech. As columnist Salena Zito famously pointed out during the 2016 campaign, Trump’s critics “take him literally but not seriously,” and his fans “take him seriously but not literally.”

But the notion that what he said was an accusation of dual loyalty or part of an antiSemitic slander requires us to ignore the context of his remarks and their clear meaning.

Trump, a man who came of age in a New York real estate and political world in which Jewish support for Israel was considered automatic, is

cord with their anti-Semitic policy positions on BDS and Israel’s existence.

The willingness of so many people to invest themselves in the false narrative that Trump is an anti-Semite is about partisan politics, not his bad character. The same is true of the willingness of so many Democrats to turn their heads when it comes to Omar and Tlaib.

Democrats talk a lot about not wanting Israel to be a partisan issue and about the GOP sowing divisions among their party. They claim to fear that the GOP is sabotaging the national consensus by pointing out its lockstep support for the Jewish state and pointing to divisions among Democrats. But until they acknowledge the truth that Trump is a friend of the Jews and Israel (albeit one who is easy to criticize and misinterpret), in addition to the anti-Semitic nature of the policies backed by some on their side of the aisle, these arguments are just so much hot air.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.

15 THE JEWISH STAR April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779

Awkward Trump…

are some of the Jews. While Trump’s pro-Israel policies don’t obligate anyone to support him, liberals’ abhorrence for the president and his politics is so great that acknowledging the truth about this conundrum gives them an acute case of cognitive dissonance.

As for Omar and Tlaib, their situation was just the opposite. They are already on record as supporters of the anti-Semitic BDS movement. Their statements—in which they alleged that Jewish money was buying congressional backing for Israel and claimed that those who support the Jewish state were “pledging allegiance” to a foreign nation—were clearly intended to both silence and marginalize American Jews.

Nor were the excuses made for them—that they didn’t understand the meaning of their words—remotely credible. They understand the politics of the Middle East very well and meant every word they said. We know that because their anti-Semitic tropes were fully in ac-

April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

16

Parsha of the Week

Rabbi avi billet Jewish Star columnist

Of Pesach, matzah, marror

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he Kli Yakar describes three stages of growth in his explanation of the dialogue with the Wise Son. There is avdut, the removal of the “dirt,” symbolized by the bitterness of maror. There is hachna’ah, the humility represented by matzah. And then there is cheirut, freedom, as represented by the Pesach, personified through serving G-d.

What is the dirt of which we must rid ourselves?

An important principle in Judaism is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” In order to do that, one must be at peace with oneself — otherwise how would we know how to treat the other?

There is no excuse for self-loathing, unless one has a detestable character. But the simple antidote to that is to do good deeds.

One who wants to be a good person needs to simply do nice things for others.

It’s just a matter of training.

There is an arrogance we unknowingly exhibit. We so easily see flaws in others, but not our own. R Elimelekh of Lizhensk famously prayed “that each of us see the positive qualities of others and not their flaws.” Not respecting someone else’s tzelem Elokim is pretty nasty. Judging a person for making different life choices is unbecoming. Calling human beings names they don’t call themselves is obnoxious childhood behavior.

What is the humility we must achieve?

The Torah’s depiction of the simple son’s and wise son’s questions has their conversations taking place “tomorrow.” Humility, in one sense, means we must be ready to wait with our confrontations until the heat of the moment has passed. We must train ourselves to have patience. But there is no comparison between the response one has in the moment, when passions are high, and when they have cooled.

I recently saw a great piece of advice.

When you want to tell someone off, go to your computer, compose an email that says everything you want to say, read it twice to make sure you made every point articulately, and then delete it without sending it. he Talmud (Megillah 28a) has many examples of rabbis who were asked how they merited a long life. Among them, Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah speaks of never viewing himself as better than anyone else. He forgave everyone every night before he went to sleep.

Rabbi Eliezer taught “Let your friend’s honor be more beloved to you than your own” (Avot 2:10). This is not just a slogan.

It is the theme of life.

One should think, “I’m not a big deal.

Whatever honor I think I deserve should be given by me to the other person. And that other person should ideally be thinking and living the same way. But it’s not about me. It’s never about me.”

See Pesach on page 18

The way we get closest to Him is through imitating Him.

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The JEWISH STAR’S

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Five Towns times from the White Shul

Jewish Star columnists: Rabbi Avi Billet, spiritual leader of Anshei Chesed Congregation, Boynton Beach, Florida, mohel and Five Towns native; Rabbi David Etengoff of Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn; Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem. Contributing writers: Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, emeritus chief rabbi

of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth; Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president emeritus of the Orthodox Union. to contact our columnists, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

We are more than our mistakes From Heart of Jerusalem

Rabbi biNNY FReeDMaN

Jewish Star columnist

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s there a point when a person can no longer change?

On the one hand, Jewish law teaches that for some transgressions, such as murder, a person is put to death, suggesting that such a person can no longer redeem him or herself in this world.

On the other hand, our tradition also teaches us in the name of Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:10) to “repent the day before you die.” In the Talmud (Shabbat 153), he explains this to mean that a person should always repent, as he never knows when he might die. The clear implication is that everyone can repent.

Rav Ephraim Oshry, one of the last rabbis of the Kovno ghetto, shares a powerful responsum from the Holocaust in his sefer Mima’amakim. A fellow came over to him in the DP camp, after the war, with an intense question. He had been a chazan before the war, and some of his fellow former inmates wanted him to lead the services for Rosh Hashanah. But he had been appointed a kapo by the Nazis and had had to do terrible things.

He was unsure if he could or should lead the services.

Rav Oshry asked some of the former Jewish prisoners why they wanted him to lead the services. They replied that he had done many more good deeds than bad and had saved lives, and they longed to hear the haunting melodies of the Days of Awe from a chazan who could call up the power of prayer from before the war….

Should such a person — who may have saved some, but certainly had harmed others — be allowed to lead the services? Who could determine if he had repented? Can one ever really repent from such actions? here is a fascinating detail worth noting in this week’s portion of Metzora. The portion continues to expound on the laws of ritual impurity and opens with the case of the metzora, a person afflicted with the spiritual skin malady of tzara’at.

Interestingly, although the topic is discussed quite extensively in last week’s portion of Tazria, only now is the person afflicted named as a metzora; a person afflicted with tzara’at. Until now, the Torah has defined the conditions for tzara’at, discussed the process whereby a kohen identifies it and declares it as tzara’at, without actually defining him as a metzora. Only now do we find the person named.

Even more interesting is that the person is

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only described as a metzora on the day he becomes purified (Vayikra 14:2).

This is rarer than one might think: a person in the Torah is not usually defined by their impurity. As an example, a woman experiencing her monthly menstrual flow, thus rendered impure, is described as “b’niddata” (ibid 15:19-20) literally, in her flow. A man with a seminal emission, also rendered impure, is described not as a ba’al keri, but rather as “teitzeh mimenu shichvat zera,” literally, he from whom a seminal emission flows.

In other words, the Torah does not allow the impurity to define the person, but rather simply describes a process or state a person is experiencing.

How easy it is for us to see a characteristic and presume it as the totality of the person.

We live in an age that loves to label. So people are black or white, left or right, charedim or Reform, liberal or conservative. We see people as blind or deaf, learning disabled or with special needs.

But these labels do not define the person, they merely describe a small part of them. fascinating example of this is occurring during Israel’s current election season. It has been fascinating to watch the media struggle to define Zehut leader, Moshe Feiglin, who has always been defined as a traditional hard-right politician, and yet whose platform supports legalizing cannabis. His being religious should, in our stereotype-happy perception, mean he is against cannabis. But it is not so easy to explain why that should be.

It should be so obvious that a person’s skin color is only a small part of who they are. It should be equally obvious that a person’s cultural background is only a very small part of their potential skill set, intelligence, success or failure.

Perhaps we use these labels because they are easier. After all, we could just as easily label people as blue, brown, or green-eyed as we do white or black. In fact, Jewish tradition does this as well; though the Torah does not call a women a niddah or a man a ba’al keri, the Mishnah clearly does, maybe because it makes the conversation too laborious to have to explain them in truer fashion. But the Torah is clearly suggesting and perhaps we are meant to infer, that such labeling is problematic.

