The Jewish Star

The JEWISH Shoftim • August 17, 2018 •7 Elul, 5778 • Torah columns pages 18 –19 • Luach page 18 • Vol 17, No 32

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Flight 59: ‘It’s time to go!’

LIers among 239 on latest NBN run

The Kreiger family of Flushing (from left): Danielle; Liat, 18 months; Ed Weintrob / The Jewish Star Eitan, 7; Netanel, 3-1/2; and Elazar.

The Charnoff family of Flushing (from left) Moshe Chaim, 5 months; Ed Weintrob / The Jewish Star Laura; Aharon, 2; Rabbi Robby; and Aliza, 6.

By Ed Weintrob Long Islanders were among 239 North Americans who boarded Nefesh B’Nefesh’s 59th aliyah charter flight at JFK airport on Tuesday.

“If we don’t go now, we’re never going to go,” said Ayelet Ross Pelzner of Lawrence, who will settle in Ra’anana with her husband Jonathan and 15-month and 4-1/2-year-old children. “It’s the right time for my kids.”

“It’s been the dream for 10 years,” said Rabbi Robby Charnoff of Flushing, who with his wife Laura were co-directors of the OUJewish Learning Initiative on Campus at Queens College for six years. “We finished our shlichut and our daughter’s ready for first grade, so it’s time to go.” Their children are 5-month, 2-years, and 6-years old. Rabbi Charnoff will teach at MMY and Jodi Ezratty, 27-yearold doctor from Long Tiferet.

Beach, making aliyah.

“There’s no time like the present,” said Elazar Kreiger, who with his wife Danielle and 18-month, 3-1/2-year and 7-year-old children were moving from Hillcrest to Modiin.

“We want to put down roots over there.” Elazar, who works in health care management, said he has no job yet “but we’re going with hope.” Danielle, a physical therapist, will look for work after a licensing exam.

Jodi Ezratty, a 27-year-old doctor from Long Beach, said that after four years in medical school in Israel, “it feels like home and I want to go back.”

Avigail Levitz of Woodmere, a 19-year-old SKA graduate, said she took her “first opportunity to go.”

“I wanted this forever,” she said.

Marc and Sarah Merrill of Kew Gardens Hills were making aliyah with their 20-month and 3-year-old children.

See Flight 59 on page 4

The Pelzners of Lawrence: Jonathan; Noam, 15 months; Ayelet Ross; and Ed Weintrob / The Jewish Star Hadar, 4-1/2. At right: Avigail Levitz of Woodmere.

The Merrill family of Kew Gardens Hills: Naomi, 20 months; Marc; Binyamin, 3; and Sarah.

Ed Weintrob / The Jewish Star

‘93Queen,’ made by 5 Towner, will screen in Malverne Who’s in the Kitchen

JudY JoSzef

Jewish Star columnist

I

met Paula Eiselt years ago when my brother dated her aunt. We became friendly with her wonderful parents, and from the getgo, she struck me as a sweet, funloving and bright young girl.

That being said, I never dreamed that one day her documentary film would receive an initial 100% from Rotten Tomatoes. Seriously, even movies that have won an Academy Award usually don’t score 100%.

The acclaimed new film by Eiselt, who grew up in Woodmere and now lives in Teaneck, is “93Queen.”

It follows the creation of Ezras

Paula Eiselt (left) and Rachel Freier at the New York premier of ‘93Queen.’

Nashim, an all-female EMT service in Borough Park founded in 2014.

93Queen is now showing at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village and at the Teaneck Cinema, and will open on Long Island on Thursday, Aug. 23, at the Malverne Cinema.

Eiselt’s foray into filmmaking began during her sophomore year in HAFTR, when she cut class and rented Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream.” It inspired her so much that she decided to become a filmmaker, eventually interning with Aronofsky

himself. In 2012, she began producing a documentary about her uncle Baruch and his journey through bipolar disorder, but soon put that project on hold to work on 93Queen.

Eiselt is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, was an IFP Documentary Lab Fellow and won the inaugural FirstLook prize at the 2017 Hot Docs Forum in Toronto.

Her work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, ITVS, IFP, the New York State Council on the Arts, the International Documentary Association, Women Make Movies, and the Hartley Film Foundation. She served as researcher for “The Undocumented” (Independent Lens) and as associate producer for “Bronx Princess (POV). Additional directing credits include short films Priscilla (New York Newfilmmaker Series at Anthology Film Archive),

My Mom the Dead Head (Cannes Film Festival’s Short Film Corner) and The Fitting Room (New York Jewish Student Short Film Festival). In addition to her feature documentaries, Eiselt is developing a New York Times Op-Doc on Jewish identity in collaboration with the team behind the In Conversation on Race series.

When I heard about 93Queen, I was immediately intrigued and was lucky enough to have been invited to the premier in Manhattan. As much as I knew about the film in advance, to say I was blown away is an understatement. From the moment the movie opened until the closing credits rolled, I was mesmerized. I don’t ever recall viewing a movie and not looking at my watch at least once.

I was riveted to the screen for See 93Queen on page 4

We can read the sign: Booker’s dumping Israel

By Elizabeth Kratz In May 2015, Senator Cory Booker was the keynote speaker at a Bergen County yeshiva’s annual scholarship reception. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach introduced him, as was their shtick at the time — the rabbi and the senator.

