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Parsha Bamidmar • May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777 • Shavuot week • Candlelighting 7:57 pm, Havdalah 8:58 • Luach page 31 • Vol 16, No 20

The Newspaper of our Orthodox communities

Yerushalayim shel zahav

Israel’s 3,000 year-old capital toasts 50 years united

Video art is projected onto the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City during a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem’s reunification in the Six-Day War. SEE PAGE 35

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Tehilla’s love letter on her ‘Jerusalem-ness’ tehilla r. goldberg

heard music, transfiguring thoughts. Prayers are vibrant. The Sabbath finds it hard to go away…”

In a word: kedushah. Holiness. Jerusalem. hroughout the millennia, writers and poets, philosophers and songwriters, Talmudists and King David the Psalmist, all put their emotions of longing for this ethereal Yerushalayim into words. “Libi ba-mizrach va-anochi be-sof ma’arav” (“my heart is in the East while I dwell on the edges of the West”) waxed Yehuda Halevi. Rabbi Akiva, a poor shepherd at the time of his nuptials, promised his bride Rachel that one day, when he was able, he would gift her with a “golden Jerusalem.” This became the source for Naomi Shemer’s modern day anthem to Jerusalem that makes us think of Jerusalem painted in every shade of gold.

As Jews sat exiled by the rivers of Babylon, they wept, “for it is more likely that I will forget my right arm than forget Jerusalem,” and to this day, at Jewish weddings, it is customary to conclude the matrimonial ceremony with these very words, accompanied by the shattering of a glass under the chuppah.

When Isaiah offers comfort and consolation, he says, “As a mother comforts her son, So I shall comfort you; You shall find comfort in Jerusalem.” Jerusalem … she is maternal.

Who can add to the poetry of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi? Or King David? I certainly cannot. But in my small way I did, when it was my honor to have had the weekly byline of “View From Jerusalem” for four years, something I shall always cherish.

Shalem, whole, is at the heart of the word Yerushalayim.

Ultimately, that is what Jerusalem symbolizes and represents: wholeness. That elusive ideal, that elusive wholeness we as humanity, as Jews, crave and strive for and try to cling to.

Yet, it was Jerusalem, the city that represents wholeness, that was divided for so long. Or was besieged, captured, recaptured too many times to count. So fragile. Yet so strong. Jerusalem is a complex brew of contradicting and conflicting qualities

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view from central park

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missed being born in Jerusalem by one year. We moved there when I was a year old. My birthplace is Boston. But I always felt I was “of Jerusalem” or, as one would be known in Israel, a “Yerushalmit.”

In my twenties, when I came across Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon’s words, whose famed character Tehilla (“psalm”) is my namesake, I felt like he was articulating a feeling of attachment that I had long held but was unable to verbalize. In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Agnon shared: “Resulting from the catastrophic destruction that Titus of Rome inflicted upon Jerusalem, consequently exiling Israel from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. Nonetheless, I always perceived myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.”

For a long time, these words were printed on Israel’s 50 shekel bill. When I left Israel and Jerusalem to my own personal “exile,” I left with a folded purple 50 shekel bill in my pocket, my personal memento of “Im eshkachech Yerushalayim” (“Lest I forget you, O Jerusalem”) that I carried with me.

To me, Jerusalem has always had an intangible quality, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I used to refer to it as Jerusalem holding a space like that of Shabbat’s neshamah yeteirah, the additional soul that Shabbat endows.

So when I came across Abraham Joshua Heschel’s words I again felt he was expressing a feeling I had long been unable to put into words: “She is the city where waiting for G-d was born, where the anticipation of everlasting peace came into being.

Jerusalem is waiting for the prologue of redemption, for new beginning … the evenings often feel like Kol Nidre nights. Un-

regardless of where we might be, we live for the sake of Jerusalem, ‘lema’an Yerushalayim.’

After the Western Wall’s liberation in 1967, Jews resumed praying there. This scene is from Shavuot 2012. Daniel Majewski via WikiCommons

coalescing within her. Perhaps, it is these qualities — fragile and vulnerable, yet eternally resilient — that form Jerusalem’s luminescence. Both a lamentation and a consolation, these are Jerusalem’s endurance.

After all, we never did forget Jerusalem. Regardless of whether Jerusalem was broken, divided or united, we never faltered. If anything, when we were exiled, our dreams for Jerusalem were only amplified.

The tall, strong, walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, its top cut out like an endless crown, stand their ground with fortitude and calm, regal composure, protective, like a parent, like a guardian angel, enclosing, encompassing the ancient Jerusalem within.

Yet when viewing those monumental walls from afar, they inspire strength still. Because Jerusalem is timeless. hose walls. How many centuries of secrets do they hold?

How many battles have they withstood? How many pilgrimages have they witnessed? How many broken lamentations have they heard?

See Tehilla’s love letter on page 10

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3 THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

Israel. Then, now, anD always.

We helped build a nation. Now we’re helping to shape its future.

Together with our partners, we’re committed to the promise of a fully welcoming, democratic, thriving Jewish state — now and always.

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50 facts for 50th anniversary of reunification

By Eliana Rudee, JNS.org On the occasion of Jerusalem’s semi-centennial milestone, here are 50 facts highlighting the rich tapestry of Israel’s capital:

Reunification

1. Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day) is an Israeli national holiday commemorating the city’s reunification in the 1967 Six-Day War. 2. During the Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem, Jews were not allowed to access their holy sites, including the Western Wall.

History

3. Jerusalem has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times and destroyed twice over the course of 3,000 years.

4. Israel is the only country to enter the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, and you can enjoy them over a picnic or barbecue in the Jerusalem Forest.

5. The name “Jerusalem” most likely comes from “Urusalim,” a word of Semitic origin meaning “Foundation of Shalem (wholeness)” or “Foundation of God.”

Religion

6. Jerusalem has more synagogues per capita than any city in the world.

7. Jerusalem is the only city in which some 15 different Christian communities live alongside one another, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

8. Jerusalem is considered the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

9. Jerusalem is the third-holiest city in Islam, outside of Mecca and Medina, both in Saudi Arabia.

10. Jerusalem is mentioned more than 600 times in the Hebrew Bible, but not once in Islam’s Quran.

11. In the Middle Ages, Jews were banned from Jerusalem by Christians, and Muslims

later lifted the ban.

12. There are more than 70 different Hebrew names for Jerusalem in Jewish scripture.

Education

Tourism

25. Jerusalem has separate educational and religious systems for its Christian, Muslim and Jewish populations.

Holy sites

26. Jerusalem has one of the highest-rated nightclubs in the world: Haoman 17.

27. There are 26 wineries in Jerusalem, according to United with Israel.

28. Bob Dylan held his eldest son Jesse’s bar mitzvah at the Western Wall.

29. The actress Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem.

13. Jerusalem is statistically safer than most large U.S. cities and many major cities elsewhere in the world.

14. Jerusalem hotels record more than 2.5 million overnight stays by foreign tourists each year.

15. Thirty-thousand people ran in this year’s Jerusalem Marathon.

16. Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives is home to 150,000 Jewish graves, dating back to the 1400s.

17. Under Israeli rule, Jews are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.

18. The Old City of Jerusalem is divided into the Muslim Quarter, Christian Quarter, Jewish Quarter and Armenian Quarter.

19. The Dome of the Rock is not a mosque, but an Islamic shrine on the Temple Mount.

Government

20. Although all branches of the Israeli government are headquartered in Jerusalem, the city is not home to any foreign embassies.

President Donald Trump is considering moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Archaeology

21. The 2.5-mile-long walls around Jerusalem’s Old City were built in 1536 by Suleiman the Magnificent.

22. Jerusalem has more than 2,000 archaeological sites.

23. Archaeology proves Jews have lived in Jerusalem since 3000 B.C. 24. Archaeologists have found 3,800-yearold pottery in the City of David.

Culture

Demographics

30. Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city in both landmass and population.

31. Jerusalem’s population is comprised of 61 percent Jews, 36 percent Muslims, 1 percent Arab Christians and 1 percent non-Arab Christians.

32. While the country’s self-identified “secular” Jewish population is 44 percent, Jerusalem’s secular Jewish population is just 19 percent.

33. Of Jerusalem’s Muslim population, 62 percent identify as religious and just 1 percent identify as not observant.

34. Jerusalem has had a Jewish demographic majority since 1864.

35. Jerusalem represents about 0.001 percent of the landmass of the Middle East.

36. Eighteen percent of Israel’s Arab population lives in Jerusalem, compared to 8 percent of Israel’s total Jewish population.

37. Eleven percent of Jerusalem homeowners are foreign residents, compared to 3 percent in Israel at large.

38. Thirty-four percent of Jerusalem’s Jews identify as haredi.

Economy

39. Nearly 37 percent of all Jerusalem fam-

ilies live below the poverty line, which represents 61 percent of all Jerusalem’s children.

40. Jerusalem is home to more than 400 high-tech companies.

41. The number of high-tech start-ups in Jerusalem has grown from 200 to more than 600 since 2012.

42. Fourteen percent of the Jerusalem workforce is self-employed.

43. Arab families in Jerusalem are almost three times as likely to live below the poverty line compared to Jewish families in Jerusalem. This is attributed to a large difference in number of years in education.

44. Seventy-nine percent of Jewish women in Jerusalem work, compared to 70 percent of Jewish men.

45. Women in Jerusalem earn 25 percent less income than the average man, compared to 46 percent less in Tel Aviv.

46. The Jerusalem-founded company Mobileye, bought by Intel this year, was part of the largest-ever acquisition of an Israeli technology company.

Immigration and migration

47. This year, a noticeably high proportion (almost 50 percent) of newcomers to Jerusalem were 20 to 34 years old.

48. Of those who move to Jerusalem, 38 percent come from Beit Shemesh and Tel Aviv.

49. Brazilian immigration to Jerusalem tripled during the past year.

50. The new immigrant population of Jerusalem — those arriving in the past 20 years — represents about 13 percent of the city’s Jewish population.

Eliana Rudee is a fellow with the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Her by-lines have been featured in USA Today, New York Daily News, Forbes and The Hill.

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THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

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From left: Rep. Jacky Rosen (R-NV) with former Hadassah National President Marlene Post; American Friends of Likud Chairman Ken Abramowitz with Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX); Touro College Executive Dean Jay Goldsmith, Religious Zionists of America President and Chairman of the Center for Righteousness and Integrity Martin Oliner, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) of Long Island, and Touro School of Law Dean Harry Ballan.

Congress celebrates ‘Jerusalem 50’ 20 lawmakers join 25 Jewish organizations at historic event in the Capitol that was organized by Martin Oliner of the RZA

By Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star Twenty members of Congress professed firm support for Israel last week, addressing a “Jerusalem 50” luncheon in the Capitol that was organized by Martin Oliner, president of Religious Zionists of America and chairman of the Center for Righteousness and Integrity. Twentyfive diverse Jewish organizations participated.

Several of the legislators, gathered in Washington one week before the 50th anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Israel’s capital, urged President Trump to fulfil a campaign promise and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They strongly criticized the BDS movement, Iran’s terror-sponsoring and nuclearizing regime, and a United Nations that unfairly maligns the Jewish state.

Oliner, former mayor of the Five Towns Village of Lawrence, said he was hopeful that President Trump would keep his promise, despite the refusal, one day earlier, of his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, to acknowledge that the Western Wall stood within sovereign Israeli territory. Presidential Press Secretary Sean Spicer similarly refused to link Jerusalem to Israel.

“Not recognizing Jerusalem as the unified and indivisible capital of Israel actually hurts the peace process because many Palestinian Arabs still believe that somehow Israel is a transient country that will eventually be wiped off the map,” said Rep. Ron De Santis (R-FL).

“Moving the embassy there is a great statement to say Israel is here to stay.”

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), of Long Island, said the president’s trip “would present the perfect opportunity to announce that he’s going to deliver on a campaign pledge to move the embassy to Jerusalem” and “reinforce that Jerusalem is, without doubt, unquestionably, the capital of Israel.”

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) said that together with Zeldin and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) he’s recruited fellow representatives to sign a letter to President Trump urging that he “recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

“Let it be clear to all people,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). “Jerusalem is the undivided capital of the Jewish state of Israel.”

Rep Brad Shneider (D-IL) emphasized that the “unbreakable bond between the United States” and Israel depends on bipartisan support, with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), of the Bronx, assuring that “support for Israel is bipartisan and that’s the way it should be.”

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), of Long Island, welcomed the crowd with “Bruchim haBayim!” and pledged that “I’m 100 percent on the team.

I’ll do whatever I can to be a strong defender of Israel through thick and thin.”

Suozzi reported that earlier in the day, with

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL), he had introduced House Resolution 328 to commemorate the reunification of Jerusalem.

He recounted that on his first visit to Jerusalem, during the second Intifada in 2002, he met officials, toured important places, and prayed at

the Western Wall. “It was an incredibly moving academic, policy-oriented trip,” Suozzi said.

He wanted to go to Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, “because if I go home and tell my mother that I was in Jerusalem and I didn’t Continued on next page

Speaking at last week’s Jerusalem 50 commemoration in the Capitol building (from left): Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) of Brooklyn and Manhattan, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC).

The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob

From left: Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) of Riverdale, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Rep. Ron De Santis (R-FL), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Rep. Jacky Rosen (R-NV), and Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) of Long Island.

The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob

From left: Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Rep. Keith Rothfus (R-FL), Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), Rep. Don Bacon (-NE), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), and Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA).

The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob

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Continued from previous page go to church, I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.”

But the church was not on the security-minded itinerary, so early the next morning, he and one other person snuck out to go to Mass.

“I was so proud of myself, that I would go without the armed guards, that I would go do this thing to be a good Catholic boy,” he said.

“I was so full of myself. And then I walked outside and I saw the little girls getting on the bus to go to school that morning. And I realized, these are the courageous people — the people that have lived in Israel and who have made the desert bloom, who have kept the rule of law, who have kept democracy, who have fostered tolerance, and who are our best ally in the entire region.”

“From that day forward,” Suozzi concluded, “I decided that I would always do whatever I could to help the state of Israel.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), of Brooklyn and Manhattan, who’d been chastised by segments of the pro-Israel community for his vote in favor of the Iran nuclear deal, was warmly received by Wednesday’s crowd.

Oliner welcomed Nadler as a good friend whom he first met over 50 years ago when they were members of Mizrahi Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement.

Nadler recalled that in the days leading up to the Six Day War, the Arab League voiced “blood-curdling threats” that the battle would be “a war of extermination — and without the nais it could have been.”

In the 50 years since then, “the U.N. has been a viper’s nest” that helps “maintain an anti-Israel industry” and keeps alive the refugee status of Palestinians “just as a weapon to oppose the end of the war against Israel.”

He pointed out that 100-million Hindus and Muslims on the Indian subcontinent were exchanged in 1947, around the time that Israel was being established. “It was settled,” he said.

“Except in Israel … no one talks about refugees in the second generation or the third or fourth.”

Meanwhile, Nadler added, “UNESCO functions as a propaganda arm to say that the kotel” and other holy sites are not Jewish. “This is fiction,” he said.

UNESCO’s objective is to “to deny the Jewish ties to Jerusalem and to make way for the holy city to be part of any future Palestinian state,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).

“Jerusalem is the ancient spiritual, Biblical and historical capital of the Jewish state,” she said. “The legitimacy of not just Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but of Israel itself is being challenged daily.”

Sen. John Barrass (R-WY) said that “while Republicans and Democrats might fight about a lot of things, what we are 100 percent united on is that we are committed to reigning in the United Nations and the abuses we have seen.”

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) asserted his opposition to BDS and his determination to push for action against Iranian violations.

“Support for Israel should be guaranteed in this year’s budget,” he said, including “funding the technology that makes Israel safer and the United States safer.”

Rep. Jacky Rosen (R-NV), talked about her daughter’s singing Rick Brecht’s song, “The Hope,” in Jewish camp, and pledged to keep the fire — the neir tamid, as her synagogue is named — alive for Israel.

Rep. Pat Roberts (R-KS) described the importance of Israel’s leadership in finding solutions to the world’s water crises.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) recalled his visit to Israel during the most recent Gaza war. He saw Hamas tunnels under Israeli elementary schools, through which the terrorists planned to kidnap children and force Israel into bloody battles to win their return.

Four of the legislators said that their Christian faiths reinforced their support for Israel.

“If you think the solution in Israel is two states, your faith in your G-d is much too small,” said Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX).

“I don’t know if the United States is going to be around at the end of time — I believe that

Five Towners Iris and Shalom Maidenbaum present a copy of “American Interests in the Holy Land” by Lenny Ben-David, to Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) of Long Island.

Israel will be — but I believe the United States’ best chance to be around is to be as good a friend as Israel can ever have … not to be cursing Israel but to be blessing Israel, and that is what I intend to do.”

Rep. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who joked that he doesn’t “have a lot of Jewish minors” in his district, recalled that two of his suitemates in college were Jewish. They were “devout Jews who supported Israel,” he said.

“I didn’t know a lot about it [and] I never saw this kind of excitement from a young person about the religion he was involved in — he gave me everything, and explained it to me.”

Today, Manchin said, “you have my unwavering support.”

“In the most dysfunctional political atmosphere that we live in,” he added, the two things that bring members of Congress together are support for the U.S. military and for Israel.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NB) referenced a Biblical assurance “that those who bless Israel will be blessed,” proclaimed himself a “strong advocate for a unified Jerusalem,” and said, “I don’t believe in leaving any light” between the U.S. and Israel.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), raised in Charlestown, site of the oldest synagogue in continuous use in North America, “grew up with a great appreciation of people with a Jewish heritage,” he said.

“I feel like I’m among friends,” said Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT), who shared memories of his several visits to Israel. Because of his “religious faith, and culturally … we are very close to the people of Israel.”

Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY), who represents organizer Oliner’s district on Long Island’s South Shore, and Rep. Keith Rothfus (R-PA), also attended the event.

Oliner, vice-chairman of Religious Zionists of America, marveled at the turnout of Jewish organizations that don’t always see eye-to-eye as well as members of Congress, many of whom, while waiting for their turn their turn to speak,

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) is flanked by the event’s organizer, former mayor of the Village of Lawrence Martin Oliner, his wife, Reva, and their grandchildren — Olivia, Jonah, Isabella, Ethan, Jed, Reva, Calvin and Quincy Oliner.

left to cast roll call votes and then returned.

“Most of all, I want to thank G-d for giving us Jerusalem,” he said. “Jerusalem has always been the capital of the Jewish people … and in our lifetime we’ve been able to accomplish that” again.