Indeed, Jewish tradition wants us to differentiate between the person, and their actions.

A great example of this appears in Pirkei Avot (1:6-7) in the teachings of Rabbis Yehoshua

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ben Perachia and Nitai Ha’Arbeli. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachia says we should judge every person meritoriously; always assume the best about every person. Nitai Ha’Arbeli says we should distance ourselves from a wicked neighbor. But if we are meant to assume the best about everyone, how would one ever have a wicked neighbor?

Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch explains that we should not judge the person; we should only judge their actions. An action can be wicked, but who are we to determine the totality of a person as wicked? Only G-d can make such judgments. By labeling the person’s actions as impure, rather than defining them, we learn to be more careful in labeling people. hich returns to our original question: why here, on the day he becomes purified, is the person struggling to leave his tzara’at behind labeled and defined as a metzora?

There are two types of instances in which a person becomes tameh, impure. In one type of event, an external factor renders a person impure, but the source of impurity is external to themselves. The best example of this is, of course, contact with death. A person who comes in contact with a dead body becomes impure, but the impurity came from an external source.

Here, in our portion of Metzora, we are dealing with impurity contracted from within one’s own body. The ultimate example of becoming impure from the inside out is the metzora. The Talmud (Erchin 16a) lists the seven transgressions for which a person would be afflicted with tzara’at, the greatest of which seems to be slander. This is by definition a transgression that comes closest to changing who a person is.

And maybe the reason the Torah labels such a person a metzora as he is purified is to remind us that such behavior, which stems from something warped and imbalanced deep inside, does not simply leave when the person repents. It leaves a residue that is much harder to erase.

In the DP camp, Rav Oshry ruled that the chazan in question, despite having been a kapo, could, under the circumstances, lead Rosh Hashanah prayers. Being a kapo was something he did, but he had the capacity to decide that it would not be who he was — as do we all.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.

Who are we to determine the totality of a person as wicked?

Only G-d can make such judgments.

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Torah

Rabbi david eTengoff

Jewish Star columnist

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ur natural inclination at this time of the year is to focus upon the phrase zecher l’yetziat Mitzrayim — a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt. After all, one of the major mitzvot of Pesach evening is none other than to tell the story of the departure from Egypt.

While this is surely a key element of our thoughts during the course of the Seder, the Torah also reminds us, no less than five times, “And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt” (Devarim 5:15, 15:15, 16:12, 24:18 and 24:22).

In sum, while we are certainly obligated to focus upon our joyous march to freedom on the

night of Pesach, we are equally mandated to remember our 210-year ordeal of backbreaking servitude and abject misery at the hands of our heartless Egyptian taskmasters.

Two of the five instances wherein the Torah enjoins us to “remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt” explicitly discuss our responsibility to treat the stranger, orphan and widow in an equitable and righteous manner: “You shall not pervert the judgment of a stranger or an orphan, and you shall not take a widow’s garment as security [for a loan]. You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the L-rd, your G-d, redeemed you from there; therefore, I command you to do this thing” (Devarim 24:17-18).

“When you beat your olive tree, you shall not

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s we saw in Parshat Tazria, the Sages identify tzara’at — the condition that affects human skin, the fabric of garments, and the walls of a house — not as an illness but as a punishment, and not for any sin but for one specific sin, that of lashon hara, evil speech.

This prompts the obvious question: Why evil speech and not some other sin? Why should speaking be worse than, say, physical violence? It is unpleasant to hear bad things said about you, but surely no more than that.

There is not even a direct prohibition against evil speech in the Torah. There is a prohibition against gossip: “Do not go around as a gossiper among your people” (Vayikra 19:16). Lashon hara is a subset of this larger command.

The Sages go to remarkable lengths to emphasize its seriousness. It is, they say, as bad as all three cardinal sins together — idol worship, bloodshed, and illicit relations. Whoever speaks with an evil tongue, they say, is as if he denied G-d. Why are mere words treated with such seriousness in Judaism?

people of Babel to build a tower to heaven, He “confused their language” so they were unable to communicate. Language remains basic to the existence of human groups. To this day, differences of language, where they exist within a single nation, are the source of ongoing political and social friction: between English and French speakers in Canada; Dutch, French, German, and Walloon speakers in Belgium; and the Spanish and Basque languages in Spain.

G-d created the natural universe with words. We create — and sometimes destroy — the social universe with words. o the first principle of language in Judaism is that it is creative. We create worlds with words. The second principle is no less fundamental.

Abrahamic monotheism introduced into the world the idea of a G-d who transcends the universe, and who therefore cannot be identified with any phenomenon within it. G-d is invisible.

Hence in Judaism all religious images and icons are a sign of idolatry.

How, then, does an invisible G-d reveal Himself? Revelation was not a problem for polytheism. The pagans saw gods in nature, making us feel small and powerless in the face of its fury.

A G-d who cannot be seen or even represented in images demands a different kind of religious sensibility. Where can such a G-d be found?

The answer again is: in words. G-d spoke. He spoke to Adam, Noach, Avraham, Moshe. At the revelation at Mount Sinai, as Moshe reminded

the Israelites, “The L-rd spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Devarim 4:12).

In Judaism, words are the vehicle of revelation. The prophet is the man or woman who hears and speaks the word of G-d. That was the phenomenon that neither Spinoza nor Einstein could understand. They could accept the idea of a G-d who created heaven and earth, the force of forces and cause of causes, the originator of the Big Bang, the G-d who was the architect of matter and the composer of order. G-d, Einstein famously said, “does not play dice with the universe.”

Judaism calls this aspect of G-d Elokim. But we believe in another aspect of G-d also, which we call Hashem, the G-d of relationship — and relationship exists by virtue of speech.

For it is speech that allows us to communicate with others and convey our inwardness to them. It is at the very heart of the human bond.

A G-d who could create universes but not speak or listen would be an impersonal G-d — a G-d incapable of understanding what makes us human. Worshipping such a G-d would be like bowing down to the sun or a giant computer. We might care about it but it could not care about us. That is not the G-d of Avraham. e can use language not just to describe but to create new moral facts. The Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin called this speSee Speech on page 18

Our entire nation was once completely vulnerable.

The power of speech Rabbi siR jonaThan sacks

pick all its fruit after you; it shall be [left] for the stranger, the orphan and the widow. When you pick the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean after you: it shall be [left] for the stranger, the orphan and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt: therefore, I command you to do this thing” (24:20-22).

These verses urge us to guard the rights and privileges of the most vulnerable members of Jewish society by reminding us, in no uncertain terms, that our entire nation was once completely vulnerable, subject to the diabolical control of Pharaoh and his vicious henchmen. As such, as a people and as individuals, we must build upon the historical consciousness of our Egyptian servitude and be acutely sensitive to

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he answer touches on one of the most basic principles of Jewish belief. There are ancient cultures who worshipped the gods because they saw them as powers: lightning, thunder, the rain and sun, the ocean that epitomized the forces of chaos, and sometimes wild animals that represented danger. Judaism was not a religion that worshipped power, despite the fact that G-d is more powerful than any pagan deity.

Judaism, like other religions, has holy places, holy people, sacred times, and consecrated rituals. What made Judaism different, however, is that it is a religion of holy words. With words G-d created the universe: “And G-d said, Let there be … and there was.” Through words He communicated with humankind. In Judaism, language itself is holy.

That is why lashon hara is not merely a minor offense. It involves taking something that is holy and using it for purposes that are unholy. It is a kind of desecration.

After creating the universe, G-d’s first gift to the first man was the power to use words to name the animals, and thus to use language to classify. This was the start of the intellectual process that distinguishes Homo sapiens. The Targum translates the phrase “and man became a living creature” (Bereishit 2:7) as “a speaking spirit.”

Evolutionary biologists nowadays take the view that it was the demands of language that led to the massive expansion of the human brain.

When G-d sought to halt the plan of the

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Metzorah: Miserly Marner Rabbi dR. Tzvi heRsh weinReb Orthodox Union

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no longer remember the name of my ninthgrade teacher of English literature. But I do remember well one of his important lessons.

He taught us that there are many great works of literature that are misunderstood. These are books that are commonly thought to be concerned with one specific theme, but are really about something else entirely.

