The Jewish Star

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Parsha Matos-Masei • July 21 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777 • Five Towns Candlelighting 8:02 pm, Havdalah 9:10 • Luach page 19 • Vol 16, No 26

The Newspaper of our Orthodox communities

Up against the wall

Pols rip Nassau Coliseum appearance by anti-Semitic rocker, Roger Waters

By Ed Weintrob It might be just one more brick in virulently antiSemitic rock superstar Roger Waters’ wall of hate, but for several Nassau County elected officials, it’s one step too far onto the dark side.

Allowing the former Pink Floyd frontman to play

Roger Waters’ pig at the Gelredome in Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 2005.

Mork nl via WikiCommons

the Nassau Coliseum on Sept. 15 and 16 — a few days before Rosh Hashana — “offends the sense of decency held by our residents,” said Legislator Howard Kopel of Lawrence. Hempstead Town Councilman Bruce Blakeman wrote to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking that Waters’ visa to be revoked.

Waters is an outspoken supporter of BDS, the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions movement against Israel, and has pushed his political agendas at his concerts.

Waters “maintains that he is not anti-Semitic, yet one of his primary images is an inflatable pig that floats above his concerts emblazoned with the Star of David,” Kopel said. Over the years, the pig has featured a wide range of political assaults in addition to those interpreted as being anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

The Nassau County Legislature passed a law earlier this year that prohibits the county from doing business with anyone lending support to the BDS movement.

See Waters on page 6

Mac games spell unity

Fireworks marked the opening ceremony of the 20th Maccabiah Games in Jerusalem on July 6. The Maccabiah Games yielded “positive connections” to Israel for athletes worldwide. See story on page 4.

Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

As witnesses die, ‘Project’ keeps history alive

By Zachary Sharfman As the generation that bore witness to the Shoah is dying, Project Witness will host a three-day holocaust education conference next week on topic of “Transmitting Memory: Commemorating Heroism.”

The conference, which opens in Mahattan on Monday, July 24, will consider how the Jewish world can keep alive, after they’re gone, the legacy of those who lived through the terrors of the Holocaust.

Project Witness is a Brooklyn-based

Among presenters (from left): Judith Cohen of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, Project Witness Director Ruth Lichtenstein, and Museum of Jewish Heritage CEO Dr. Michael Berenbaum.

Shoah resource center that combines scholarship with cutting-edge media to provide thought provoking, educational resources to schools, shuls and communities at large.

The conference will include a lecture on shaalos and teshuvos surrounding the Holocaust, by Rabbi Moshe Tarashansky of Michlalah in Jerusalem, and an in-depth discussion on the propaganda war that the Nazis waged against European Jewry — by Dr. William Meinecke See Shoah on page 6

Chief rabbinate ‘blacklist’ puzzles Orthodox rabbis

By Ben Sales, JTA In 2012, Rabbi Jason Herman wrote a letter to Israel’s chief rabbinate certifying that a friend of his who wished to get married was Jewish and single.

The letter was declared invalid.

But several months later Herman, spiritual leader of the Orthodox West Side Jewish Center in Manhattan, obtained a license from the chief rabbinate to conduct that wedding

in Israel — and did so, legally, with no problem.

Herman’s case illustrates the bureaucratic confusion that has accompanied the publishing of the chief rabbinate’s so-called “black-

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video. So it really depends on who you ask!”

JNS.org asked Bialik about science, Hollywood, anti-Semitism, BDS and the meaning of her name.

JNS: What inspired your interest in science, and does your knowledge in the field enhance your acting roles and your new position as SodaStream’s pitchwoman?

Mayim Bialik: “I fell in love with the cell in high school, and being a scientist makes my life complex and beautiful whether I am at home, with my kids, acting with other humans or talking about the environment with SodaStream.

It’s just who I am!”

Have you encountered pressure from the BDS movement, and do you anticipate pushback from anti-Israel activists in your new position for SodaStream, a well-known Israeli company?

“Not yet, but I get attacked simply for being Jewish, for visiting Israel and for saying Israel has a right to exist. I’m sure people will find reasons to be mad at me about this, too.”

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Mayim Bialik with a plastic bottle-lugging “Homoschlepien” in a new SodaStream video campaign.

(SodaStream’s former headquarters were located in Mishor Adumim, beyond Israel’s pre1967 lines, making the company a high-profile target of the BDS movement. Before relocating its facilities to Israel’s Negev desert, SodaStream had employed 1,300 work-ers, including 500 Palestinians who were given the same pay and benefits as their Jewish-Israeli colleagues. The relocation forced SodaStream to lay off most of its Palestinian workers. SodaStream currently employs 74 Palestinians, who were rehired in May after the renewal of their work permits.)

“SodaStream is about diversity, coexistence and peace,” Bialik said. “As so many people in Israel know, people from different religions, ethnicities and nationalities can work to-gether in peace and harmony despite what the media wants us to believe. Individuals and corporations can show that we are stronger together: women, men, children, lovers of peace, and lovers of freedom and justice.”

Your predecessor, Scarlett Johansson, resisted pressure from the BDS movement and stood by her Super Bowl commercial for SodaStream in 2014. What do you think of the stance Johansson took?

“She issued a great statement and I respect her as an actress, a public person and a Jew.” In your opinion, why is Israel held to a different standard than other countries?

“Haha. Anti-Semitism? Bigotry? Historical bias? I’m sure every professor and rabbi of mine can answer that better than I can! I’m just another liberal Zionist.”

Your first name, Mayim, is the Hebrew word for water, and now you’re the pitchwoman for a company whose machines make sparkling water? Is it destiny?

“Ha, we call it bashert (Yiddish for destiny) where I come from!”

909604

By Adam Abrams, JNS.org Mayim Bialik, a star on the CBS hit sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” launched a witty new video campaign this week for SodaStream, succeeding actress Scarlett Johansson as the official pitchwoman for the Israeli beverage carbonation company.

Bialik, a self-described “observant-ish” Jew and a doctorate-holding neuroscientist, is uniquely suited for the new SodaStream promotion.

In the video, the actress finds herself in the year 2136 working as a research scientist, deeply consumed in the study of primitive “Homoschlepiens,” an unevolved jungle-dwelling tribe of humans who still rely on bottled water in a world that has since discovered other means of consuming beverages—such as Sodastream’s sparkling water maker.

Kristian Nairn, who plays the role of Hodor in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” is the prime primitive subject of Bialik’s field research in the video, and also becomes her unanticipated love interest.

Regarding the unconventional career path that saw her master both acting and neuroscience, Bialik told JNS.org that her professional life evolved “one step at a time … with the help of a good therapist and some solid loved ones by my side.”

Bialik played the lead role in the 1990s NBC sitcom “Blossom.” She has also appeared in Woody Allen’s made-for-television film “Don’t Drink the Water” and Larry David’s HBO sitcom “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” among other onscreen roles.

Asked which TV role she is best known for, Bialik said, “Big Bang is the most widely viewed show I have been a part of, but people flip out when they hear I did three episodes of ‘MacGyver,’ or that I was in a Michael Jackson

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let me say the bride is Jewish for the same wedContinued from page 1 names of 78 North American spiritual leaders — ding. I understand it’s a different person in the including Orthodox rabbis — and its publication bureaucracy, but it’s ridiculous. There’s a culture there that allows for the bureaucratic screw-up.” last week led to lots of head-scratching.

Several rabbis on the list said the problem is Itim, the Israeli organization that obtained the list from the chief rabbinate, calls it a black- a lack of transparency. Tubul’s office has no set list meant to delegitimize rabbis who do not meet criteria for judging whether a rabbi is authorized the rabbinate’s cryptic standards. The rabbinate to write a proof-of-Judaism letter. In December, claims the list is more innocuous and not meant the rabbinate announced it was drafting criteria, to impugn the rabbis’ reputations. Rather, ac- a process it says is ongoing. cording to the rabbinate’s director-general, Moshe Dagan, the problem was with the letters sent by the rabbis, not the rabbis themselves.

But several rabbis on the list told JTA that they had never heard of any problems with their letters. None had received calls from the rabbinate in 2016, the year their letters were ostensibly rejected. And some wondered why, if the rabbis’ credentials were not at issue, the list was solely of rabbis’ names.

“If there is a problem, and the rabbinate is deal- Israel Chief Rabbi David Lau met last Tuesday with one of the “blacklisted” ing with so many of these rabbis, Yehoshua Fass of Nefesh B’Nefesh.

NBN letters, isn’t it their reSometimes the letters in question aren’t even sponsibility to share with rabbis in the Diaspora what they’re looking for, how they expect the let- written for the rabbinate. Rather they are written ter to be written?” asked Rabbi Avi Weiss, a lib- to certify that someone is Jewish for the purposes eral Orthodox rabbi from Riverdale, whose name of immigration to Israel, and then forwarded to is on the list. “This is not about documentation. the rabbinate once the immigrant wants to marry.

That’s why some of the rabbis — including rabbis This is about a blacklist.”

The rabbinate is the only body authorized to who died a few years ago — appear on the list even conduct Jewish marriages in Israel. Rabbinate though they did not write any letters in 2016.

Rabbis told JTA that their process for writing spokesman Kobi Alter said every immigrant who wishes to wed must provide a proof-of-Judaism let- immigration letters is straightforward. Often the person they are certifying is a congregant or close ter from a rabbi, as well as their parents’ ketubah.

Alter told JTA that the list indicated errors in acquaintance. The letter simply states that the documents sent in 2016, not problems with the prospective immigrant is Jewish, born to a Jewish rabbis. He declined to discuss the cases of specific mother and a member of their local synagogue.

Rabbi Herman believes rabbis were put on the rabbis, but said one letter was dated 2016 when the rabbi in question died in 2012. In another list not because of an error in the letters but becase, only one witness had signed the ketubah cause of their rabbinic backgrounds and careers.

His seminary is not recognized by right wing Orrather than the two required by Jewish law.

Alter said the list should not have been pub- thodox rabbis.

The rabbinate’s criteria for marriage are stricter lished with the rabbis’ names, and referred to a letter Sunday from the office of Chief Rabbi Da- than those for Israeli citizenship. While people with only one Jewish grandparent may gain autovid Lau apologizing for its publication.

“The list went out in the wrong way,” he told matic citizenship in Israel, one must be Jewish acJTA. “The list isn’t a list of rabbis but a list of cording to Orthodox interpretations of halachah to register for marriage with the rabbinate. The rabdocuments.”

Alter added that some rabbis on the list had binate controls all Jewish marriage in the country.

The Chicago Rabbinical Council, an Orthodox submitted several letters in 2016. If all were accepted except for one, the rabbi still made the list. body that provides a service writing proof-of-JuAlter said the rabbis should feel free to contact daism letters to the rabbinate, requires applicants the rabbinate to ask why their names appeared to provide statements from two acquaintances attesting to their Jewish identity. It also asks apon the list.

The chief rabbinate issued a public apology to plicants to list their parents, grandparents and at least one of the Orthodox leaders — Rabbi Ye- great-grandmothers. Applicants must also sign a hoshua Fass of Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization sworn statement that they are single.

The rabbis who spoke to JTA acknowledge that has assisted over 50,000 people in making that it’s possible that a letter they wrote several aliyah over the last 10 years.

“I regret that this incident may have called years ago for immigration purposes was sent to your reputation into question,” said a statement the rabbinate last year and rejected without their signed by Rabbi Rephael Frank, senior adviser to knowledge. But they all wondered, if the problem the chief rabbi. “The chief rabbinate recognizes was with the documentation and not with them, and appreciates you as a rabbi and all that you why the rabbinate never reached out to them to clear up errors in the letter. have done for the Jewish people.”

“The only conclusion I can reach is: If a conRabbi Herman told JTA that in 2013, he did speak with Rabbi Itamar Tubul, the bureaucrat gregant of mine was rejected, it was because who alone approves or rejects every letter. Tubul of me and not because of the case particulars,” asked him a few basic questions — whether his Adam Scheier, a past president of the Montreal synagogue was Orthodox (yes), whether it had a Board of Rabbis, wrote in an email Wednesday barrier dividing men and women (yes), where he to JTA. “If that’s not the definition of a blacklist, received his rabbinic ordination (Yeshivat Cho- then I don’t know what is.” vevei Torah, a liberal Orthodox seminary founded

by Rabbi Weiss) — and thanked him for his time.