“Can you imagine if [the holy] sites were given to the barbarians who have destroyed one monument after another?” he asked. “It is inconceivable, but that threat to Jerusalem can’t go undeterred. We must guarantee that there isn’t an inkling that suggests otherwise.”

Oliner reminded attendees that “Jews have been in Jerusalem for 3,300 out of the last 3,500 years, making our claim to the city stronger than that of anyone else. As far back as 1818, British writer Robert Richardson estimated the number of Jews to be 10,000, twice the number of Muslims.”

When he recently visited with his grandchildren, Oliner pointed out how different Jerusalem is now compared to when it was divided prior to 1967.

“Back then, if you were Jewish, you could not enter the Jordanian-occupied Old City,” he said. “Now it is a haven for Jews, Christians, Muslims, and those who are still trying to figure themselves out. We mark Jerusalem Day due to the miracles that made this situation that was only dreamed of before a reality.”

The Jewish organizations at the Washington event were Alpha Epsilon Pi, American Jewish Congress, American Zionist Movement, American Friends of Likud, AMIT, B’nai B’rith International, Bnai Zion, Emunah of America, Hadassah, State of Israel Bonds, Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Jewish National Fund, Mercaz USA, National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, National Council of Young Israel, New York Board of Rabbis, Rabbinical Council of America, Religious Zionists of America, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Touro College, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, World Jewish Congress, World Zionist Organization, Yeshiva University, and the Zionist Organization of America.

Participants in the Capitol’s Jerusalem 50 celebration pledge allegiance to the U.S. as the event began.

The Jewish Star / Ed Weintrob

THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

From left: Orthodox Union Executive Vice President Allen Fagin; Rep. Ron De Santis (R-FL); RZA President and chairman of the Center for Righteousness and Integrity Martin Oliner; and Orthodox Union President Mark Bane.

May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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PRESIDENT TRUMP SPEAKS AT THE ISRAEL MUSEUM

‘I stand in awe of the accomplishments of the Jewish people, and I make this promise: My administration will always stand with Israel.’

Here’s what President Trump said on Tuesday, May 23, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. ’d like to begin my remarks today by sending the thoughts and prayers of the entire American people to the victims of the terrorist attack in Manchester. … Dozens of innocent people, beautiful young children savagely murdered in this heinous attack upon humanity. I repeat again that we must drive out the terrorists and the extremists from our midst, obliterate this evil ideology, and protect and defend our citizens and people of the world.

All civilized nations must be united in this effort. This trip is focused on that goal: bringing nations together around the goal of defeating the terrorism that threatens the world, and crushing the hateful ideology that drives it so hard and seems to be driving it so fast.

It is a privilege to stand here in this national museum, in the ancient city of Jerusalem, to address the Israeli people and all people in the Middle East who yearn for security, prosperity and peace.

Jerusalem is a sacred city. Its beauty, splendor, and heritage are like no other place on Earth. What a heritage. What a heritage.

The ties of the Jewish people to this Holy Land are ancient and eternal. They date back thousands of years, including the reign of King David whose star now flies proudly on Israel’s white and blue flag. esterday, I visited the Western Wall, and marveled at the monument to G-d’s presence and man’s perseverance. I was humbled to place my hand upon the wall and to pray in that holy space for wisdom from G-d. I also visited and prayed at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a site revered by Christians throughout the world. I laid a wreath at Yad Vashem, honoring, remembering, and mourning the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. I pledged right then and there what I pledge again today: the words “never again.”

Israel is a testament to the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people. From all parts of this great country, one message resounds, and that is the message of hope. Down through the ages, the Jewish people have suffered persecution, oppression, and even those who have sought their destruction. But, through it all, they have endured and, in fact, they have thrived. I stand in awe of the accomplishments of the Jewish people, and I make this promise to you: My administration will always stand with Israel.

Through your hardships, you have created one of the most abundant lands anywhere in the world — a land that is rich not only in history, culture, and opportunity, but especially in spirit. This museum where we are gathered today tells the story of that spirit. From the

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two Holy Temples, to the glorious heights of Masada, we see an incredible story of faith and perseverance. That faith is what inspired Jews to believe in their destiny, to overcome their despair, and to build here — right here — a future that others dared not even to dream. n Israel, not only are Jews free to till the soil, teach their children, and pray to G-d in the ancient land of their fathers — and they love this land, and they love G-d — but Muslims, Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience, and to follow their dreams, right here.

Today, gathered with friends, I call upon all people — Jews, Christians, Muslims, and every faith, every tribe, every creed — to draw inspiration from this ancient city, to set aside our sectarian differences, to overcome oppression and hatred, and to give all children the freedom and hope and dignity written into our souls.

Earlier this week, I spoke at a very historic summit in Saudi Arabia. I was hosted by King Salman — a very wise man. There, I urged our friends in the Muslim world to join us in creating stability, safety and security. And I was deeply encouraged by the desire of many leaders to join us in cooperation toward these shared and vital goals.

Conflict cannot continue forever. The only question is when nations will decide that they have had enough — enough bloodshed, enough killing. That historic summit represents a new opportunity for people throughout the Middle East to overcome sectarian and religious divisions, to extinguish the fires of extremism, and to find common ground and shared responsibility in making the future of this region so much better than it is right now.

Change must come from within. It can only come from within. No mother or father wants their children to grow up in a world where terrorists roam free, schoolchildren are murdered, and their loved ones are taken.

No child is born with prejudice in their heart.

No one should teach young boys and girls to hate and to kill. No civilized nation can tolerate the massacre of innocents with chemical weapons.

My message to that summit was the same message I have for you: We must build a coalition of partners who share the aim of stamping out extremists and violence, and providing our children a peaceful and hopeful future. But a hopeful future for children in the Middle East requires the world to fully recognize the vital role of the State of Israel.

And, on behalf of the United States, we pledge to stand by you and defend our shared values so that together we can defeat terrorism and create safety for all of G-d’s children.

Israelis have experienced firsthand the ha-

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Faith is what inspired Jews to believe in their destiny, to overcome their despair, and to build here a future that others dared not even to dream.

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tred and terror of radical violence. Israelis are murdered by terrorists wielding knives and bombs. Hamas and Hezbollah launch rockets into Israeli communities where schoolchildren have to be trained to hear the sirens and run to the bomb shelters — with fear, but with speed. ISIS targets Jewish neighborhoods, synagogues, and storefronts. And Iran’s leaders routinely call for Israel’s destruction. Not with Donald J. Trump, believe me. …

Despite these challenges, Israel is thriving as a sovereign nation, and no international body should question the contributions Israel makes to the region and, indeed, the world.

Today, let us pray for that peace and for a more hopeful future across the Middle East. here are those who present a false choice.

They say that we must choose between supporting Israel and supporting Arab and Muslim nations in the region. That is completely wrong. All decent people want to live in peace, and all humanity is threatened by the evils of terrorism. Diverse nations can unite around the goal of protecting innocent life, upholding human dignity, and promoting peace and stability in the region.

My administration is committed to pursuing such a coalition, and we have already made substantial progress during this trip.

We know, for instance, that both Israelis and Palestinians seek lives of hope for their children.

And we know that peace is possible if we put aside the pain and disagreements of the past and commit together to finally resolving this crisis, which has dragged on for nearly half a century or more.

As I have repeatedly said, I am personally committed to helping Israelis and Palestinians achieve a peace agreement, and I had a meeting this morning with President Abbas and can tell you that the Palestinians are ready to reach for peace. I know you’ve heard it before.

I am telling you — that’s what I do. They are ready to reach for peace. n my meeting with my very good friend, Benjamin, I can tell you also that he is reaching for peace. He wants peace. He loves people. He especially loves the Israeli people. Benjamin Netanyahu wants peace.

Making peace, however, will not be easy.

We all know that. Both sides will face tough decisions. But with determination, compromise, and the belief that peace is possible, Israelis and Palestinians can make a deal.

But even as we work toward peace, we will build strength to defend our nations. The United States is firmly committed to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and halting their support of terrorists and militias. So we are telling you right now that Iran will not have nuclear weapons.

America’s security partnership with Israel is stronger than ever. Under my administration, you see the difference — big, big beauti-

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ful difference — including the Iron Dome missile defense program, which has been keeping the Israeli people safe from short-range rockets launched by Hezbollah and Hamas, and David’s Sling, which guards against long range missiles. It is my hope that someday, very soon, Israeli children will never need to rush towards shelters again as sirens ring out loud and clear.

Finally, the United States is proud that Israeli Air Force pilots are flying the incredible, new American F-35 planes. There is nothing in the world like them to defend their nation, and it was wonderful to see these mighty aircraft in the skies over Israel recently as you celebrated the 69th anniversary of Israel’s independence.

But even as we strengthen our partnership in practice, let us always remember our highest ideals. Let us never forget that the bond between our two nations is woven together in the hearts of our people, and their love of freedom, hope, and dignity for every man and every woman. Let us dream of a future where Jewish, Muslim, and Christian children can grow up together and live together in trust, harmony, tolerance, and respect.

The values that are practiced in Israel have inspired millions and millions of people all across the world. The conviction of Theodor Herzl rings true today: “Whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will rebound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.” s we stand in Jerusalem, we see pilgrims of all faiths coming to this land to walk on this hallowed ground. Jews place the prayers from their hearts in the stone blocks of the beautiful Western Wall.

Christians pray in the pews of an ancient church. Muslims answer the call to prayer at their holy sites. This city, like no other place in the world, reveals the longing of human hearts to know and to worship G-d.

Jerusalem stands as a reminder that life can flourish against any odds. When we look around this city — so beautiful — and we see people of all faiths engaged in reverent worship, and schoolchildren learning side-by-side, and men and women lifting up the needy and forgotten, we see that G-d’s promise of healing has brought goodness to so many lives. We see that the people of this land had the courage to overcome the oppression and injustice of the past and to live in the freedom G-d intends for every person on this Earth.

Today, in Jerusalem, we pray and we hope that children around the world will be able to live without fear, to dream without limits, and to prosper without violence. I ask this land of promise to join me to fight our common enemies, to pursue our shared values, and to protect the dignity of every child of G-d.

Thank you. G-d bless you. G-d bless the State of Israel. And G-d bless the United States. Thank you very much.

Iran’s leaders routinely call for Israel’s destruction. Not with Donald J. Trump, believe me.

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Arava terminal when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a peace treaty with his Jordanian counterpart, Abdelsalam al-Majali.

The next day Maariv, a newspaper then owned by the Nimrodi family, published a full-page photo captioned “1965, collection of Yaakov Nimrodi,” with no other comment.

Nimrodi, the clan patriarch, was Israel’s leading private arms dealer.

In the photo, a smiling King Hussein is cradling an Israeli-manufactured Uzi submachine gun.

By Ron Kampeas, JTA The three paratroopers casting eyes upward at the Western Wall. The troops reveling in the waters of the Suez Canal. The sweeping views of a Galilee no longer vulnerable to shelling from atop the Golan Heights.

Not to mention Naomi Shemer’s anthem “Jerusalem of Gold,” reissued after the SixDay War with a new verse celebrating access to the Old City. Or the settlements, the Palestinians, the tensions, the violence.

These — and many others — are images, memories and challenges that persist after 50 years of triumph, soul searching and grief.

But there are anomalies — small, telling wrinkles in what the war wrought — that, if not quite forgotten, have faded into the recesses of memory. They are worth reviving to deepen our understanding of an event that changed Jewish history.

For 20 years, Jews paid fees to a symbol of Palestinian pride.

In the wake of Jerusalem’s reunification, its mayor, Teddy Kollek, was faced with a dilemma: Jewish neighborhoods were sprouting up in the eastern part of the city. Any attempt to extend electricity to them from the electricity provider in Israel would likely elicit local and international protest because the world did not recognize Israel’s claims to the city.

Kollek’s solution: Allow the Palestinian-run Jerusalem District Electric Company, or JDEC, predating Israel’s establishment, to continue providing power in and around the Old City, including the new Jewish neighborhoods.

So until 1987, Jews living in the Old City and the new neighborhoods received electric bills that seemed a mirror image of their other utility bills: First the text was in Arabic, then in Hebrew.

The JDEC held exclusive rights to a radius of 50 kilometers, or 31 miles, around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Old City site believed to be the site of Jesus’ burial.

After 1948, Israel assumed responsibility for providing electricity to western Jerusalem.

The JDEC, which had become a symbol of Palestinian aspirations for independence, was helmed by Anwar Nusseibeh, the scion of an ancient Palestinian family.

According to the 1999 book “Separate and Unequal,” about relations between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, even after the JDEC’s limited capacities were exhausted by the rapidly expanding demand, Israeli authorities balked at extending the Israel Electric Corp.’s reach into eastern Jerusalem. Instead, the Israeli company sold capacity to the JDEC. In December 1987, the government finally — quietly — shifted total responsibility for the Jewish neighborhoods to the Israeli company.

“Separate and Unequal,” penned by three Israelis — Amir Cheshin and Avi Melamed, two former municipality liaisons to the city’s Palestinian population, and journalist Bill Hutman — cited the conundrum as an example of the balancing act that Israeli officials had to perform: Maintaining a Jewish claim to the entire city, while at times deferring to Palestinian nationalism, in order to keep the peace.

“Israel could not expect to wipe out an important Palestinian national symbol without a reaction, possibly a severe reaction, from the Palestinian public,” they wrote.

The JDEC still exists, albeit providing electricity only to Palestinian residents.

King Hussein longed for peace — and liked his Israeli hardware.

During most of his reign, King Hussein of Jordan sought a peaceful arrangement with Israel, taking a cue from his beloved grandfather, King Abdullah I, whom he saw assassinated in Jerusalem in 1951 because he was seeking peace with Israel.

Like his grandfather, he sought peace in secret but did not escape opprobrium — and was wary of meeting Abdullah’s fate. Hussein felt

When did Israel unite Jerusalem?

Did it unite Jerusalem?

Israeli troops preparing for battle during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Mosaic from the ancient synagogue in Gaza.

Three Lions/Getty Images

Avishai Teicher via the PikiWiki85

Israeli soldiers approaching the Dome on the Rock in Jerusalem, June 7, 1967.

he had little choice but to join President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in saber rattling against Israel in 1967 — Nasser, wildly popular in the Arab world, had already taunted the king as being subservient to Israel.

Moreover, Israel had humiliated Hussein a year earlier with a massive daylight raid into his territory to exact revenge for an attack carried out by Palestinian Fatah troops, who then operated with relative impunity from Jordanian soil.

According to historian Martin Gilbert’s “Jerusalem Illustrated History Atlas,” on June 4, 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol relayed a message to Hussein: “We shall not initiate any action whatsoever against Jordan.

However, should Jordan open hostilities, we shall react with all our might and (Hussein) will have to bear the full responsibility for all

Newsmakers/Getty Images

the consequences.”

At 8:30 am the following day, Jordan started shelling western Jerusalem, and at 9:30 am, Hussein broadcast, “The hour of revenge has come.”

That kind of talk and the ensuing bloody battles — plus prior years that witnessed the destruction of Jewish properties in eastern Jerusalem and Hussein’s refusal for 19 years to allow Jewish access to the Western Wall — left some Israelis wondering whether Hussein truly sought peace.

The answers came over time — King Hussein drove Fatah out of Jordan in 1970 and in 1973 waited out the Yom Kippur War. In 1986, he came close to signing a peace deal with Israel.

In 1994, symbols bold and subtle made evident that Hussein had earned the trust of leading Israelis. The king was present at Israel’s

“The future belongs to the complete Jerusalem that shall never again be divided,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said two years ago on Yom Yerushalayim, which marks the Hebrew calendar anniversary of Israel’s capture of eastern Jerusalem during the SixDay War. The adjectives vary — “complete,” “united,” “indivisible” — but the meaning is clear enough: Israel will never cede an inch of the Jerusalem it reunited.

Except when it formally reunited Jerusalem is not so clear: 1967? 1980? 2000? Ever?

On June 27, 1967, less than three weeks after the war’s end, Israel’s Knesset passed ordinances that allowed Israeli officials to extend Israeli law into areas of their designations. The next day, the Interior Ministry acted on those new ordinances, extending Israeli law into the areas that now constitute the Jerusalem municipality. They included 28 Palestinian villages, the Old City and what had been defined

by Jordan as municipal Jerusalem.

So, June 28, 1967, apparently is when Israel “united” Jerusalem. Except Ian Lustick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, published a widely cited paper in 1997 that showed unification was not necessarily the intention of the 1967 ordinances.

An Interior Ministry news release on June 28, 1967, said the “basic purpose” of its order was “to provide full municipal and social services to all inhabitants of the city.” Absent was any expression of political purpose.

Not long after, Abba Eban, then Israel’s foreign minister, told the United Nations that the ordinances had a practical, not a national consequence.

“The term ‘annexation’ is out of place,” he said. “The measures adopted related to the integration of Jerusalem in the administrative and municipal spheres and furnish a legal basis for the protection of the Holy Places.”

As Lustick noted, even within these parameters, anomalies persisted: For decades, Jordanian curricula prevailed in Palestinian schools in eastern Jerusalem.

In 1980, the Knesset passed a Basic Law — what passes in Israel for a constitution — declaring united Jerusalem to be Israeli. “The complete and united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” it said.

But left out of the law was a definition of what constituted the “complete and united” Jerusalem. It took until 2000 for the Knesset to pass an amendment to the 1980 Basic Law specifying that Jerusalem was defined by the Interior Ministry order of June 28, 1967.

So was 2000 when Israel formally set down in law what constituted the united, indivisible, complete Jerusalem?

Not exactly, according to a Haaretz analysis in 2015, which said the 1980 law is essentially declarative: Nowhere does it include the words “annexation” or “sovereignty.”

Marshall Breger and Thomas Idinopulos, in a 1998 Washington Institute for Near East Policy tract, “Jerusalem’s Holy Places and the Peace Process,” suggest that these are distinctions without a difference and say that Israeli court decisions that treat eastern Jerusalem as essentially annexed should be determinative.

See 6 things, 6 days on page 33

THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

6 things you may not know about 6-Day War

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Tehilla’s ‘Jerusalem-ness’ love letter…

Continued from page 2 They stand unmoving, towering, alone.

Yet, Jerusalem has never been singular. Not in its name, and not in its legend.

There are two Jerusalems, we are told.