To illustrate his point, he included George Eliot’s famous novel Silas Marner in our list of assigned readings. He pointed out to us that even well-educated individuals assume the work is about a pathological miser and is a psychological study of miserly behavior. He thus demonstrated to us that one of the common clues in the highbrow New York Times crossword puzzle is “miserly Marner,” for which the correct response is “Silas.” The creator of the

crossword puzzle is confident that even his sophisticated audience will readily associate “miserly” with the hero of Eliot’s novel.

Yet after the class had completed the assignment and read the great novel, we all knew well that miserliness was only a secondary, and quite incidental, theme in this work. On the contrary, the book was a study of several significant issues, ranging from religion to industrialization to community. any years later, it occurred to me that my freshman teacher of English literature was on to something that applied not only to classic English literature, but to the weekly Torah portions. Many, even ardent, students of the weekly parsha fail to identify important themes, and very substantial lessons, in the Torah portion.

This week’s parsha is a case in point. We will be reading Metzorah (Vayikra 14:1-15:33).

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In Judaism, language itself is holy.

Most of us assume that the content of this Torah reading is limited to its title, Metzorah, usually translated as a “leper.”

On the surface, this assumption is true. The parsha is all about symptoms of a once common and fairly widespread disease, usually identified with leprosy. As such, this Torah portion heads the list of those passages in the Torah which seem irrelevant to contemporary life and which have little to teach us about human conduct.

But the rabbis thought otherwise. Famously, they saw the connection between the Hebrew word metzora, leper, and the Hebrew phrase motzi ra, “he who expresses malice.” They go further and maintain that the disease is a punishment for the egregious sin of spreading malicious gossip, and countless rabbinic sermons have used this week as a springboard for a lecture about the evils of maligning others and abusing the gift

There is a lesserknown theme in this week’s parsha.

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of speech.

But there is another, lesser-known hidden theme in this week’s Torah portion, which the rabbis of the Talmud identified. For metzorah, besides being a contraction of the words motzi ra, can also be decoded as a contraction of the words tzar ayin, “narrow eyes,” a euphemism for miserly behavior. A stingy person is referred to in Hebrew as a tzar ayin, a narrow-eyed individual, one who selfishly sees only himself and not the needs of another.

The source of this approach is to be found in the Babylonian Talmud, Arachin 16a, which includes tzarut ayin, stinginess, as one of the sins for which “leprosy” is a punishment. The Talmud finds a basis for this contention in the phrase to be found in chapter 14, verse 35, which describes the procedure to be followed when an individual discovers a “leprous blemish” in “his” house.

The school of Rabbi Yishmael taught that such blemishes were the consequences of the sinful attitude of one who thinks that his “house” is his and his alone, and who selfishly does not share his possessions with others. epresentatives of the nineteenth-century Mussar movement, which emphasized the central importance of ethical behavior in See Metzorah on page 18

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17 THE JEWISH STAR April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779

Pesach and social justice

the needs of those who require our assistance to live dignified and meaningful lives.

In other words, the Torah is commanding us to practice the highest standards of social justice. he Rambam codifies our moral and halachic imperative to actively provide for the needs of those most at risk. In the context of a famous halacha regarding the mitzvah of simchat Yom Tov (rejoicing during the Yom Tov meal), he states: “When a person eats and drinks [in celebration of a holiday], he is obligated to feed converts, orphans, widows, and others who are destitute and poor. In contrast, a person who locks the gates of his courtyard and eats and drinks with his children and his wife, without feeding the poor and the embittered, is [not indulging in] rejoicing associated with a mitzvah, but rather the rejoicing of his belly” (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Yom Tov 6:18).

The Rambam is teaching us a profound life lesson that goes far beyond the purview of a specific Yom Tov-based halacha, namely, kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh — every Jew is personally reSee Social on page 18

April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

18

Rabbi Bender’s new ‘Chinuch Haggadah’ Kosher Bookworm

AlAn JAy GerBer

Jewish Star columnist

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abbi Yaakov Bender is perhaps one of the premier Jewish educators in our community today, both here on Long Island and nationwide. Thus, the publication of his take on the Pesach Haggadah, The Chinuch Haggadah (Artscroll/Mesorah, 2019), should come as no surprise. The Haggadah is the premier education text of our faith, teaching us how to talk to our youth about the holy meaning of the Exodus experience as the foundation of our sacred faith.

In his introduction, Rabbi Bender informs us that this Haggadah is “an attempt to share with others the values, insights, and inspiration that shaped our world. The timeless emunah of our parents, the indomitable spirit of the people I knew in my youth, the tangible sense of ashreinu mah tov chelkeinu, the knowledge that we were the most fortunate people in the world.”

In that stated goal this work is a success that will surely inspire you to experience the Seder with greater passion, as well as gain a deeper understanding of both the theological and historical meaning of the exodus experience leading up to Sinai and the land of Israel.

Below I present to you in Rabbi Bender’s own eloquence and passion in his introduction to this Haggadah. Hopefully you will come to an even better understanding of what the Haggadah, and its authors of so long ago, tried to teach and inspire us with: a better appreciation of G-d’s liberation of our people from the slavery of Egypt.

••• “Some books have dedications at the begin-

Pesach...

Continued from page 16 And the connection to freedom raised by the Kli Yakar was channeled through an appreciation of the role G-d plays in our lives.

“I set G-d before me always.” “I am to my Beloved and my Beloved is to me.” “For me, closeness to G-d is good.” What do these verses mean? We can love Him all we want. We can become absorbed in davening and always behave in shul and be the most humble and the most efficacious and the greatest Torah learners.

But the real way we get closest to Him is through imitating Him. “Just as He is merciful, you are to be merciful.”

The Talmud passage in Megillah mentioned above gives many examples of those who merited long life because of their tremendous qualities, character traits, and care for their fellow man. G-d blessed them with long life because they were humble, subservient, respectful, never took benefit from someone else’s downfall or delighted in someone else’s failure.

Pesach, matzah and marror are meant to teach us what kinds of behaviors we don’t want in our lives (marror), what kinds of behaviors we do want (matzah), and what kinds of behaviors we can train ourselves to have (Pesach) that allow us to be the most gratified Jews in the service of G-d, who earn honor and respect because we give honor and respect, and who modestly fulfill the verse from Micah “to walk humbly with your G-d.”

Social...

Continued from page 17 sponsible for the welfare of every other Jew, and no one should ever be left behind.

Little wonder, then, that in the opening words of the Haggadah we declare as one: “This

ning, a note of thanks to one of the people who inspired or helped the author. This isn’t a book, and I’m not the author: it’s the Haggadah shel Pesach, our shared story, and I offer only some small he’aros — yet I’d like to open with a dedication just the same.

“If there’s a word so central to this evening, a key component in the glorious avodah that lies ahead, it’s this one: father. From both sides of the table, eyes are turned to the father, the one charged with leading, transmitting, sharing and inspiring. So what happens when that seat is empty?

“What if there is no father? What if the people surrounding the table are orphans?

“And it’s not only orphans who feel a lack on this night. There are children whose parents have divorced, and the line of connection with the father has been severed.

“We are a generation blessed with so many determined souls who’ve come back to the faith of their ancestors on their own, without the father to lead them at the seder. Who will tell them the story?

“One of the last shmuessen my father gave at Yeshivah Torah Voda’as, just days before his sudden passing, centered on the pesukim in Parshas Mishpatim. “‘You shall not oppress any widow or orphan. Im aneh te’aneh oso, ki im tza’ok yitz’ak eilai, shamoa eshma tza’akaso … If you cause him pain, beware, for if he will cry out to Me, I will surely hear his cry’ (Shemos 22:21-22).

“The words are all doubled, aneh te’aneh, tza’ok yitz’ak and shamoa eshma. The Kotzker Rebbe explained the significance of this: when a person has an open wound and someone else strikes them on that very spot, the pain is doubled, compounded. Not just the pain of being hit, but the pain of the original

wound, which is always there.

“The almanah and yasom carry a constant ache: any additional ache affects them doubly, because they experience that slap right on the spot of the first wound. ‘It’s because I have no father that you insult me,’ thinks the orphan. ‘If I had a husband, you wouldn’t ignore me,’ thinks the widow.