Rabbi Herman found out his letter was rejected only when his friend, the bride to be, called him in tears with the news.

But that didn’t stop Rabbi Herman from beIn a story in last week’s print edition heading able to conduct the wedding with a license lined “Chief rabbinate to Rabbi Fass: Sorry,” a from the chief rabbinate — approved by someone statement made by Rabbi Adam Scheuer was inother than Tubul. correctly attributed to Rabbi Yehoshua Fass. This “It’s ridiculous,” Rabbi Herman said. “You’re was corrected in our online edition. We apologize willing to let me do a wedding, but not willing to for this editing error.

Correction

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he U.S. consul general in Jerusalem recently set off on the first leg of a 200-mile hike that will simultaneously promote one proPalestinian myth while inadvertently exploding another.

Consul General Donald Blome is an avid hiker. For some reason, he has decided to ignore Israeli hiking trails in Judea and Samaria, and instead is making his way across the “Masar Ibrahim Al-Khalil,” or the Ibrahim Path, which runs from northern Samaria to southern Judea.

Blome says his journey is “about exploring the connection of the people with the land.” But he’s not talking about the Jewish people, with a 3,000-year-old connection to the land through which he is hiking, but the “connection” of people who only started calling themselves “Palestinians” in the 1970s and who—in many cases—are actually the descendants of Egyptian, Syrian or Lebanese Arabs who arrived in the 1920s and 1930s.

Blome began his hike in the Arab village of Rummana, north of Jenin, and will conclude in “the Old City of Hebron,” as he calls it. There will be no stops along the way in the sites that genuinely demonstrate the ancient connection between the people and the land—such as Shiloh, the first resting place of the biblical tabernacle and the center of Jewish religious life before the building of the First Temple. Nor will the consul general be visiting Beit El, where the patriarch Jacob had his famous dream of the angels as-

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cending and descending to heaven.

Blome appears to have forgotten that the Jewish presence in that “Old City of Hebron” is a lot older than that of the Muslims. The Jewish connection dates back to Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of the Patriarchs. Muslims did not show up in the area until more than 2,000 years later.

While promoting one myth, however, Blome has unintentionally exposed another.

Few Americans have heard of the “Ibrahim Trail.” Based on what they read in the newspapers—and what they hear from former U.S. envoys such as Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk—the American public is led to believe that Israel “occupies” the Palestinians, “controls their move-ment” and “prevents their access” to neighboring communities. et thousands of Palestinian hikers each year traverse the Ibrahim trail without interruption for 200 miles. Where are all the Israeli “occupation” troops? Where are the checkpoints that supposedly make the lives of Palestinians miserable? Where’s all the persecution, oppression and humiliation that we’re always reading about?

They’re nowhere to be found. The hikers aren’t stopped by Israeli soldiers. They aren’t bossed around by an Israeli military governor.

That’s because way back in 1995, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin withdrew all of Israel’s troops from the areas where more than 98 percent of the Palestinian Arabs reside.

Giving the PA control over so much land that is steeped in Judaism and Jewish history was an extraordinary sacrifice by Israel, one that few in the international community have ever appreciated. Perhaps that is something for Blome to contemplate during the long hours of quiet reflection he will enjoy as he hikes across the land of Israel in the weeks ahead.

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THE JEWISH STAR July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777

US consul in Israel erases Jewish history

5

Waters…

Continued from page 1 The Coliseum is owned by the county.

Waters is also scheduled to perform at Barclays Center, on Sept. 11 and 12. Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment oversees operations and events at both Barclays and the Coliseum.

A Waters tour between 2010 and 2013 reportedly grossed $458.7 million, making it the biggest tour ever by a solo artist.

Waters has compared Israeli treatment of Palestinians to both Nazi Germany and South African apartheid. He vigorously lobbied — unsuccessfully — to get Radiohead to cancel a Tel Aviv concert this week.

In a Facebook Live talk on BDS on Saturday, Waters said of attempts to cancel his Long Island appearances: “They’re gonna fail.”

“Although the Bill of Rights is constantly under attack now in the United States, I don’t think they can go that far,” he said.

“This is something that is negative to all communities, not just the Jewish community,” said Mineola Chabad’s Rabbi Anchelle Perl, of Waters’ shows.

Shoah…

Continued from page 1 from the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington and Israel Bitton, an award-winning marketing and communications consultant who will cover “New Era Propaganda” and the growth of modern anti-Semitism.

A panel of teachers will discuss “methods of teaching the Holocaust in a variety of school settings,” hosted by educators from across America.

A talk about children who were hidden during the Holocaust will be given by Dr. Mor-

dechai Paldiel, a professor at Stern College, CUNY, and Touro College. Harav Ahron Lopiansky, Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, will discuss hashkafic aspects of the Holocaust.

Other presenters include the director of Project Witness, Ruth Lichtenstein, publisher of Hamodia; Rebbetzin Esther Farbstein, director of the Holocaust Education Center at the Jerusalem Teacher’s College, with a multi-media presentation on challenging questions surrounding the Shoah; Michael S. Glickman, president and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage; and Judith Cohen, chief acquisitions curator of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The conference’s final day, on Wednesday, will open with a talk by Rochel Licht, a Holocaust educator and researcher, titled “Pre-War: Commemoration of a World Destroyed Leading to a Message of Hope and Rebirth,” which will cover the lasting legacy of Holocaust historian, Professor Yaffa Eliach. Lichtenstein will speak about rebuilding after the war “through publications, education and literature,” and there will be a lecture on teaching the Holocaust through literature by Charlotte Friedland, a former editor at Mesorah Publications and former director of publications at the OU. Dr. Michael Berenbaum, director of the Sigi Ziering Institute, which explores the ethical and religious implications of the Holocaust, will consider “The Role of the Museum in Portraying the Holocaust.” The program will conclude with a lecture titled “Learning from Artifacts: How an Object Can Tell a Story,” by Dr. Paul Radensky, the Museum Educator for Jewish Schools at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

The conference will be held from Monday, July 24, through Wednesday, July 26. The first day from 5 to 9 pm at the Center for Jewish History on W. 16 St. in Manhattan; the next two days at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, from 10 am to 5:30 pm. Price of admission for the full program is $100.

For more information call 718-WITNESS.

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Mac games yield ‘positive connections’ to Israel

By Adam Abrams, JNS.org Some 7,000 Jewish athletes from 80 countries headed back to their home countries this week following the 20th Maccabiah Games, a two-week event that is being praised for helping create “positive connections” to Israel.

The Jewish athletes from overseas had arrived in Israel in early July, joining 2,500 Israeli contestants in the world’s third-largest sporting event, which convenes every four years and is often dubbed the “Jewish Olympics.” This year’s games, hosted in Jerusalem, had the added significance of coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Israel’s capital city.

Tamir Goodman, a former Maccabiah athlete who gained fame during his high school basketball career in 1999, when Sports Illustrated magazine nicknamed him the “Jewish Jordan,” told JNS.org, “The 2017 games were all-around great—great for the athletes, great for Israel and great for the thousands of fans who got to watch and cheer on the teams.”

Contestants competed in 43 different sports at complexes throughout Israel. Soccer was the largest competition, with more than 1,400 athletes from 20 countries participating. In addition to the athletes, as many as 20,000 international visitors attended the games, injecting around $100 million into Israel’s economy.

“Most of the federations who sent athletes to Israel took the competition very seriously,” said Ilan Kowalsky, head of the Sports Department at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center research college in Herzliya. “They did not send third-[division] or fourthdivision athletes. Only the top swimmers, basketball players and lacrosse players came to compete.”

Among the top Israeli and international Jewish athletes who competed in the 2017 Maccabiah Games were Israeli Olympic judo bronze medalists Ori Sasson and Yarden Gerbi, French Olympic gold medalist swimmer Fabien Gilot, and American Olympic gold medalist swimmer Anthony Ervin.

“Thousands of people came from all over the world and connected with Israel during the Maccabiah Games. This is very important for Israel,” said Kowalsky.

With “Israel is in a difficult political situation … sports, and the arts, are the only things that can make such positive connections to Israel,” he said.

Kowalsky’s perspective comes from his decades of experience using sports to break down cultural and political barriers. He served as head coach of Israel’s under-20 women’s basketball team in the 2009 Maccabiah Games, guiding the squad to win gold in the finals against the American team.

In addition to working with Israeli athletes, Kowalsky in 2006 headed an initiative dubbed the “Friendship Games” in collaboration with Ed Peskowitz, former co-owner of the National Basketball Association’s Atlanta Hawks. The initiative offered college students from 17 different countries and territories the opportunity to compete in a basketball tournament and tour Israel together.

Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians all participated.

“For seven days, players from 17 countries played basketball and stayed in the same hotels together. Within just a few days, these athletes became friends and many stayed in touch with each other,” said Kowalsky.

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In Memory Of Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky

By Celia Weintrob Continued from last week’s Jewish Star Tell me about the death march.

Our camp was close to the front where the Americans were fighting the Germans.

So they took us out and walked us far away.

At night we slept in the hay, in farms. In the day we would march again. People would fall off the sides and the back. Germany had highways but no shoulders, only ditches on the sides. When people fell and died we had to kick them into the ditches. Every day they counted us to see how much less we were.

One night as I dug myself into the hay, I thought the next day it might be me kicked into a ditch on the side of the road. As I dug myself deeper, I came across a leg, a shoulder, a nose, and I heard “ssshhhhhh…” Others had the same idea as me. In the morning, the soldiers fixed their bayonets onto their rifles and stabbed into the hay. People near the top screamed as they were impaled. [Rybsztajn was sliced at the bridge of his nose, and still bears the scar.] They ordered us out, to stand with our hands up. The blood is dripping down my face, I am drinking my own blood icicles. I have no strength to keep my hands up, how am I going to run away?

After a while the soldier turned away for a minute, and I ran into the marching people, switched my coat and hat with others in the group. The soldier was yelling, “where did that boy go?” As I moved up to the middle of the column, then the front, I found my uncle, Leib Aryeh, and his son, Karl. I grabbed my uncle’s other arm. At night we stood in the mud as they counted us — they wanted to see how much they were accomplishing killing us off — and I saw my uncle fall and die.

How were you liberated?

We were taken to yet another camp. There was no work to do there, and only two barracks, which were supposed to be for sick people. But soon it was full of corpses. This was a wide open place surrounded by forest. Every day with dogs we were made to run through the open space and the forest, with no end. And no food. People would pull the leaves off the trees, roll them up and eat them. There was nothing else. I expired.

Inside this camp, each day two piles of dead people were stacked up on either side of the gate. The dead were lined up in a row, and then stacked up on top of each other like logs, to be burned each day. I am expired, and am piled onto the top of the stack. But on this day the Germans capitulated, they hung up white flags and left the gates open while they ran away, so the last piles of the dead were still there, not burned.

Two twin brothers named Nalewka, who went to yeshiva with me, walked past the stacks. They took a final look to the right and then to the left, to make sure the Germans were really gone, and said Kaddish for all the dead. One twin saw me and said to the other, “You know this is Yankele;” the other brother did not recognize me, I was just a skeleton.

They touched me and said, “he’s still alive!”

They still had a little strength left, and they took me under the arms and dragged me out of the camp and down the road. Then they became too exhausted, they were skeletons too. They laid me at the side of the road and wrapped me in a blanket they had taken. I was told later that I was not conscious, almost dead. But G-d wanted me alive.

Bonnie and Jack Rybstajn in their Woodmere home in February, 2016, on the occasion of their 70th wedding anniverary.

The Jewish Star /Celia Weintrob

Americans in a Jeep found me on the side of the road covered in the blanket. They thought I was a bomb on the side of the road.

They saw that I was still alive and the captain told the driver to rush to the American field hospital where they treated their own wounded. They took good care of me for nine weeks and slowly I got back to myself. They told me to sign myself out, gave me clothes and a file with no name on it, just the number of my tattoo. It had my medical records in it, and two letters.

I said, “what do I do now that I am released?”

They took me to the door and said, “See that village?