The physical Jerusalem we know, the Jerusalem on this earth, “Yerushalayim shel Matah,” the Jerusalem of Below.

Which is but a mere counterpoint to the Jerusalem of Above, the Heavenly Jerusalem, “Yerushalayim shel Ma’alah.”

It is within that gulf, that space of inbetween-ness, from the ideal mythical Heavenly Jerusalem and the very real, mundane Jerusalem, that our longing and affection lives.

Yehuda Amichai writes: “Why is Jerusalem always two, Jerusalem on High and Jerusalem Below? I want to be in the Jerusalem of the middle. Without craning my neck upward, without bruising my feet below. Why is Jerusalem in the language of pairs? Yerushalayim? Like two hands, yadayim, and two feet, raglayim. I just want to be in the “Yerushal.” For I am just one, me, ani. And not anayim.”

I think this literary duality of Jerusalem captures its intensity so well.

But is Jerusalem really only twofold? Jerusalem has strummed on the collective heartstrings of our people for millennia.

Jerusalem is Below and Jerusalem is Heavenly.

But then there’s also the Jerusalem of hopes and, of course, the Jerusalem of memory. n another famous teaching about Jerusalem, of 10 measures of beauty in the world, Jerusalem was endowed with nine, the rest of the world with one. The teaching repeats itself, supplanting the word “beauty” with suffering, might, wisdom, hypocrisy, and Torah.

The intensity of Jerusalem is captured simultaneously, poetically and mathematically. If a quality exists in the world in a 1/10 fraction, spread out and diluted around the globe, 9/10 of that same quality is concentrated in Jerusalem. How true this is asymmetry, this mathematical illustration of Jerusalem’s intensity.

Not that Jerusalem can be quantified. It is the city that defies all odds, that runs on magic, spirit, prayer, and on the holiness and the holy, faithful people who, day and night, inhabit it, walking and winding their way throughout the labyrinth of her woven streets and alleys.

I can honestly say that I have glimpsed the splendor and grandeur of the Heavenly Jerusalem, Yerushalayim shel Ma’alah. The secret is nighttime in Jerusalem. Jerusalemites whose essence is Jerusalem emerge into the night. In those moments it feels like the legend of the 36 hidden righteous tzaddikim really can be true. I recall walking, twisting and turning on various roads, going home up Ussishkin Street and feeling enveloped by this holiness of Jerusalem, feeling as though I were literally touched by Yerushalayim shel Ma’alah.

Of Jerusalem Below, earthly Jerusalem, I can speak more directly. I was raised by Jerusalem. I learned how to find among the winding alleys a shortcut to Machneyuda, as the souk is

I

How does it happen that they caress the wall with feeling?

How does it happen that their tears transform into song?

Perhaps it is because these 19-year old youths, who were born precisely the year of the state’s founding, Carry on their backs the burden of 2,000 years.

It was not just those privileged to have returned the Kotel to the Jewish people who reacted so viscerally. In Rabbi Menachem Kasher’s The Western Wall, he records the following from an anonymous secular Israeli: “Because of its utter plainness, because of its very crudity, so to speak, the wall sets every fiber of my heart aquiver. … I see Jews and Jewesses go up to the Wall and kiss its every stone.

As I see this, I want to do the same; but in my lips the power is frozen. How can I kiss cold stone? …

“Yet I feel a stream of tears welling up from the recesses of my heart to my throat, and from there it forces its way up to my eyes. I control myself, even as my entire being shakes with emotion … and a great light illumines my spirit. In an instant the Wall has changed for me. …

“I have forced my way through the mass of people thronging the Wall, and leaned the palms of both hands on the two largest stones I could find. And suddenly I feel some mighty new power flowing from those stones, pouring into the depths of my spirit. At that moment my vague, academic belief that in the past we had a Jewish state, and my abstract theoretical hope that in the future we will have a Jewish state, has hardened into steel. Now I know this. … Purified and calmed, I left the Wall.” have leaned on that Wall in my lifetime. Time and again, that Wall has gotten me through.

And yet, though rare, there have been times when it felt like just that, a wall. And that euphoria that Israel and the Jewish people felt after the Six Day War of 1967? Today, sadly, contentiousness regarding Jerusalem has replaced euphoria.

And what of me feeling that I am “of Jerusalem,” a Yerushalmit?

Today I pen this column in my complex and somewhat selfimposed “exile” on foreign soil. It is still “A View from Central Park” and has not yet returned to “A View From Jerusalem.” For now, New York and Colorado have been the right decisions, but Jerusalem they are not.

Although he was not near the rivers of Babylon, he was near a different river and closer to my Central Park, when Aaron Zeitlin expressed his reaction to the news of the miraculous Six Day War victory with the following: From here, from a street by the Hudson, in Manhattan A call to you, to you, Jerusalem!

Your liberated Kotel awaits me as well.

So why do I still linger here?

Why do I still rot in Galut?

From here, from a distance, from Manhattan, where I still sit alone, do you hear my cry, and my questioning, questioning myself, Jerusalem?”

The hold of Jerusalem. Her resilience and resonance reaches across the generations. Regardless of where we might be, we live “for the sake of Jerusalem, lema’an Yerushalayim.”

For me, there are times when I still think of myself as S.Y. Agnon’s mythical Tehilla, walkng mystical velvet dark streets of Old Jerusalem; and, no matter where I am, identifying “as one who was born in Jerusalem.”

Part of this column was inspired by a lecture by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks. Copyright 2017 Intermountain Jewish News

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I have glimpsed the splendor and grandeur of the Heavenly Jerusalem, ‘Yerushalayim shel Ma’alah.’

known locally, as well as to Jaffa Road and King George Street, to wait on Fridays for the Shabbat siren after experiencing the bustling beehive of Geula in the throes of Shabbat preparations. I learned how to rush from Ussishkin Street to the Yeshurun Synagogue, and then to cut through Independence Park to downtown’s Rabbi Akiva Street and then up to Jaffa Gate, portal to the Old City.

The jostling at the souk, the pungent, rosemary or jasmine-scented (depending on the season) Jerusalem night air, the shouts and shivers of the city, the beggars with their outstretched palms, the verve, the tension of the news, Sir Moses Montefiore’s windmill forming part of the city’s silhouette, David Citadel glowing by amber light, the bumbling buses and noisy cafes, the bureaucracy and quarrels and conflicts, passing through the history-laden lore of one of the eight gates to the ancient Old City, to the Kotel, the cacophony and cadences of tolling bells, muezzin calls to prayer and the piercing shofar, and sirens — the heart-stopping whine of sirens — signaling terrorist bloodshed and pain, the golden twilight sunsets reflecting off ancient Jerusalem stones bathing the city as if in a halo of light, the men wrapped in tallit prayer shawls at daybreak in dew-drenched mornings of the Days of Awe, of the most peaceful invisible canopy that descends upon a liminal sunsetting, a dimdumei chamah, the reddening crimson sun, beckoning the Sabbath Queen … Shabbat.

All of these are layers of the “Jerusalem of Below.”

But it wasn’t always so. am of the generation that was born into the reality of having a “Jerusalem of Below.” I count among my blessings my merit to live in these historic times of Jerusalem.

From 1949 to 1967, the Old City of Jerusalem was just beyond the border. It was as if there was only one Jerusalem then, the Jerusalem of our dreams, Yerushalayim shel Ma’alah.

When Lt. General Motta Gur declared three unforgettable words, Har ha-Bayit be-Yadeinu (the Temple Mount is in Our Hands), on June 7, 1967, in the span of seconds the course of Jewish history was changed forever. It was code for having penetrated the Old City of Jerusalem, the innermost point in the concentric circles of Jerusalem.

Haim Hefer penned the poem, “The Paratroopers Weep”— This Kotel has heard a multitude of prayers, This Kotel has seen many walls fall, This Kotel has felt the hands of grieving women And that of notes pressed between the crevices of its stones, This Kotel saw Rabbi Judah HaLevi trampled in front of it, This Kotel has seen Caesars rising and falling, But this Kotel has never before seen paratroopers cry.

This Kotel has seen them tired, exhausted, This Kotel has seen them wounded and scarred, Running toward it with beating hearts, in cries and in silence, Emerging in wild abandon from the alleyways of the Old City, And they’re dust-covered and cracked sore-lipped, And they’re whispering: If I forget you, if I forget you, O Jerusalem, And they are lighter than eagles and more tenacious than lions, And their tanks are the fiery chariots of Elijah the Prophet, And they pass like lightning, and they pass in fury, And they remember all those terrible years, In which we didn’t even have a Kotel in front of which to pour our tears.

And here they are standing in front of it breathing deeply, And here they are gazing upon it in sweet pain, And the tears fall, as they look awkwardly at one another, How is it that paratroopers cry?

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May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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Long Islanders unfurl the blue and white in Jerusalem

Jerusalem parties after 50 years

Minister of Education Naftali Bennet celebrated Monday night at Jerusalem’s Leonardo Plaza with Dr. Joe Frager of Jamaica Estates (left), Dr. Paul and Drora Brody of Great Neck and their daughter, millennial activist Dana Brody (right). Brody unfurled his pocket-sized Israeli flag at a gala with Kinesset ministers and MKs that was organized by Frager, with Brody’s assistance, to mark the 50th anniversary Itsig Nissim of the city’s reunifiation.

Who counseled Jared and Ivanka on Shabbos? Rabbis won’t say Should we even care? And how does a Torah-observant Jew who requires time off for Shabbat and Yom Tov explain to an employer not versed in Jewish law or custom how he or she is different from Jared and Ivanka? Visit The Jewish Star’s website on Friday for links to several relevant articles on this subject.

By Ben Sales, JTA Which Orthodox rabbi gave Jared and Ivanka permission to fly on Shabbat?

We don’t know who it was, but we know who it wasn’t.

It wasn’t Haskel Lookstein, who oversaw the first daughter’s conversion to Judaism.

It wasn’t Marvin Hier, who gave the invocation at President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

It wasn’t Levi Shemtov, the spiritual leader at the synagogue in Washington that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have attended.

And it wasn’t Shmuley Boteach, the celebrity rabbi who has lavished praise on the president and taken a series of selfies with his advisers.

Those rabbis, on the record, denied giving their stamp of approval to the Friday night flight to Saudi Arabia — though none of them criticized the decision, and all refrained from commenting on it.

Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who ran the Chabad at Harvard, where Kushner was active as a student, was unavailable for comment.

Flying in an airplane is one of many activities prohibited by Jewish law from sundown Friday to nightfall Saturday, principally because igniting the engine involves lighting a fire. Shabbat’s laws can be broken, however, to save a life, a concept known in Hebrew as pikuach nefesh.

The question — much debated on social media by both fans and detractors of Trump’s daughter and son-in-law — is whether participating in Trump’s first foreign trip as president qualifies as life-saving. (Some of the discussions were respectful inquiries into Jewish law. Others were, let’s face it, pure snark of the “frum-shaming” variety.) Observant Jews with political power have faced questions like these for ages — most famously, perhaps, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Jack Lew, President Barack Obama’s treasury secretary.

When dealing with the fate of a nation, how far does pikuach nefesh stretch?

“If a person would be in that circumstance, with that level of responsibility, it’s not just that isolated event he has to calculate,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the kosher division of the Orthodox Union. “He’d have to think not just about this event. What are the consequences down the line? The definition of pikuach nefesh might be broader than it usually is.”

Rabbis Genack and Shemtov both cited Israeli officials who were given permission to pick up the phone — also prohibited — to give or receive directives on Shabbat, even if the call was not directly related to military operations. Likewise, religious Israeli soldiers will continue serving on Shabbat when necessary, even during (relative) peacetime.

Rabbi Shemtov, who runs the Washington synagogue commonly known as TheShul, generally has a narrow definition of saving a life. He will give elected officials who consult with him permission to break Shabbat laws only if they are personally

JERUSALEM — Tens of thousands gathered in Jerusalem on Wednesday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the holy city’s reunification.

Ceremonies and events took place throughout the day in the Israeli capital to mark the annual observance of Yom Yerushalayim. Among the events were memorials for soldiers killed in the Six-Day War in 1967. A state memorial also was held at Mount Herzl cemetery for the thousands of Ethiopians who died enroute to the Promised Land.

Thousands of young people participated in a flag march through Jerusalem, including in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. Hundreds of police were deployed in the city to prevent clashes.

The Knesset held a special session to mark Jerusalem Day. The Temple Mount and the Western Wall “will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address to the Knesset session.

“Some see the Six-Day War as a disaster for Israel. I see it as Israel’s salvation. How could we keep existing with a narrow waist and daily danger to our citizens?” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu also said he was moved to see President Trump standing in front of the Western Wall earlier this week. The president’s visit to the site “destroyed UNESCO’s propaganda and lies,” Netanyahu said, referring to several resolutions passed in recent months by the United Nations body ignoring Jewish ties to the city and its holy sites.

‘Never again,’ says Trump at Yad Vashem Ivanka Trump praying at the Kotel on May 22.

Mendy Hechtman/Flash90

needed in the situation, it cannot be deferred until Saturday night, and someone’s life is actually at stake.

He also said there is no blanket answer for this question; it must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

“I’ve been getting questions like this for about 20 years, and I’ve only found it appropriate twice to allow any exemption from the rules,” Rabbi Shemtov said. “They involved immediate and unequivocal situations affecting preservation of life.”

Rabbi Shemtov recalls walking miles with Lieberman from synagogue on Shabbat to the Capitol, where Lieberman would cast votes. Lew also endeavored not to break Shabbat, but told the Tablet website that he would take calls and drive in a car when necessary.

Although a range of activities are prohibited on Shabbat, Jewish law does not treat them all equally. Some are deemed to be prohibited by the text of the Torah, while others are prohibited by rabbinic consensus, which is considered less severe.

As it happens, Kushner and Trump also reportedly received permission ahead of Trump’s inauguration on a Friday, Jan. 20, to ride in a car that night. Which rabbi gave that allowance?

That’s also unknown. But every rabbi that JTA spoke to for this article cautioned against criticizing these decisions without being privy to all of their details.

“What’s at stake long term or short term?” Rabbi Genack wondered. “You never know what the next steps will be. I’m happy that I’m not in that situation, that I have to deal with these problems.”

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- President Trump called the State of Israel “a soaring monument to the solemn pledge we repeat and affirm: ‘Never again’” during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Trump and his wife, Melania, laid a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance on Tuesday afternoon.

The president, wearing a black kippah, also was accompanied by his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who are both Jewish. Trump also lit a candle at the eternal flame in the hall.

Israel, Trump said, is “testament to the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people.”

“The Jewish people persevered. They have thrived.

They have become so successful in so many places, and they have enlightened the world,” he said.

Trump said it is every person’s duty “to remember to mourn, to grieve, and to honor” each life lost in the Holocaust.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, who with his wife, Sara, attended the ceremony, responded that the people of Israel “pledge never to be defenseless against that hatred again.”

To achieve this, he said, “Israel must always be able to defend itself.” Netanyahu thanked Trump for the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security.

Trump was presented with a replica of a personal album that belonged to a teenage German Holocaust victim, Ester Goldstein. While most of the Jews who contributed photographs and handwritten messages were killed in the Holocaust, Ester’s older sister, Margot Herschenbaum, 91, survived and briefly met the president.

13 THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

AMERICAN FRIENDS OF ATERET COHANIM/ JERUSALEM CHAI Yom Yerushalayim Dinner Celebrating The Miracle Of 1967 And The Reunification Of Our Jerusalem This dinner is dedicated to the memory of the esteemed pillars of our organization Dr. Irving Moskowitz z"l and Mr. Joseph Mermelstein z"l & In honor of the Ateret Cohanim children living the 2000 year old dream Guests of Honor & Bonei Yerushalayim Honorees

NISSAN & DR. HINDIE M. KLEIN

Dedicating Gan Aryeh in memory of their beloved son Aryeh Zev a"h on the rooftop of Beit HaNof

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Rabbinic Leadership Honorees

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Musical entertainment by ELRON ZABATANI resident of Ateret Cohanim’s Beit HaTzalam, accompanied by SHLOMI AHARONI from Chashmonaim

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By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA Britain’s bloodiest terrorist attack in over a decade occurred Monday just two miles from Rabbi Yisroel Cohen’s synagogue.

Yet one day after the deadly bombing in Manchester, he told JTA he has no intention of changing security arrangements at his shul.

In fact Rabbi Cohen, a Chabad emissary who works in a Jewish enclave in the northern part of the city surrounded by a heavily Muslim area, said there is little room for improving security across his tight-knit community.

After all, the Jewish community in Manchester — one of the U.K.’s fastest-growing spots thanks to an influx of immigrants and young couples seeking alternatives to pricey London — has been on its highest alert since long before the explosion that killed 22 people and wounded 50 at an Ariana Grande concert. On Tuesday, ISIS claimed responsibility for the act.

“Well, the radio equipment is working, the residents have been briefed, police are patrolling, security professionals from the Jewish community have been in place since the attacks in Belgium” last year, Rabbi Cohen said when asked about security. “There is only so much you can do — except pray.”

On Kings Road, a busy street of the heavily Jewish borough of Prestwich, residents keep an eye out for strangers. Any abnormal behavior — particularly photography or the gathering of information — quickly invites polite but firm inquiries by both passers-by as well as shopkeepers who cater to the local population of haredi and modern Orthodox Jews.

The vigilance in Jewish Manchester owes much of its preparation and training to the lo-

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May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

16

cal police, the Community Security Trust organization and other groups. But it is also born of circumstance: Manchester’s some 30,000 Jews are concentrated in a relatively small area. This makes them an easy target, but it also means that the community’s institutions are easier to protect and vigilance is easier to instill.

While there are also concentrations of Jews in North London, in Manchester — a city of 2.5 million, where 15.8 percent of the population is Muslim — there is added tension because the Jewish and Muslim communities live in close proximity. Kings Road, for example, is sandwiched between the Judaica World bookstore on its western end and the Masjid Bilal mosque on its eastern one.

This juxtaposition has generated some friction, including the harassment of Jews on the street and the occasional violent incident.

At least one more premeditated plan to attack Manchester Jews was uncovered and foiled five years ago. In 2012, a British judge imprisoned a Muslim couple for seven years for gathering intelligence on Manchester Jews for an attack.

“That incident came at a time of reassessment about the threat to Jews in Manchester, and it was one of the reasons that led to a complete overhaul,” Rabbi Cohen said.

“So today, we in the Jewish community are perhaps less surprised than others at what happened,” the rabbi added, though he also said that Mancunian Jews are “shocked at the horror” witnessed at the concert.