Pain on top of pain.

“This was the vort my father told his talmidim. Days later, I understood it in the depths of my being. Because yasmus isn’t a word, but an identity: I had become an orphan…

“The shivah was a surreal experience, piercing pain, longing for my father, worry about the future … and then came Shabbos.

“Rav Yosef Dovid Epstein and his wife, my parents’ mechutanim, joined us for Shabbos: we came in for Kiddush, and the chair at the head of the table remained empty.

That emptiness still remains, a void in my heart that 53 years haven’t filled.

“Six months after my father’s passing came the Pesach seder: if any healing had begun, it all slipped away and we started mourning anew.

Who could feel free or happy when the pain was so excruciating and raw?

“My father was gone. I would never return to the yeshivah in Philadelphia, where I had been learning, since it was decided that it would be good for my mother if I was home, near her. I joined the Mirrer Yeshivah, where each lonely day during that winter reminded me of the truth of Chazal’s words — all beginnings are difficult.

“I was beginning a new life as an orphan, a new reality, in a new yeshivah. And it was so, so hard. It was a winter of tears.

“But then something interesting happened. The tears didn’t stop, but I learned to cry at night, under my covers. My mother taught me that once the sun comes up, we smile. We would learn to live.

“We wouldn’t deny the pain, but we would find a place for it — not a block, preventing us from moving forward, but as a step to climb higher…”

••• “To you, who come to the Seder with that void at the head of your table, that emptiness in your heart, know this: the words you will read in the Haggadah teach us that what appears to be so painful is but a blip in time, a nightmare that fades with morning.

“At the end, it all becomes clear, the bitterness itself is the catalyst for the redemption.

The great deeds of your fathers remain with you, as your actions will accompany your children. That’s the message of the Seder.

“May the simchah and clarity of this night give us the strength to meet the challenges ahead with confidence and pride.

“Maschil b’gnus, we begin by recalling the shame of our humble origins. And mesayem b’shvach, we close with celebration and praise for how far we’ve come.

“May we never forget from where we come, and never lose sight of where we are going. May it be speedily, in our days.”

is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. All those who are hungry, let them enter and eat. All who are in need, let them come celebrate the Passover. Now we are here.

Next year in the land of Israel. This year we are enslaved. Next year may we be free.”

L’shanah haba b’Yerushalayim habenuyah!

May we all join as one united people in the rebuilt Beit HaMikdash soon, and in our days.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag kasher v’sameach.

That, according to the Sages, is why the speaker of lashon hara was smitten by leprosy and forced to live as a pariah outside the camp.

The punishment was measure for measure. udaism emerged as an answer to a series of questions: How can finite human beings be connected to an infinite G-d? How can they be connected to one another? How can there be cooperation, collaboration, families, communities, a nation, without coercive use of power? How can we form relationships of trust?

How can we create collective liberty such that my freedom is not bought at the cost of yours?

The answer is: through words, words that communicate, words that bind, words that honor the Divine Other and the human other.

Lashon hara, by poisoning language, destroys the very basis of that vision. When we speak disparagingly of others, we diminish them, we diminish ourselves, and we damage the very ecology of freedom.

That is why the Sages take lashon hara so seriously. Never take language lightly, implies the Torah. It was through language that G-d created the natural world, and through language that we create and sustain our social world. It is as essential to our survival as the air we breathe.

right, which is attributed to Rabbeinu Tam, one of the outstanding leaders of French Jewry in the twelfth century: “An individual’s miserliness is not limited to just one aspect of his overall behavior. Rather, the stingy person will fail to perform even basic mitzvot, good deeds, because he sees no benefit to be gained from performing them. If performing such good deeds will cost him even a minute monetary loss, he will find all sorts of excuses to avoid performing those good deeds. His stinginess will make it impossible for him to be a truly pious person.”

Interestingly, and almost paradoxically, the Alter finds that the character trait of miserliness is not always a negative one. It is sometimes praiseworthy, particularly when it is utilized as an antidote to a very different negative trait, namely extravagance. The Alter recognizes that whereas many individuals in the communities with which he was familiar were overly stingy, there were many who were given to excessive spending, often falling into irreversible debt.

He has no difficulty in finding earlier rabbinic authorities who condemn excessive spending as well as miserly selfishness.

In a collection of the Alter’s personal correspondence, we have an example of just how careful he encouraged his students to be in order to avoid profligate spending. In a letter to three of his young students, he urges them to conserve the stationery at their disposal and join together in writing letters to him on just one sheet of paper. He concludes his letter thus: “Remember that spending even one penny for naught is a violation of the prohibition against waste.”

The Alter’s insistence that one strike a balance between selfish stinginess and wasteful spending is a useful teaching for those of us who live in today’s affluent society. Often, we adopt distorted priorities and practice thrift with regard to important societal causes, and spend excessively on frivolous ones.

As always, Maimonides said it best when he advocated what has come to be called the “golden mean,” and advised us to carefully contemplate the downsides of extreme behaviors and adopt moderation in all of our endeavors.

Speech...

Continued from page 17 cial use of language “performative utterance.”

The classic example is a promise. When I make a promise, I create an obligation that did not exist before. Nietzsche believed that the ability to make a promise was the birth of morality and human responsibility.

Hence the idea at the heart of Judaism: a brit, covenant, which is a mutually binding promise between G-d and human beings. What defines the special relationship between the Jewish people and G-d is not that He brought them from slavery to freedom. He did that, says the prophet Amos, to other people as well: “Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir?” (Amos 9:7). It is the fact that at Sinai, G-d and Israel entered into a mutual pledge that linked them in an everlasting bond.

For that reason, Jews were able to survive exile. They may have lost their home, their land, their power, their freedom, but they still had G-d’s word, the word He said He would never break or rescind. The Torah, in the most profound sense, is the word of G-d, and Judaism is the religion of holy words.

To abuse language to sow dissension is not just destructive. It is sacrilege. It takes something holy, the human ability to communicate and join soul to soul, and use it for the lowest of purposes, to destroy the trust on which relationships depend.

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Metzorah...

Continued from page 17 Jewish religious practice, used this week’s Torah portion to severely criticize miserliness and undue emphasis upon the retention of one’s possessions.

One of the leaders of this movement, Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, known as the Alter of Kelm, writes at length about the “shameful behavior of kamtzanut (stinginess).” The Alter delves into medieval rabbinic literature and finds a treasure trove of quotations condemning miserliness, and which find miserly behavior widespread in the communities in which they lived.

One example is this quotation from the work known as Sefer HaYashar, the Book of the Up-

tehilla r. goldberg

Intermountain Jewish News

For 37 years, not forgotten

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wo sets of Jewish bones were found this past week. One was in Brest, Belarus.

The other — after 37 years of waiting — was the remains of IDF Sergeant Zecharya Baumel, killed in the battle of Sultan Yacoub.

At a mass gravesite in Belarus, the remains of over 1,000 Nazi victims were discovered. One female skeleton cradled her baby.

Between the murdered Jews and Zachary Baumel lies the story of the Jewish people.

Even after the Holocaust, even with a state of our own, it is still not a foregone conclusion that there is a place for the Jew in this world.

Either way, there will be bones to be buried. Either way, there will be battles, broken hearts and shattered families.

The thousands of Jewish skeletons unearthed in foreign lands are anonymous people, once named and loved but now lost to history as helpless victims of Nazi terror. The brave IDF soldier had a name and a place.

Zecharya Baumel’s name literally means “remembered.” His bones returned for a Jewish burial in his homeland. The Jewish people never forgets its soldiers.

Zecharya, and all missing soldiers, symbolize the price we pay for the privilege of defending ourselves, instead of becoming piles of massacred, nameless bodies shot into pits.

Zecharya gave his life so that we would never become the dead piles of Brest again. one of this is consolation for his loss.

Many years ago, one of my colleagues was a sister-in-law of Zecharya Baumel. She shared the searing impact of his loss on the family. When Yosef is reported dead to Yaakov, though he was still alive, Yaakov’s grief is described: “He refused to be comforted.”

Zecharya’s father Yona never had closure.

He died not knowing. Not that having a dead son to bury is a consolation, but for 37 years, not knowing was a torture all its own.