There was no doubt the senator was a true pro. He slung around Yiddish phrases like “tachlis,” acting like he’d had borscht instead of milk in his baby bottle. He told the assembled crowd of 400 yarmulke-wearing Jews and their spouses that he was going to share a dvar Torah with them, and paused for the expected laughter and applause, which he got. He clearly relished his I’m-African-American-but-I-speak-Jewish act. He’d done it all a hundred times before.

Rabbi Boteach looked on proudly. The student had become the master.

Only the student is leaving his mentor behind, and with a now-checkered voting record on Israel, appears to be espousing views that are not as well-aligned. As he mulls a 2020 presidential run, he is increasingly reaching out to groups whose raison d’être is decidedly not supportive of Jews or Israel.

Booker’s entree into the Jewish community famously began in 1992, when he happened upon a Simchat Torah event at the L’Chaim Society at Oxford, the year he was a Rhodes Scholar. Boteach, then a Chabad-associated campus rabbi and not the celebrity co-author he is now, was there to greet him.

Years later, Boteach introduced him to the crème de la crème of the New Jersey Jewish community, lining the coffers for Booker’s election as mayor of Newark, where few Jews live today. Winning the senatorship was then but a piece of cake. Booker had become one of the single largest recipients of pro-Israel financial support in U.S. history.

In fact, NORPAC, a pro-Israel lobby based in New Jersey, has given Booker more money

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Sen. Cory Booker is shown posing with attendees at the Netroots Nation 2018 conference in New Orleans. @US_Campaign/Twitter

than only one other entity, and more than double the funds he received from Goldman Sachs, Disney, Prudential, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley and many others: $158,871 in a single campaign cycle, according to Open Secrets.

But all the lights on the proverbial menorah abruptly flickered out with Booker’s vote in favor of the Iran nuclear deal in September 2015, a vote taken to stark objection of the entirety of the pro-Israel community.

Fast forward to last week.

There were no borscht belt-style jokes on Aug. 3, when Booker was a keynote speaker at Netroots Nation, a progressive conference hosted by Daily Kos, a liberal online community.

The event was a haven for activists from such organizations as Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Emily’s List,

Radical Dharma, The Indivisible Project and others that identify as part of the progressive “Resistance” movement.

The list of some two dozen exhibitors included the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, an organization aligned with the BDS movement, which funnels funding, according to Tablet Magazine, to a coalition of movements that includes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — all considered terror groups by Israel, the U.S. and Europe.

It was a sign held up by Booker and tweeted by the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights that made headlines. “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go,” Booker’s sign read.

Booker, through a staff member, denied that he read the sign or knew what he was doing.

However, possibly even more interesting was

the person standing next to him. On his left was Leah Muskin-Pierret, government affairs director for the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, who previously served as a Tufts University campus organizer for National Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Her t-shirt read “Palestine is a Feminist/Queer/Refugee/Racial Justice Issue.” Boteach seemed to have fun ripping apart the nonsensical moral equivalency between progressivism and the Palestinian narrative.

Muskin-Pierret, identified as Jewish in a New York Times article about hostilities between the Zionist and BDS communities at Tufts, is a wellknown BDS activist and Trump protester.

NORPAC’s Dr. Ben Chouake told The Jewish Insider he hopes Booker will hold a press conference to express his views on Israel and his opposition to the BDS movement to reassure the Jewish community about his commitment to Israel. He added, however, that Booker is one of 44 senators not signed on as a co-sponsor of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. Chouake didn’t add, though certainly knows, that Booker also infamously voted against the Taylor Force Act in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He told the Associated Press afterward that “he was swayed by indications that Israeli officials did not support the measure, fearful that it could squeeze P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas, with whom Israel cooperates in the West Bank on security matters.”

As a Democrat with presidential aspirations, it may be understandable that Booker wishes to present his bona fides to the rising left wing of his party. But the senator should know that the intersectionality argument is deeply flawed — causes that progressives believe in are not even remotely tolerated in Arab and Palestinian society.

Elizabeth Kratz is editor of The Jewish Link of New Jersey.

9/30/18.

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In 5 Towns, UJA helps put kids’ success in bag

Tov B’Yachad, the Orthodox outreach division of UJA Federation on Long Island, held its annual “Supplies for Success” initiative in HAFTR’s gym last Sunday in Lawrence, with volunteers filling more than 900 backpacks with essential school supplies for children in need within our communities. From left: Avigdor Trachtenberg,volunteering for the second time; Barbara Satt from JCCRP; Dovid Bluth, loaded with bags bound for Darchei; Nechama Bluth, Rebbetzin Shani Lefkowitz and Pam Bluth; and Bracha Waldman, 5, with her grandfather Arnie Waldman who has been volunteering for years.

Christina Daly / The Jewish Star

Summerfest moves north Ed Weintrob / The Jewish Star

August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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Flight 59...

Continued from page 1 “We want to go when our children are young, so they’ll be able to fully integrate into the society,” Marc said.

“Take in the enormity of this moment,” Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, co-founder and executive director of Nefesh B’Nefesh, told the olim at JFK. “Appreciate the miracle that we have in the State of Israel — the miracle that you can get on a plane and make aliyah 10 hours from now.”

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LI Summerfest, UJA Federation’s mid-summer gala, moved to a new location last Wednesday — from Old Westbury north to the Tilles Center at LIU Post.

Among supporters from South Shore Orthodox communities (from left): Akiva and Talia Fried of West Hempstead and, from Woodmere, Brian Levkovich flanked by Alax and Jessica Goldschmidt; in right photo: Stacey Feldman of Gural JCC, and Sheryl and Irwin Gershon. Center: County Executive Laura Curran.

down of traditional gender roles. When women wanted to join the all-male Hatzolah, they were met with a resounding “NO.” Opponents worried that if Hatzolah became a mixed-gender service, what would come next?