Paul Harris, editor of the city’s Jewish Telegraph weekly, told JTA he generally agrees that Manchester’s Jewish community is well prepared to deal with any emergency or fallout thereof, but he also flagged one weak point: On evenings and afternoons, observant Jews in the city congregate outside synagogues — a habit that makes them an easy target and which, for that reason, has largely been abandoned in atrisk communities in France and beyond.

“Maybe that will change now,” Harris said.

In a statement Tuesday following a suspect’s arrest, Prime Minister Theresa May said the bombing was a “callous terrorist attack” that targeted “defenseless young people.” Police believe a homemade explosive vest was detonated by a suicide bomber who may or may not have been working alone.

Rabbi Cohen said that Chabad was not aware of Jewish fatalities in the attack.

The attack happened a little over two weeks before the June 8 general election in which hardliner Theresa May from the Conservative Party is running against Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party. The attack may further increase May’s lead in the polls on Corbyn, a leftleaning promoter of outreach to Muslims who has called Hezbollah and Hamas his friends.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at a joint news conference Tuesday in Jerusalem with President Trump, who was visiting Israel, referenced the attack in criticizing incitement to terrorism by the Palestinian Authority under its president, Mahmoud Abbas.

“President Abbas condemned the horrific attack in Manchester,” Netanyahu said while standing next to Trump. “Well, I hope this heralds a real change, because if the attacker had been Palestinian and the victims had been Israeli children, the suicide bomber’s family would have received a stipend from the Palestinian Authority. That’s Palestinian law. That law must be changed.”

Back in Manchester, Rabbi Shneur Cohen of the Chabad Manchester Center City organized a food and drinks distribution to police officers stationed near where the attack took place.

“We are Manchester, we stand together,” Cohen told reporters at the scene.

But Harris, the Jewish Telegraph editor, said that despite such gestures, “there is definitely a silence, a shocked silence” in the city following the attack.

Judy Joszef who’s in the kitchen

T

his past Sunday was a beautiful spring day from Jerry’s perspective. It was sunny and cool and precipitated Jerry’s reflecting back on how he spent spring days when he was very young and lived with his parents in a three room, one bedroom apartment on Elm Avenue in Brooklyn.

Throughout his childhood, right through to his early 20s, there were no memories of summers spent in Brooklyn, ever. He spent many summers with his entire extended family, from the time he was born until he was 12, in Turkin’s Bungalow Colony off exit 106 near Monticello.

After that, he went to sleepaway camps.

Jerry was tenured in Camp Raleigh for six summers, followed by an assortment of other camps. He has vivid memories, however, of how he experienced (survived) spring each year in Brooklyn, particularly the beautiful days when Jerry felt imprisoned (a veritable Rapunzel, for all non-sleeping hours during every day) in the apartment waiting for his mom to finish her daily (endless) chores. By the time they left the apartment, having listened to a myriad of Art Raymond’s Yiddish classics on WEVD, Jerry morphed into a full-froth frenzied state, needing to unleash his pent-up, naturally boundless energy, in the great outdoors that awaited him on Avenue M in the afternoon.

Jerry was very active back then (he would have been diagnosed as top shelf hyperactive by today’s standards) and was reputed to be a handful (monster) for his mother to entertain (restrain) until he reached 6 years old, at which point he was sentenced to eight years at Yeshiva

Rambam. Finally, his mother could recuperate, during school hours. Of course, Jerry would return home late in the afternoon, his energy level rocket-fuel sky-high after a day forced to sit in class with only 15 minutes of “recess” twice a day. Jerry’s teachers further determined that Jerry (and all other kids) should be sentenced to sit and do homework and study. The only reason Jerry was never left back (despite specializing in failing all tests) was that no teacher deserved to be sentenced to endure Jerry’s antics for a second year. erry’s favorite activity was playing in the park off 18th street between avenues M and L. He spent many afternoons there, and can still vicariously experience and recall how he used the adult-sized metal swings from which he would look up at the sky when he was at the apex of his swing, imagining that he was an airplane fighter-jet pilot flying very close to the sky and shooting down Nazi planes. He also loved the rush of climbing all the way up on the steps of the high sliding pond and then hurtling at what felt like breakneck speed, to the ground below. He could swing and slide for hours until the temperature cooled off, as evening announced its approach and Jerry’s mom decided it was time to head home after an afternoon of non-stop action.

Jerry, of course, pleaded and begged to remain playing at the park, but after many tantrums and an ocean full of false tears, Jerry inevitably trudged home, compelled to hold onto the carriage, in which his brother rode, tired, scraped up, and hungry. Dinner and a warm bath in the “vannah” awaited him at day’s end.

If playing at the park was the best of times from Jerry’s perspective, one day each spring he was compelled (sentenced) to accompany his mother on a shopping spree. She excitedly

J

Raspberry Fudge Cheesecake Bars

planned a trip to 34th street in Manhattan where she spent countless hours schlepping (torturing) Jerry through the notorious Macy’s and Gimbels department stores (Dante’s inferno, the ultimate crucible of hell!).This reflected the very worst of times which Jerry encountered during childhood.

He still recalls how they would enter Macy’s and head over to the beautiful elevators, where the elevator man sat on a stool, wearing a special hat and jacket, greeting everyone, and then closing a metal fence-like contraption, imprisoning all young hyperactive victims who had the misfortune of being caught in its unforgiving net. The elevator man would open the gate announcing all the departments available on each particular floor, until they reached a floor which sounded most boring and oppressive of all which, of course, his mother excitedly determined to explore.

Jerry’s mom finally exacted just retribution for all that Jerry compelled her to endure while Jerry acted like Jerry during his childhood. As Charles Dickens would have written: “While the park was the spring of hope, Macy’s was the winter of despair.”

Bet you didn’t think I could tie in a recipe with Macy’s! Well, this one comes straight from Macy’s. com and is a perfect dairy dessert for Shavuot.

Ingredients: Crust 2 cups chocolate wafer cookie crumbs 1/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup butter, melted Filling 3 packages 8 oz bars of cream cheese, softened 1 can 14 oz. sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated) 2 oz white baking chocolate, melted, slightly cooled 1 teaspoon vanilla 3 eggs Topping 1 pint raspberries 1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon water 2/3 cup powdered sugar

Instructions: Heat oven to 300°F. In an ungreased 9x13 cake pan, combine all crust ingredients, mix well and press firmly in the bottom of the pan. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add condensed milk, melted chocolate, vanilla and eggs; beat until smooth, scraping the side of the bowl frequently. Pour filling over crust.

Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until set. Cool 30 minutes.

Arrange raspberries on top of filling. In a 1-quart saucepan, heat unsweetened chocolate and 1-tablespoon butter over low heat, stirring until smooth.

Remove from heat. Add water and powdered sugar, and beat until smooth and drizzling consistency. (If the glaze is too thick, add more water, 1-teaspoon at a time. If glaze is too thin, add more powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time.)

Drizzle glaze over raspberries. Refrigerate for 1-1/2 hours or until cold. Remove from refrigerator 15 minutes before serving. Cut into 5 rows by 3 rows.

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Young Jerry’s in town: Would Macy’s tell Gimbels?

17

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Beat the heat: Keep safe in summer Summer will soon be here and that means spending plenty of time outdoors. You may be eager to get on out to take advantage of local parks, pools or walking/bike paths.

These physical activities can be great fun and good for you, but consider these tips to help you safely take your workout outside this summer.

Protection from the sun: Protection from the sun is more than just a great SPF. In addition to your sunscreen, try SPF workout clothes. These are hot items this year with protection built right into the fabric.

And don’t forget a hat if you are running around outdoors.

Time of day: Early morning and evening workouts are recommended to avoid the height of the heat and sun. Besides, working out first thing out of bed gets your workout done for the day, and working out at night boosts your metabolism before you go to bed.

Hydrate with water: You’ll need more water to combat the increased temperatures.

Not sure how much you need? Remember this easy hint: drink enough water to make your urine clear.

Hit the sand: Running, walking, even Yoga on the beach is more challenging because of the unevenness of the surface. Working out on the beach requires more muscle groups to engage so it can be dynamic and invigorating.

Enjoy the outdoors: Outdoor activities don’t have to be just running and biking.

Gardening, swimming, jumping rope, running through the sprinkler with your kids — these are all great ways to burn calories and have fun.

Know when to enjoy the indoors: There will be times when the heat index is just too high to safely workout outside. Try a new class at the gym or yoga studio for a cool in-

door workout, or do a workout DVD in the comfort of your home.

Go for a long walk: Summer is the perfect time to go for a long walk with family, friends, neighbors and Fido after dinner. It stays light long into the evening and the temperatures cool off at night.

Join an exercise group: Every form of exercise has a group attached to it. Try a running or hiking group or a group Pilates mat class. If the group dynamic is what will encourage your workouts, do your research and join one. Summer is a great time to join an early morning or evening bootcamp.

Try something new: This is a great tip for any time of year, but especially when the weather is warm. It could be aquatic aerobics or plyometrics. Maybe some new Pilates moves or take a hike.

Prepare to stay fit all year: Lots of people who became idle or sedentary during the

long winter months suddenly get out and start exercising as soon as the weather allows. Prepare for next summer by starting good habits this summer and becoming a winter exerciser too! This will ward off any injuries, aches and pains and keep you fit and trim all year round.

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akash,” tank officer’s course, is one of the most difficult in the Israeli army. Four and a half grueling months of misery deep in the desert, with little or no sleep, just an endless misery of dust, grease, scorching desert sun, and tank maneuvers.

The course’s pinnacle, the “ringo” maneuver, came at the end. Each cadet was given a platoon of tanks to command, with a host of unexpected dilemmas and targets thrown at him one after another. Designed to test his ability to react and make difficult decisions under intense pressure, it was the tank officer’s ultimate nightmare, and failing this test meant failing officer’s course.

For me, repeating the entire course a second time after having failed in my first attempt five months earlier, I had been dreading this maneuver for months, as I could still recall how painful the experience had been when I failed it nearly half a year earlier.

Standing in the turret of my tank, as ready as I would ever be, with the tanks now under my command waiting for the signal to begin, I could feel the pit deep in my stomach. The officer overseeing me that day, Yuval Azulai, was a legend, and after watching me fail a few months earlier, was absolutely determined to see me through that course. Just as we were about to start, he leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Clear your mind, let it all go, just flow with it (tizrom), hear the commands and do what you know how to do, and you’ll be fine.”

Thirty years later, I can still hear his voice, still smell his breath, and still feel myself take in his words and let go. A calm came over me and somehow I was able to let go of all the stress and uncertainties clouding my mind and focus on the task at hand. It was as though he had somehow enabled me to experience the entire maneuver in slow motion. And from that moment it was like I was on autopilot — whatever new threats and challenges they threw my way were met with exact responses until we emerged flawlessly on the other end, with a near-perfect score.

I can still vividly remember at one point in the test maneuver, when a ‘bazooka’ anti-tank target popped up in the corner of my field of vison, a challenge I had struggled with through the entire course, and all the different pieces just came together: without even thinking one hand on my machine gun firing at the bazooka on my right while giving the orders to the gunner and traversing the main gun to the enemy tank that had simultaneously popped up on the left and ordering the tank in the rear of the column to take out the second enemy tank target that had popped up on the ridge… it had somehow become like slow motion…. because there was nothing else clouding my mind.

Sometimes to get it right, you have to let go. his Shabbat we will begin the book of Numbers, so named for the census with which it opens. But its more traditional name, gleaned from the words contained in the opening verse, is Bamidbar: literally: “in the desert,” referring to the fact that this book is the story of the Jewish people’s journey through the desert prior to entering the Land of Israel.

This week’s parsha, Bamidbar, is always read on the Shabbat before Shavuot, the festival on which we celebrate the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, in the desert.

Which raises an obvious question: why did we receive the Torah in the desert? Would it not have made more sense to receive the Torah in

T

Egypt, on Pesach, as we embarked on our journey as a Nation?

No less interesting is the fact that on the night of Shavuot we read the story of Ruth, who left everything behind to embrace the Jewish people and, like the Jewish people receiving the Torah, embraced Judaism as the first recorded convert, ultimately leading to the birth of no less than King David.

Naomi with her husband Elimelech and their sons Machlon and Kilyon, leave Israel in time of famine and make a new home in Midian. Eventually, one of the sons marries Ruth who, according to tradition, was a Midianite princess.

Tragically, Elimelech and both their sons die and Naomi, realizing there is nothing left for her in Midian, decides it is time to return home to Israel. It is at this point that Ruth refuses to abandon her mother-in-law and, leaving everything behind, becomes the paradigmatic convert and accompanies Naomi to an uncertain future.

It worth noting that Ruth had a sister, Orpah, who also loses her husband, the second of Naomi’s sons, and is equally insistent on remaining with Naomi. But she eventually acquiesces and, parting ways with Naomi and Ruth, returns to Midian. The Midrash (Rut Rabbah 2:22) suggests that when Orpah returned to her people in Midian she also returned to idolatry. Two sisters, both from the same origins on the same paths who end up in completely divergent lifestyles —one embracing Judaism and a spiritual journey to accept G-d in her life and the other returning to the pagan morass with all its abominations.

This divergence recalls a similar parting of the ways from no less than Lot, Avraham’s nephew, who leaves Avraham for the wicked life of Sodom. And the rabbis suggest (Bereishit 13:11 and Rashi there) that he too left the G-d of Abraham and sank back as well into the pagan idolatrous practices of Sodom. What caused Lot to abandon his journey? Why did Lot, like Orpah, leave a promising future to fall back into paganism? erhaps it was because Lot simply could not let go. Indeed when Lot is told to leave Sodom, he hesitates (Bereishit 19:16) and the messengers need to take hold of his hand to lead him out of Sodom. Simply put, Lot never really left Babylon.

The Midrash paints the famous story of Avraham breaking all the idols in his father’s idol store; before Avraham can fully embrace G-d, he must break his idols. Lot, though physically accompanying Avraham, never really broke his idols. And that was why Orpah was not able to follow Naomi — she had not completely broken with her pagan past, she had not broken her idols.

Perhaps this is also why we receive the Torah in the desert, because we could not receive it until we had left Egypt behind. Before we can accept truth and embrace life we have to break and let go of our idols. And that is what being in the desert is all about. It’s the place that is “no place,” where the vast spaces allow a person to feel he or she is no longer limited by the narrow confines of life.

One does not journey to stay in the desert, one passes through. It is the journey, just like the Torah, which is not the goal but rather the recipe of how we are meant to get there.

Thus the Talmud (Nedarim 55b) tells us that to receive the Torah a person must make himself like the desert, which means letting go of all the influences and desires that bring us down, to “get away from it all.”

Just like on the Ringo maneuver: sometimes we need to let go and make room for a healthier reality to come into our lives.

Wishing everyone a Shabbat shalom and a wonderful Shavuot! Chag sameach from Jerusalem.

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21 THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

BOB BLOCK The Story of a Winner It was back in 1986 when Bob Block got involved with The Five Towns Community Chest (now Community Chest South Shore). He started as a volunteer working on the Fair Committee and quickly grew from volunteer to the chair of the Fair Committee. He has often talked about the great times he had and the friendships he forged in the late 80’s and 90’s.

As an important member of the Chest Board and a budding star, Bob was offered a Vice President position.

He accepted and remained at the position for over 15 years. When the need for a new Executive Director presented itself 6 years ago, Bob offered his services, and the Board accepted. He enrolled in professional classes, attended seminars, joined professional organizations and networked with industry leaders.

Through the years, Bob introduced many new events and helped to significantly grow the “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” Program. He can certainly be proud of his tireless work, the alliances he has developed and the milestones achieved.

Bob has decided that the time is right for him to move on. We at the Community Chest South Shore wish him well and thank him for his years of service and dedication to this community and our organization.

We close with a statement that Bob often stated, “community service is contagious.” We promise to keep it going!

Community Chest SS OH UOTRHE Neighbors Helping Neighbors

915534

To learn more or get involved, visit www.communitychestss.org or call 516-374-5800

915537

May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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STAR SCHOOLS

May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan 5777 • Every week in print and online at TheJewishStar.com • Send news and photos to: Schools@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline: Sundays at noon

CAHAL and Darchei Torah get creative together Kids have been inventing things for hundreds of years. Did you know that the popsicle, ear muffs and the trampoline were all invented by children? More than a few kids have become rich off their inventions before they even graduating from high school.

Recognizing the multiple benefits to exploring the inventive process, Yeshiva Darchei Torah hosted its annual Invention Convention for their sixth grade students on May 10. CAHAL students rose to the challenge with amazing results.

With the guidance of their teacher, Malkie Hyman, and assistant teacher, Timema Yoffe, the boys brainstormed, noting their ideas in a journal with a list of pros and cons for each.

After analyzing each option, they voted to create a “smart desk” that would make a student’s life easier.

The boys first identified the problems inherent in their current desks. The next step involved designing a desk that would address each of the problems and be practical enough to appeal to students. They decided that their invention would need to include the following features: a back massager to prevent back pain as well as provide enough sensory input to help kids stay focused(so they wouldn’t have to use annoying fidget spinners), a built-in pencil

sharpener and white board, a built in iPad with apps for all their text books, a notebook app that also has the ability to record the teacher talking in the event that the student can’t get all the notes down, an app that allows the teacher to download her notes onto the iPad,

a dictionary/thesaurus app and a cd card that can download everything on the iPad, so when the student gets home, he can put the cd card into his kosher computer and have all the notes and textbooks at his fingertips.

After listing all the materials needed for the

desk and estimating their total cost, the class went to Lowe’s and collected all of the items that were needed. They recorded the actual prices and totaled them at the register.

Returning to yeshiva, the boys compared their estimate to the actual total, noting the difference.

With the help of Michael Blieberg, one of the student’s parents, the desk was finally constructed. The culminating activity involved recording all the steps on a display board including a written explanation of the invention process and how their “smart desk” solved all of their problems. Many participants made a special stop to see what the boys had invented.

They were amazed at their accomplishment, and the students were so proud of their work.

Unfortunately, the boys have not yet entered the patent and manufacturing stage, so you will have to wait a bit before it will hit the market.

CAHAL, the local yeshiva-based and sponsored community program for children with learning challenges, now in its 24th year, provides smaller, more individualized classes in the local yeshivas catering to children’s learning styles, where all the students attend mainstream activities daily. CAHAL is currently accepting students for the next semester.