Go there, there are more people like you.” I couldn’t read English at that time, so they read to me. The first letter said: Treat this youngster very carefully, don’t give him too much food, go gradually with him. The second one said: If this boy survives, he should come to the U.S. at this address in Philadelphia. It was the captain’s address, he had returned to the fighting.

So I walked to the village and knocked on the door of the first house I came to. It was full of dogs, and a lady yells at me to go away and slams the door in my face. She was afraid of me, there were no men in the town and she was afraid I would kill her. I knock again, and again she yells at me, “Get lost!

Go further.” But I don’t give up, I knock again and say “Please tell me where are the people like me.” She says to go seven houses down.

I knock at the seventh house and who opens the door but the twin brothers! “Yankele!” they shout.

They apologized for leaving me by the road, thought I was dead. We hug and kiss and celebrate, and I tell them of the American captain who saved me and was so good to me. “Wait a minute,” the brothers said, “the captain was not the only one who helped you. If not for us pulling you out of the camp, you wouldn’t be here.”

This village was a tiny one, with only houses. We walked to the next village, which had stores. We wanted to rent three bicycles so we could have a little fun. In the bicycle shop the woman asked what we want, and

I am telling this to heal the world, to live and let live with respect.

People should not forget what happened.

we say we want to rent three Bonnie and Jack Rybstajn’s wedding photo. bikes. She told us to just take the bikes and go, she was afraid of us. She wouldn’t take our money, we even showed it to her. We rode back to the house in the first village, but as we rode one brother hit a stone, fell off his bike and died instantly.

We buried him in a shallow grave dug with our bare hands in a field next to the road. This was my liberation.

How many in your family survived?

My parents perished.

There were six siblings, born in this order: my sisters Fela and Mila, Jakub (myself), my sister Cyla, my brother Karolik, and my sister Estushka. Three survived: Fela, who lived to the age of 97, she died only a few months ago. Cyla, my younger sister, who died at the age of 90.

And me.

Jack Rybsztajn’s parents, Yittele and Yechiel.

How did your Shavuos tradition start? gram for fashion design, and I thought, “That’s My wife and I found a shul in downtown for me — I’ll never be a carpenter, I’ll go for Brussels after the war. I went early, because fashion design.” I remembered my beautiI was taught when you go to shul, you arrive fully dressed, aristocratic-looking father. After first; when you leave shul, you leave last. But training, a Flemish man asked if I wanted to be there was no minyan. I was very disappoint- a teacher in Antwerp. “You speak well, so why ed. We came back to this shul on Shavuos, not?” I traveled to Antwerp daily by train. I the second day is Yizkor. I asked who was in requested a raise after my first year, I felt I decharge, and if I could daven and say Kaddish, served it, but they refused — we helped you, because we lost everyone. They immediately now you want a raise? granted me the honor. I not only said KadAfter I left there I made trench coats. The dish but I davened the Shacharis service for company that employed me didn’t have a facShavuos, the Hallel, the Mussaf, and Mincha. tory, they hired people who had factories and And now I continue to do that here in Wood- gave them fabrics. I was a patternmaker, my mere. job was to lay out the clothes and chalk in While in Brussels the newspapers report- the shapes and figure out how many meters ed that survivors could go back and liquidate it would take to make a dozen coats — for their property. My sister went and I were example 10 meters of fabric would make six going too, but a man about my father’s age coats. It was my first job after the war. came out of the train I was waiting for, and ••• told me not to go back, that I was of army age Why am I so devoted to G-d, despite so and that they’d send me to the fighting, and much hell, so much torture? Why did so goodbye Charlie. G-d saved my life again, many millions die from hunger, from beatwith that man. ings? I don’t know why. I am telling this story How did you find work? for the sake of the world, to heal the world, There was a school called ORT that taught to live and let live with respect. So the world trades to survivors. Like how to be a shoe- should be a better place. People should not maker, a carpenter, a tailor. There was a pro- forget what happened.

THE JEWISH STAR July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777

Jack Rybsztajn’s memories of Shoah survival

7

Summer in the suburbs and a dog’s life is easy Judy Joszef

O

who’s in the kitchen

S

ummer is my favorite season and so far, I’ve been keeping busy. My daughter and sonin-law’s dog, Murphy kept us company for a week while they enjoyed their first anniversary on July 3rd, catching the Cubs, Reds and White Sox in action, along with a hot air balloon ride.

As excited as I was for them, I was just as excited for Jerry and me. It’s always a treat or have Murphy or Penny, my son and daughter-in-law’s English Cocker Spaniel. At this point, everyone makes fun of me, and had my kids not decided to have dogs, I probably would have agreed that my behavior is a bit much. But now I can’t imagine not having those two adorable dogs coming over.

Before Murphy arrives, I try to do all my errands for the week. Yes, I know I could leave him home by himself, but when he gives me that look (and you dog owners know what I’m talking about) that says, “you’re not going out and leaving me here, are you? Do you really think I don’t see you sneaking out and leaving me here all by myself? And, yes, you did leave me a really good treat to occupy myself with while you’re not here, but I’m still going to remember this.”

True to my word I did all my errands beforehand — including getting a doggy mini swimming pool, two cooling pads (one for each dog), dozens of amazing treats (my fave is the chicken, beef and lamb shishkbob, which actually tempted me!) and lots of fresh salmon and chicken to cook for him.

We had fun from the get-go.

As when Penny vacationed with us, Murphy realized early on that he had me wrapped around his little paw. Soon as he woke we were

Like a Trojan horse, he slowly crept into their perimeters, and scared them half to death, then he would proudly come out of the bush with a victorious march. n Friday night, Jerry went out for a walk with Murphy at 11:30 pm and did not get home until 1:15 am. I started to panic.

When he finally walked in I asked where in the world he was and he said, “Don’t ask. I got lost.”

I said, “You got lost? Jerry, you’re living in Woodmere for 10 years now, how in the world did you get lost?” He responded, “Murphy was leading me on one of his nightly cat-hunting expeditions, and I let him lead, hoping he knew where he was going and would know how to get me back. Murphy played the role of Don Quixote and I proudly played the role of his loyal servant Sancho Panza.”

This was one of the few times I was speechless in response. Sigh.

And as fun as having one dog sleeping over it’s even more fun when Penny and Murphy visit together — the party seems to never end and the cousins are definitely in cahoots with each other.

I can’t wait till the end of the summer when Penny comes to spend a week with us. I’m planning the menu already.

But until then I’ll have to keep busy entertaining humans. This past Sunday I hosted a BBQ and my friend Debbie Shafran brought an amazing dish of vegan spicy baked beans. They were delicious and a perfect addition to the barbecue.

She was kind enough to share the recipe with me, and I’d love to share it with you.

You really have to try this, as they are out of this world. Just ask Eric Hack.

Best vegan BBQ beans Chuck Underwood Ingredients: 3 cups dried great northern beans 2 cups bean liquid 2 cups vegetable broth, low sodium

From left: Cousins Murphy and Penny vacation with Judy and Jerry.

outside walking around the neighborhood to his favorite places; somehow he knew exactly where the other dogs lived.

When we returned home, I let him out back, where he had free reign. He was flying around the backyard and In places that I didn’t know existed behind trees and bushes which is where he hid most of the treats I gave him. I would actually reason with him and say, “seriously, you don’t have to hide it — since I’m giving it to you I’m obviously not going take it away from you. And you know that you will get another one later.”

Jerry had a dog in the past and would love to have one now. He always has a blast when either Penny or Murphy visit or stay over.

While out walking with Jerry, Murphy developed an adversarial relationship with every cat in the neighborhood. He spent every “walking” moment planning to ambush every cat, hiding in their most strategically placed hiding spots.

ter

1 tsp salt 1 onion, diced 1 bell pepper, green, diced 3-4 garlic cloves, minced 1/4 to 1/2 jalapeño pepper, minced 6oz can tomato paste 1/4 cup molasses 1/4 cup dark brown sugar 1 Tbls yellow mustard 1 tsp apple cider vinegar 1/4 tsp ground pepper 1/4 tsp chipotle chili powder Directions: 1. Soak beans overnight in several inches wa-

2. Drain and rinse beans next morning 3. Add enough water to cover and bring to a boil 4. As soon as the beans begin to boil, remove from heat and cover 5. Let rest 30 minutes 6. Drain and rinse beans, reserving 2 cups bean juice 7. Add beans back into pot, with 2 cups bean juice 8. Add vegetable broth, onion, garlic, peppers, and salt 9. Bring to a boil again and simmer on low for 1 hr 10. Add mixture to crock pot 11. Add remaining ingredients and slow cook on low 4 to 6 hrs

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July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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9 THE JEWISH STAR July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777

AMIT Long Island Annual

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By Ron Kampeas, JTA WASHINGTON — Alan Gross, 68, wanted to tell me his news: He and his wife, Judy, had made aliyah.

“It came through on May 3, which is Golda Meir’s birthday, and a day after my birthday, which is also Herzl’s birthday,” he said. “It was long overdue. I’d been going there for more than 40 years, and I’d worked in Israel and around the region.”

Gross was released in December 2014, after five years, as part of a broader exchange in which three Cubans convicted of spying were freed from American prisons. The same day, President Obama announced renewed ties with the communist nation.

As a contractor who worked in development, Gross was especially busy in Israel and the Palestinian areas, working on joint Israeli-Palestinian development after the launch of the Oslo peace talks in 1993.

“I was in Israel probably 60 times before I made aliyah,” he said. Now Alan and Judy live in Tel Aviv.

“The first time I went,” when he was 28, “my wife and I co-led a group of 45 teenagers for 45 days for BBYO. It really turned me on. Six months later I was working for BBYO.” He spent four years with the Jewish youth organization and another four working for the Jewish federation in Washington, and then he returned to his chosen field, development.

What’s his favorite thing about Israel?

“Walking. Every day I walk up to the Carmel Market, into Jaffa and to the Tel Aviv port,” he said.

Also public transportation.

Gross shows off his Rav-Kav card, which gets him onto any mode of transportation — train, bus, light rail — for half price because he’s a senior citizen. He marvels about Israel’s public transportation and notes it takes him 90 minutes to get from his daughter’s home in Jerusalem to his Tel Aviv flat. He wishes more Israelis loved it like he did, fretting — like a veteran Israeli — about the traffic accidents in the country.

He also kvells about a cigar store in Tel Aviv called Brill, where he meets every Friday afternoon

not competent and incompetent. The POTUS is the latter in both,” he wrote recently on Twitter.

“Facebook enabled me to reconnect with a lot of friends and family,” he said. “People didn’t know how to react to me, a lot of people wanted to get together right away, others thought I wanted to be left alone. It’s a wonderful network.

“Twitter is a different story; Twitter could be really brutal. I try not to give rabid responses. Sometimes I fail.”

Gross relishes communication.

“I hadn’t communicated in prison for almost five years,” he said. “The last nine months I was allowed access to email a couple of times a week — not internet — but that changed my life there. That was a tremendous improvement to my psyche.”

Gross also to three lawmakers who led the fight for his release: Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and then-Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. (now a U.S. senator), as well as to the organized Jewish community.

“The reality is it was the grassroots effort in the Jewish community who tipped the effort,” he said.

“There were tens of thousands of emails, literally tens of thousands, that’s what tipped the scales. My redemption from Cuba is a story of activism.”

What does Gross want the world to know?

That he was not a spy and Cuba’s authorities never him considered one: He was convicted of crimes against the state.

Misreporting that characterized him as a spy means he cannot get back into the business he loves -- the development of emerging economies.

Gross appears regretful, but also sanguine.

“In the countries where I work, emerging markets, I can imagine people looking at me with a stink eye, ‘is he or isn’t he?’ I’m not, I never was, I never will be [a spy],” he said, “but that eliminates an ability to regain client trust.”

How’s his Hebrew?

Not great, and not as good as his Spanish, which improved vastly in a Cuban jail.

Joking, he says “I can say ‘why not?’ in six languages.”

Alan Gross with a pastrami sandwich and a Cuban cigar, a deli in Washington on July 12. Ron Kampeas

with an array of aficionados and talks politics and “fake news” over cigars, hummus and whisky. He acquired the cigar habit in jail.

“The Cuban government would give me a box of nice cigars every time a dignitary visited,” Gross recalled, brandishing one he purchased in Switzerland. “Each box was worth a month’s salary to a Cuban. They got me hooked.”