The documentary follows Rachel Freier (or Ruchie, as she refers to herself) and a group of Hasidic women who decide to start an all-woman volunteer EMT service after they are not allowed to join the established all-male Hatzolah.

Ruchie, who is now a New York criminal court judge, was an attorney when the documentary began filming. She faced many obstacles — online messages accused her of challenging the Torah and of playing with fire.

Why did Eiselt choose to make a documentary about Ezras Nashim?

“Over five years ago, I was perusing a Yiddish website and came across a photo featuring Hasidic women in lab coats,” Eiselt said. “I read in the accompanying description about Ruchie Freier, a Hasidic woman who was leading her fellow Hasidic women from Brooklyn in creating America’s first all-female volunteer EMT corps. They were called Ezras Nashim or ‘women helping women.’

“As an Orthodox woman myself, I immediately understood that the formation of Ezras Nashim would be a significant distraction to cultural norms in the gender segregated Hasidic community. At that point, Hatzolah, the all-male orthodox EMS corps, were not only opposing, but actively working against these trailblazing women. Until that moment I had never heard of proud Hasidic women challenging the status quo of their community and refusing to take no for an answer from the all-powerful patriarchy.

“Their courage and persistence, and demanding progress from their community — even in the face of fear — is why I made 93Queen.”

The opening of 93 Queen at the Malverne Cinema on Aug. 23 at 7:30pm will be followed

by Q&A with Ruchie and Paula.

that is that it’s a real part in a real

By Josefin Dolstein, JTA Philip Sherman, an Orthodox show, where I’m not playing a rabbi chazan, gives me a call after having or cantor or some Jewish guy,” he told finished two brit milahs before noon JTA in a phone interview.

Sherman has appeared in about 15 on Tuesday. That’s a light day, he explains. On Thursday, he will be per- other roles in commercials, TV series forming circumcisions for four baby and movies, mostly playing religious Jews. He played a boys; on Friday, he’ll rabbi in a 1999 comdo five. mercial with Whoopi Sherman, 62, is Goldberg for Flooz. a mohel (featured com, a now-defunct as one of “America’s digital currency, and Top Mohels” in a a mohel in the 2011 2014 JTA article) and comedy “Our Idiot has performed over Brother,” where his ap20,000 circumcisions, pearance was cut from both for Jewish and the final movie but non-Jewish families. made it into the DVD But between performing multiple cirextras. Sherman has cumcisions a day and also been featured as serving as associate an expert on “Storage chazan at Congrega- Philip Sherman has appeared Wars,” a reality show tion Shearith Israel in more than a dozen roles in where the contents of in New York — also commercials, TV and movies, unpaid storage lockers known as the Spanish mostly playing a religious Jew. are auctioned off.

Sherman’s “Orange” and Portuguese Synascene lasts about a minute and a half, gogue — he has another gig: actor.

Most recently, the Orthodox cantor, but was shot approximately a dozen who lives in White Plains, New York, times. He had to come in another time appeared in the Netflix hit series “Or- to re-record some lines. Sherman said ange is the New Black,” about a wom- he was later asked to return to the seen’s prison. Though the role was small ries in a recurring role, but he was not — he played a judge presiding over a able to make the filming date because trial involving one of the prisoners — he was in Israel at the time.

Sherman thinks the outfit he wore Sherman says it was his favorite to date.

“The really amazing thing about to his audition may have helped him

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The heat wave scorching Western Europe has helped identify visually, for the first time in decades, the exact layout of the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Netherlands.

Thanks to scorching 100-degree temperatures recorded this month, the grass that usually covers the sunken headstones at the 400-year-old Beth Haim Cemetery near Amsterdam has died and turned yellow, while the grass between the headstones remains green. The precise outline of each headstone became visible to the naked eye for the first time in decades, the NIW Jewish weekly reported.

The phenomenon is connected to Beth Haim’s status as a Sephardic-Portuguese cemetery, established by Jews who fled the Inquisition in the 15th and 16th centuries. In that community, headstones are not placed vertically, but laid horizontally on the ground over the grave.

However, because the Netherlands has unusually soft soil, the headstones gradually sank into the ground and eventually became completely covered with grass. But because of the drought, the grass growing over the headstones died, while the deeper-rooted grass between them survived.

For the first time in years, visitors can see the plots where their loved ones are buried at Beth Haim, provided snag the part. He came in his black robe from Congregation Shearith Israel, which resembles those worn by justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“When you have an audition, if you have the stuff to help make you look the part, you bring it and you wear it.”

Though he belonged to theater groups in high school and college, he never studied acting. His acting career launched by chance in 1987, when the Philip Morris tobacco company decid-

The outlines of Beth Haim synagogue near Amsterdam are visible again.

Beth Haim

they consult the records that show who is buried where.

Due to the heat, the cemetery’s management is enforcing a temporary ban on yahrzeit candles, fearing that lighting candles in the current weather would start brush fires.

Approximately 28,000 people are buried at the cemetery, which remains in the service of the Portuguese Israelite Community of Amsterdam.

ed to feature a shot of Shearith Israel in a commercial celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Sherman mentioned to the producers that the music they had planned to feature in the background during that shot featured an Ashkenazi, not Sephardi, melody and therefore was not representative of the synagogue’s culture. They asked him to record a more appropriate song.