SKA students join NORPAC mission Twenty five Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls students, accompanied by faculty member Rikki Fishbein, parents and grandparents, joined over 1,000 thousand citizen activists on May 17, at NORPAC’s Annual Mission to Washington. They went to advocate among members of Congress for a stronger U.S.-Israel relationship.

The SKA students initially attended a briefing session at the Warner Theatre with presentations by congressional leaders. They then split into groups to meet with members of Congress and their staff to discuss pressing issues of U.S.-Israel concern. Among the representatives the girls met with were Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) who represents the Five Towns, Rep. Gene Green (R-TX), Rep. John Lar-

son (D-CT.) Sen. Michel B. Enzi (R-WY) and Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), among others.

Sophomore Shira Cohen shared her enthusiasm over the mission.

“It was so reassuring to see how much support for Israel we found in Washington,” she said. “Every legislator we spoke to, Jewish or nonJewish, expressed their belief that Israel is the Jewish homeland and that the Kotel is part of Jerusalem.”

SKA students on the mission noted how encouraged they were by their Israel advocacy.

Pictured: SKA freshman Emma Spirgel with Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH).

Source: SKA

3 vals walk at Touro’s Sunday commencement The Tourco College system named three Valedictorians who will walk at commencement exercises set for Sunday, May 26.

Simcha Bordon, Valedictorian of the School for Men at Lander College of Arts and Sciences in Flatbush, grew up in London, travelling to America after high school to study at Passaic Yeshiva, followed by a seven year stint in Israel at Yeshivas Brisk.

“Simcha is an outstanding example of a Ben Torah who concurrently has achieved excellence in his pre-medical studies,” said Dr. Robert Goldschmidt, executive vice president of Touro and dean of Touro’s Lander College of Arts and Sciences.

After graduation, Bordon will begin his studies at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Rachel Tabi, valedictorian of Touro’s School for Women at Lander College of Arts and Sciences – Flatbush, majored in actuarial mathematics at Touro and will graduate with a G.P.A of 3.9.

“Rachel, who spent a year at Darchei Binah seminary in Israel, has demonstrated excep-

Touro valedictorians Simcha Bordon, Rachel Tabi, and Steven Treitel. tional achievement in mathematics by passing multiple actuarial tests, outperforming what most college graduates in this field usually do,” said Goldschmidt. “Coupled with her person-

ality and focus on helping others, she will no doubt create a Kiddush Hashem in the professional world.”

In September she will begin her career as

an actuarial associate in the benefits department at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

While most of us were still asleep, Steven Treitel, valedictorian of Touro’s Lander College for Men, would leave his home in Monsey at 5:45 am to make a 7am minyan at Meridian Capital Group, where he worked. Twice a week, he would drive from Manhattan to Queens to take classes until 10:30 pm, only to then make the hour-long drive back to Monsey.

Treitel’s determination enabled him to balance a demanding job with a rigorous academic schedule while earning a 4.0 GPA. Even before his time at LCM, Steven displayed similar ambition and resolve when he spent two years immersing himself in Talmud study at Mercaz HaTorah in Israel. “ ‘Lippy’ is a gifted student, with the warm personality, drive, and determination so crucial to success, and with a deep consciousness of his special responsibilities as an Orthodox Jew,” said Dr. Moshe Sokol, dean of LCM. “He is destined to make a difference in the world.”

Source: Touro College and University System

THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

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May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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Shulamith links math and games for family fun Learning math at the Shulamith School for Girls in Cedarhurst is never dull.Once a week, Sara Wolf visits each classroom to teach a new game highlighting one of the math skills the students are working on.

Last Tuesday and Thursday, third and fourth graders invited parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles to spend the morning learning to play math games at the first-ever Family Math Hour.

During this culminating event, the children got to be educators and teach their guests how to play the games.

Each game was carefully chosen for the math skills it reinforced. In third grade, the focus was on multiplication and place value, while in the fourth grade, the skills practiced were multiplication, long division, and comparing and simplifying fractions.

All the adults in attendance agreed that learning math was never this much fun.

Source: Shulamith School for Girls

Shoah essay winners at HANC

HANC’s ninth and tenth graders gathered in the auditorium for a special presentation

by Alan and Judy Eisenman, parents of three HANC graduates. The Eisenmans sponsored tuition scholarships for ninth-grade winners of the Moshe Flescher Holocaust Memorial Scholarship Freshman Essay Contest dedicated in memory of Judy Eisenman’s father A”H, Moshe Flescher. Eisenman met with the students and provided them with a brief history of her father.

Two winners — Ali Lenefsky and Rafi Silbiger — were selected from a record number of entries who responded to the question: “What has the world learned from the Holocaust over the past seven decades?”

Moshe Flescher was born in Poland in 1921.

As the youngest of seven children, he survived the tumultuous period by hiding in the forest with five siblings. Judy Eisenman further added that her father was soft-spoken and brief when responding to questions concerning his experience during the Holocaust.

She explained that the scholarship’s purpose is to educate students about the Holocaust and to perpetuate the memory of those who perished.

“We should not be silent about this period, but rather our HANC students will serve to unite, through such education, the past and the future generations,” she said.

Source: HANC

Golfers raise funds for HAFTR HAFTR hosted its 10th annual Golf Spring Classic & Spa Day on May 15, honoring the memory of Jacob Greenberg.

Greenberg, a former HAFTR student, was a vibrant young boy who truly represented a symbol of excellence for our school and our community.

The event took place at the Seawane Club in Hewlett and more than 120 guests were in attendance.

The day’s events included golfing and spa services for our male guests, as well as a painting event and spa services for our female guests.

The golf outing is the second largest annual fundraiser of the year, with all proceeds benefitting the students’ educational experience at HAFTR. The event concluded with a phenomenal dinner accompanied by live auctions and raffle prizes.

Source: HAFTR

Philadelphia’s Rav Kamenetsky visits Darchei

From left: Rav Moshe Bender, Rav Shimon Finkelman, Rav Yaakov Bender, Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky, Rav Yosef Warman, Rav Dovid Bender, and talmidim of Yeshiva Darchei Torah.

On Sunday morning, Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky shlita, the venerable Rosh Yeshiva of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia and a member of Agudath Israel of America’s Council of Torah Sages, davened Shacharis at Mesivta Chaim Shlomo of Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway. After the davening, he addressed the students of the Mesivta and Beis Medrash as well as the middle school, delivering a brief halachic discourse on the laws of Bircas Hatorah.

He then headed outdoors where he briefly addressed the elementary school talmidim, telling them that “Torah is the greatest [source of] blessing. A Jew is blessed when he is connected to Torah, when his life is Torah, when he learns Torah and is immersed in Torah.” He blessed the boys with “abundant success in Torah and Yiras Shamayim.”

Source: Yeshiva Darchei Torah

25 THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

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May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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Hebron: Fifty years since its liberation AlAn JAy Gerber Kosher BooKworm

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his week not only marks the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, Yom Yerushalayim, but, the next day, the 29th of Iyar, marked the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Hebron, site of the Me’orat Hamachpela.

In an informative essay, entitled “Discovering the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land” (HebronFund.org) Rabbi Moshe Goodman of Hebron’s famed Kollel Ohr Shlomo wrote the following: “There is a difference between Jerusalem and Hebron in regard to the specific days of this last week of the Omer. Jerusalem’s Liberation Day is attributed to the hessed (kindness) of this last week of the Omer (malchut), while Hebron’s Liberation Day corresponds to the gevura (just mightiness) of this last week of the Omer (malchut). We may say that Jerusalem represents in this context the attribute of Divine kindness as Jerusalem is the Holiest Divine City and special Divine aid and kindness from above is befitting her.

“On the other hand, in this context Hebron represents the attribute of ‘mightiness’ which

calls for ‘justly earning’ the Land though human effort. Indeed, Hebron was the first city within the lands liberated during the Six-Day War to be settled under considerable human effort despite all the odds. “ ‘Covenant’ is a major concept in regard to the Holy Land, as we say in the ‘blessing on the Land’ in the Blessing After Meals. This means that a major part of our ability to connect to this Land, and the Holy Presence therein, lies with keeping our ‘covenant’ with G-d. This also means that an important part of G-d’s covenant to us, through our Patriarchs of Hebron, lies with the granting of the Holy Land to us.

“In other words, there is a dual covenant in regard to the Holy land — our part of the covenant, and G-d’s part of the covenant.

“One Chamber of Me’arat Hamachpela is called the ‘Chamber of the Covenants’ (Ulam HaBritot). This name, in the plural, can remind us of the dual covenant between G-d and our people through the Patriarchs who lie here at

tion of Jerusalem and the holy human initiative and courage of Hebron toward our final redemption.” ight years ago I penned an essay-review of “Hebron Jews” by Jerold Auerbach, in which I quoted the author’s telling words that ring as true today as they did then: “Once Jews relinquish their right to live in Hebron, they implicitly undermine their claim to live anywhere in their biblical homeland. To abandon Hebron is to surrender the claims of memory that bind Jews to each other, to their ancient homeland, and to their shared past and future.” (Kosher Bookworm: A Graphic History Lesson of the Jews of Hebron, Nov. 18, 2009) My personal observations at that time of the historical events experienced by Hebron’s Jews were as follows: “No other Jewish community in Israel has ever been treated in such a manner. This book, whatever the original intent of its author, places these Jews at the center of the action; placing their rightful claims in their proper historical as well as political perspective.”

I still proudly stand by these sentiments.

Kindly please read on to learn why.

I conclude this week’s essay with the following sad observations: This past week the majority Arab population of Hebron elected a new mayor. His name is Tayseer Abu Shneineh. If this name is not faSee Hebron on page 27

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Me’arat Hamachpela. This name may also remind us of both the covenant of the Patriarchs and also of the covenant formed in Hebron with David, the archetype of Messiah and builder of Jerusalem.

“Today, especially on Jerusalem Day and Hebron Day, and especially on this Jubilee Year of Liberation, we are called to contemplate on these matters and also see how they may touch on our spiritual endeavors and actions as well.

“One possible conclusion is working on the synthesis between the special Divine inspira-

With G-d on our side, our mission is true rAbbi Avi billet Parsha of the weeK

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s we begin the fourth book of the Torah, we embark on a journey, along with the Israelites who are leaving Sinai after having been there for 11 months.

Not only does the focus of the Torah’s narrative switch — from being primarily law and instruction-oriented in Vayikra to advancing the narrative — but the style shifts in the opening chapters of Bamidbar. There is an air of excitement, of anticipation, of something wonderful emerging on the horizon.

And why not? For the nation of Israel, things have never been better! They’ve experienced the Exodus. Their most frightening ene-

mies — Egypt and Amalek — are behind them.

They’ve witnessed Revelation and received the Torah. They’ve made the worst mistake possible, and they’ve survived, thrived, and moved on. They’ve seen their leader, Moshe, emerge as not only a miracle worker, but as a compassionate powerhouse of strength, ready to lose everything for the sake of his people.

They’ve built a Mishkan and learned how it functions. They’ve seen Aharon emerge as a competent Kohen Gadol who not only embraced his role with humility and pride, but who has taught them a valuable lesson about how to face suffering and how to sacrifice for the benefit of the greater good. The deaths of Nadav and Avihu (also recorded in our parsha 3:4) were a national tragedy, from which the nation was still reeling, and yet through Aharon’s leadership, they saw they could move on.

Now, as they gather for a census, they view their strength in numbers and feel confident as

they prepare to face enemies in the Land who will choose to fight rather than submit to G-d’s will that the children of Abraham reclaim their ancestral, G-d-given Land.

With all this hope and optimism, how long does it take before things turn and take the direction we all know is coming? hile we can’t rewrite history (some choose to, but it’s never a good practice), we can learn from it. And if this parsha is to serve as any kind of teaching tool — with its census, military preparations and travel arrangements, and the defined roles of the Levites being put in order — then it becomes our challenge to take the lessons to be learned from the experiences of our nation, and in particular to learn from mistakes.

We live in a post-Holocaust world, in a State-of-Israel and United-Jerusalem world.

While our worst enemies (Romans, Crusaders, Cossacks, Nazis, etc.) are behind us, we still

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have enemies hell-bent on our annihilation.

And yet we also have an army, like the imposing army in the wilderness, that will do everything in its power (with G-d’s help!) to protect our brothers and sisters in Israel and around the world.

We have Torah, more widespread, more readily accessible, more available to people than ever before. We don’t experience Revelation, but we do have the responsibility to view the Torah anew every day. And, thank G-d, between the many translated works that have been published, and the mountains of Torah lectures and information available on the Internet, anyone who can navigate through it all and come away with a tremendous repository of knowledge with which to enhance personal wisdom, understanding, discernment, and spiritual desires.

We have Torah leaders who are heroes in See Torah on page 27

In Bamidbar: Learning to know Hashem rAbbi dAvid etenGoff

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his week’s haftarah portion contains two of the most celebrated pasukim of Sefer Hosea: “And I will betroth (v’arastich) you to Me forever, and I will betroth you to Me with righteousness and with justice and with lovingkindness and with mercy. And I will betroth you to Me with faith, and you shall know the L-rd.” (II:21-22) The three-fold repetition of the Hebrew term “v’arastich” in our verses metaphorically teaches us that Hashem will create a new covenant with klal Yisrael. As such, these verses foretell the time when the intimacy characterized by a loving husband-wife relationship will be completely and permanently restored between the Almighty and our people.

The Maharal of Prague (1512-1609) was one of the great thinkers who underscored the everlasting nature of the bond that will exist

between G-d and our nation: “The connection that will exist in the future between the Holy One blessed be He and the Jewish people will be eternal (yi’yeh l’netzach), [that is,] this link will never cease or be severed. This matter is explained in the comforting words to the Jewish people [that were revealed to them] through His prophets. It is in this sense that the prophet Hosea said: ‘And I will betroth (v’arastich) you to Me forever, and I will betroth you to Me with righteousness and with justice and with lovingkindness and with mercy.’ Behold, the prophet explicitly stated that this connection, [the betrothal] will be everlasting in nature, unlike the original one.”

At this juncture, the Maharal analyzes the essence of the union that will be established between Hashem and the Jewish people. In his opinion, the central features of this relationship are symbolized by the repetition of the phrase “And I will betroth (v’arastich)”: “And in this passage, we find the word, ‘v’arastich’ repeated three times. … [A person must] realize that this future connection entails three different aspects. Firstly, it will be permanent in nature. Secondly, the Jewish people

will cleave to all of the behavioral characteristics (middot) of the Holy One. Lastly, this bond will be all-inclusive (chibur gamur). Even were this relationship to incorporate all of [G-d’s] middot, it is nonetheless possible that that the Jewish people would not cleave to Hashem in a holistic manner. This is the case, since [without Hashem’s promise of precisely this type of relationship, there is a likelihood that] our people would not cleave to Him in great mercy or great kindness – and so, too, with the rest of [Hashem’s] ethical characteristics.”

The Maharal now explicates the manner whereby each reiteration of v’arastich supports the central ideas of the new relationship that will obtain between Hashem and His people: “ ‘And I will betroth (v’arastich) you to Me forever’ proves that the connection will be eternal.

In addition, the text states, ‘And I will betroth you to Me with righteousness and with justice and with loving-kindness and with mercy.’

Each of these qualities is mentioned, since they … encapsulate the middot of Hashem [that the Jewish people will develop and master]. …

Afterwards the text states, ‘And I will betroth you to Me with faith (b’emunah), and you shall

know the L-rd,’ This proves that the new relationship will be all-inclusive.” ased upon a careful reading of our two verses, one may question why Hosea needed to state the third instance of v’arastich, “And I will betroth you to Me with faith,” which focuses upon the chibur gamur motif. After all, would not the second phrase of v’arastich have led one to this conclusion? Apparently the Maharal wrestled with this problem, as well, as he continues with the following keen analysis: “The notion of the new relationship being one of chibur gamur (all-inclusive) is an idea that stands on its own (ma’a’lah bifnei atzmo), since when the text states, ‘And I will betroth you to Me with righteousness and with justice and with loving-kindness and with mercy,’ this only teaches us that the Jewish nation will cleave to the Blessed One with all of these middot. It does not mention, however, that the future relationship between Hashem and our people will be an all-encompassing one. This is the case, since, even if the connection is based upon each of these middot, it is possible See Bamidbar on page 27

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Rabbi JeRemy Rosen

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t comes as no surprise to me that more European countries are trying to make life difficult for Jews in various ways. But how should we react? Is it worth fighting prejudice? Should this be an issue of freedom of religious practice?

Hebron...

Continued from page 26 miliar to you, please take note of the following biographical data concerning this ‘’honorable’’ mayor as noted in the Times of Israel on May 14, 2017: “Abu Shneineh was one of four Palestinian terrorists who on May 2, 1980, attacked a group of Israelis and Jews in a Hebron alley, firing and hurling grenades at them. The attack killed U.S. citizens Tzvi Glatt and Eli HaZe’ev, Canadian Shmuel Marmelstein, and Israelis Hanan Krauthammer, Gershon Klein and Ya’akov Zimmerman. The four terrorists were all sentenced to life in prison, but were released in prisoner exchanges later in the decade.”

All six of the targeted boys were unarmed yeshiva students.

Fatah, the party that ran this new mayor, described the terror attack as ‘’one of the most important battles and acts of bravery of the Fatah movement’’ and ‘’one of the most courageous self-sacrifice operations.’’ Fatah furthermore praised the killers as ‘’heroes’’ and men ‘’of delicate emotions.’’ (United With Israel, May 14, 2017) This election and the subsequent popular acclaim that the killer mayor received from the population of Hebron, should further our support for the brave Jewish community of Hebron and Kiryat Arba who will have to contend with this man and his newly invigorated supporters.

With all this said, may I take this opportunity to wish you all, my dear readers, a meaningful Shavu’ot and Chag Samei’ach.

Torah...

Continued from page 26 their commitment to teaching and sharing, who take stands for what they believe in, and who serve as inspirations to hundreds and thousands of our people in their holy work of being “marbitzei Torah” (those who spread the study of Torah to the four corners of the globe.) We build shuls and schools – all imperfect, but all aiming to provide a space where people can grow, learn and be inspired.

How do we respond to tragedy? Or to horrible mistakes? Do we throw others under the bus, pointing fingers and spreading blame? Or do we try to gather pieces and see where we can go from there? Do we work to turn failure into opportunity?