Relief, even joy, have been the response to Zecharya’s return. Is the news sweet? Zecharya is dead. His father died unconsoled.

Unlike Yosef and Yaakov, Zecharya was not returned to his father in his lifetime.

The profound pain of IDF soldiers lost to battle and lost to burial, unable to bring even the painful closure of burial and bereavement to their families and friends, has riddled too many Israeli families. achel, like Yaakov, “refuses to be consoled for her children, for they are gone.” The following response is heard: “Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears; for … your children will return to their border.” V’shavu banim legvulam.

To me, this Biblical phrase carries the hope of the return of the living, not the dead.

But when the angel of death has already taken your loved one, at least there is comfort in seeing a resting place, a monument.

Once, the names Zecharya Baumel, Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz — comrades in the battle of Sultan Yacoub — were everywhere.

Then, sadly, Ron Arad was added. In 2014, Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin joined them.

But to be part of a nation that never forgets, that values every loss in battle even 37 years later, to know that finally there is some closure for the family — bitter as it is, there is much to be grateful for.

We work toward the day when we will not need to unearth Jewish bones, be they in Brest or Israel, the day there will be no bones or skeletons at all. Just limbs of life.

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Dem acceptance of hatred continues Politics to go

Jeff duNetz

Jewish Star columnist

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ne might expect that after the recent controversy about anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party, it would try to avoid anti-Jewish acts and people. Sadly, that expectation was not realized.

Recent weeks saw another outburst of anti-Semitism, this time from a senior California Democrat, and a parade of Democratic presidential candidates paying tribute to a Jewhater who has also shown outbursts of racism, homophobia, and misogyny.

First, Iyad Afalqa, chairman of the Arab American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, accused fellow Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), of dual loyalty to the U.S. and Israel. The California party has not condemned the statement.

Afalqa’s words were both hateful and ignorant: “Shm**k Schumer, the traitor whose allegiance is for Fascist Israel lobby who called himself the Guardian of Israel in Congress is attacking Rep Omar who hinted at the big elephant in the room: treason of the Fascist Israel lobby that Schumer belongs to.

“For the 2015-2016 election cycle, the pro-Israel network has already dispensed $4,255,136 in contributions. The largest single amount ($259,688) went to Senator Charles Schumer of New York.”

Afalqa posted the charge to Facebook on March 27th, the day after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference. he charge of dual loyalty is among the most hurtful and dangerous anti-Semitic canards, as old as the Bible itself. The first chapter of Exodus tells of a new Pharaoh who said the Israelites were too numerous and might rise up with Egypt’s enemies against them. It was Pharaoh’s excuse to kill male Israelite babies and enslave the adults.

Between the Middle Ages and World War II, the canard went from Jews’ disloyalty to a worldwide conspiracy to rule the planet. It was a driving force behind anti-Semitic massacres in the Crusades and after pandemics. It was written down in the Protocols of Elders of Zion, a false anti-Semitic text claiming to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. It was used by the Cossacks to justify pogroms, and eventually was part of Hitler’s rationale for the Holocaust. The Protocols are still published and distributed by hatemongers throughout the world, including, ironically, at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism.

Along with the dual loyalty canard, Afalqa’s

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ignorance was display in two places. AIPAC, which is nonpartisan, does not donate money to parties or candidates. And Chuck Schumer is not loyal to the Israel lobby. I live in New York; he has been one of my senators for 21 years. He has never been faithful to anything except the Democratic Party.

As of this writing, the California Democratic Party hasn’t reacted to Afalqa’s anti-Semitic attack. But based on their reaction to Rep. Ilhan Omar, expect them to continue ignoring it. uring the AIPAC conference, there were rumors that the Democratic Party candidates had boycotting this year’s gala. In fact, they weren’t invited. Generally, AIPAC asks candidates to speak during an election year.

The 2020 AIPAC conference will probably include invites to candidates still running.

Unfortunately, most of the current candidates showed up at a different conference last week.

Fourteen 2020 hopefuls went to New York City to kiss the ring of Al Sharpton. They included former Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, businessman Andrew Yang, former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, former Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams, Reps. John Delaney and Eric Swalwell, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Gov. John Hickenlooper, Sens.

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker.

By showing up, these would-be presidents endorsed Sharpton’s slander of former New York Attorney General Robert Abrams. Sharpton refused to meet Abrams during the Tawana Brawley hoax because meeting Abrams, who was Jewish, would be “like asking someone who watched someone killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr. Hitler.”

Is this the voice of a member of the clergy? Is it the voice of someone trying to unite people?

Fourteen Democrats who want to be president must think so.

In 1987, Sharpton accused Steven Pagones, a former Assistant District Attorney in Duchess County, of raping Tawana Brawley. Not only was Pagones nowhere near Brawley that night, but Brawley’s entire story was a fraud. This week, fourteen Democratic candidates endorsed the slander.

After days of anti-Jewish rioting in Crown Heights, at the funeral of Gavin Cato in 1991, Sharpton’s eulogy inspired hatred and anti-Semitism: “The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. … It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. … Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds

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straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. … All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’. Pay for your deeds.”

Al Sharpton never apologized or paid for his deeds. And fourteen presidential wannabes are okay with that. he Sharpton fourteen endorsed the murder of Angelina Marrero, Cynthia Martinez, Luz Ramos, Mayra Rentas, Olga Garcia, Garnette Ramautar, and Kareem Brunner — the seven victims of the massacre at Freddy’s Fashion Mart. They are dead because a four-month-long campaign of hate by Al Sharpton incited a man to firebomb the store. If they don’t endorse the murders, why pay tribute to Sharpton?

During the Justice Kavanaugh hearings, the Democrats insisted that all women who claim to be victims must be heard. The batch of candidates who showed up to be blessed by Sharpton must disagree. During the “Central Park Jogger” trial, where a jogger was raped and beaten almost to death, Sharpton led rallies where he claimed the victim’s boyfriend had raped her, and called her a whore.

Remember the Duke lacrosse team, falsely accused of rape? Sharpton declared that the “rich white boys” had attacked a “black girl,” and warned that if arrests didn’t happen immediately, there would be no peace. Eventually evidence proved the girl had invented the story. Did these candidates spend time with Sharpton because they endorse his fake charges?

Do those 2020 candidates disrespect the Mormon faith? When Mitt Romney was running for president, Al Sharpton did: “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in G-d will defeat him anyways, so don’t worry about that; that’s a temporary situation.”

These people running for the Democratic nomination, do they even care that they paid homage to a man who called General Colin Powell George Bush’s house Negro?

Fourteen Democratic candidates endorsed Sharpton’s hatred just by showing up.

Democrats have learned nothing from the crisis caused by Rep. Omar’s comments. The party cannot be blamed for Iyad Afalqa, but they are at fault for not publicly condemning him. And by meeting with Al Sharpton, fourteen Democratic presidential aspirants accepted two anti-Semitic pogroms in New York, led by a man who called a rape victim a whore, an American hero a house Negro, and gay people “homos,” falsely accused people of rape, and displayed a lack of tolerance of faiths different than his own.

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They are at fault for not publicly condemning him.

19 THE JEWISH STAR April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779

View from Central Park

Photos by Laura Ben-David

April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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These commuters finally get to board their buses to their final destinations in Israel, after waiting at Checkpoint 300.

Nearly everyone who comes through the crossing has one thing in common: They’re putting their belt back on after a security check.

Checkpoint Palestinians: What it’s really like laura ben-david Laura Ben-David is a resident of Tekoa, Gush Etzion, in Judea. believe in the Jewish people’s right to live in our homeland. That profound belief has no bearing on the rights of others to live here as well.

There are Palestinians who live and work in the land of Israel, and while I may seldom agree with the positions of their elected officials, the Palestinians are certainly entitled to live their own lives with the same dignity as anyone else.

I also believe in peace, and I deeply wish for peace for all of the Jews and Arabs who share this tiny stretch of land.

Recently I went out of my comfort zone and took a hard look at the things in my backyard that I always knew were there but never thought about. Every day, over 80,000 Palestinians cross into Israel. Eighty-five percent of them are men who work in Israel. The rest come for medical, educational or other purposes.