“A few months later, checks started to come in,” he said. “Apparently

they put in my little voice, the thing that I did, and it was a 26-week nationwide commercial, which back then was like hitting the lottery.”

The voice appearance earned him a spot in the Screen Actors Guild, and from there he hired an agent who helped him land further roles.

“Over the years it’s been a lot of fun,” Sherman said. “It’s just one thing that I get to do, and you get to meet all sorts of interesting people.”

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THE JEWISH STAR August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778

‘Orange’ role goes Floods uncover long-hidden to a mohel-chazan Jewish cemetery in Holland

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Ocasio-Cortez disses Shapiro debate dare

August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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By Ron Kampeas, JTA But reply she did on Thursday, and in the Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro challenged process advanced a jarring simile: Shapiro’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newcomer so- very polite debate challenge, she said, was akin to catcalling. cialist Democrat from the Bronx, to “Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a debate last Wednesday. a response to unsolicited requests The conversation quickly defrom men with bad intentions,” she volved into discussions of sexual hatweeted. rassment and Orthodox Judaism.

That prompted a new round of Shapiro had offered $10,000 to conservative outrage, accusing Ocathe charity of Ocasio-Cortez’s choice sio-Cortez of playing the gender card. or to her campaign if she took him “Crying sexism in order to avoid up on it, saying she had accused Rea debate of ideas is not a feminism publicans of being afraid to debate.

Ben Shapiro I want any part of,” said Erielle DaThe challenge spurred the equivalent vidson, a contributor to The Federalof “Fight! Fight! Fight!” chants from ist and TownHall. conservative Twitter.

John Podhoretz, the editor of (In a brief Internet search, I found Commentary, seized on Ocasio-Corno accusations of Republican cowtez’s claim that Shapiro’s challenge ardice by Ocasio-Cortez, but I did was based on “bad intentions.” find an account of her debate stratAnd then it was Shapiro’s turn to egy in The New Yorker: she showed get weird: He advanced his Orthodox up. Crowley bailed twice, and the Judaism as a defense against intimaone time he came, she whomped him, at least according to the writer.) Alexandria Ocasio- tions that he was harassing her. A defender, fellow conservative pundit If there is a debate, you can count Cortez Daniella Greenbaum, said Shapiro is “a on Shapiro, a prominent Israel defender, to challenge Ocasio-Cortez on her criti- happily married man,” implying presumably that cism. She described the day in May when Is- no happily married man (like no Orthodox man) raeli troops killed more than 60 Palestinians, has ever made a rude sexual remark to a woman.

Carol Costello, an anchor on CNN’s Headmostly Hamas operatives attempting to breach line News Network, had enough. Costello the Gaza fence, as a “massacre.”

Ocasio-Cortez did not have to respond to hosted Shapiro for a sympathetic interview Shapiro’s challenge; no one expects a candidate when leftist protesters tried to drive him away to debate non-candidates, and her from-the-left from a lecture last year at the University of appeal is based more on getting out the vote California, Berkeley. Quoting Shapiro’s “but than it is on persuading undecided indepen- I’m Orthodox” tweet thread, she admonished, “Sigh. Seriously Ben this is a silly stunt.” dents or hostile conservatives.

987328

‘Progressive racism’ excludes the Jews

By Charles Dunst, JTA Are Jews too powerful to be considered victims of racism?

Some progressives think so, and have been downplaying accusations of anti-Semitism in light of a debate over prejudice and power.

Last week, the New York Times took heat for hiring Sarah Jeong, a technology writer, to its editorial board. Some have called her racist against white people, pointing to past tweets in which she proclaimed “White men are bulls--t” and “#CancelWhitePeople.”

The debate over her tweets centered around the very notion of anti-white racism, and especially whether minorities (Jeong is KoreanAmerican) can be accused of racism when ridiculing the white power structure.

Former Bernie Sanders campaign aide Symone Sanders said on CNN that Jeong was not being racist because racism is only “prejudice plus power” — implying that only those in positions of power over others can be racist.

Sanders’ point is not new — she is building off the work of others, such as social scientist Patricia Bidol-Padva, who used the “prejudice plus power” definition in the 1970s. As a standup comedian might explain it, racism means “punching down,” not punching up.

Prominent activists such as Linda Sarsour and Melissa Harris-Perry have promoted the idea as well, and applied it to defend people they consider relatively powerless against charges of anti-Semitism.

“The thing I’m always worried about in the world is power, and how power is wielded in ways that cause inequity,” Harris-Perry said earlier this year about Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite. “So if

you can show me that Minister Farrakhan has taken his position and used his position to create inequity and inequality for Jewish people, then I will denounce that tomorrow.”

She went on to contrast Farrakhan to President Donald Trump, whom she considers a bigot and an anti-Semite who wields actual power.

“Because Louis Farrakhan is empowered to do what? He runs an organization that controls what resources? And creates what policy? And owns property where?” Harris-Perry asked rhetorically.

Some think this new formulation of racism has problematic implications for Jews. First, it equates Jews with white, presumably privileged, people, ignoring the history and ongoing prevalence of anti-Semitism.

“If Jews are seen as ‘white’ (which, in this permutation of progressivism, they are), and ‘whites’ cannot be subjected to racist attacks, then anti-Semitism becomes a trivial concern,” K.C. Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College, told JTA. Second, it ignores the fact that Jews as a class are often falsely maligned as too powerful — which, paradoxically, would make them fair game for ridicule under the prejudice-pluspower definition.

“Anti-Semitism is a strange form of prejudice,” Olivia Goldhill wrote in Quartz. “Rather than denigrating Jews as inferior, it casts them as maliciously superior.”