Perhaps most importantly, do we see and understand the strength that even our small number has? Do we believe with a full heart that G-d is on our side and that our mission is just, right, and true? Do we articulate our trust that the Almighty is watching and waiting for the right moment to bring about our Redemption? Do we view Him as the Compassionate Father in Heaven Who knows what is best for us?

If we can jump on the optimistic bandwagon and take the steps necessary to build on past successes and emerge stronger for disappointments, we will have made the best of the opportunities life sends our way.

If we miss it … well, then, we will have missed it. And wouldn’t that be a shame?

But then what are the boundaries? The increasing attempts to restrict shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter) and ban bris milah (religious circumcision) are creating such a negative climate for Jews that they reinforce the strong arguments for having a homeland where we can practice our religion unimpeded. However, as with many issues of religious practice, it is not that simple, because sometimes they appear to conflict with other moral and ethical imperatives.

There are those who think this is a matter for no compromise. Belgium is a strange little country where rival parties scrap over meagre rewards. It has three separate regions, five provinces, and three official languages. The parliament of French-speaking Wallonia has voted to ban ritual slaughter. Of all the major issues it has to deal with—economic, social and safety—this seems to be its priority. We know it is not really about cruelty to animals., because if it were, then they would ban animal slaughter altogether (which, as my readers know, I am all in favor of, though it’s not going to happen in my lifetime).

Look at the countries which have banned shechita: Switzerland in 1893, Norway in 1930, Nazi Germany in 1933, and Sweden in 1937.

None known for their love of Jews. The EU is now preparing to ban shechita across the board unless animals are stunned, and it will require that kosher slaughtered meat be labelled as such when passed on to the wider market.

The new angle is the requirement to stun an animal before killing it. Up to now Judaism has rejected stunning on the grounds that it doesn’t help animals and actually injures organs which make the animal unacceptable. Anyone who has seen the stunning process in action knows that the failure rate of stunning runs between 10 and 20 percent when equipment is perfectly clean, up-to-date, and free of interference—which it rarely is. Like the electrocution of humans, stunning can take time and cause great pain.

Whereas cutting the supply of oxygen and blood to the brain causes instantaneous loss of consciousness. So, given that we are dealing with prejudice here, how should we react?

One way is to fight it using whatever political influence one has. The only way of doing this with a chance of success in Europe nowadays is to ally with the Muslim communities on matters of religious freedom. Which Jews have done hitherto. It is votes that decide policies. The trouble is that more and more Muslim authorities are now considering permitting stunning, so Jewish power on this issue is even further diluted. uslim religious slaughter, called dhabihah, is similar to shechita but far less strict or rigorous, so that kosher slaughter meets Muslim standards, but not vice-versa.

The Jewish market is relatively small. After slaughter, animals are examined, and if found defective in some way that matters in Jewish law, they are usually sold to non-Jewish butchers. So too are parts of the animal we are not allowed to eat. Labelling meat as coming from

M

Bamidbar...

Continued from page 26 that we would not experience it through total mercy. Therefore, the prophet proclaims, “And I will betroth you to Me with faith,” since this phrase suggests the concept of a complete and total connection [to Hashem]. As such, the relationship will be infused with total mercy and kindness, for that is the true meaning of emunah in regards to an [authentically] total union (chibur gamur) [with the Almighty].”

Chazal established the yearly calendar in such a manner as to ensure that the public reading of our haftarah frequently precedes the Festival of Shavuot. In their divinely inspired wisdom, they understood that there is a

Jewish sources could drive down its value on the wider market and that would raise the cost of local kosher meat.

The other option, as already happens in those Aryan Northern European states that ban shechita, is to import kosher meat from areas that do not ban it. Or, of course, one could move either east to Israel or west to Britain or the USA, where there is no problem.

My brother-in-law Dr. Henri Rosenberg has campaigned for a different approach. He argues that there are strong halachic grounds for allowing stunning. Instead of campaigning against stunning, which threatens our common alliance with Islam, it would be better to accept the new reality. Indeed, this debate took place first in response to the ban by Hitler (Y.Sh). The prominent rabbis of Eastern Europe were consulted. Although there was a case to be made that stunning did not contravene Jewish law, the overwhelming body of opinion was that one should not make concessions on principle, for fear that showing weakness would encourage other demands. In other words, a meta-legal argument rather than a legal one.

Since we are not dealing with a Hitler, but a lower and less pernicious form of prejudice, my brother-in-law argues one ought to consider making concessions rather than face defeat. While I respect his opinion and his guts in supporting his position in public, I want to present an alternative point of view.

We Jews have always split between the fighters and the compromisers. Israel is usually associated with fighters and the diaspora with compromisers (or appeasers, depending on whose side you take). here is a principle in Jewish Law called chanifa — literally, a law against groveling or sycophancy. The Talmud discusses it in tractate Sotah (41 a&b) in the context of standing up to Roman authority. This is supported by some great authorities from the Medieval Rabbeynu Tam to the more recent Rav Moshe Feinstein. Should one grovel or fight, compromise or stand firm on principle? Will we look weak if we concede, even on issues that are not essential?

Perhaps the Europeans should consider a campaign of civil disobedience, fighting restrictions on our religious practices on the principle that those restrictions are denying our human rights.

In 1936, Poland banned shechita. The Bobov Chasidim led a campaign of resistance—a boycott that hurt the government’s revenues and had Jews going without meat until the powers relented.

There is a similar problem with circumcision. Would it make any difference if children were anesthetized? There is a move in Norway to ban circumcision of boys under the age of 16 and several other measures which have been

blasted as an attack on minorities. Advocates claim that circumcision results in mental and physical harm to children and is a serious violation of human rights. purious arguments about psychological damage are childish. We might as well ban parenthood for the psychological damage parents do to their children. Besides, we circumcised Jews seem to be doing pretty well. And I haven’t heard anyone complain that it is his brit that has ruined his sex live.

The other optioThe problem there is that we insist on circumcision within eight days, whereas in Islam the ritual is done much later, around 13. I bet no one dares suggest that that’s why Muslims are more prone to violent jihad! And there’s absolutely no comparison to the horrific female mutilation (it is not circumcision, by definition) where a pleasure-giving organ is removed altogether. The arguments on both issues, shechita and circumcision, are less scientific than ideological.

To complicate the issue, there are problematic aspects of shechita that apply even where anti-Semitism is no argument. I would like to see the rabbinates in the forefront of urging humane methods of the sort that Dr. Temple Grandin advocates. Last week, Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has decided to put its foot down, banning unacceptable hoists and shackling for slaughterhouses in Israel and for imported shechita. Why, you might well ask, didn’t the Chief Rabbinate do it ? Sadly we know the reason why. Cruelty to animals, though a biblical law, is universally minimized in many very Orthodox communities.

On the other hand a Califorinia judge has just thrown out a human rights suit against Chabad over swinging chickens over people’s heads in the ceremony of Kapparot before Yom Kippur. The judge refused to allow the suit on the grounds that one ought not to ban a longstanding religious custom. I wish he hadn’t. Kapparot is quite unnecessary and cruel to chickens.

Sometimes we need to be rescued from our own blindness. But this illustrates perfectly the difference between Europe and the USA. One culture respects Judaism (perhaps too much); the other does not.

The arguments in Europe are clearly political rather than humane. I wonder if we should just ignore them, instead of trying to plea. Why would we want to live in such countries anyway? When empires are intolerant of different religions or ideologies, they have always declined. When they have been tolerant, they have flourished.

Mainland Europe’s antipathy towards Judaism is a sure sign of its moral decline. Time to move. jeremyrosen.blogspot.com

close association between this portion from the Prophets and the giving of the Torah on Shavuot. Based upon the Maharal’s illuminating insights, I believe we are in a better position to understand the nature of this connection.

As noted, the Maharal emphasizes that our mastery of Hashem’s ethical characteristics leads to chibur gamur, our close union with Him. This is congruent with Rabbi Meir’s analysis in Mesechet Avot d’Rabbi Natan that discusses the final words of our pasukim: “Rabbi Meir said: ‘Why does the prophet [mention righteousness (tzedek), justice (mishpat), loving-kindness (chesed) and mercy (rachamim)] and immediately follow this with the phrase, ‘and you shall know the L-rd’?”

Surely this is coming to teach us that everyone who has mastered these middot will have close knowledge of the Omnipresent one [a strong

personal relationship will exist between such individuals and the Master of the Universe].

(Mesechtot Katanot, Mesechet Avot d’Rabbi Natan, Nuscha I, Chapter 37) If we integrate the approaches of Rabbi Meir and the Maharal, we discover that the link between Hosea’s prophecy and Shavuot becomes quite clear: Both Hashem and the Jewish people long for a strong and intimate relationship that will abide for evermore. Since this is the case, we must do everything in our power to forge this bond by demonstrating our worthiness to be a full partner in this union.

As such, just as Hashem practices tzedek, mishpat, chesed and rachamim, so, too, must we; for, in truth, the Torah was given to us to enable us to “know the L-rd.” May this time come soon and in our days. V’chane yihi ratzon.

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should we continue to fight stunning, in order to not show weakness, or accept the new reality?

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THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

Coping with attacks on shechita and bris milah

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Firsthand from June 1967: ‘I have a feeling war will start tomorrow’

By Abraham Rabinovich

Five days before the Six-Day War broke out in June 1967, the American reporter Abraham Rabinovich arrived in Jerusalem. When the war ended, he decided to remain and write an account of Israel’s lightning victory. Over the next two years he interviewed close to 300 soldiers and civilians.

In this excerpt for JTA from the 50th anniversary edition of “The Battle for Jerusalem: An Unintended Conquest,” Rabinovich recounts the days leading up to the war’s start and the decisions of the Israeli politicians and generals on the ground.

The date for war was fixed on Friday, June 2, 1967, the day after Prime Minister Levi Eshkol relinquished the defense portfolio to Israel’s military icon, Moshe Dayan. For two weeks, Eshkol had blocked his generals’ demand for a strike against Egypt, but the signing of a defense pact between Jordan and Egypt had finally convinced him that war was inevitable.

At a meeting with Eshkol and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, Dayan said that if the cabinet on Sunday approved a preemptive strike, the air force would carry it out the following morning. He rejected as irrelevant the army’s plans for attacking the Gaza Strip and the coastal guns overlooking the Tiran Straits, which Egypt had closed to Israelbound shipping.

The army’s primary task, he said, was the destruction of Egypt’s tank divisions, the core of its army. The brazenness of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in sending his army into Sinai, banishing a U.N. buffer force, and closing the straits meant that he no longer feared Israel. Therefore, Dayan argued, his challenge must be met head-on.

The army would bring the Egyptian tank formations to battle and leave the Straits of Tiran and Gaza Strip for later. Rabin said that nothing would

be done to provoke the Jordanians in order not to draw forces away from the Egyptian front. Jerusalem’s Old City was on no one’s agenda.

Air Force Commander Motti Hod had never revealed details of the preemptive strike to his colleagues on the general staff. Even now, at a meeting Saturday night, June 3, he revealed only one element: zero hour. The planes would strike at 7:45 am. Intelligence knew that the Egyptian air force mounted patrols from first light until 7 am in anticipation of a possible Israeli attack out of the rising sun. At 7:45 the Egyptian pilots would be back at their bases having breakfast. Senior commanders lived off base and arrived about 8 am. They would still be in their cars when the planes struck. At zero hour, Israel’s armored divisions would shed camouflage netting and cross into Sinai.

Dayan, in his first press conference as defense minister that Saturday night, declared that the time for a spontaneous response to the closing of the straits had passed. A diplomatic solution, he said, would now be sought. At an English-language newspaper in Jordanian Jerusalem, skeptical journalists joked that they should run Dayan’s soothing remarks under the headline “Israel about to attack.”

Sunday morning, at the crucial cabinet meeting, several ministers asked that a decision be put off, but for the first time Eshkol came out clearly for war. Washington’s objection to an Israeli firststrike, while officially still in place, had softened, he said, in the wake of the Jordanian-Egyptian pact. Washington had not flashed a green light, “but the light was no longer red.”

Dayan warned that if the Egyptians struck first (“to do to us what we want to do to them”), one of their first targets would be the nuclear reactor at Dimona, which the Egyptians believed was about

to come on line. “Our only chance of winning the war is to initiate it and shape it,” he said. The cabinet voted 12-2 for military action.

Gen. Hod summoned his base commanders after the cabinet decision and informed them that the long-mooted attack would be launched in the morning. In the first wave, 160 planes would attack. Only 12 planes would remain behind to guard Israel’s airspace.

Gen. Uzi Narkiss, commanding the Jordanian front, met Sunday night with his brigade commanders for a final briefing. He had been informed of the cabinet’s decision but gave no hint of it to his officers. On a wall map, an intelligence officer reviewed the Jordanian deployment. Five infantry brigades on the West Bank had been reinforced by an additional brigade, held in reserve 10 miles east of Jerusalem. Troops had been shifted in substantial numbers from rear encampments to the front line and Jordan’s two armored brigades were poised to cross the Jordan River to the West Bank. A large Iraqi force was expected to take up positions threatening Israel’s narrow waist within a few days.

At Narkiss’ request, his brigade commanders rose in turn to outline their operational plans. The commander of the Jerusalem Brigade, Col. Eliezer Amitai, was restrained. The Jordanian army was considered the best in the Arab world. In the War of Independence, the Israeli army had failed to dislodge it from any fortified position.

Israel’s Jerusalem Brigade had more than twice as many men as the Jordanians opposite them in the city but it was a hometown unit of reservists, many of them over 30. Contingency planning called for an elite regular army unit to break through stout Jordanian defenses to relieve the 120-man garrison on Mount Scopus, a mile

behind Jordanian lines, if it was threatened. But it was doubtful whether elite units could be spared for the task in a multi-front war.

At an Israeli position on Mount Zion, adjacent to the Old City, a platoon commander challenged one of his men to chess Sunday evening. There was little conversation as they concentrated on the board. Suddenly the officer looked up and said, “I have a feeling the war is going to start tomorrow.”

At Tel Nof air base, pilots were wakened at 3:45 am on Monday, June 5. Filing into the briefing room, their eyes focused on the terse announcement on the blackboard: “Zero Hour 0745.” When all were seated, the squadron leader said, “Good morning. We go to war with Egypt today.”

In nearby orange groves, Col. Motta Gur’s reserve paratroop brigade had spent the night in anticipation of boarding troop carriers for a jump into Sinai. An officer rose before dawn and looked expectantly towards the air base but could see no sign of unusual activity.

The troops were wakened at six, and the orchards were soon bustling. The men were making coffee when a succession of roars erupted from the airbase. As the sound intensified, planes began to rise above the tree line — dozens of them following each other into the sky like children playing tag. Low-slung with bombs and rockets, the aircraft wove themselves into formations of four and headed southwest at treetop level. At the airfield, a mechanic wept as the planes swept past him, wave after wave, glinting in the sky like a sword unsheathed. In the orchards the paratroopers watched in silence, awed by what they were seeing and by what they knew must come. They then drifted off to write postcards home.

“We’re seeing the start of the war,” wrote one.

“We hope it’s finished soon. We’ll do what we can to finish it soon.”

In the afternoon, Col. Gur was informed that the fast-moving tank divisions in Sinai would overrun the paratroopers’ planned target. The brigade was being sent instead to Jerusalem to break through to Mount Scopus. No one in authority mentioned the Old City. Some, however, were beginning to think about it.

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In Memory Of Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky

Since Chabad-Lubavitch opened a tefillin stand at the Western Wall on June 15, 1967, millions of Jews have since put on tefillin there, transforming emotions felt at one of Judaism’s holiest sites into action.

Mark Neyman/Israel Government Press Office

Temple Mount’s retaining wall unimpeded for the first time in two millennia.

The first morning after Shavuot, four Chabad-Lubavitch Chassidim stationed themselves at the wall with tefillin, offering throngs of Jews the opportunity to transform their raw emotions into concrete action. The men were on the front lines of Chabad’s newly-launched tefillin campaign, which the Chabad Rebbe— Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, z”l—had initiated just days before war started.

It had been on Saturday, June 3—the Shabbat prior to the Six-Day War—that Rabbi Schneerson first directed his followers to put on

tefillin with Jewish men around the world, placing special emphasis on soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces. In calling on soldiers to perform the mitzvah, the Rebbe quoted the verse, “the nations of the world shall see that the name of G-d is upon you, and they will fear you,” adding that the Talmud explains that this “refers to tefillin.”

With the war over and the Kotel liberated, hundreds of men lined up to don the black boxes, wrap their forearms in the soft leather straps, and connect their hearts and minds in the service of G-d and to their ancestors. By the end of November 1967, the Boston Globe reported, “more than

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400,000 members of the Jewish faith are estimated to have observed the commandment to wear Phylacteries—tefillin in Hebrew—at the city’s Western, formerly known as the ‘Wailing,’ Wall.”

Rabbi Yosef Gopin, a 16-year-old boy at the time, spent the war in Jerusalem helping his older sister while his brother-in-law was at the front. Like Blau, Gopin came to the Western Wall for the first time on the day after Shavuot.

“I saw a Lubavitcher approach a group of high-ranking officers and offer them to put on tefillin. The most senior one put them on and suddenly ran to the Kotel and started crying.

Then he came back and gave an order to the officers with him to put on tefillin and pray as well.”

The Jewish people’s surprise victory in the face of overwhelming odds stunned the world.

At the same time, Jews everywhere were elated—a feeling heightened and given expression to by the poignant images of Israeli paratroopers weeping at the Kotel, staring at it in awe and wonder.

Although Jews had received various degrees of access to the Western Wall prior to 1948, all of its rulers—from the Romans to the Mamluks to the Ottomans to the British—had placed strictures on what Jews could and could not do at the holy site.

“I remember powerful but conflicting emotions converging. Not only sitting with my father in anguish about the possibility of another Holocaust [before the war], but also standing at the Western Wall and seeing him become a religious Jew again,” author Yossi Klein Halevi recently told the Israeli publication Fathom.

Klein Halevi’s father was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who carried the experience with him and grappled with his relationship with G-d, “yet at the Western Wall my father made his peace with G-d, and became a devout Jew. What happened to my father also played out in the Jewish people.”

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By Dovid Margolin, Chabad.org It was the morning of June 7, 1967, the third day of the Six-Day War. After a long night of battle on the streets of Jerusalem, an eerie quiet enveloped the ancient city.

With fresh orders to take the Old City, Israeli paratroopers blew open the great wooden doors of Lion’s Gate and entered, making their way through the narrow alleys to the Temple Mount, site of the First and Second Temples.