Though I knew about the border crossings, I never saw them on my own. I’d heard stories of humiliation and waiting, mostly on the in-

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ternational news. Of course, I know why the crossings exist. I remember the first intifada and lived in Israel through the second one.

The news too often featured blown up buses, bombed restaurants and nightclubs that had become scenes of mass casualty.

Because of the diligence of the Israeli army, including careful inspections at crossings and various checkpoints on the roads throughout the West Bank and into Jerusalem, bombs have largely been abandoned and terror has gone low-tech. But it has never gone away.

Not long ago, a woman was caught with a knife in a container of Pringles at the Qalandiya checkpoint. Had she not been stopped and caught, she may well have killed someone with that knife.

But still I had questions: Are the crossings really mere security barriers, similar to airports where those with nefarious intentions are caught? Or, as some claim, are they places where Israeli soldiers humiliate the population whose movements they restrict?

I went to take photographs at Checkpoint 300, located in Bethlehem near Rachel’s Tomb, mere minutes from Jerusalem. Although I see Palestinian workers every day, I never thought about where they come from or what it takes them to get there. In my neighborhood, which is over the Green Line, it is less of an issue since there is no border to cross to get from a Palestinian village into my own. But for the thousands of Palestinians

As the commuters passed by, most ignored the blonde stranger who was photographing everyone, but some hammed it up.

working within Israel proper, the only way to get to work is through one of the six checkpoints into the country.

These checkpoints can potentially add many miles onto a commute, not to mention the additional time spent waiting to get through the actual checkpoint, and then waiting for organized transportation, which is the only way Palestinians can get from the crossing to their destination within Israel.

What I was first struck by on that early morning was the mass of Palestinian men, well over a thousand, all milling about. I was told that this was ordinary. Some were pacing, some sitting, many were smoking or eating. But all A Palestinian man waits at Checkpoint 300. were waiting, most with a look of resignation on their faces.

I admit, I was uncomfortable. I am a blonde, Jewish-Israeli woman, and I was there with a big camera, clearly not a Palestinian looking to cross into Israel. But I also wasn’t an 18-year-old Israeli soldier staffing the crossing, asking people to remove their belts and scanning their bags — no different from what any security agent would do in any airport or border crossing around the world, mind you, but perceived by many Palestinians as anything from an unwelcome inconvenience to threatening and aggressive.

Aside from a few Israeli policemen, the only others at the checkpoint are some representatives from the Institute for Zionist Strategies Blue & White Human Rights program.

They come to the crossings that are staffed by Not every Palestinian crossing into Israel is going Israeli soldiers (other checkpoints are run by for work. Some 15 percent cross the border for private security firms) in the mornings to see medical, educational or other purposes. the facts on the ground and offer assistance to Palestinians with issues they may have dealing with the Israelis.

I started photographing the people tentatively, afraid they would be hostile — or worse. I imagined them seeing me as the enemy. Perhaps they did. But once I became comfortable, I found the reactions to my presence ranging from none to mild interest, and even to smiles and posing. I felt no hostility aside from what I projected from my imagination.

Whatever one may think about the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, it’s important to understand the people and the everyday experiences involved — not just the politicians and leaders. These photos humanize the Palestinians in a way that Israelis don’t often see and force us to glimpse the endless waiting that is A Palestinian man smokes a cigarette at a border crossing into Israel. their plight.

JaSON fruCHtEr aNd JuliaN kritz

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he last few months has been an especially painful time to be Jewish in the United States. Hate crimes against Jews are on the rise; in New York City, for instance, a majority of the city’s hate crimes have been anti-Semitic. And Congress has failed to lead on combating anti-Semitism. In the wake of a series of anti-Semitic comments made by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Congress failed to denounce her remarks, instead passing a resolution condemning bigotry in general.

We recognize that there are widespread misconceptions about what constitutes anti-Semitism and when hateful rhetoric about Israel and its supporters crosses the line from legitimate criticisms of Israel into anti-Semitism. We understand that this line is not intuitive and that there must be ample space for criticism of Israel.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a coalition of thirty-one countries committed to a coordinated effort against anti-Semitism, uses a series of examples to illustrate what constitutes anti-Semitic rhetoric. Two of them are directly applicable to Congresswoman Omar’s comments.

Anti-Semitism includes “making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not ex-

clusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions,” and “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.” hese are forms of anti-Semitism with deep roots in Jewish history. For centuries, there have been conspiracy theories about Jewish domination and accusations of Jewish disloyalty, which have been used to justify discrimination and violence. Representative Omar has repeatedly invoked anti-Semitic themes, suggesting that the Jewish State has “hypnotized” the world, that it’s Jewish money that drives Congressional support for Israel, and that Jewish-Americans who feel affinity for Israel are disloyal. These are textbook examples of anti-Semitism.

It is not a coincidence that former Klu Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke praised Ilhan Omar for her defiance to the “Z.O.G.,” which stands for the Zionist Occupation Government that he believes runs the U.S. Likewise, writers for the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer have praised Omar in the “Jewish Problem” section of their website.

Similar to other types of bigotry, Omar’s claims are not grounded in reality. The Jewish State is the world’s scapegoat, the target of more condemnatory U.N. resolutions than any other nation in the world, despite being the Middle East’s only liberal democracy. If Israel is trying to hypnotize the world, it is failing miserably. AIPAC, America’s largest pro-Israel group, comes in 147th in lobbying expenditures according to a Tablet

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Magazine study. Last year, Gallup pegged support for Israel at 64 percent amongst Americans, a much better explanation of congressional support for Israel than money. The poll also indicates that Jews — a paltry two percent of America’s population — are not alone in feeling affinity for the Middle East’s only liberal democracy and a vital American ally.

Omar’s anti-Semitic rhetoric is especially unfortunate because of how important it is for Jewish and Muslim communities to stand together against hate, and work together to bring peace to the Middle East. Omar herself has been the victim of despicable Islamophobia, most notably when she was depicted as being responsible for 9/11 at the West Virginia State Capitol. The recent white supremacist terror attack on mosques in New Zealand and the attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue underscore the need for solidarity between our communities. This solidarity can also lead to progress towards Middle East peace, as we work together to promote reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. e want to be very clear. We are not trying to silence debate about the Israeli-American alliance or the Israeli government. Indeed, we welcome debate and engagement with the country that is so dear to our community. At times, we ourselves are very critical of the current Israeli government. No country is perfect or immune from criticism, including Israel, though we firmly believe that much criticism of Israel is unwarranted, especially in view of Israel’s status as the Middle East’s See Anti-Semitism on page 22 only democracy.

We are not trying to silence debate.

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A historic problem with dividing Jerusalem JONatHaN S. tOBiN

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hose who continue to deny the historical facts about Jewish Jerusalem got more bad news this week. Archeologists working at the City of David site in Jerusalem revealed some of their latest finds, among them a bulla, or small seal, that can be dated to the sixth century BCE and before the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple.

This particular item was found this past fall in the City of David, an area just outside the current Old City walls of Jerusalem which was the site of the biblical capital of the Kingdom of Judea. The seal bears an inscription that notes that it “belonged to Natan-Melech, eved haMelech” (“servant of the king”).

The significance of the small seal lies in the fact that its owner is mentioned in the Second

Book of Kings as an official who worked in the service of King Josiah, who lived and died some 2,600 years ago. As such, it is one more in a growing list of evidence found in excavations at the City of David that the stories told in the Bible of the Davidic kingdom are rooted in historical fact, not religious fiction. his is important for two reasons.

One is that it debunks claims by Palestinians to deny Jewish history and the ties of the Jewish people to the country, and in particular, to Jerusalem.

Second, it puts into context the ongoing controversy over the excavations at the City of David and the right of Jews to move into the area.

As Bari Weiss noted in an even-handed feature published in the Sunday New York Times this past weekend, as far as the Palestinian Authority and local Arab residents are concerned, the archeologists are as unwelcome as the Jews who have come to live in this section of the ancient city.

While the significance of the treasures found

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Archaeological excavation underway last month at the City of David in Jerusalem.

The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob

there are undeniable, Israel’s critics consider the dig to be more about politics than history.