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum recognizes anti-Semitism as racism and as “prejudice against or hatred of Jews based on false biological theories.” Last month, a federal judge ruled that racial discrimination law applies to See Racism on page 21

By Josefin Dolsten, JTA Dafna Michaelson Jenet traces her political career back to conversations around the Shabbat table as a 14-year-old. She remembers hearing her parents and their friends discuss the challenges facing Cincinnati, where they were living. But the conversations would quickly be forgotten once the day of rest came to an end.

“I was distressed by this because I truly believed that they had the answer to the problems that I cared strongly about, that were plaguing our community, and they didn’t fix them,” Michaelson Jenet said.

That feeling led Michaelson Jenet, now 45, to resolve not to complain about problems unless she was willing to solve them, a promise she calls “a driving factor” in her life.

After a career in nonprofit and a yearlong trip around the country, which she documented in a book, it led her to local politics in Colorado, where she lives. In 2016, she was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives as a Democrat with the endorsement of President Barack Obama. Last week, Obama again endorsed her, along with 80 other Democrats, ahead of the November midterm elections.

Michaelson Jenet’s focus is on helping struggling youth, which stems from the challenges faced by her son Eytan, 16. He has a severe learning disability but did not qualify for an IEP, which Michaelson Jenet believes contributed to his suicide attempt at age 9.

“I knew that I had the access, the privilege, the means to be able to get my son the help he needed, and I was still failing my son, failing him so much that he wanted to end his life,” she told JTA. Through volunteering at juvenile correction facilities, Michaelson Jenet came in contact with boys who faced similar problems but had far fewer resources available to them than her son.

“Who was fighting for them? Ultimately when I was asked to run for this seat, I realized that I could make such a significant difference for children like my son and that I could work to end youth incarceration,” she said.

Michaelson Jenet has introduced a number of bills to help young people in her state, including to allow children as young as 12 to obtain confidential mental health services. Other measures expand access to free school lunches and provide sexual abuse prevention training to early childhood providers.

Her journey to politics was roundabout. In 2008, she decided to quit her job at a Denver hospital to travel America and meet people who were making a difference in their communities. Each week she visited a new state. Her subjects ranged from Alfred Tibor, a well-known sculptor who created art to commemorate the

Dafna Michaelson Jenet says her experiences in BBYO and Hadassah gave her ”the underpinnings I needed to be a legislator.”

Sophia Laster

Holocaust, to a woman in a small community in Alabama who started an afterschool program to keep local youth from becoming involved in gun violence.

She filmed the encounters and wrote about them on a blog.

“No matter what they looked like, what they sounded like, how much money or education they had, I [felt I] could show people that they had the power to solve the problems in their communities,” she said.

The project caught the attention of writer Maya Angelou, who interviewed her on the Oprah Radio Show. Michaelson Jenet also spoke about her journey on CBS Sunday Morning.

In 2015, as Michaelson Jenet worked on a book about her trip, she met a local politician who suggested she run for office. A year later she defeated Republican JoAnn Windholz by 8 percent.

Michaelson Jenet was born in Tel Aviv, and her parents moved to the U.S. when she was a baby. She grew up Orthodox, but struggled with her religious identity. She recalled being asked not to sing at the Shabbat table when she was 12, since her stepbrother

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“I had to silence myself so that the whole family could be at the table, and that was the kind of not fitting in that went on through my life,” she said.

Michaelson Jenet felt more at home in non-Orthodox Jewish settings and said her experiences in BBYO, a nondenominational Jewish youth group, and Hadassah, a women’s Zionist organization, gave her “the underpinnings I needed to be a legislator.”

Another challenge to her faith came when after divorcing her first husband, she fell in love with a non-Jewish man. She remembers visiting the Western Wall and asking G-d for clarity: “Why do you put this man in my life who isn’t Jewish and is the best thing that ever happened to me?” The two eventually married, though several of her family members cut ties.

Today, Michaelson Jenet is involved with two Conservative synagogues, the Hebrew Educational Alliance in Denver and Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder. She calls her husband “the greatest enabler of my faith.”

Prior to politics, Michaelson Jenet worked as director of the Holocaust Awareness Institute at the University of Denver and, before moving to Colorado with her first husband, ran March of the Living for the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York.

While working for March of the Living, she met Jared Kushner, then 17, on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz.

Though Michaelson Jenet is no longer in touch with Kushner, who went on to marry Ivanka Trump and is now a key adviser to her father, President Donald Trump, she remembers him fondly.

“He was amazing, he was adorable,” she said. “He really liked our kids from Denver, he ended up dating one for a little while, and when he married Ivanka and all of this stuff, quite frankly I’m like ‘Oh no, Jared’,” she said.

Michaelson Jenet says that being part of a political campaign in 2016, when Hillary Clinton ran for president, was “an unbelievable time to run for office and be a woman.”

Under the Trump administration, she is focused on protecting rights for Colorado residents that she believes could be at risk, including women’s reproductive rights.

“I am really grateful that I am elected to serve in a state legislature, and we are authorized under the 10th Amendment to do what we need to do to run our state,” she said. “That means that if I see something coming down the pipe that I think is going to be harmful to my citizens, I can run a bill to protect them.”

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August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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Wine & Dine

Hot summer sliders in every flavor Kosher Kitchen

Joni SCHoCkETT

Jewish Star columnist

M

y inspiration this week comes from a magazine article featuring 50 kinds of sliders.