Would he go back to Cuba given the chance?

“I’d go back in a heartbeat,” he said.

Gross has written twice to the Cuban Embassy here just wanting to talk. He hasn’t heard back.

He wants to see the families of his cellmates, who brought him food. “They helped sustain me for five years,” Gross said. “They’re my family, too.”

Gross lost five teeth to poor nutrition during his time in jail.

Gross is an avid social media presence, and President Trump is a favorite target.

“There is a difference between not fit and unfit,

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July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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11 THE JEWISH STAR July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777

Staycation

Wanna Play?

Plenty of summer fun around Long Island Adventureland 2245 Broad Hollow Road (Route 110) Famingdale, 631-694-6868 •adventureland.us American Airpower Museum 1230 New Highway, Farmingdale.

631-293-6398 •americanairpowermuseum.com Fun 4 All 200 Wilson St., Port Jefferson Station, 631-331-9000 •fun4allpark.com Fun Station USA 431 E. Main St., Riverhead, 631-208-9200 •funstationusa.com Harold H. Malkmes Wildlife Education and Ecology Center 249 Buckley Rd., Holtsville, 631-758-9664 •abt.cm/29wFmko Kaler’s Pond Nature Center Montauk Highway, Center Moriches, 631-878-5576 •kalerspondauduboncenter

Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium 180 Little Neck Rd., Centerport, 631-854-5555 •vanderbiltmuseum.org Whaling Museum & Educaiton Center 279 Main St., Cold Spring Harbor, 631-367-3418 •cshwhalingmuseum.org For some, Long Island means Nassau and Suffolk. Period. Others consider that parts of Queens merit the Long Island moniker. But in fact, Long Island extends through all of Queens (and Brooklyn too), and if you add those boroughs to your Staycation menu, there’s so much more to do! And lets’ not leave NJ out...

New Jersey Land of Make Believe 354 Great Meadows Rd., Hope, NJ 905-459-9000 •lomb.com

Brooklyn Brooklyn Bridge Park Just below the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, this new 1.3-mile-long multi-use park provides a thrilling view of Lower Manhattan across New York harbor. Enter from Old Fulton Street in DUMBO or Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights. 718-222-9939 •brooklynbridgepark.org

LI Aquarium & Exhibition Center 431 E. Main St., Riverhead, 631-208-9200 •longislandaquarium.com

Brooklyn Botanic Garden 1000 Washington Ave., 718-623-7200 •bbg.org

LI Children’s Museum 11 Davis Ave., Garden City, 516-224-5800 •licm.org

Brooklyn Childrens Museum 145 Brooklyn Ave., 718-735-4400 •brooklynkids.org

LI Game Farm Wildlife Park Chapman Boulevard, Manorville.

631-878-6644 •longislandgamefarm.com

Jewish Childen’s Museum 792 Eastern Parkway, 718-467-0600 •jcm.museum

LI Maritime Museum 86 W. Ave., West Sayville, 631-HISTORY •limaritime.org Quogue Wildlife Refuge 3 Old Country Rd., Quogue, 631-653-4771 •quoguewildliferefuge.org Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Mus. 200 Main St., Sag Harbor, 631-725-0770 •sagharborwhalingmuseum.org

Lots of Fun

Close to Home

Living Torah Museum 1601 41 St., Boro Park, 877-PLAN-A-TOUR •torahmuseum.com Luna Park 1000 Surf Ave., Coney Island, 718-373-LUNA •lunaparknyc.com New York Aquarium Surf Ave. at W. 8 St., Coney Island., 718-265-FISH •nyquarium.com

Serpentarium-Reptile Museum 213 E. Main St., Riverhead, 631-722-5488 •snakemuseum.com

New York Transit Museum Boerum Pl. at Schermerhorn St., Brooklyn 718-694-5100 •mta.info/mta/museum/

Sweetbriar Nature Center 62 Eckernkamp Dr., Smithtown, 631-979-6344 •sweetbriarnc.org

Queens New York Hall of Science 47-01 111 St., Corona, 718-699-0005 •nysci.org

Long Island Children’s Museum 11 Davis Avenue • Garden City NY 11530 www.licm.org • (516) 224-5800

919792

If Long Island trumps travel on your summer itinerary, don’t dispair: There are plenty of activities in and around our home base that promise an enjoyable vacation experience.

This is a Staycation sampler; if you have venues to suggest for a future list, send them to Publisher@TheJewishStar.com

July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

12

Sale Dates: July 23rd - 28th 2017

Weekly Powerade

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pasta partners!

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13

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Kippah can be a lifesaver for kids with allergies

By Gabe Friedman, JTA At 3-1/2, Peretz Apfelbaum may not completely understand it yet, but some kitchens can put his life in danger.

The Brooklyn boy is allergic to peanuts, cashews, pistachios, flax seeds, mustard seeds, coconut, peas, eggs and beef. Some of the foods give him hives, but the nuts can send Peretz into anaphylactic shock. The inherent risks make it impossible to test the severity of some of the allergies, meaning he could have other, unexpected reactions to some of those foods.

Obviously it is an extremely distressing situation for his mom, Chanie. But the 36-yearold mother of five from Crown Heights is doing something other than worrying. Chanie Apfelbaum came up with a simple, clever idea to notify others that her son has severe allergies: an “allergy alert” kippah.

The skullcap, which Apfelbaum helped design with the Brooklyn-based company iKippah — an online retailer with bright designs like the one inspired by “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” — is navy blue with a red circle on the front that contains the words “Allergy Alert.” It also says “flip for info” — the underside has lines to write down the child’s allergies.

“We loved Chanie’s idea immediately,” Sarale Seewald, who founded iKippah with her sister-in-law, Dina Seewald, told JTA. “We see a great need for this kippah, and we truly believe this design will help save lives.”

The company put the allergy alert skullcap on its website two weeks ago and, according to Seewald, has already sold a few hundred.

Though the skullcaps are still unavailable in stores — iKippah has about 180 retailers as customers, in addition to its direct-to-consumer website — the company plans to make

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Chanie Apfelbaum with her “Allergy Alert” kippah-wearing son, Peretz.

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Food allergies have increased markedly in the United States in recent years. Research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has shown that food allergies in children rose by

50 percent between 1997 and 2011, possibly from overuse of antibiotics or increased hygiene, which shields children from being exposed to infectious agents during the critical immune system-forming years.

Apfelbaum — a popular kosher food blog-

ger under the moniker Busy in Brooklyn with more than 33,000 Instagram followers — has borne witness to the trend. She said Peretz used to wear a bracelet noting his severe allergies, but she feared it wasn’t prominent enough for others to see.

The kippah is an easy way to inform anyone serving food to an allergic child — at camp or restaurants or a parent hosting a play date — that they should be careful.

Plus Peretz, who is a member of an Orthodox household, already wears a yarmulke every day.

Apfelbaum, a member of the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement, was worried, too, about Peretz running around from house to house in her community’s summer bungalow colony in upstate New York. She started a WhatsApp group to message other parents about her concerns, and she helped make the colony nut free.

But the worries never totally disappear for the parent of a child with severe allergies, especially when he or she is very young.

“I always remind him, but I can’t trust a 3-year-old to remember that he always has to ask before [he eats something] and say ‘I’m allergic,’” Apfelbaum said.

“I wanted something on him so that when someone looks at him, they say, ‘I can’t just give him food from my kitchen,’” she said of her kippah’s design. “It just makes me a little more secure.”

Still, it took Apfelbaum a little time to become accustomed to her son wearing the same kippah every day — she would help Peretz pick out a skullcap that coordinated with his clothes.

“You get so used to [using] one that matches every outfit, and now he can only wear that,” Apfelbaum said with a laugh.

“But it’s worth it.”

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Preventing ‘apocalypse between Islam, Judaism’

By Alex Traiman, JNS.org The Israeli government reopened the Temple Mount complex to Muslims and members of other faiths on Sunday with strict new security measures, in the wake of last Friday’s attack near the flashpoint holy site, in which Arab terrorists killed two Israeli Druze police officers.

Israeli defense experts who specialize in understanding radical Islamic culture stress that such attacks are likely to occur again.

“For many years, there has been the motivation to create an apocalypse between Islam and Judaism on the basis of the Al-Aqsa mosque (the name of the mosque on the Temple Mount plaza),” said Reuven Berko, a former colonel in the Israel Police and former adviser on Arab affairs for the Jerusalem Police Department. “Sheikh Raed Salah (head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel) is very bold in using this argument day and night.”

Islamic leaders have called on Muslims “to reject and boycott all the Israeli aggression measures,” claiming the changes violate a long-held status quo between the Islamic Waqf, which administers the site itself, and Israel, which controls access to the Temple Mount.

After metal detectors were installed at the entrance gates to the Temple Mount, Sheikh Omar Kiswani, director of the Al-Aqsa mosque, told Israeli media, “We reject the changes imposed by the Israeli government. We will not enter through these metal detectors.”

Unholy act at a holy site?

“Radical Muslims do not give a damn about the fact that a site is holy—even to themselves.

They have a long track record of using holy sites of all faiths as arenas to promote their radical agenda, across the Middle East,” Berko said.

Berko suggested that future incidents on the Temple Mount are likely due to ongoing “incitement and the circumstances which support and

Israeli security officers stand near a newly installed metal detector at one of the entrance gates to the Temple Mount on July 17.

Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

encourage using weapons, killing innocent people and creating chaos.” He noted that last Friday’s terrorists, who came from the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, were incited by radicals like Salah, who are affiliated with Hamas and were “raised on the same petri dish” as the global movement of Islamic State and other Muslim terror groups.

There have been numerous cases of weapons stockpiling on the Temple Mount in recent years, with multiple incidents of stone-throwing and firebombing. Last Friday’s attack was the first major incident in recent years involving automatic weapons.

“Many times within the Al-Aqsa mosque, we discovered several hiding places, stockpiled with means to kill,” Berko said, referring to his time with the Israel Police.

According to Dr. Mordechai Kedar—a researcher at Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and a leading scholar on Arab culture, who served for 25 years within the IDF’s military intelligence units—the Temple Mount has long been a source of radical Islamic incitement against Israel and the U.S. “There are hundreds of recordings of sermons from the Temple Mount, replete with violence, replete with incitement against the Jews, against Israel. And unfortunately, Israel just lets it go,” Kedar told JNS.org.

Kedar said the violence stems “from an ideological imperative to prevent Israeli sovereignty,” noting that in Muslim doctrine, Islam “cannot exist side by side” with another religion, and that “within Islam there is only the concept of one re-

ligion being dominant over the other.”

“Muslims do not want Jews in the land of Israel, especially in Jerusalem, and particularly on the Temple Mount. Islam, as a religion, cannot accept a Jewish state. They view Judaism as a threat on Islam,” said Kedar, adding that while murderous acts are considered unholy to Jews and Westerners, acts of martyrdom can be considered holy in Islamic culture.

Preventing future attacks Understanding Islamic culture and using it to develop sound policies is a key to preventing further violence, according to both Berko and Kedar.

“They are violent, but if they face an iron wall, they will retreat—once they understand that they cannot defeat us,” Kedar said.

For more than a decade, worshippers or tourists wishing to visit the adjacent Western Wall—a site revered by Jews in absence of full permission to enter and pray on the Temple Mount—have been forced to pass through metal detectors, despite the fact that there have been no recently recorded incidents of Jews seeking to commit acts of terror at the site. Now these same measures are being installed on the Temple Mount, where tens of thousands of Arabs can gather to pray on Fridays and during the month of Ramadan.

Berko noted that recommendations for stricter security measures at the Temple Mount were presented in 2014, “but they were not implemented.” He stressed the sensitivities Israel must contend with when dealing with Jordan, which controls the Islamic Waqf; the Palestinians, many of whom are employed by the Waqf; and Muslims who pray on the site.

Muslims with a stake in the issue object to the stricter security measure, Berko said, “because they are afraid. They view this move not as a step to protect their own prayers, or to protect the mosque, but rather they treat it as an attempt by Israel to control Al-Aqsa.”

Jerusalem terror and the split between minorities

By Ariel Ben Solomon, JNS.org Last Friday’s deadly terror attack near the Temple Mount shows how Israel is at the forefront of the clash of civilizations between the Islamic world and the West—not only with the Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries, but also from within its own minority populations.