Despite the Temple Mount’s holiness, it was not the Jewish soldiers’ true destination. They sought the Kotel Hamaaravi, the Western Wall, where Jews had prayed for 2,000 years, but where no Jew has been allowed during the past two decades of Jordanian rule.

Finding a path, they descended a small staircase to the wall below.

The alley in front of the Western Wall was barely 15 feet wide, but was soon flooded with Israeli paratroopers—religious and non-religious, kipah-wearers and kibbutzniks. Photos and film of that day depicted battle-hardened men breaking down in tears as they encountered the Kotel, burying their faces in the enormous Herodian stones. A shofar was blown. Soldiers prayed, even those not used to doing so.

One of the paratroopers, the late Knesset member and activist Hanan Porat, remembered a non-religious kibbutznik asking him what prayer to recite. “Say Shema,” Porat answered him, recounting the moment in the 2007 PBS documentary “Six Days in June.”

“I do not know how to say it,” the young responded.

“I told him to repeat after me, and I said ‘Shema!’ and he shouted ‘Shema!’ recalled Porat.

“Believe me, I do not know if I ever heard a Shema like that in my life.”

Less than a week later, on Shavuot, the Western Wall plaza opened to the public, allowing Jews to approach the remnants of the

THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

Recapturing kotel led to a spiritual renewal

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President Trump in Israel: Day of historic firsts Jeff Dunetz politics to go

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efore he arrived in Tel Aviv on Monday, many Israel supporters were angry at President Trump because of the disagreement with the advance team about the status of the Kotel being a part of Israel and because the promised U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem was not happening yet. However, by the time he left, supporters of Israel may have still been disappointed about the embassy remaining in Tel Aviv but were ecstatic about the president’s words and, more importantly, his actions in Israel.

President Trump’s visit was more than an American leader visiting his country’s closest ally in the Middle East, it was a day of historic firsts, with an undercurrent of contrast between this president and his predecessor.

On the tarmac of Ben Gurion airport, Israeli President Rivlin opened the welcoming ceremony with “Mr. President, we are happy to see that America is back in the area — America is back again.” This was not only

meant as a welcoming to Trump, but a reminder that President Obama pivoted away from traditional U.S. allies such as Israel and the more moderate Sunni states, like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, and toward the Shia terrorist state of Iran.

President Trump visited Israel in his first foreign trip since he took office, something no other president had done before, an honor that was not lost on the Prime Minister Netanyahu in his welcoming speech.

“Your visit here, Mr. President, is truly historic,” Netanyahu said. “Never before has the first foreign trip of a president of the United States included a visit to Israel. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for this powerful expression of your friendship to Israel.”

Netanyahu went on to praise Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia the day before, which signaled a 180-degree shift from Obama’s weak-on-terror pro-Iran policies.

“Mr. President, yesterday in Saudi Arabia you delivered a forceful speech of clarity and conviction. You called on all nations to drive out terrorists and extremists. You called for

the forces of civilization to confront the forces of barbarism.”

Netanyahu also pointed out another first: that Trump’s commute from Riyadh was the first publicly reported airplane trip directly from Saudi Arabia to Israel. nd then another first: No other President had visited the Kotel while in office. Thus, Trump’s visit to the Western Wall can be seen as a de facto acceptance of Israel’s control of the holy site. Donning a kippah, the president received a lesson about the site’s holiness as he entered the Kotel plaza. He walked up to the wall, took a moment to reflect, and stuck a message in the wall.

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Later, the president and FLOTUS found themselves in the prime minister’s residence.

Before the two leaders met they did the traditional “photo-op/some words” in which Netanyahu was effusive in praise of Trump’s criticism of Iran. Statements made after their meeting made news, with Netanyahu saying that “I also look forward to working closely with you to advance peace in our region, because you have noted so succinctly that common dangers are turning former enemies into partners. And that’s where we see something new and potentially something very promising.

“It won’t be simple. But for the first time in many years — and, Mr. President, for the first time in my lifetime — I see a real hope for change.”

Trump answered by thanking the prime minister for his hard efforts toward making peace: “I believe that a new level of partnership is possible and will happen — one that will bring greater safety to this region, greater security to the United States, and greater prosperity to the world. This includes a renewed effort at peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and I thank the Prime MinisSee Trump on page 31

Crisis shouldn’t mask new opportunities for peace Ben Cohen Viewpoint

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y any standards, it was an extraordinary week for U.S.-Israel relations—and that was before President Donald Trump even arrived in Israel for his official visit.

It began with what sounded like a brawl between American and Israeli officials laying the groundwork for the president’s visit. Irritated by an Israeli request that Prime Minister Netanyahu accompany Trump on his visit to the Kotel in Jerusalem — an image that would send the unmistakable signal that the new U.S. administration regards a united Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital — David Berns, a political counselor at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, reportedly responded that the Jewish holy site is in fact “part of the West Bank.” The Israelis were stunned and said as much to the White House; by the end of the day, the White House had clarified Berns’s comment did not reflect “the position

of the administration” on Jerusalem’s status.

But what is the position of the administration? More confusion on this point came the following day. At a press briefing on Trump’s itinerary in Israel, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was asked — twice — whether he regarded the Western Wall as part of Israel. McMaster declined to answer the question by describing it as a policy decision.

In the same briefing, McMaster confirmed that “no Israeli leaders” would accompany Trump at the Western Wall, encouraging speculation that the U.S. doesn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. McMaster revealed Trump would visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance center—but only, it was reported later, for 15 minutes—and made no mention of Trump’s much-anticipated speech at the ancient Jewish fortress of Masada, which was ultimately scrapped by the Trump team, reportedly due to logistical and weather challenges.

How, then, did this high-profile spat between longtime allies not dominate the week’s headlines around the world? It’s because the week was also, by any standard, an extraordinary one for U.S. politics in general.

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ith all the flair of a political thriller, and just hours after McMaster’s comment, Israel suddenly found itself inserted into a story that was tearing its way across the networks, as the New York Times revealed that the deeply sensitive intelligence Trump is said to have shared with Russian officials had originally been supplied by the Israelis. Then came the revelation that James Comey, the FBI chief fired by Trump, had written up the notes of a meeting in which Trump reportedly asked him to drop the investigation into the contacts between former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the Russian government—the very issue behind Flynn’s rapid departure from the White House.

The cumulative effect of all this for the Trump administration is terrible, on fronts both foreign and domestic. It suggests, especially to Europeans—even those who tend to give Trump the benefit of the doubt—that all their worst fears about his presidency are coming true, and that the man who roasted Hillary Clinton over her email server is even more careless and indiscreet now that he’s in office. This is not the message Trump should

be sending to a continent where public distaste for military action is already widespread and entrenched, particularly when he is simultaneously asking NATO member states to increase their budgetary contributions.

Much the same argument could be made in the context of Japan and South Korea, both stalwart allies currently living under the shadow of the North Korean threat, who are nevertheless deeply nervous about Trump’s ability to handle Kim Jong-un. It might even extend to Israel, whose government seems unable to grasp what Trump’s policy agenda actually is, and whose intelligence services are likely thinking about how to present important intelligence to the Americans in the future—in a sufficiently “Trump-proof” manner.

But this shouldn’t lead us to conclude the U.S.-Israel relationship will end up as one more casualty of Trump’s unprecedented presidency. There is a natural tendency among political journalists to concentrate on the policy flips and hyperbolic statements that make politics so compelling, rather than upon the duller consistencies that make our democratic system more or less reliable.

See Peace on page 31

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Luach Fri. May 26 • 1 Sivan Parsha Bamidbar Candlelighting: 7:57 pm Havdalah: 8:58 pm

Mon. May 29 • 4 Sivan Memorial Day

Tues. May 30 • 5 Sivan Erev Shavuot Candlelighting: 8:00 pm

Wed. May 31 • 6 Sivan Shavuot Candlelighting: 9:01 pm

Thurs. June 1 • 7 Sivan Havdalah: 9:02 pm

Fri. June 2 • 8 Sivan Parsha Nasso Candlelighting: 8:02 pm Havdalah: 9:03 pm

Sun. June 5 • 10 Sivan Celebrate Israel Parade

Fifth Ave. from 57 to 74 streets, Manhattan 11 am to 4 pm ujafedny.org/celebrateisrael

‘Concert with a Message’

after the parade, in Central Park (see ad on page 35)

Fri. June 9 • 15 Sivan Parsha Beha’alocha Candlelighting: 8:07 pm Havdalah: 9:07 pm

Five Towns times from Hebcal.com Havdalah is 42 minutes

Peace…

Continued from page 30 From the latter vantage point, there are some key points worth emphasizing about current American-Israeli ties.

First, Trump isn’t the first president to have waded into a disagreement with Israel.

One can think of numerous clashes during the last 50 years, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, which the relationship has readily survived.

Second, it’s clear there are a variety of voices within the administration speaking on this issue, with U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman following up McMaster’s remarks with assurances that, in their view, the Western Wall belongs to Israel. This heightens the insecurity that only Trump knows what he is really thinking (and rethinking), and we should not expect this to change while he’s in office.

Third, it should be remembered that many on the political right in Israel made the mistake of taking Trump’s campaign rhetoric at face value. They might not have been as shocked by this week’s events had they not suffered from these delusions in the first place.

Fourth, does anyone doubt that Trump, once in Israel, will use his showmanship to publicly soothe the rattled bilateral relationship? That his immediate goal is to leave the Israelis asking themselves what they were worried about?

For as long as Trump is consumed by his domestic crisis, it is unlikely a final deal between the Palestinians and Israel will remain anything more than a lofty ambition. But Trump’s crisis doesn’t change the fact that there is a realignment in the region between Israel and the Arab states — and potentially the Palestinians — based on shared interests, from economic development to confronting the Iranian threat. These opportunities really do form the basis for a meaningful peace process — one, moreover, that won’t depend on the fate of a single president.

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Bring your family & friends to Chabad and hear the Ten Commandments

wednesday, may 31, 2017 @ Chabad of the Five Towns 74 Maple Avenue, Cedarhurst

Services begin at 10:00 am Reading of the Ten Commandments at 11:00 am followed by a delicious Ice cream Party & Cheesecake / Blintz Bar 5:30 pm 2nd Ten Commandments Reading and Ice Cream party for those unable to attend earlier

ThuRsday, June 1 · 5:30 pm famIly GaRden paRTy

Join us for a garden dessert party in honor of Shavuot.

Enjoy sweets and tea with your Chabad family.

At the home of Jonathon & Shana Rabinow 438 Summit Avenue, Cedarhurst

Tuesday, may 30 all nIGhT leaRn-a-Thon Women: 11:30 pm - 1:00 am Men: Beginning at Midnight Boys & Teen learning!

Light Refreshments

All are welcome! Regardless of background or affiliation!

For more information please call Chabad at: (516) 295-2478 Visit us on the web @ www.chabadfivetowns.com

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Continued from page 30 ter for his commitment to pursuing the peace process. He’s working very hard at it. It’s not easy.

“I’ve heard it’s one of the toughest deals of all, but I have a feeling that we’re going to get there eventually, I hope.”

There was yet one more White House first.

As the Whitehouse.gov website was about to steam Monday’s post-meeting comments by Trump and Netanyahu, it splashed a screen notice that the location of the meeting was Jerusalem, Israel (see photo on previous page). To my knowledge no president has ever recognized that Jerusalem was in Israel. an President Trump negotiate a peace between Israel and the Palestinians — or, as he called it, “the ultimate deal?”

I’d strongly advise you never to put money on anyone being able to convince the Palestinians that peace is worthwhile (Arafat had a great deal and walked away, Olmert gave Abbas a similar deal and he said no). But this may be the time.

President Trump is the master of the deal.

And the closeness between Netanyahu and Trump may help. One of the reasons the talks directed by Obama, Kerry and Indyk talks failed was that Netanyahu justifiably didn’t trust them. Now, it seems, Netanyahu trusts Trump.

After President Trump met with Palestinian Authority President Abbas on Tuesday, his statement lacked the positive spirit embodied in his reparks following a meeting

31 THE JEWISH STAR May 26, 2017 • 1 Sivan, 5777

Trump…

with Netanyahu. It’s talk of Abbas’ commitment to peace was followed by a lecture on the horrors of terrorism.

Trump’s Israel trip ended with an address at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem which may have been his best speech in the Holy Land (you’ll find the full text on page 8). He began by recognizing the historic connection between Jerusalem, the Kotel, and the Jews.

“Jerusalem is a sacred city. Its beauty, splendor, and heritage are like no other place on Earth. What a heritage. What a heritage.

The ties of the Jewish people to this Holy Land are ancient and eternal. They date back thousands of years, including the reign of King David whose star now flies proudly on Israel’s white and blue flag. …

“Yesterday … I laid a wreath at Yad Vashem, honoring, remembering, and mourning the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. I pledged right then and there what I pledge again today: the words ‘never again’.” …

“I stand in awe of the accomplishments of the Jewish people, and I make this promise to you: My administration will always stand with Israel.”

While Israel had heard from other administrations that they would always stand with Israel, for some reason this time it seemed more believable. Eight years of President Obama’s anti-Israel policies may have stretched out the bond, or even weakened it — but it didn’t break the bond.

A new president, with a commitment to Israel’s well-being and future that goes beyond campaign lip-service meant to get donations from supporters of Israel, will actually strengthen that bond.

Malik Haleem Swinton, 38, of Las Vegas, was deployed to Germany with the Army and sustained injuries in Bosnia and Kosovo, from jumping out of vehicles and helicopters. He also suffered psychological and emotional wounds he can’t speak about because of their classified nature.

Malik left the military in 2001 and enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, where he began having mood swings, insomnia and attitude problems. He thought about suicide. Yet he didn’t connect his state of mind with his military service until 2004, when he sought medical help. He resisted doctors’ diagnoses until 2012, when he sought treatment at a VA hospital and to his relief, learned that his records would be kept confidential.

It took Malik two years to apply and be accepted to Heroes to Heroes, but he believes the wait was worth it. “Now, finally, I can talk to people who have had experiences similar to mine, people who don’t judge me and who offer camaraderie and fellowship,� he says.

Edwin Henderson, 36, of Houston, was deployed to Iraq with the Army. He says his physical injuries were minor in comparison to psychological issues. He saw a good friend get shot in the head, and another lose his leg. “Certain images have stayed with me and continue to haunt me,� he says.

Edwin had thoughts of suicide, and came to feel he had lost his relationship with G-d. Now, the former Bible student who once aspired to be a minister says the Israel trip has “awakened in me a recharge. It’s like G-d saying, ‘Look, I created you for something more than what you think you were put on this Earth for.’ I’m still on a journey of trying to figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing, but being [in Israel]

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‘Midnite’ shopp ers crowd Cedarhurst

An estimated 4,000 cial streets of Cedarhurstshoppers poured onto the commeron motzei Shabbos, tive atmosphere creating a fesas of “Black Friday� they celebrated the American — on a Saturday tradition night. “The event was a great success,� proclaimed Teri Schure, See Cedarhurst on page 24

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for respect Rabbi Chanina, for were it not fare of the government, th 240 27th alive.� one another nation that for swallow NOVEMBER you for this blessed would th to “proclaim SEE AD 26th SUNDAY, We -thank G-d:8PM MIDNIGHT Eternal the Biblical command reality INSIDE 26th SATURDAY, 25 translated into D! for all the inhabitants thereof.�created , NOVEMBER years has NOVEMBER KED WEEKEN the land that has FRIDAY, SUPER SALE! SATURDAY liberty throughout our constitutional government ONE JAM-PAC justice and MIDNIGHT MADNESSIC EVENTS IN We thank you for of democracy, freedom, American ideals religion or national origin.

TWO FANTAST and fostered the very dangerous regardless of race, equality for all, We know that we are living in from without, are threatened from within, Almighty G-d: of these blessings and times, when all and unimaginable brutality, and violence, putby forces of terror the seeds of bigotry, hatred by those who sow our way of life at risk. a government ting our lives and Dear G-d: Help us to form strength; And so we pray, with sound strategy and steadyof compasus acts which will protectus with words of wisdom and safety peace and harmony, which will unite will thereby bring all of humankind. sion; and which our beloved America and to to and well-being Amen.

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A key element of the Heroes to Heroes program is pairing U.S. veterans with their Israeli counterparts.

Adam Stufflebeam, 23, an Indianapolis native, is a former IDF lone soldier (those without family members living in Israel). Now a student at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Adam was connected with Heroes to Heroes through an organization he volunteers for, Reservists On Duty, which sends Israeli soldiers to America to speak about Israel and to counter the BDS movement. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A lot of these [U.S. veterans] never met Jews before, which is my purpose in being here,â&#x20AC;? Adam says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re coming to Israel [in part] to talk with Israeli soldiers who can answer their questionsâ&#x20AC;Ś.To see these guys who have been through so much emotionally, to watch them grow, even throughout the day, to see their faces when we walked up to the Kotel (Western Wall), has been amazing.â&#x20AC;?

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over time, I began to self-medicate.â&#x20AC;?

Luke was medically retired in 2013 due to depression and PTSD. He lost not only his military career, but also his marriage. His parents saw a Heroes to Heroes interview on Mike Huckabeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talk show, and convinced him to try the program. â&#x20AC;&#x153;On that first trip to Israel,â&#x20AC;? Luke says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I went into the Jordan River [to be baptized], seeing no future for me, and came out of the water with a speck of hope on the horizon. And through the process of being able to come back to Israel and work with the other Heroes to Heroes teams, that speck has grown. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m feeling hopeful now. I take enjoyment in things now.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;What makes Israel special,â&#x20AC;? he adds, â&#x20AC;&#x153;is the fact that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t deny thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something unique about this place â&#x20AC;Ś you see the culture and the heritage of the people, and the tie-in of God in thisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the political history since 1948, the history of the last 3,000 years. To see Israel as a nation is to see that thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something at play here that defies natural history. This is the essential catalyst for getting guys like me to begin to feel again.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘

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A firefighter views Friday. A report a wildfire that broke out near Jerusalem from Israel: Page on 2.

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The Jewish Star With fire trucks bers seeing action donated by the Young Israel of Woodmere and in The shul raised Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arson war, the YIW plans its mem$125,000 between to donate two more. enough, with a Friday JNF passing the envelopeUSA matching grant, to buy afternoon and Monday â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a $250,000 truck. to fund a second The Jewish Star Now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s truck, and Rabbi late Hershel Billet told The YIW has beenTuesday that he expected that and when the rockets helping in the fire-fighting would happen. arena â&#x20AC;&#x153;since the started falling,â&#x20AC;? ed by the shul and Carmel fire, he said, with ment as they can two by individual members. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Israelone truck previously donatget.