It looked like fun, so I tried a few vegetarian ones and some made from salmon and eggplant. I made several sauces and added lots of shredded veggies. Happy meal time for all!

When I first heard the term “slider,” I thought it was a new outdoor toy, like the old “slip and slide.” Boy, was I wrong. The kids quickly set me straight. Sliders were burgers.

Why call them sliders? Because they were small. Why not call them small hamburgers?

Because they are sliders!

Fast forward a decade or so, and the term is easily understood by all. Sliders are served in some of the most elegant restaurants, at events from brit milahs to birthday parties to milliondollar celebrity weddings.

So where did the term come from? It seems that White Castle, an establishment famous for its burgers, coined the term in the late 1940s, and the U.S. Navy adopted it as a term for greasy hamburgers that easily slid across a tray or plate. (Ugh! Not very appetizing.) Over the decades, the term came to be used for small hamburgers easily finished in two or three bites.

That change made them perfect for appetizers, and thus their popularity at bnei mitzvot and weddings. We served them to the kids at my son’s bar mitzvah. We served them at my daughter’s wedding. I was surprised to see people devouring them at 1 am!

So here we are in the last weeks of summer — hard to believe — and I think it is the perfect time to make a slider party. You can offer meat, vegetarian or fish and have everyone enjoy their meal. Kids of all ages love them and they are the perfect size to avoid waste for small children and those for whom 8-ounce burgers are too much.

Salmon Sliders (Pareve) 1 large onion, diced 2 cloves garlic, diced 3 scallions, cut into pieces, white and green parts 1 can Alaskan Red Salmon 1 egg 1 to 2 tsp. Dijon mustard 1/2 cup breadcrumbs or cracker crumbs or GF crumbs Salt and pepper to taste Place the chopped onion, garlic and scallion in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until small, almost minced. Add the can of salmon, bone and liquid included, and break up with a fork. Then pulse to blend, 2 to 3 pulses. Add the egg, mustard, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper, and pulse to blend evenly. Scrape into a large bowl and let sit for about 10 minutes to thicken. If the mixture is too wet, add some more breadcrumbs and mix, let sit for several minutes and then continue. Form into three-inch patties.

Heat a large skillet and add some Canola oil, just enough to generously cover the bottom. As soon as the oil begins to shimmer, place the patties in the oil. Cook until deep golden, flip carefully and cook until the second side is golden brown. Place on a plate and repeat until all the mixture is used. Makes about 12 patties.

Grilled Eggplant Sliders with Charred Tomatoes and More (Pareve or Dairy) 2 red onions, thinly sliced 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided 2 medium eggplants, about 3 inches diameter 2 pints cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half 1/2 tsp. oregano Pinch red pepper flakes

2 to 4 cloves garlic, finely minced Salt and freshly ground black pepper OPTIONAL: Shredded mozzarella cheese; Arugula, watercress or baby spinach Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Line 2 large, rimmed baking sheets with foil and then a piece of parchment paper. Set aside.

Heat a skillet and add about 2 Tbsp. of the olive oil. Break the onions into rings and place in the skillet. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring often until deep golden brown. If the onions stick, add a bit of water and scrape with a wooden or silicone spatula. When golden, scrape into a bowl and set aside.

While the onions are cooking, wash the eggplant and slice crosswise into half-inch thick rounds. Place in a bowl and drizzle with 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Shake or toss gently to coat. Place on one of the rimmed baking sheets and place in the oven.

Place the cut tomatoes in the same bowl and add a bit more olive oil. Toss to coat. Place in a single layer on the prepared pan and sprinkle with oregano, red pepper flakes, garlic, and salt and pepper. Place in the oven.

Cook the eggplant until just softened. You do not want to overcook the eggplant or it will be more suitable for a dip than a sandwich. Flip one using a thin spatula.

Roast the tomatoes until they are charred in several places. Remove from the oven and let cool. Scrape into a bowl, leaving excess liquid.

When the eggplant is done, assemble the sandwich with the bottom half of a slider roll, a slice of eggplant, some tomatoes and the onions. Add cheese if you like and place on a rimmed baking sheet in the oven just to melt. Top with garlic aioli, and greens if desired.

Makes 8 to 12 sliders.

Spicy Sausage, Egg and Pepper Sliders (Meat) 2 to 3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil 1 package spicy kosher sausages, thinly sliced 3 red bell peppers, cut in half, seeded and thinly sliced 4 small Yukon Gold Potatoes, thinly sliced Black pepper, to taste 2 Tbsp. chopped flat-leaf parsley 6 to 8 extra-large eggs Heat a large skillet and add the olive oil.

Add the slices of sausage and cook until golden brown, stirring and flipping as needed. Remove the sausages to a large bowl, leaving any oil in the pan.

Cut the peppers in half, remove the seeds, stem and white membrane, and thinly slice. Add to the pan and cook until browned in places and softened, 7 to 10 minutes. Remove to the bowl, leaving any oil in the pan.

If needed, add some olive oil to the pan. Add the potatoes and cook until cooked and softened, stirring and turning as needed. Remove to the bowl, leaving any oil in the pan.

Mix the sausages, peppers and potatoes together and toss to mix. Set aside.

Remove the pan from the heat.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl and season with pepper. Add some olive oil to the pan if needed.

Place the pan back on the heat and heat a few seconds.

Add the eggs to the hot pan, cook for 15 to 30 seconds, allowing raw egg to seep under the cooked portions. Add the veggies and sausage mixture evenly over the eggs.