In the attack, Arab terrorists from the northern Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm killed two Druze police officers, highlighting a sharp dichotomy between two of Israel’s minority groups.

Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population. While Israeli Arabs maintain a higher quality of life than their brethren in most other places in the Middle East, a significant number of them support the Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state. Yet some smaller minority groups in Israel, such as Christians and the Druze, are largely supportive of the state.

Israeli officials blamed the Temple Mount attack on the ongoing incitement by the Islamic Movement in Israel, an affiliate of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood movement. The leader of the Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch, Sheikh Raed Salah, said Israel was responsible for the attack and that he prays for the terrorist “martyrs” who carried it out, according to a video posted by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Rafa Halabi, an Israeli Druze who recently stepped down as an adviser to Communications Minister Ayoub Kara (Likud), who is also part of the Druze community, told JNS.org, “The problem is that Arab political leaders of the Joint List (the Knesset’s alliance of Arab parties) and the Islamic Movement are simply starting a war—they don’t speak about peace, but incite for war.”

Halabi, who served as a senior officer in the IDF for 15 years, said that he visited the families of the Temple Mount attack victims, and saw some local Muslim and Christian leaders there who called for coexistence. Halabi said the Israeli government should enforce the law by destroying the homes of the terrorists.

Atta Yemini Farhat, chairman of the Druze Zi-

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan speaks at the funeral of Druze police officer Kamil Shnaan in the northern village of Hurfeish.

Basel Awi-dat/Flash90

onist Council for Israel, told JNS.org the terrorist attack was partially a result of the lack of support for IDF soldier Elor Azaria, who was convicted of manslaughter for killing an immobilized Palestinian terrorist in Hebron last year. Farhat, who reached the rank of major in the IDF, said the Azaria verdict “makes the terrorists feel stronger.”

“Around 90 percent of Druze call for destroying terrorists’ homes, not giving them national insurance benefits, revoking their families’ citizenship and deporting them to Gaza,” Farhat said.

Druze support for the state Israeli Druze claim they are descendants of Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses. “We have been supporting the nation of Israel for 3,000 years,” said Farhat, adding, “We don’t believe in [the prophet] Muhammad and our women do not marry four wives, but just one, and we don’t fast during Ramadan.”

Druze are drafted into the IDF, unlike Arab

Muslims and Christians, who are not required to serve but can volunteer.

Meanwhile, Farhat explained that since Syrian Druze residing in the Israeli Golan Heights are worried about being forced to return to wartorn Syria, and concerned for the safety their family members who still live there, they are scared to identify with Israel. Yet Farhat asserted, “Privately, they will tell you they prefer to live in Israel, and many are now applying for Israeli citizenship since they now see no way of returning to the chaos [in Syria].”

According to Dr. Mordechai Zaken, head of minority affairs in the Israeli Public Security Minis-try, there are around 135,000 Druze and 165,000 Christians in Israel, with each minority making up less than 10 percent of Israel’s total Arab population. More than 80 percent of Israeli Arabs are Muslim.

Druze community members reside in 22 vil-

lages on or around Mount Carmel in the Galilee and in the Golan Heights, where four of the Druze villages still have an association with Syria.

“The Druze constitute a distinct Arabic-speaking community,” Zaken told JNS.org, noting that a survey carried out in 2008 showed 94 percent of Druze self-identify as Israeli.

“While the Druze religion is not accessible to outsiders, one known aspect of its philosophy is the concept of ‘taqiyya,’ which is Arabic for ‘prudence, fear, caution,’ and in practice means that the tenets of the religion are not shared widely,” said Zaken. “Because of this defensive mecha-nism, the Druze are loyal to the regime of the country where they reside, whether in Syria or elsewhere. …

Therefore, the Druze are loyal to the state of Israel and serve in the Israel Defense Forces, unlike the Muslim Arabs of Israel. Many have served in high ranks within various branches of the government, particularly in the security forces.”

Explaining why Israeli security forces utilize the Druze at sensitive sites such as the Temple Mount, Halabi said the Druze “speak Arabic and understand Muslim culture more than Jews,” giving them an advantage in picking up small clues that can thwart terror attacks. Halabi estimated the majority of security officers guarding Jerusalem’s Old City are Druze.

Islamic Movement facilitates terror “The Islamic Movement is very radical,” said Halabi, describing it as a “potential Hamas inside of the state.” Halabi, who believes the Temple Mount attack resulted from incitement by Islamic Movement leader Salah and Arab Knesset members, said, “An Islamic Movement member can radicalize and become an Islamic State activist in five minutes.”

Farhat said Israel should deal with the Islamic Movement just as Egypt’s government has cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood in recent years.

“I think Israel needs to enact emergency laws,” he said, “and detain the leaders of the Islamic Movement.”

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Last month, for example, three Jewish women were ejected from the Chicago Dyke March because they were carrying a rainbow flag with a Jewish star on it. One of the women said she was told by a march organizer “your flag looks too much like Israeli flags because of the star, and that it is triggering to people and it makes them feel unsafe.”

Organizers of the Chicago Dyke March themselves tweeted, “QUEER AND TRANS ANTI-ZIONIST JEWISH FOLKS ARE WELCOME HERE,” a clear example of exclusionary intersectionality.

The tweet makes it explicit that you can only be part of the cause if you agree with the organizers on every issue. Those with a different perspective need not apply.

On too many college campuses, political activists embrace exclusionary intersectionality. Jewish students have reported feeling unwelcome in certain social justice coalitions. In such instances,

anti-Israel students have become gatekeepers for campus coalitions, citing intersectionality in excluding Jewish students.

For example, Students for Justice in Palestine at Brown University managed to get transgender activist Janet Mock to cancel her scheduled speech at Hillel. Drawing on the intersectional vocabulary, they argued that “Brown/RISD Hillel, through its association with Hillel International, has a clear policy of supporting … Israel’s racist and colonial policies. ... Indeed, queerness does not lie in isolation from other forms of identity; rather, it explicitly interacts with other identities including race, gender, class and ability.”

Faced with such hostile exclusion, some in the Jewish community would just as soon condemn all intersectionality and be done with it. But not all uses of intersectionality are equal: The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ rights orga-

nization, responded to the incident at the Chicago Dyke March by tweeting, “Marches should be safe spaces to celebrate our diversity and our pride.

This is not right.”

Indeed, the LGBTQ rights group took aim at the march organizers for excluding the Jewish marchers, thereby practicing inclusionary intersectionality.

Diaspora Jews must learn, not shun, intersectional discourse in all its forms and be part of the discussion while not being afraid to challenge instances of exclusionary intersectionality. Condemning all intersectionality won’t make it go away. We — and the larger society — have a major stake in the more inclusionary form winning out.

David Bernstein is president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the representative voice of the Jewish community relations movement.

Follow him on Twitter @DavidLBernstein.

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Commentary by David Bernstein, JTA Last year, I wrote an opinion piece for JTA about a term and a trend few Jews over the age of 30 had ever heard of: intersectionality. Coined in the late 1980s, intersectionality posits that various forms of oppression — racism, sexism, classism, ableism and homophobia — are all interconnected.

According to the theory, a black female is doubly marginalized by racism and sexism, for example. As a result, it is necessary for activists to connect these multiple forms of oppression in their advocacy.

Rising in popularity in the wake of protests over, the fatal shooting of a black man by a white officer in Ferguson, MI, intersectionality, I pointed out, made it easier for Israel’s detractors to connect the dots between their cause David Bernstein and other causes — to blame, somehow, the behavior of Missouri police on the example of the Israeli military, or to reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a clash between whites and “people of color.”

I argued that to counter this growing problem, supporters of Israel must do more to join the conversation and engage other groups susceptible to outreach from anti-Israel groups.

The op-ed generated a firestorm. Numerous proponents of intersectionality spoke out against the article, arguing that I simplified an important theoretical framework for understanding prejudice and exploited it for advocacy purposes. Others were shocked by what they considered yet another manifestation of anti-Israelism.

Since that time, I’ve delved deeper into the doctrine and observed its various manifestations.

In its original form, intersectionality is a perfectly legitimate way to understand discrimination and power, and can bring people together. I call this “inclusionary intersectionality.”

In its more malevolent form, however, it is used to purge social justice causes of anyone who doesn’t agree with the entire package of ideologically extreme views. I call this “exclusionary intersectionality.”

It’s critical that we know the difference.

Many college students, including young Jews, embrace inclusionary intersectionality. Think not of a raucous rally but of a dorm room discussion.

The intersectional conversation allows students to map themselves with other students onto a Venn diagram reflecting their multiple identities.

In their discussions, they recognize both overlapping and divergent experiences. A college student intern in my office told me that “thinking intersectionally means appreciating our association with diverse identities. It allows us to recognize the potential for empathy beneath surface-level differences and develop greater opportunities for cooperation.”

These concepts should not be all that alien to us. The Jewish community relations field, which for decades has been building bridges to other minority communities in order to create a more just society, operates under what could be considered a form of inclusionary intersectionality.

Increasingly, however, a more exclusionary discourse has been used to divide people and target, in particular, Jews and supporters of Israel. The detractors use the same framework of interconnected identities to limit, not expand, the scope of human empathy.

JST

THE JEWISH STAR July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777

Intersectionality: It can exclude, it can include

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July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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Is it Jewish to savor sweet vengeance? rAbbi Avi billet Parsha of the weeK

T

he truth is, it depends. The Torah, for example, says that if a person kills someone accidentally, the blood of the victim shall be avenged (Shmot 21:20).

Chapter 19 in Devarim discusses the rules surrounding the accidental murder and the need for the perpetrator to run to a city of refuge before the avenging relative will deliver unprosecutable vigilante justice against his relative’s killer. A good portion of tractate Makkot is dedicated to these discussions.

Vayikra 19:18, famous for its Golden Rule of loving your neighbor, actually begins with

the phrase, “Do not take revenge nor bear a grudge against the children of your people.”

Parshat Matot, chapter 31 begins with G-d telling Moshe, “Take revenge for the Israelites against the Midianites.” This is the prelude to the annihilation war against Midian, the nation responsible for bringing upon Israel a plague that took the lives of 24,000 people.

In the Vayikra passage, the midrash and many commentaries describe the frowned upon revenge as being of the type which is just spiteful and mean — you didn’t lend me something, so I won’t lend you a different item; you were stingy, so I’ll be stingy back.

On the other hand, the cases of revenge that seem to be sanctioned by the Torah, or at the very least not stopped outright, are when the side seeking vengeance, either a relative or the entire nation of Israel, suffered a loss or many losses at the hands of the target, the

erstwhile perpetrator.

And so the propriety of revenge becomes a question of what happened, and what is the benefit of said revenge. n a personal level, I have very little qualms about revenge or vengeance being taken out against murderers.

Last week’s terrorist attack against Israeli police officers on the Temple Mount ended when the perpetrators were killed. Any terrorist who engages in such a cowardly assault, attacking or aiming to murder people who mean them no harm and who are not a threat to them, whether they are successful in harming their intended victim or not, should be met with immediate vengeance while they are engaged in the attack. (If they desist and it’s possible to safely arrest them, we can have a different conversation.)

See Jewish on page 19

O

Zev Berkovitch’s brother Akiva died enroute to Auschwitz. As sandak, Zev holds great-grandson Akiva.

Against Nazism, Jewish survival is sweetest revenge.

Literature of the 3 weeks and the Shoah AlAn JAy Gerber Kosher BooKworm

M

idway through the month of Tammuz our religious focus shifts to observances commemorating the saddest events in our history. The destruction of the two temples, the murders and massacres of centuries past, and the hateful actions that fill our daily news feeds are given special attention at this time of year.

“Em Habanim Semeha: Restoration of Zion As a Response During the Holocaust,”

by Rabbi Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal, edited and translated by Rabbi Dr. Pesach Schindler, emerges as a premier literary work of the Holocaust era. Teichtal, a chassidic rabbi, was a fervent adherent of a rabid anti-Zionist ideology. During the last years of the Holocaust, as its horrors enveloped his community and ultimately consumed him as well, he openly repudiated his anti-Zionist beliefs and committed his feelings into writings, which evolved

into “Eim HaBanim Semeha.”