JNF developmentMissles can create more fire thanneeds as much fire equpia pyromaniac.â&#x20AC;? officer Ariel Kotler, AM on Monday, reporting from said Israel on JM in â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not lookingthat he saw a YIW firetruck deployed the for kavod,â&#x20AC;? Rabbi el.â&#x20AC;? He said that Billet said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The last week. efforts would be goal is to help fires, who are numerous undertaken soon Israto assist and located in In an email to many communities. victims of the number of people YIW members of Monday, Rabbi injured and homes Billet pointed to â&#x20AC;&#x153;From time to the large destroyed. time we have â&#x20AC;&#x153;Now is one of those times. We been called to stand with Israel,â&#x20AC;? have always stood â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is a tremendous he said. need for firefighting tall as a community.â&#x20AC;? have enough trucks ing that the trucks and many that they have equipment. Israel does not are antiquated,â&#x20AC;? being acquired he said, addare state-of-the-art.

To contribue, visit support.jnf.org/g oto/yiwemergenc y

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brings me back to when I was in school, to before Iraq.â&#x20AC;?

Johnny Turner, 38, of Saginaw, Texas, was in Iraq with the Marines. He survived a blast, but suffered a back injury and deafness in his left ear. He says he â&#x20AC;&#x153;saw a lot of my Marine buddies die in front of me. I often feel guilty that I made it home and they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.â&#x20AC;?

After returning from Iraq, he says his guilt became so acute he â&#x20AC;&#x153;attempted suicide, drank, did a lot of crazy things, because I was trying to take my life.â&#x20AC;?

A friend recommended Heroes to Heroes, and Johnny was accepted. He says his â&#x20AC;&#x153;ahaâ&#x20AC;? moment in Israel came upon visiting Capernaum, near where Jesus is believed to have preached the Sermon on the Mount. Johnny says he broke down in tears when he realized he was standing where Jesus walked and taught. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That moment was the best,â&#x20AC;? he says, struggling to compose himself. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This trip has helped me so much. It makes me want to get even closer to the Lord, and it makes me want to do anything I can to help Heroes to Heroes.â&#x20AC;?

Harrison Manyoma, 40, of Houston, spent his first tour of duty with the U.S. Army in Korea. When the Iraq War started, he re-enlisted for four more years. In Iraq, he was injured by a suicide car bomb. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When I got back home to the States things started to affect my life,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I lost my marriage, my [relationship with my] kidsâ&#x20AC;ŚI had PTSD, but didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know it. I got to a point where I thought suicide was my only way out of living the worthless life I thought I was living.â&#x20AC;?

Harrison says he literally had the gun in his hand, ready to end his life, when he received the phone call that saved him. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Two coaches from Heroes to Heroes were on the line, calling to tell me about their organization and inviting me on a journey of healing,â&#x20AC;? he recalls. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I listened to what they had to say and put the gun down.â&#x20AC;?

Now a Heroes to Heroes coach himself, Harrison vividly remembers his first trip to the Western Wall, in 2012. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I placed my hands on the stones and was sincere with prayer,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I felt a burning sensation in my hand and in my mind, my heart and my body. [Heroes to Heroes founder] Judy [Isaacson Schaffer] looked at me and said, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not the same man.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; She was right. I was completely transformed.â&#x20AC;?

Luke Gaffney, 36, of Union Springs, N.Y., is also a coach with Heroes to Heroes.

Luke joined the Marines and served two tours of duty in Iraq. His first deployment to Iraq came immediately after his brotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suicide, leaving him no time to deal with the loss.

During his next tour, his company lost 14 men. Upon returning to the U.S., he says he â&#x20AC;&#x153;began having issues. â&#x20AC;Ś To have a psychological problem is a stigma. So, it just built up and

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By June Glazer. JNS.org About 20 veterans commit suicide across the U.S. each day, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. An organization providing spiritual healing, suicide prevention and peer support programming for veterans believes Israel is part of the solution.

Leading up to Mondayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s observance of Memorial Day, JNS.org is spotlighting the stories of six American veterans who traveled to Israel with the Heroes to Heroes Foundation, which works with veterans suffering from mental and emotional stress. The foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Israel programming is sponsored in part by Jewish National Fundâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Boruchin Israel Education and Advocacy Center.

Igrain â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iggyâ&#x20AC;? Padilla, 55, of Concord, N.C., spent 12 years in field artillery with the U.S. Army and 14 years in the military police, with tours of duty including deployments to Iraq, where he was physically injured in a head-on collision with a suspected bomber vehicle, and to Afghanistan, where he inspected sites at which U.S. soldiers were killed or injured due to accidents. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I came home in 2012 on medical retirement and began having depression, nightmares, mood swings. It got so bad that I felt I had lost my identity, lost all interest in life.

I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work, couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do anything, and I started drinking too much. I was 50-years-old and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what to do,â&#x20AC;? he says.

Iggyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wife told him about Heroes to Heroes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a religious Christian, and when I heard that the program would take me to Jerusalem I got really excited, because who gets a chance like this to come to the Holy Land?â&#x20AC;? he says.

Iggy says the trip to Israel â&#x20AC;&#x153;opened my eyes about how to communicate and have a relationship with people I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even know.â&#x20AC;?

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Israeli paratroopers enter the Old City of Jerusalem through Lion’s Gate on June 7, 1967, reuniting it after 19 years of Jordanian occupation and placing it under Jewish control for the first time in two millenia.

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sign of respect for a most holy place, donated this mosaic in the month of Louos (the year of) 569.”

The quiet reunifications This was the myth: Between 1949 and 1967, the heart of a city identified since the beginnings of history with the Jews had been made Judenrein.

The myth was largely based in fact, but there were exceptions: Every two weeks, a convoy of Israeli troops would travel through Jordanian Jerusalem to Mount Scopus, the Hebrew University campus that remained Israel’s as part of the 1949 armistice. Intrepid non-Israeli Jews occasionally passed through the Mandelbaum Gate, the gateway between Jordanian and Israeli Jerusalem. Muriel Spark, the Scottish novelist, captured the danger in such a crossing in her 1961 novel “The Mandelbaum Gate.”

And then there were stories like this one: In 1991, the building where I owned an apartment obtained permission from the municipality to add rooms and balconies. The contractor subcontracted some of the work. One day, a gregarious Palestinian subcontractor came by to measure my balcony for the railing he would build.

But the contractor disappeared just before completing the job. I paid others to complete the work and asked around for the number of the subcontractor.

He lived in Silwan, the ancient neighborhood abutting the Old City. I called.

A woman speaking fluent Hebrew answered; this in itself was striking. It was not unusual for Palestinian men, who worked throughout Israel, to speak Hebrew, but it was a rarity at the time to encounter a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian woman. Moreover, her Hebrew was unaccented and flawless.

She was the subcontractor’s mother. Of course he would come and install the railing, it was gathering dust in their yard, and he had forgotten my exact address, she said Not only that, but I wasn’t to pay him a shekel extra, he had been paid for his work and wouldn’t hear of it.

I couldn’t resist asking her to explain her Hebrew.

She was Jewish, born and raised in Jerusalem. She had married a Palestinian Muslim before independence. And she remained in Silwan after the war. Did she reunite with family? Yes, she said, immediately after the Six-Day War, but would not elaborate.

The subcontractor came by.

“I spoke to your mother,” I said.

“Yes,” he said and smiled.

I asked the neighbors who had used the same contractor, I asked other Jerusalemites, and no one expressed surprise.

They had heard similar stories of excommunication and then tentative reunification. How many were there? No one knew. No one compiled these stories. There was no shame to the phenomenon, but neither was there a celebration of it.

It seemed unresolved, like so much else about the Six-Day War.

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Continued from page 9 The first Jewish settlement in the captured territories There are plenty of dramatic markers in the history of the return of Jews to the areas Israel captured in the Six-Day War: The first homes reoccupied by Jews in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, in 1969; the Jews, led

by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who moved into a Hebron hotel to mark Passover 1968 and would not leave until the government allowed them to establish the settlement that would become Kiryat Arba; the settlers who would not leave the area of Sebastia in the northern West Bank until the government in 1975 allowed them to establish Elon Moreh.

But the first settlement? That would be Merom Golan, a kibbutz originally named Kibbutz Golan, when Israelis quietly moved in on July 14, 1967, just over a month after the war.

Why the urgency? A clue is in who founded the kibbutz: Israelis from the eastern Galilee, who had suffered potshots and shelling from Syrian troops for years.

The Israeli attachment to the West Bank and to Jerusalem has been from the outset one defined by emotion, history and identity. Occupying and settling the Golan Heights — an area traditionally not defined as within the boundaries of the biblical Land of Israel — was seen as a matter of security and practical necessity: Israel, atop the Golan, was less vulnerable.

These days, Merom Golan is a resort.

That ancient church in Gaza?

It was a synagogue.

The Western Wall, Qumran, Shiloh, King Herod’s tomb — the Six-Day War was a boon for historians seeking evidence of ancient Jewish settlement in the Holy Land.

Most of these sites are in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. But a team of archaeologists rushed to the Gaza Strip within weeks of its capture.

Why? In 1966, Egypt’s Department of Antiquities announced the discovery of what it said was an ancient church on Gaza’s coast. Examining the pictures in the Italian antiquities journal Orientala, Israeli archaeologists immediately understood it was no church — it was a synagogue.

Visible in one photograph was a Hebrew inscription, “David,” alongside a harpist — King David.

According to an article published in 1994 in Biblical Archaeology Review, by the time the Israelis reached it a year later, the David mosaic had been damaged — evidence perhaps that the Egyptians understood that the biblical king’s depiction validated claims of ancient Jewish settlement and sought to erase it.

They set about excavating the site, which turned out to be one of the largest Byzantine-era synagogues in the region.

At the foot of one mosaic they found the following inscription: “(We) Menahem and Yeshua, sons of the late Isai (Jesse), wood traders, as a

Cohen-Kishik, an heroic Israeli spy, was 100

By JTA Shulamit “Shula” Cohen-Kishik, a spy for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency who worked undercover in Lebanon for 14 years, has died at 100.

Cohen-Kishik, codenamed “The Pearl,” died Sunday at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

The Buenos Aires native was raised by Zionist parents who moved the family to prestate Israel. She married Joseph Kishik, a wealthy Jewish-Lebanese businessman from Beirut, when she was 16 and the couple settled in Lebanon.

At 27 she began working for the Mossad, spending the next decade and a half helping to bring persecuted Jews from Arab countries to Israel and gathering intelligence information about Arab military activities — information she was able to collect by getting herself accepted into Lebanon’s high society.

She was caught smuggling in 1952 and taken to jail just three weeks after giving birth, where she spent 36 days in confinement. Cohen-Kishik continued her clandestine activities for another nine years before things became too dangerous and she moved to Rome for three months.

Upon her return to Lebanon in 1961, she was arrested immediately for espionage.

While in prison during the trial she was brutally tortured. Sentenced to death by hanging, the verdict was reduced to 20 years of hard labor because she was a mother of seven.

In 1967, Cohen-Kishik was released in a secret prisoner exchange following the SixDay War. She then immigrated with her family to Jerusalem, where she spent the rest of her life.

Cohen-Kishik was chosen to light a torch for Israel’s Independence Day ceremony in 2007.

“I never worked for a prize or for glory,” she said. “I did what I did because I wanted to, because I loved the country and I wanted to help its establishment.”

A video made in 2011 by her grandson tells her history, and includes photos of Cohen-Kishik as a baby in Buenos Aires, in Lebanon and with her own testimony, and also singing an Argentinean tango song “A Su Memoria,” or “To His Memory.” Her son Itzhak Levanon was Israel’s ambassador to Egypt from 2009 to 2011.

She is survived by her seven children, and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A Moliere adaptation, at LIU, for ladies only “The Imaginary Invalid,” an adaptation of the “Hypochondriac” by Moliere, will be performed by students of the Jewish Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 6 and 7, 8 pm, in the Kumble Thetatre of Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, Flatbush Avenue Extension at DeKalb Avenue.

In this frolicking comedy, Monsieur Argan is obsessed with being sick. Through his friends’ hijinks, jokes and dance interludes, hilarity ensues as he discovers the extent of his own medical prowess in the silliest of all possible ways.

The Jewish Center for Performing Arts was founded and is directed by Rivka Nahari, whose upbringing in a non-observant home allowed her to study and excel in ballet and harp playing. Upon becoming

The ceremony “is an act of historical reparation” with the Sephardic Jews who suffered “the intolerance that was then not only in Spain,” said Spain’s ambassador to Panama, Ramon Santos.

Last year, another group of 23 Jews became Spanish citizens in Panama, including nationalized Venezuelan emigres who had escaped the economic crisis in their native country. Nearly 5,000 Sephardic Jews became citizens of Spain or Portugal in 2016 following the passing of laws on the naturalization of descendants of Sephardic Jews.

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Eight Panamanian Sephardic Jews received Spanish citizenship from Spain’s ambassador to Panama in a ceremony at the embassy in Panama City in which the group swore allegiance to the Spanish Constitution and the king.

Spain passed a law two years ago that allows the conferring of citizenship on those who prove to be descendants of Jews expelled from the country in 1492.

A Holocaust survivor in Plymouth, Minnesota, received her high school diploma 71 years after she was denied the opportunity by the Nazis.

Esther Begam, 88, donned a blue cap and gown earlier this month and received her diploma surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as the Wayzata High School class of 2017, the local NBC affiliate KARE reported.

Begam’s entire family was killed during the Holocaust. From the age of 11, she lived in a ghetto in Poland and then worked in a forced labor camp. At 17 she married a fellow survivor and moved to Minnesota.

Seven years ago, Begam spoke at the high school about her wartime experiences, and when asked what was her biggest regret, she said it was never receiving a diploma.

A Wayzata High teacher, Candice Ledman, approached the school administration about awarding Begam an honorary degree but was denied. But the new principal, Scott Gengler, who took the post this term, imme-

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involved with Chabad in her teen years, Nahari found ways to continue practicing both dance and music while also becoming aware of restrictions involved with being Torah observant.

Several years after marrying and having daughters of her own, Nahari started the Jewish Center for the Performing Arts, a space for women and girls to learn and explore expression in dance and music while remaining within the frum community. At the end of each academic year, the students perform a show that is directed and choreographed by Nahari, for exclusively female audiences.

Tickets are $25 and $35 in advance, $35 and $45. For more information call 718-513-6257 or email info@jewishperformingarts.com.

diately agreed, according to KARE. Begam was presented with a diploma and a graduation cake; she threw her mortarboard in the air after being awarded her diploma.

Her grandson Lenny Segal, in a speech at the graduation, called on the students to share Begam’s story, “so we can make sure this doesn’t happen again,” KARE said.

74 return to SodaStream Seventy-four Palestinian employees of SodaStream, who lost their jobs when the company shut its West Bank plant in the face of international pressure, will return to work at its factory in southern Israel.

The employees’ work permits, which allowed them to enter Israel from the West Bank, expired in February 2016.

The Israeli government agreed to reinstate the permits after persistent requests from SodaStream and its CEO Daniel Birnbaum, the Jerusalem Post reported.

“We are delighted to welcome back our 74 devoted Palestinian employees, who are able to join their 1,500 friends at our Rahat facility in the Negev,” Birnbaum told the newspaper. “The Israeli government did the moral and honorable thing to grant work permits to our employees, who can now provide for their families and also prove that coexistence is possible.”

In October 2014, SodaStream announced it would close its factory in Maale Adumim and move to southern Israel in the face of pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to hurt Israel’s economy over its policies toward the Palestinians. The movement claimed that SodaStream discriminated against Palestinian workers and paid some less than Israeli workers.

Five-hundred Palestinian employees lost their jobs at that time. Israel gave the remaining 74 employees permission to enter the country and continue to work for SodaStream until February 2016.

The company now has more than 1,400 employees in the Idan Hanegev industrial park near Rahat, one-third of them Bedouin Arabs from the surrounding area.

The Palestinian employees will have to leave for work at 4:30 am in order to make the long commute and be there on time, but at least one told the Post that he does not care.

briefs Knife-wielding teen killed Israel Police officers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager who attempted to stab them just outside the Old City of Jerusalem as President Donald Trump was visiting holy sites in the city.

The teen, identified by the Palestinian Maan news agency as a 16-year-old from Bethlehem, approached the Border Police officers at a guard post in eastern Jerusalem on Monday afternoon with the knife drawn and disputed with the officers before being shot, according to the police.

Hate fliers hit Montana Fliers described as anti-Semitic were dropped in front of homes in Bozeman, Montana, for the second time this month.

In the incident Saturday morning, the actual fliers were different than those dropped on May 6 and the distribution was not as extensive, Bozeman Police Sgt. Hal Richardson told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

The flier shows a photo of Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump and includes what appears to be a fictional quote in which Netanyahu describes the U.S. as a welfare state under Israeli control.

More cash for Survivors Romania’s Parliament passed legislation that would provide increased direct financial support for Holocaust survivors.

The funds, a payment of up to $97.98 per month for each year of deportation or detention, will be available beginning in July to those who were persecuted in Romania between 1940 and 1945, including deportees to ghettos and concentrations camps, survivors of the death trains and forced labor detachments, refugees and those who were imprisoned for ethnic reasons or forcefully removed from their homes in that period.

Survivors who no longer have Romanian citizenship or reside in the country, as well as the spouse of a deceased Holocaust survivor if they did not remarry, also are eligible.

Before WWII, Romania had a Jewish population of over 700,000. Between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were murdered or died during the Holocaust in Romania and the territories under its control, according to the Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania published in 2004.

Rocket fired from Sinai A rocket was fired from the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt at southern Israel Tuesday morning during President Trump’s visit. No one was injured and no damage was caused

Stolen books donated Thirty-three rare books stolen during World War II from Jewish communities located in present-day Poland were donated to the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

Most of the books handed over come from the former collections of the Jewish Theological Seminary of the Fränkel Foundation in Wroclaw. The oldest book, published in 1644, is signed by the German-Jewish theologian David Rosin, who lived from 1823 to 1894.

There are also two books from the collection of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw: Ludwik Wachler’s “Literature Handbook of 1833” and a pastoral letter from 1785. One of the books comes from the synagogue in Legnica and contains fictional literature.

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