Continue to make holes in the cooked mixture so raw egg can seep under. Continue until

most of the liquid egg has been cooked. Cut into quarters and flip each quarter. Cook until completely cooked through. Sprinkle with parsley.

Place each quarter on a slider roll, cutting pieces to fit, top with the other half and serve with condiments. Makes a great special Sunday morning breakfast. Makes enough for 4 to 6 sliders.

Simple Roasted Garlic Aioli (Pareve) 12 cloves garlic, peeled 1/2 cup canola oil 3/4 to 1 cup mayonnaise 1 clove fresh garlic, pressed thru garlic press 2 Tbsp. fresh, finely minced chives 1 Tbsp. fresh, finely minced parsley 1 Tsp. grated onion or grated shallot Place the oil and garlic cloves in a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat until cloves turn light golden and are completely softened.

When golden, remove from the heat and let cool completely. Can be made the day before.

Place 6 cloves of roasted garlic in the bowl of a food processor. Save the oil and remaining cloves in a tightly closed jar in the refrigerator for another use. Add the rest of the ingredients and process until smooth. Scrape sides as needed.

Taste and adjust. If too strong, add more mayonnaise or more roasted garlic. Refrigerate leftovers in a tightly closed container. Makes 3/4 to 1 cup.

Horseradish Sauce for Salmon Sliders (Dairy) 1/2 cup sour cream 1/3 cup mayonnaise 2 to 4 Tbsp. white horseradish OR 1 to 3 Tbsp. cup grated, fresh horseradish

1 large clove shallot, finely minced 1 to 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley, leaves only 1 Tbsp. finely minced chives Mix all ingredients together, taste and adjust ingredients to taste. Makes about 1 cup.

Chipotle Mayo (Pareve) 1 cup mayonnaise 2 chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce 1 Tbsp. minced chives 1 Tbsp. minced parsley 1 clove garlic, finely minced Juice of 1/2 lime 1 Tbsp. adobo sauce Place all ingredients, except the adobo sauce, in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Taste. If not spicy enough, add adobo sauce to taste. Adjust lime and mix well. Place in a non-reactive container and refrigerate. Makes over 1 cup.

THE JEWISH STAR August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778

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August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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Europe goes bananas over an Israeli’s avocados Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA AMSTERDAM — Last year, Ron Simpson was still managing talent for a living.

But within a few months, Simpson, a 34-yearold Jewish marketing professional with no restaurant experience, launched an international chain of eateries so wildly popular that seasoned critics are celebrating it as a cultural symbol.

As it turns out, all Simpson and partner Julien Zaal needed to take the Dutch capital’s restaurant sector by storm was a small space, a good concept and an Instagram account.

Oh, and avocados. About 10,000 a week, to be exact.

Each item on the menu at The Avocado Show is based on the fruit. In addition to avocado salads, pancakes, egg dishes and smoothies, there’s an avocado burger, the meat sandwiched between two peeled halves sprinkled with sesame.

The cocktail department features Guaca Mary and Avo Daiquiri. And for dessert, you can have ice cream, mousse and waffle (take a wild guess as to the flavors).

At about noon each day, dozens of patrons — many, but not all, millennials — queue up at the entrance to The Avocado Show’s main restaurant near the bustling Albert Cuyp market in south central Amsterdam to wait for a table.

There are only 50 seats, including a bright pink velvet couch. Large plants and shiny tables balance out the concrete walls.

Despite the humble setting, The Avocado Show generated a media frenzy in Holland and beyond. It was featured in hundreds of mainstream newspapers in places as far-flung as New Zealand. Its success stunned observers of the local restaurant sector.

“Had someone told me last year that he’s opening a restaurant based on avocado, I would have declared him insane,” Mac van Dinther, food critic of the highbrow Volkskrant daily, told JTA. “Maybe that’s part of the reason for The Avocado Show’s success: It makes people curious.”

The drab decor sharpens the focus on the dishes. Some feature elaborate flower-shaped structures made of thin avocado slices and bright purple beet strips. In others, layered avocado rectangles form elaborate patterns to hedge seaweed and salmon salads.

“This is why we call ourselves The Avocado Show,” Simpson told JTA. “The show is on your plate.”

Booker Jennings, a recent high school graduate from Denver, Colorado, said his avocado

The poke bowl dish at The Avocado Show in Amsterdam is among the many images patrons share on social media.

Left, A look at the Avocado Rose dish at The Avocado Show restaurant in Amsterdam.

pancakes were the healthiest he’s ever had and “not something you can get at home.” His friend, Mark Gardner, said the lean bacon at The Avocado Show “is so fresh, so good. The best I’ve had.”

Not everyone is as positive. Van Dinther said that “from a culinary perspective, The Avocado Show has little to offer. It’s basically pieces of avocado with something on the side.” He gave the place 6 points out of 10, “which is not really a recommendation.”

Simpson said the dishes’ aesthetic is more than a gimmick — it is an integral element of their marketing strategy.

“You give people a spectacular dish, they’re going to take a picture of it and probably share it on Instagram. If it looks good, their friends will come, too,” he said. “That’s basically our advertising strategy in a nutshell.”

The Avocado Show’s success “is a direct result of social media,” Simpson said. The chain has more than 100,000 followers on Instagram and 63,000 on Facebook — a formidable following in European terms. The established EXKi chain of 70 health food restaurants has just over 7,000 followers on Instagram and 43,000 on Facebook.