The book was hidden before Rabbi Teichtal was deported. After the war, it was brought to Israel and printed in Hebrew. Based on classical Jewish sources, the author tries to find meaning in the tragedy unfolding around him.

He began to see the galus as the prime source of all the troubles. He regarded aliyah to Israel as the rectifying force, which did not happen because of the widespread anti-Zionist stand of most of the chassidic leadership in Europe during the inter-war years.

In addition to strong theological arguments for the settlement of Israel, Rabbi Teichtal condemns his fellow chassidic rabbis. He directly blames them for the large Jewish presence that remained in East Europe on the eve of World War II. In 1999 “Eim HaBanim Semeha” was translated into English by Rabbi Dr. Pesach Schindler of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, one of the most distinguished scholars of both the Holocaust era and the chassidic community under Nazi rule. What makes Rabbi Schindler’s work unique is that he does not treat it as a literal translation, but as a learning experience. He translates the

most important sections of the book together with detailed footnotes that are designed to be informative and allow the reader to conduct further research. Additionally, the print, type style, and format make it a very userfriendly volume.

Rabbi Schindler, in paraphrasing Rabbi Teichtal’s original work, has edited the book to make it readable for both the expert and the layperson.

In his eloquent and informative introduction to the book, Rabbi Walter Wurzburger, the former rabbi of Shaaray Tefila in Lawrence and a close friend of Dr. Schindler, noted the value of the editor’s introduction to the work. “It enables even readers unfamiliar with the historic background to appreciate the momentous nature of Rabbi Teichtal’s ‘conversion’ from radical anti-Zionism to a passionate advocacy of religious Zionism,” he says.

Rabbi Wurzburger further notes that one major technical flaw in the original volume is that because of its hasty composition under trying conditions, some of the language assumes that the reader has a firm base in the works cited. Thus, notes Rabbi Wurzburger, “even individuals who can read the Hebrew original

will derive much benefit from Dr. Schindler’s excellent notes and commentary.

With the tools of scholarship at his disposal, he is able to illuminate what would otherwise have remained obscure to those who cannot match his [Rabbi Teichtal’s] extensive knowledge of Talmudic and chassidic literature.”

This is a very delicate topic, sensitive to some who have refused to acknowledge past misjudgments. Rabbi Dr. Schindler’s treatment of this text reflects a keen sensitivity to the issue at hand. I highly recommend it.

Originally published July 16, 2008 Rabbi Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal

The unalterable eternality of Torat Moshe rAbbi dAvid etenGoff

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he phrase, “aleh hamitzvot” (“these are the commandments”), appears twice in the Torah — in the concluding pasukim of Sefer Vayikra, and in our parasha, MatotMasei, in Sefer Bamidbar: • These are the mitzvot that the L-rd commanded Moses to [tell] the children of Israel on Mount Sinai. (Vayikra 27:34) • These are the mitzvot and the ordinances (v’hamishpatim) that the L-rd commanded the children of Israel through Moses in the plains of Moab, by the Jordan at Jericho.

(Bamidbar 36:13) The pasukim are dissimilar in that the geographic location mentioned in the first is Mount Sinai, whereas the second refers to “the plains of Moab, by the Jordan at Jericho.” Additionally, the first verse only mentions mitzvot, while the second includes mishpatim. In both cases, however, Moses is charged to teach the commandments to the entire Jewish people. This concept is alluded

to, as well, in the well-known verse, “Torah tzivah lanu Moshe morasha kehillat Ya’akov” (“The Torah that Moses commanded us is a legacy for the congregation of Jacob,” Devarim 33:4) While the substantive meaning of “aleh hamitzvot” is elusive, we are fortunate that the Talmud Yerushalmi enables us to better understand this phrase: “[This means,] that these [and these alone] are the commandments that Moses instructed us to observe.”

(Megilah I:V) The Talmud Yerushalmi adds this crucial statement: “And so, too, did Moses teach us — ‘In the future, and from this point forward, no other prophet may originate a new commandment for you’.” In addition, this principle is found in the Midrash Sifrei to Sefer Bamidbar and four separate times in the Talmud Bavli. Its inclusion in these multiple sources bears powerful testimony to its singular import in classical halachic thought. he Rambam (Maimonides), basing himself upon the above cited sources, codifies the expression, “no prophet is permitted to create a new matter (i.e. mitzvah) from this point forward,” in a straightforward juridic formulation: “It is clear and explicit in the Torah that it

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is [G-d’s] commandment, remaining forever teacher Moses was the sole prophet of the without change, addition, or diminishment, Torah.” As such, the Malbim explains, “all of as [Devarim 13:1] states: ‘All these matters the subsequent prophets had but one purpose which I command to you, you shall be careful — to encourage loyalty to Moses’ Torah (Torto perform. You may not add to it or dimin- at Moshe).” Thus, by definition, “they could ish from it,’ and [Devarim neither add nor subtract 29:28] states: ‘What is re[from the Torah].” (Comvealed is for us and our chilmentary on Sefer Vayikra, dren forever, to carry out section 120) The Malbim’s all the words of this Torah.’ use of the expression, “TorThis teaches that we are at Moshe” is similar in kind commanded to fulfill all the to a verse in Sefer Malachi Torah’s directives forever. wherein the prophet proIt is also said: ‘It is an evclaims, “Remember My sererlasting statute for all your vant Moses’ Torah (Torat generations,’ and [Devarim Moshe) [inclusive of] the 30:20] states: ‘It is not in laws and ordinances which the heavens.’ This teaches I commanded him in Horeb that a prophet can no lon(i.e. at Mount Sinai) for all ger add a new precept [to Israel.” (3:22) — talmud yerushalmi the Torah].” (Mishneh ToThe promise of reward rah, Sefer Hamada, Hilchot for fulfilling Torat Moshe Yesodei HaTorah 9:1) (i.e. the mitzvot) is found The Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush ben throughout the Torah. One of the most celYechiel Michel) further explicates the mean- ebrated of these passages appears in the secing of our phrase, “no prophet is permitted ond paragraph of the Shema: to create a new matter from this point for“And it will be, if you hearken to My comward.” He opines that “aleh hamitzvot” con- mandments that I command you this day to notes “these and no others,” and adds, “our See Torat Moshe on page 19

no prophet is permitted to create a new matter from this point forward.

Rabbi binny FReedman The hearT of jerusalem

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he was the Other Doctor of Auschwitz and I recently read a story about her in Yitta Halberstam’s small miracles series.

A young woman (we’ll call her Chaya) had just arrived in Auschwitz as a young bride of 19. Forced to suffer the ordeal of Mengele’s infamous selection, she watched her beloved husband taken off in the opposite direction and, having survived, realized he must be gone.

Soon, though, amidst the constant fear, hunger and pain, Chaya discovered a small glimmer of hope: she realized she was pregnant, a part of her husband still lived. Her friends in the barracks explained to her that trying to save the baby would only result in her own death as well.

Begging for help, finally someone went to get Dr. Gisella Perl, an obstetrician in Siget (Hungary) before the war and known among the inmates as the Other Doctor of Auschwitz. Quietly, secretly, she moved among the prisoners dispensing medical help and healing wherever possible, and she had helped hundreds of pregnant women in despair in Auschwitz.

When she examined Chaya, she realized she was too far along for a safe abortion and advised her she would have to carry the baby to term.

“You will have to hide your pregnancy, and when it is time, I will deliver the baby. And then, I will do what I have to do to save your life.”

Averting her eyes, Doctor Perl walked away.

Chaya asked everyone who would listen what Doctor Perl meant by “doing the right thing,” but no one would answer her. Finally one woman could stand it no longer and broke the silence: “As soon as your baby is born Doctor Perl will kill it; it’s the only way.”

By some miracle Chaya managed to hide her pregnancy and some months later went into labor. Doctor Perl took her to the floor of the latrine and helped deliver the baby and through the entire ordeal, Chaya begged her to let the baby live.

Through her tears, Doctor Perl explained

Jewish...

Continued from page 18 Most normal people do not have any issue with taking a life in defense of self or in defense of others. If it boils down to the question of whose life is more important, the murderer or would-be murderer who engages first loses such rights.

We live in a society that functions under the rule of law. In some cases, the law is clear; in others, it’s a little spotty. I remember thinking, as I read John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill,” that Carl Lee Hailey had every right to kill the men who had destroyed his ten-year old daughter’s life, even though they were in a form of custody at the time of his vengeance killing.

There were assassination teams that hunted down Nazis after World War II ended. The terrorists responsible for the Munich murders were hunted down. Is this justifiable? I hear both sides — but I don’t think any of these people would have submitted freely if confronted with an arrest warrant.

So where do we fit on the revenge scale today? his question came home to me this week because of a unique experience I had. On Friday, my sister shared with me an incredible photo she had seen on Facebook, of an older man serving as sandak at his great-grandson’s bris. The picture is quite amazing, perfectly angled and focused on

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Dr. Gisella Perl

how painful it was for her as well, as a doctor, a mother, and a human being. “But if I do not do this they will find this baby and murder it, and you and maybe others along with it; this is the only way to save your life. If the Germans find you with a baby they will torture you both and then murder you horribly. … I survive one day I will dedicate myself to bringing lives back into the world. And if you somehow survive you too will yet merit to bring life into the world.”

And when the baby was born, Doctor Perl did the unthinkable: she took the newborn baby just come into the world and strangled it.

Somehow, Chaya survived the war, and after liberation and two years in a DP camp in Sweden she made it to Borough Park in the early 1950s and began the slow painful process of rebuilding her life. She remarried and eventually got pregnant. Her husband wanted her to see an obstetrician, but she had difficulty making that decision.

One day, she was walking down the street and noticed a sign for an obstetrician, named … Dr. Gizelle Perl. They had lost track of each other and Chaya wondered if she too had somehow managed to survive. So she walked into the office unannounced and there standing behind the nurse’s counter was none other than Dr. Gizelle Perl; she too had survived the war.

Doctor Perl felt the stare of someone on her and

the baby’s perfectly shaped head, underneath which is the shortsleeved arm of the sandak, with the number A-7790 visibly tattooed.

The story behind the photo is no less incredible, as the sandak, a little over 70 years ago, held his brother Akiva in his arms as Akiva died on their way to Auschwitz. And now, in 2017, saba Zev Berkovitch held his great-grandson, named for the boy who died so long ago, this time for life in the land of the Jewish people.

I posted the photo on my mohel Facebook page, and within three days it was seen by over 160,000 people, shared over 700 times, garnering all the requisite clicks, likes and comments that define something which has “gone viral.”

Many of the comments spoke of how “this is our revenge against Hitler.” And, I guess to a large degree, that is correct. By and large, Nazism is a criminal offense, or at least viewed as bigoted lunacy in most of the civilized world. And we, the Jewish people, go about our business. We live, we raise families, we teach our children, and we value and celebrate life at every turn.

When we think about what Saba Zev and his generation went through, victims of an ideology hell-bent on murder, devastation and destruction, and we look at how we have survived and built the lives we live, focused on building and progress and supporting our heritage, we see how this is the greatest kind of revenge.

looked up and slowly her eyes widened in recognition; with a shout she ran out from behind the counter and they hugged until the tears stopped flowing.

Doctor Perl had kept her promise and come to Borough Park, which had one of the largest concentrations of Holocaust survivors in the world, to bring life back into the world. And she immediately confirmed to Chaya that she had not forgotten her promise to one day after the war help deliver her baby.

So once again Dr. Gizelle took Chaya under her wing, only this time not on the floor of a latrine in Auschwitz but in a sterile delivery room at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn.

And as she delivered the baby she shouted out what would become her trademark line every time she delivered a Jewish baby: “A Life for a Life!”

It is estimated that Dr. Gizelle Perl saved almost 10,000 Jewish women in Auschwitz. But until her death as an unsung heroine 1984, her greatest joy was the babies she delivered in freedom, her act of defiance in a post Holocaust world. aking lives and giving them was a fine line in that world of darkness, and there is a detail in the story of this week’s parsha Mattot that makes the point well.

G-d tells Moshe it is time to avenge the wickedness of the Midianites. Recognizing that they would not triumph against the Jewish people on the battlefield, the Midianites, at the behest of Balaam their wicked sorcerer, decided to bring the Jewish people down spiritually. So Midianite women seduced Jewish men in a wicked orgy of idolatry which resulted in a terrible Plague.