By developing the site into a historical park, the City of David Foundation has been blasted as a settler group intent on solidifying Israel’s hold on a section of the city that is not recognized as

part of Israel by most of the world.

Like the Old City and the West Bank, Jordan illegally occupied the City of David site from 1948 to 1967. The Palestinian Arabs who live in the vicinity of the site consider Jews foreign interlopers, even though almost all of the property in the area is or was owned

by Jews prior to the founding of the State of Israel. Though no one is chasing them out of their homes, they feel increasingly threatened by an influx of Jews into the neighborhood, now making up one-sixth of the local population, according to the Times.

More than that, they bitterly resent the development of the archeological park, and consider the discoveries made there to be an insult to their belief that Jerusalem and all of its sacred sites are exclusively Arab.

Their fables about that attempt to treat the physical evidence of Jewish Jerusalem — like the Temple Mount itself and the Western Wall — as either fake or Islamic in nature have been encouraged by Palestinian leaders like Yasser See Jerusalem on page 22

South Africa: one step forward, two steps back Viewpoint

BEN COHEN

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outh Africa’s Jewish community, battling an environment where the most extreme anti-Zionist tropes have become normalized, understandably welcomed a vote by the University of Cape Town’s top decision-making body against an academic boycott of Israel.

The boycott proposal was not rejected for political or moral reasons. Asked to confirm the March 15 vote of UCT’s Senate in favor of a boycott, the university’s council instead sent the resolution back to the Senate with a request for more “clarification.”

But just in case that due diligence should be misconstrued as sympathy for the “Zionists,” the council also made sure to pass a resolution that eviscerated Israel’s “atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.” Commented South Africa’s Palestine Solidarity Forum: “Zionism at UCT is weaker now because of this resolution. That,

in itself, is worthy of celebration.”

As sinister-sounding as this statement is, with its accent of menace around the word “Zionism,” it’s also a reasonable summation of the status of Israel (and to a great extent, “Zionism” and the Jewish community as well) in South Africa these days. hose readers who wonder what British government policy towards Israel would look like a year or two into a government led by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn would do well to consider the South African example — because in that country, individuals who share Corbyn’s unflinching anti-Zionist views, with its attendant contempt for the local Jewish community, are running universities, government departments, powerful labor unions and politically connected NGOs. Whereas in the United States, the BDS movement’s incitement is largely confined to the university campus — and it is politically and legally frozen out of federal and state level decision-

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making — in South Africa the reverse is true.

There, the influence of the BDS movement on university campuses is actually a reflection of government policy.

Two weeks ago, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed that his country would be downgrading diplomatic relations with Israel.

The initial decision to downgrade was made at a December 2017 conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which voted to reduce the South African Embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office, so as to “give our practical expression of support to the oppressed people of Palestine.” Senior representatives of Hamas were on hand to witness the moment.

If this is the atmosphere within South Africa’s government, the prospect of one of the country’s university’s boycotting Israel seems like a comparatively minor problem, even if, with UCT, we are talking about one of the flagship higher education institutions on the African continent. The

The country has downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel.

underlying question is why, exactly, South Africa has adopted this seemingly implacable hostility towards Israel, and whether it can be sustained. he conventional (and largely correct) answer as to why goes back to the struggle in the late 20th century against apartheid— the legal system of racial segregation through which South Africa’s small white minority denied that nation’s vast black majority their most basic human and civil rights.

Like most of the regional struggles of that era, the ANC’s battle against apartheid was incorporated into the wider Cold War in Africa, with the Soviet Union presenting itself as the most stalwart friend of the anti-apartheid cause. With the USSR came its allies, especially the Palestine Liberation Organization; by the 1970s, the supposed correspondence between “apartheid” and “Zionism” — a common ideology of racism and a common strategy of colonialism — was firmly established in the PLO’s propaganda arsenal.

Yet it isn’t nostalgia alone that propels current South African loathing of Israel. Enmity towards the Jewish state is a pillar of the country’s foreign policy, but it isn’t the only one. Others See South Africa on page 22

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THE JEWISH STAR April 12, 2019 • 7 Nisan, 5779

Between legitimate critiques and anti-Semitism

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Jerusalem...

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Continued from page 21 Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority. ritics of the City of David Foundation are against its activities because they believe that the area should be part of a future Palestinian state. They say that the development of the site and the digs are part of an effort to prevent the redivision of Jerusalem that will enable the Palestinian Authority to put its capital in the city.

Many Israelis still believe in principle in the idea of a two-state solution, though not nearly as many as in the past because of the lack of a credible Palestinian peace partner. But the effort to delegitimize the work at the City of David points to a basic problem with the concept when

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(516) 858-7300 @rockawaynassau

Continued from page 21 But the fact that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic does not mean that none of it is. One of the most disingenuous lines we often hear is that condemnation of anti-Semitic rhetoric directed at Israel or Israel-supporting Jews is an attempt to stifle criticism of Israel.

In reality, it is anti-Semites who are trying to silence criticism of their anti-Semitism by falsely claiming that they are just criticizing Israel.

To distinguish between bigoted and legitimate criticism of the Jewish state, the IHRA adopted what is known as the “Three D’s” framework, which identifies criticism of Israel that “delegitimizes,” “demonizes,” or applies “double standards” as anti-Semitic.

Delegitimization means denying the Jewish right of self-determination in their historic homeland, Israel. For instance, remarks that refuse to acknowledge any Jewish connection to the Land of Israel or call Israel the “Zionist settler-colonial entity” rather than acknowledge Israel’s existence as a rightful state invoke this “D.” To uniquely deny the Jewish people the right of self-determination in their historic home is an act of hate and denial, not a legitimate policy critique.

Demonization means the portrayal of Israeli Jews as evil, often using historically-rooted anti-Semitic tropes. For instance, the blood libel accused demonic Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their Passover matzah.

This trope was used to justify anti-Jewish riots and massacres. The anti-Israel movement often uses tropes about Jewish bloodthirstiness to demonize the Israeli Defense Force’s efforts to protect their country.

Double standards refers to the singling out of Israel for international opprobrium and sanction. For instance, the BDS movement targets Israel for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, based on flimsy or even false claims about Israel’s human rights record, while ignoring the blatant human rights abuses of countries around the world, especially in the Middle East.

Some in the Jewish community consider almost all criticisms of Israel to be grounded in anti-Semitism, and others assert that practically no criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

Both are extreme views unrepresentative of the mainstream. What is mainstream and has been accepted by the vast majority of Jews and Jewish organizations — across the political spectrum — is the “Three D” approach to delineating the line between legitimate critiques of Israel and anti-Semitism.

We welcome debate about strengths and shortcomings of Israeli policy, Israeli civil society, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and U.S.-Israeli relations. But we must remain vigilant to ensure that these conversations do not devolve into bigotry. We will wholeheartedly condemn such bigotry against our own and any other community. We hope you will too.

Jason Fruchter is a native of Lawrence and a resident of Far Rockaway. Julian Kritz is a resident of Raleigh, North Carolina. A version of this op-ed was originally published in the Virginia Law Weekly.

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applied to a sensitive site. If you’re going to deny Jewish rights to the place where King David and his descendants ruled their ancient kingdom, then you can deny them anyplace in the country. And that is what Palestinians have continued to do. Their effort to treat the City of David, or even the Western Wall, as linked to Jewish myths rather than the beginning of Jewish civilization is inextricably linked to their refusal to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn.

Nor can it be argued that in a two-state solution, the Palestinians could be trusted to safeguard historical sites such as these.

Just this week, evidence surfaced of ancient tombs in the Jericho area — territory that is governed by the Palestinian Authority — being looted by local Arabs. This is a commonplace occurrence throughout the territories; the region’s ancient Jewish heritage is being systematically destroyed by those out to make a profit or whose main goal is to eradicate the abundant evidence of the ancient Jewish ties to this land. ndeed, there is no better example of such vandalism than the Temple Mount itself, where the Muslim Waqf, which administers the site, has trashed archeological evidence on a massive scale. We know the extent of the damage because of the volunteers who sift through the detritus from their work on the site and have discovered many important archeological finds that point to the Mount’s Jewish origins wantonly thrown out as trash.