Moshe, at the behest of G-d, tells the people to ready 1,000 men from each tribe for the imminent battle against Midian. Rashi points out (Bamidbar 31:4) that this was meant to include the tribe of Levi — even Levites who served in the Temple and were not expected to go to war, would join this battle for the spiritual essence of the Jewish people.

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Torat Moshe...

Continued from page 18 love the L-rd, your G-d, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, I will give the rain of your land at its time, the early rain and the latter rain, and you will gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil.

And I will give grass in your field for your livestock, and you will eat and be sated.”

(Devarim 11:3) his narrative focuses on the physical rewards that will accrue to our nation if we demonstrate true allegiance to the Almighty. Thus, the focus is on rain, grain, wine, oil, livestock and the general satisfaction of our earthly needs. In contrast, the prophet Malachi turns our attention to the ultimate spiritual reward, namely, the fulfillment of Judaism’s eschatological vision: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the L-rd, that he may turn the heart of the fathers back through the children, and the heart of the children back through their fathers.” (23-24) With Hashem’s love and guidance, may we have the wisdom and desire to keep His eternal Torat Moshe. Then, with His chane v’chesed v’rachamim (grace, kindness and mercy) may we, as Michah declared, behold Elijah the prophet and the coming of Mashiach ben David soon and in our days.

V’chane yihi ratzon.

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Luach

Fri. July 21 • 27 Tamuz Parsha Matos-Masei Shabbos Mevarchim Candlelighting: 8:02 pm Havdalah: 9:10 pm

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Parsha Devarim Shabbos Hazan Candlelighting: 7:56 pm Havdalah: 9:04 pm

Mon. July 31 • 8 Av

Tisha B’Av fast begins tonight

Tues. Aug 1 • 9 Av Tisha B’Av fast

Five Towns times from the White Shul The Torah subsequently tells us that 12,000 men thus went to battle. But if the tribe of Levi also sent 1,000 men then there should have been 13,000 men. And Joseph has two sons who become tribes, Menashe and Ephraim, so there are really 13 tribes. Why were there only 12,000 men?

I saw a great response to this question in a thought quoted by Rav Yochanan Zweig, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Beis Moshe Chaim in Miami.

The Torah says these 12,000 men were “given over” to the battle (ibid. 31:5). Why were they “given over,” why didn’t they just go to war?

Rashi explains that they did not want to go, because G-d told Moshe this was one last task before Moshe would die (ibid. v. 2) and they did not want to lose their great leader.

Moshe had no hesitations about fulfilling this mitzvah, even though he knew it would be his last, because that’s who Moshe was: it was not about the price of the Mitzvah, it was about the privilege. But the Jewish people were still in a different place: they were more focused on what they were going to lose, rather than the opportunity and blessing to be gained.

When Moshe says, “Mi La’Hashem elai?” (“Who wishes purely to serve G-d, let them come forward to join me” (Shemot 32:26), it were Levites who rushed forward. Their essence was not about themselves, it was about what Hashem wanted of them. So even though this was Moshe’s last mitzvah, they approached it like every other opportunity to serve: the bigger picture always came first. Meanwhile, the rest of the Jewish people, consumed by the imminent loss of their leader, focused on what they were about to lose rather than on the opportunity to give themselves over one more time. his was Moshe’s last lesson to the Jewish people: Who do we want to be? Are we focused on what we lost or on what we have to give?

Incredibly, with the ashes from the Nazis still warm after the Holocaust, the Jewish people, rather than dwelling on their loss, decided they still had something to give to the world, and set about building the State of Israel, and rebuilding the world of Torah that had been lost.

We are in the painful period of the Jewish calendar known as the three weeks, in between when the Roman Legions broke through the walls spelling the end of the Jewish commonwealth, and the ninth of Av when the Temples were destroyed. In the midst of this period of national mourning one cannot help but be inspired by those rare few like Dr. Gisella Perl, who were able, even in the shadow of the chimneys of Auschwitz, to focus not on all that we were losing but on how much we still had to give.

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem.

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THE JEWISH STAR July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777

It’s not what’s lost, but what’s to be achieved

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July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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No, Frank Bruni, Trump Isn’t ‘dissing the Jews’ Jeff Dunetz politics to go

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ew York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote a column on Sunday that asked the question, “Why Does Donald Trump Keep Dissing Jews?” But I have a better question, “Why do liberals who have no idea what they are talking about pretend they are speaking for the Jews?”

Based on his writing, it seems that Frank Bruni is not a fan of any faith. But one thing is for sure, the closest that Bruni’s ever been to understanding what being Jewish is about was his experience as a restaurant critic for the Times.

Complaining about food has been a Jewish tra-

Ben Cohen Viewpoint

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o get a sense of what really lies beneath the campaign to boycott Israel—which is about much more than just boycotting Israel—it can be helpful to see how this issue is presented in the Arab world, and how it plays out there.

The prestigious international culture festival in Carthage, Tunisia, opened July 13 under the shadow of a call to boycott one of the performers—Michel Boujenah, a FrenchJewish actor and a proud son of Tunisia, the land of his birth.

Boujenah is not an Israeli citizen, nor does he live in Israel. But he is a vocal supporter of the Jewish state, and an outspoken opponent of the anti-Semitism that continues to plague France.

Here in the West, the BDS campaign has not quite reached the stage of boycotting artists simply because they have expressed support for Israel—you need to perform, exhibit, publish or lecture there in order to incur their wrathful campaigns, such as the one recently launched by aging rocker Roger Waters against the band Radiohead. Additionally, because the anti-Semitism of the BDS movement is carefully coded, its Western components tend to shy

dition since biblical times.

Bruni’s lack of knowledge about anything Jewish is dreadfully obvious in the column published on Sunday about President Trump dissing Jews. Consider his first example of the “Trumpian” dissing of my fellow “members of the tribe.”

“He [Trump] declined to pay his respects at a Holocaust memorial in Warsaw that other American presidents routinely visited.”

Before we address the ignorance of that statement, allow me to correct Bruni’s narrative.

The memorial in Warsaw is not a Holocaust memorial, but a tribute to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising (not the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943).

President Trump was in Poland for a total of 16 hours; while he couldn’t go to the memorial, he sent one of his closest advisers, his daughter Ivanka, who also visited a museum dedicated to the history of Jews in Poland. While she was

visiting those sites, the president was preparing for a speech that laid out his vision for the role America and the entire west in the world. After that speech, he left for Hamburg and the G20. he Trump administration has screwed up on a number of things important to Jews, but they were “screw-ups” rather than deliberate attempts to “diss” the Jews (as the Obama administration did on a regular basis).

This writer strongly criticized President Trump when a press release for Holocaust Remembrance Day referred to all the victims of the Holocaust without mentioning Jews specifically.

Bruni complained that the president’s tour of Israel’s incredibly moving Yad Vasham two months ago was a quickie — he laid a wreath and left. Again, Bruni criticizes President Trump based on what Bruni believes is important. Unlike his predecessor, President Trump delivered public speeches criticizing Palestinian violence

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BDS lesson from Tunisia away from boycotting Jews whose only tie to Israel is that they have family there, and care deeply about what happens to the country.

Not so in the Arab world. In Tunisia, Boujenah’s personal relationship with Israel was enough for the UGTT, Tunisia’s labor union federation, to join Tunisian BDS advocates from the “International Campaign for Boycotting Zionism” in calling for his removal from the lineup at the Carthage Festival.

“We do not want a Zionist, whatever their nationality, on our stages and in our festivals!” the boycotters declared. “Michel Boujenah is known as one of the leading Zionist Franco-Tunisian figures who have always defended Israel, its wars and its army.”

But if the campaign against Boujenah is a reminder of how crude Arab anti-Semitism can be, the events that followed the call to boycott him are an even more important reminder that there are some very courageous individuals in the Arab world. These people are taking a stand against the political ugliness embodied by the campaign to oppose “normalization” with Israel. amina Thabet, president of the Tunisian Association for the Support of Minorities, mocked the boycotters’ claim that Boujenah could not be a loyal Tunisian,

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“as if being non-Muslim requires one to prove one’s patriotism!”

“What I denounce is the cowardly behavior of those who do not have the guts to acknowledge their hatred and therefore hide under the guise of some general excuse,” Thabet declared, thereby acknowledging a simple truth that the Western BDS campaign, along with its enablers and excusers, continues to dance around: BDS is anti-Semitic.

Even in the comparatively liberal environs of Tunisia, it still requires remarkable courage for someone like Thabet to protest against the dual loyalty smears aimed at a man who, incidentally, is coming to perform, not to promote Israel or Jewish causes—such as the case of the murdered Jewish pensioner Sarah Halimi, for whom Boujenah has become an articulate and passionate spokesman.

Encouragingly, Thabet was not alone.

Carthage Festival Director Mokhtar Rassaa responded to the boycotters on a local radio station, describing Boujenah as “above all a Tunisian artist,” and praising him for his frequently expressed support of Tunisia’s democracy movement.

“He is a Jew, he has an attachment to Israel, just as we Muslims have an attachment to Mecca,” Rassaa said. “That does not make

without blaming it on Israel. And privately there are reports that he “lost it” during a meeting with Palestinian President Abbas over Abbas’ inciting terrorism.

Bruni brings up other isolated mistakes, like when the president criticized Jake Turx, an Orthodox Jewish reporter for Ami Magazine. In the middle of a press conference in which the president was already pummeling the press, Turx asked a legitimate question about antiSemitism in America. The POTUS mistook it as another charge of anti-Semitism against him and reacted with great nastiness.

The Times columnist may have labeled it “Dissing the Jews,” but what he was really trying to suggest is that President Trump is an anti-Semite. For Trump to be an anti-Semite he would have to hate his daughter Ivanka, his sonin-law Jared Kushner, and their three children.

The president is not an anti-Semite.

him a leader of Zionism!”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these two examples of Boujenah’s Tunisian defenders—and there were more of them—come, respectively, from the fields of political advocacy and the promotion of culture. From their distinct vantage points, both of them perceive without much difficulty what makes the BDS campaign so detestable: its doctrinaire anti-Semitism; its desire to censor, boycott and ban those who purvey knowledge and entertainment; and its determination to suppress an honest dialogue between Jews and Muslims about the issues dividing us.

I wish, frankly, that we had more examples of such clear-sightedness and bravery on our own American landscape. Listening to the likes of BDS activist Linda Sarsour or the anti-Semitic group Students for Justice in Palestine, you are compelled to wonder why American progressives are unable to see what their Tunisian counterparts are seeing in the case of Boujenah.

Perhaps it will take outright boycotts of individuals simply for supporting Israel—most of whom will be Jews, with the occasional non-Jew thrown in as cover—to persuade those who think BDS is reasonable that it is manifestly not so.

As I said earlier, the BDS movement in the West hasn’t quite reached this position; equally, we have no reason to believe this hate campaign won’t eventually arrive there.

Generation of atheists?

No, of ignoramuses W A

hot topic in Israel these days is “Hadata” “hadata” “hadata.” It means “religionization.” It doesn’t refer to religious coercion, to forcing Jewish observance on anyone, but to “impacting culture.” “Hadata” refers to “the objection to the presence of any Jewish content anywhere in Israeli public life.”

If you are secular Israeli and your child learned Shema Yisrael in school — hadata; about Shabbat — hadata; about tefillah — hadata.

I believe the controversy began when the ancient Holy Temple, the Beit Hamikdash, was referenced in a preschool graduation ceremony. What can you do? Historically, there was once a Beit Hamikdash that stood in Jerusalem. It is part of the integrity, the reality, the history of this city.

This year, being the jubilee celebration of modern-day reunited Jerusalem, the subject of Jerusalem was deemed the educational theme by Israel’s Ministry of Education. Two years ago the theme was studying “the other as myself.”

I think the word hadata has a horrible connotation. It resonates very negatively, as if passing down our heritage of Jewish content, identity and traditions is “religionization,” an infiltration of sorts. We are talking about Israel! Last I checked, it is a Jewish state. hy is studying about our heritage, about what makes us who we are, viewed with such animosity and suspicion? Learning about Shema Yisrael, the Jewish holidays and prayers and other topics does not make one a fanatic. It is not indoctrination or brainwashing.