The only way to protect the heritage of the City of David is to ensure that it and the rest of Jerusalem remains under undivided Israeli authority with the right of Jews to live in their ancient capital undiminished. Any other solution isn’t a path to peace, but something that will only further encourage the history deniers of the Palestinian Authority to keep fighting their war on Jewish history.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.

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South Africa...

Continued from page 21 include an unwavering solidarity with dictators.

South Africa was famously an enabler of the totalitarian nightmare imposed by Robert Mugabe on neighboring Zimbabwe; that principle has survived in the ANC government’s vocal backing for the illegitimate regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. In supporting Maduro, South Africa finds itself in the company of Russia, China, Iran, Turkey and all those other notorious humanrights abusers who scream about national sovereignty whenever their offenses are called out.

Yet another foreign-policy pillar includes the pursuit of ideological goals that clearly run counter to the national interest. If Jewish politicians or communal leaders were doing this sort of thing, they’d be accused of “dual loyalty,” but in South Africa’s progressive circles, denying your poorer compatriots economic and educational opportunities is a blessed act when it is presented as part of the war against “Zionism.”

Hence the corporate fight over the last two months over the proposed takeover of Clover — South Africa’s biggest dairy company — by an Israeli-led consortium. Were the bid to receive approval, thousands of jobs would be created in South Africa, where a full 28 percent of the workforce is unemployed, as well as in neighboring countries that are part of Clover’s regional distribution network.

But that is less important to South Africa’s BDS lobby than an ideological victory over “Zionism,” and so the talks, and thus the jobs, are on hold.

Given that South Africa’s leaders have spent the past decade agitating against Israel, it’s unlikely that anything less than a change of government would reverse this trend. The ANC — symbolized above all by the late Nelson Mandela — remains a hegemonic force in South Africa, but its popularity is not as solid as was once the case. In a world that has been convulsed with political shocks over the past five years, the ANC, a party that has been in power since the 1990s, should looking over its shoulder. Sooner or later, people become tired of hearing the same slogans.

CAlendar of Events

Send your events to Calendar@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline noon Friday • Compiled by Rachel Langer Saturday April 13

Women’s Shalosh Seudos: Young Israel of Woodmere hosts a women’s shalosh seudos at the Leon Mayer Bais Medrash. Shiur by Rebbetzin Margie Glatt on Shir Hashirim: “Love lessons for all.” 5:30 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

516-295-0950.

Sunday April 14

Hagalas Keilim: Halacha Hotline offers a community hagalas keilim in the parking lot of Beis Midrash Ishei Yisrael. Kasher your items ahead of Pesach. Items should be cleaned and unused for 24 hours before kashering. 2 to 7 pm.

846 West Broadway, Woodmere.

Rabbi Shafier Shiur: Ezra Academy, Chazaq & Beth Gavriel present Rabbi Benzion Shafier speaking on “Pesach: Leaving Your Personal Exile.” Introductory remarks by Rabbi Tzachi Diamond. Free book for every attendee. 8:15 pm.

66-35 108th St, Forest Hills. 718-285-9132. Free.

Monday April 15

Witness Project: The UJA-Federation of New York invites you to an inspiration evening as students bring the stories of Holocaust survivors to life through multimedia performance and art.

Proceeds will support local services for Holocaust survivors. 5:45 pm. 720 Northern Blvd, Greenvale. 516-762-5800; UJAFedNY.org/witness. $25.

Thursday April 18

Hagalas Keilim: Halacha Hotline offers a community hagalas keilim in the parking lot of Beis Midrash Ishei Yisrael. Kasher your items ahead of Pesach. Items should be cleaned and unused for 24 hours before kashering. 4 to 7 pm.

846 West Broadway, Woodmere.

Friday April 19 First Pesach seder

Wednesday May 1

Yom Hashoah: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik keynotes a Holocaust Remembrance Day program hosted by Shaaray Shalom. Topic: “What is the Message of Yesterday for Today.” 7 pm. 711 Dogwood Ave, West Hempstead. 516-967-0726. Free.

Names Not Numbers: Greater Five Towns commemoration of the six million martyrs. Featuring child survivor Judith Alter Kallman, performance by HALB 5th-grade choir, and “Names, Not Numbers” video presentation by HAFTR middle school. 7:30 pm. 390 Broadway, Lawrence.

Sunday May 5

Rubashkin Speaks: Chazaq & Congregation Anshei Shalom present Rabbi Shalom Mordechai Rubashkin, on “Emunah + Bitachon = Geulah.”

Sushi served. 8 pm. 80-15 Kent St, Jamaica.

Sunday May 19

Sharsheret Luncheon: Honoring Shari & Nathan J. Lindenbaum, Dr. B. Aviva Preminger, and Racheli Bloom Poleyeff. At the Teaneck Marriot at Glenpointe; includes silent auction. 10 am.

100 Frank W. Burr Blvd, Teaneck.

Greek Jewish Festival: Celebrating the unique Romaniote and Sephardic heritage of Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue. Authentic kosher Greek food and pastries, live music, dance, synagogue tours, outdoor marketplace. 12 pm to 6 pm. 280 Broome St, Manhattan.

Book Signing: The Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County presents “While There’s Life: Poems from the Mittelsteine Labor Camp (1944-1945), ” by Ruth Minsky Sender. Poetry reading and book signing by the author. 3 pm. 100 Crescent Beach Road, Glen Cove. RSVP 516-571-8040 or info@hmtcli.org. $10 suggested donation.

Monday May 20

Sunday May 26

Cross River Open: The Jewish community’s premier tennis experience at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, benefitting Our Place.

Tournaments include men’s singles and doubles and women’s singles and doubles. Family entertainment, deluxe lunch. 516-512-4494.

Thursday May 30

FD Dinner: Familial Dysautonomia NOW Foundation hosts its 17th annual dinner honoring Jolyn & Lane Sparber. Support research that will drive better treatments and cures for patients with this Ashkenazi Jewish genetic disease. 6 pm.

775 Branch Blvd, Cedarhurst.

Monday June 3

Beth Sholom Dinner: 67th Annual Testimonial dinner to support Beth Sholom of Lawrence.

Guests of Honor Phyllis & Philip Kerstein; Lifetime Service Award Pilar & Richie Olmedo. 6 pm. 390 Broadway, Lawrence. 516-569-3600 ext. 21.

Jerusalem: Lecture series on Sacred Cities of the World by Ron Brown features Jerusalem.

Great Neck Main Library community room. 2 pm.

159 Bayview Ave, Great Neck. 516-466-8055.

Women’s Leadership Summit: OU Women’s Initiative invites female lay leaders who are impacting schools, synagogues, and other community organizations to connect, develop, and grow. Presenters include Erica Brown, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, Leslie Ginsparg-Klein, Allison Josephs, and Chani Neuberger. Space is limited.

White Shul Dinner: 97th annual dinner, honoring Rabbi & Rebbetzin Motti & Avigayil Neuberger and celebrating Rabbi Neuberger’s installation as associate rabbi. 1395 Beech St, Atlantic Beach. 718-327-0500; info@whiteshul.com.

Wednesday May 15

Tuesday May 21

Thursday June 27

Tuesday May 7

Night of Heroes: Friends of the Israel Defense Forces hosts its 8th annual community event for the Five Towns & Greater South Shore community at the Sands of Atlantic Beach. Honoring Malky & Jay Spector, and Judith & Zoltan Lefkovits. 7 pm. 1395 Beech St, Atlantic Beach. 646-2749661; FIDF.org/FTGSS2019.

Beth Sholom Supperette: The Sisterhood of Congregation Beth Sholom hosts its annual supperette. Guests of honor Molly Lilker and Carol Small; also honoring Tammy Schreiber with Service Award and Chaya Miller with Special Recognition Award. 5 pm boutiques; 7:15 pm dinner.

Tuesday June 4

Nazi Art: Raymond Dowd speaks on the topic of “From Murder to Museums: Current Controversies over Nazi-Looted Art,” including restitution, advocacy for the return of stolen art, and coverage of ongoing cases. Great Neck Main Library community room. 2 pm. 159 Bayview Ave, Great Neck. 516-466-8055.

Wishing The Entire Community

An Enjoyable Passover

Congressman Gregory W. Meeks @MeeksNYC

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