It’s sad to think of the gap that will exist for youngsters who develop their intellectual world to a sophisticated capacity, yet remain ignoramuses about their own identity, history and culture. Studying Judaism does not need to be viewed as religious commitment. Judaism is also our culture, the source of who we are.

In a secular school, studying Jewish history and texts ought to be a neutral endeavor. If students decide to take their study to the next level, more power to them. In a secular school, teaching through a prism of observance ought not be the method — and it’s not. People behind this hadata criticism are painting a picture of aggressive fanatical religious coercion in schools, as if we’ve leapt from a democracy to a theocracy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But is it wrong for Jewish children to learn how to navigate Jewish texts, see their wisdom and beauty, and gain from them?

teaching our Jewish heritage should not turn into a milchemet achim, a civil war. after all, we are the Jewish people, we are a Jewish State.

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view from central park

hen I moved to Israel in my 20s, I worked in an office of all secular Israelis. I was the only observant one.

One day, one of my colleagues came into work very upset about a family member who wasn’t well. I said I would pray for her and asked my colleague for her relative’s name.

Appreciatively, she gave the name, upon which I responded with a question — bat? (daughter of). Traditionally, we pray for an ill person with his or her name and mother’s name. Her fast reply was a digital number, since bat also signifies one’s age. I explained to her that I was referring to her relative’s mother. Not only did my colleague have no clue, but she was touched, and thought it a beautiful tradition. She wanted to know more.

This one incident generated a lot of discussion and study among us. At the time, one of the other colleagues shared how she had recently learned of a poll that had been taken in her child’s school, where Israeli children had a hard time matching graphics to the appropriate names of holidays. We all agreed that was sad. If anything, those secular colleagues of mine felt a sense of missed opportunity and regret in their children’s ignorance and disconnect from Judaism. That is when I became exposed to the saying, ratzinu dor shel koferim, kibbalnu dor shel borim (we wanted a generation atheists, we received a generation of ignoramuses) — in Hebrew, it rhymes. n recent years, I have noticed precisely the opposite in secular Israeli circles. Many in the secular Israeli community are becoming more confident as Jews, more interested in Judaism and Jewish texts. Many of them are fed up with Stockholm syndrome leftists who are negative and self-hating. With the help of leadership from people like Amichai Chikli and organizations such as Leeba and Tavor, I think Jewish pride and balance are slowly being restored to young Israelis.

Agree or disagree, even those campaigning for ascension to the Temple Mount and prayer rights there are no longer represented only by religious settlers. I wonder then, whether this whole hadata campaign is not a last gasp from the staunch liberal secular elite that feels threatened by this spirit of Jewish renewal among Israeli youth.

This hadata discussion could be an opportunity for secular Israelis to take responsibility for the Judaism they decide to pass onto their next generation.

I do not look to Israeli secular schools as an opportunity for what is known as “kiruv levavot,” encouraging observance. I respect where people come from. But neither should teaching about our resilient, creative and long Jewish heritage have to turn into a milchemet achim, a civil war.

After all, we are the Jewish people, we are a Jewish state.

Copyright Intermountain Jewish News

THE JEWISH STAR July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777

tehilla r. goldberg

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July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777 THE JEWISH STAR

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JEWISH

STAR CALENDAR

Send your events to Calendar@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline Friday noon • Include price of admission and phone number • Hi-res photos welcomed • Compiled by Zachary Schechter

Wednesday July 19

Project Witness, this three-day Holocaust education conference features panels on topics ranging from faith, halacha and hashkafa during the Shoah to the role of artifacts in the commemoration.

Opening evening $50. Full program $100. 5:30 to 9 pm. 718-948-6377. 15 W 16th St, New York

Women’s Shiur & Tehillim Group: [Weekly] Join the women of Young Israel of Woodmere at the home of Devorah Schochet. 8 pm. 559 Saddle Ridge Road.

Tuesday July 25

Timely Tanach: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Ya’akov Trump of the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst for a shiur on Sefer Shoftim. 8 pm. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhust.

Women’s Halacha Shiur [Weekly] with Rabbi Shay Schachter on Laws of Muktza on Shabbos. Young Israel of Woodmere. 9:30 to 10:30 am.

516-295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Gemarah Shiur: Join Rabbi Shay Schachter for a Gemarah Shiur at the Young Israel of Woodmere. 9:15 pm. 516-295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Café Europa: Join Congregation of Beth Shalom in partnership with the Marion & Aaron Gural JCC for some exercise, a light lunch and a lecture. This week’s topic: Positivity as a Way of Life, with Harriet Cabelly. 12:30 to 2:30 pm. 516569-6733. 390 Broadway, Lawrence.

Thursday July 20

Iyun Tefilah: [Weekly] Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum at the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhust.

9:45 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhust.

Esther Wein: [Weekly] Join Esther Wein, renowned lecturer and speaker, at the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst as she offers words of Torah and spiritual insight. 10 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhust.

Women’s Halacha Shiur [Weekly] with Mrs. Michal Horowitz for a parsha class at the Young Israel of Woodmere. 9:30-10:30 am. 516-2950950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Amit Yom Iyun features Poupko AMIT is holding its annual Yom Iyun, a day of learning for women by women, on Wednesday, July 26, in Cedarhurst.

Dr. Shoshana Poupko, dean of students for the Ma’ayanot YeDr. Shoshana shiva High School for Poupko Girls, in Teaneck, will be the keynote speaker. She will discuss “Me vs. We — Can We Sustain Both in Today’s World?”

Poupko is a mehanekhet for 10th grade and a teacher of Jewish philosophy and Bible.

Mimi Mehlman, the event chairwoman for the past 18 years, said AMIT’s Yom Iyun “began as an educational group with many prominent keynote speakers in Lido Beach and has grown exponentially over the years.”

“Hundreds of women come together to learn, as a chabura, many valued and insightful lessons from our Torah and beyond,” she said.

As a Jewish educator, Poupko’s experience and insight fits well with the mission of AMIT to provide cuttingedge education to Israeli children throughout Israel, many of whom live in the periphery and come from disadvantaged homes.

Yom Iyun will take place at Sephardic Temple, 775 Branch Blvd. in Cedarhurst, from 9:30 am until 12:30 pm.

For information and reservations, visit amitchildren.org/liyomiyun or contact Genene Kaye at GeneneK@ amitchildren.org, or 212-477-5465.

Holocaust Education Conference: The second day of Project Witness’s Holocaust Education Conference will take place at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. 10 am to 5:30 pm. 36 Battery Place, New York.

Gavin DeGraw sings for UJA NY Gavin DeGraw will headline UJA-Federation of New York’s Annual Summerfest Concert on Thursday, Aug. 10, at the NYCB Theater, 960 Brush Hollow Road, Westbury. The event begins at 6 pm with cocktails, an elaborate buffet, raffles, and a silent auction, and concludes with an after-party. Tickets start at $250. For more information, contact Jodi Faden at fadenj@ujafedny.org or 516-762-5852.

Halachos of Coffee: [Weekly] Join Jonah Steinmetz for at the Young Israel of Woodmere for a shiur for men and women on the topic: All You Need to Know About Your Cup of Joe. 8 pm.

516-295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

HIT 4 HASC: Join HASC for an upstate baseball tournament with a siyum in memory of Chaim (Lobo) Silber z”l. 9:45 am. Free to register, sponsorships starting at $180. 39 Breakey Ave, Monticello. 917-709-1164.

Sfas Emes on the Parsha: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum at the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst for a shiur on the parsha with thoughts and insights from the great rebbe and thinker, Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leb of Gur. Following Mincha-Ma’ariv. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhust.

Practical Kashrus Seminar: Join Rabbi Moshe Elefant of the OU for an overview of the laws of Tevilas Keilim. 10:15 to 11:15 am. 516295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Friday July 21

Dinner on the Boardwalk: The BACH hosts an uplifting rooftop Shabbos service and simultaneous children’s program followed by Friday night dinner under the stars on the Long Beach boardwalk. Tickets starting at $50 for adults and $20 for children under 14 years. 7 pm. 10 Franklin Blvd., Long Beach. 516-897-2473.

Sunday July 23

Timely Torah: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Ya’akov, assistant rabbi of the Young Israel of LawrenceCedarhust, for a shiur on relevant Halachic and philosophical topics related to Parsha Moadim and contemporary issues. Coffee and pastries. 8 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhust.

Siyum: The community I invited to breakfast siyum at the Agudath Israel of the Five Towns to celebrate Daf Yomi’s completion of Baba Basra.

Following 8:30 am Shacharis. 508 Peninsula blvd, Cedarhurst. RSVP to BabaBasraSiyum@ gmail.com or call 855-275-7231.

Gemarah Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Moshe Sokoloff for a gemarah shiur at the Young Israel of Woodmere. 9:15 am. 516-295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Life and Times of Great Torah Personalities: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Shay Schachter for a men and women shiur. 9:30 to10 am. 516-2950950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

East Meadow Blood Drive: Walk-ins are welcome between 9 am and 2 pm, but to make an appointment visit RedCrossBlood.org and use sponsor code SPJC. Suburban Park Jewish Center, 400 Old Westbury Rd., East Meadow.

Sisterhood Book Club: Beth Shalom Sisterhood invites you to an evening with Tuiva Tennenbaum, author of “Lies They Tell (About America)” and “Catch the Jew.” Free. 7:30 pm.

516-353-3254. 390 Broadway, Lawrence.

Guest Lecturer Rabbi Menachem Penner of Yeshiva University at the Young Israel of Woodmere. 8 pm. 516-295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Monday July 24

Women’s Halacha Shiur [Weekly] with Rabbi Ephraim Polakoff on The Laws of Cooking and Reheating on Shabbos. Young Israel of Woodmere. 9:30 to 10:30 am. 516-295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Package From Home Walk-a-Thon: A Package From Home, an organization that raises money for Israeli Lone Soldiers, annual walk-athon at the Sunny Atlantic Beach Club. 9:30 am line up, walk begins 10 am. 2035 Ocean Blvd, Atlantic Beach. 917-560-9234.

Study Maseches Brachos: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Eliyahu Wolf at the Young Israel of Woodmere. 3 to 4 pm. 516-295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Contemporary Issues in Kashrus: [Weekly] Shiur with Rabbi Ephraim Polakoff at the Beis Tefillah of Woodmere. 9 pm. 516-3745523. 409 Edward Ave, Woodmere.

The Essence of the Soul: Join Rabbi Ari Bergman for a four-part discussion on the Neshamah titled “The Essence of the Soul & the Five Parts of the Neshama,” at the Young Israel of Woodmere. 9:15 pm. 516-295-0950. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

Holocaust Education Confab: Hosted by

Sharsheret Barbeque Dinner: Join the Genack, Lippman, Sohn and Weissman families as they commemorate the 40th yahrzeit of Sheila Sohn A”H. Lawrence Yacht and Country Club, 101 Causeway Rd., Lawrence. For details and to RSVP, visit sharsheret.org/libbq

‘Catch the Jew’ Tuvia eyes US at Beth Shalom

By Zachary Schechter Tuvia Tenenbom, best-selling author of “I Slept in Hitler’s Room” and “Catch the Jew” will be speaking at Congregation of Beth Shalom this Sunday, July 23, about his latest book, “The Lies They Tell.”

Te n e n b o m ’ s new book details his experiences as he travels across the backroads of the United States interviewing regular people on a wide range of subjects, including racism and poverty in America and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“I see now more and more [antiSemitism] as America becomes more like Europe, and Jews are part of it,” Tenenbom told The Jewish Star, reflecting on his experiences.

Tenenbom, a German Jew who was born in Israel, traveled across America by car, avoiding highways and sticking to backroads so as best to talk to and get to know the people of America. To his surprise and dismay, he found a growing number of Jews who opposed the modern state of Israel and the actions of its government.

“There are many strange developments in America,” Tenenbom said. “I met all these Jews who, for whatever reason, cannot stand themselves.”

Tenenbom’s appearance is scheduled for 7:30 pm at 390 Broadway, Lawrence. Admission is free.

23 THE JEWISH STAR July 21, 2017 • 27 Tamuz, 5777

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