Simpson, a native of Petach Tikvah, is the son of a British father and an Israeli mother. He moved to Holland at age 4 when his dad took a

job with AT&T. Most of his friends ended up “very successful, very famous or both,” but for many years he was “kind of figuring out what to do,” working as a journalist and talent agent as well as a barista, waiter “and just about any job you can imagine.”

Being Jewish, Simpson said, “meant that my friends would make fun of how, of course, I’m going to become some famous producer or businessman because there’s this stigma that Jews are good with money, right?”

And while the expectations placed some pressure on him, he said “it also gave me a sort of confidence, I think that, yeah, sure, I can make it in business if I wanted. All I had to do was start.”

From social media, The Avocado Show began making a splash in mainstream media across Europe and beyond and was featured on Netherlands TV. While it may have been the world’s first allavocado restaurant, Simpson’s chain is no longer the only one. A month after the opening in Amsterdam, Avocaderia came to Brooklyn — and another location opened this spring in Manhattan.

Millennials’ passion for avocados was mocked, and celebrated, last year when an Australian millionaire, Tim Gurner, told an interviewer that

young people would be in better financial shape if they spent less money on indulgences like avocado toast.

Simpson said he was moved by instinct, not trend. He and Zaal were talking about opening a restaurant and each made a list of favorite foods.

“Avocado was on both lists, so we went with that,” Simpson said. “Then we announced it on Facebook and it just took off from there at a speed that, frankly, none of us were prepared for.”

Six months after opening their first restaurant in March 2017, the partners found an investor in Shawn Harris, founder of the leading European exotic fruit and vegetable importer Nature’s Pride. She fronted The Avocado Show $5.7 million, allowing it to open in Brussels and in other cities soon.

Israel, which provides The Avocado Show with some of its fruits, is high on the chain’s shortlist, Simpson told the Volkskrant daily in September. But in the immediate future, it will focus on European destinations.

“To me,” he said, “it’s a story about two guys who wanted to do something they love and just didn’t spend too much time wondering if it’s actually a good idea.”

Oreo sabotage buries Hydrox, the kosher cookie

By Ben Sales, JTA You know what Oreos are — two delicious chocolate cookies sandwiched around a creme filling. Oreos also come in Double Stuff, vanilla, birthday cake and pumpkin spice (really).

There is debate on how they should be eaten, but everyone knows they’re best dunked in milk.

What you might not know is that Oreos are just a copycat of Hydrox, a sandwich cookie first sold in 1908, four years before Oreos appeared on shelves. Even though (or maybe because?) they were second, Oreos came to dominate the market, becoming a fixture in America’s grocery stores. But for most of the past century plus, Hydrox held on — at least in part because of the Jews.

Until 1998, Hydrox was the premiere kosher sandwich cookie (its website boats it “was always free of animal fats”), while Oreos were “treif,” lacking a hechsher. Growing up, I thought Hydrox cookies were knockoff Oreos produced specifically for religious Jews. Oreos were the forbidden fruit, and I still vividly remember when, shortly after they became kosher certified, my mom snagged a sleeve of Oreos from a Jewish event. We gobbled them up.

Hydrox stopped production in 2003, giving Oreo 12 years of a monopoly, give or take a 100th anniversary promotion by Hydrox’s then-maker, Kellogg’s. A Pax Oreana, if you will. But in 2015, Hydrox, now part of Leaf Brands, sprang back like a phoenix and has been duking it out with Oreo, David and Goliath style.

The new Hydrox package features an OU-D hechsher on its side (not visible in this photo).

And now it’s taking that battle to the government.

Hydrox posted on Facebook that it has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission accusing employees of Oreo’s parent company, Mondelez, of blocking Hydrox from view when it stocks Oreos on supermarket shelves. The Facebook post says Mondelez uses a system called “direct store distribution” in which

employees of the brand, rather than supermarket attendants, stock the food. This allows the Oreo stockers to push Hydrox aside when they place Oreo boxes on the shelves.

Loyal Hydrox customers have sent in pictures of the cookies being boxed out by Oreos, moved behind other products or otherwise obscured from customers. Hydrox claims a major supermarket chain brought up the problem at a meeting.

“We believe in competition and choice but we firmly believe the folks @Mondelez (the owners of Oreo) have been undertaking a national program to damage our brand and stop us from competing,” Hydrox’s posts says. “Many of you over the last few years have been great at taking pictures when you see #hydroxcookies being moved or blocked from store shelves and we really appreciate your help.”

Mondelez sounds unconcerned about the complaint, telling Gizmodo that it is “confident that this accusation has no merit.

The OREO brand is an iconic one, with a proud and rich history of delivering great tasting products and exciting innovations to our consumers for more than a century. This focus, and our commitment to operating with integrity, has made OREO America’s favorite cookie.”

So who will win, the original kosher sandwich cookie or the giant it’s fighting? Only time — and maybe a government agency — will tell.

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For kids: Magical shoebox and animals aplenty

By Penny Schwartz, JTA An African warthog to swinging orangutans, animals from all corners of the planet, a magical story about an ordinary shoebox, and a poem about the story of Creation are featured in new children’s books released in advance of Rosh Hashanah.

Shani’s Shoebox Written and illustrated by Rinat Hoffman; translated by Noga Applebaum. Green Bean Books; ages 4-8 Prepare to be enchanted! “Shani’s Shoebox,” a gentle poem-story for Rosh Hashanah by the award-winning Israeli illustrator and children’s author Rinat Hoffman, will kick off the Jewish New Year on the right foot.

Shani’s “aba” surprises her with a pair of shiny new red shoes for Rosh Hashanah. Naturally, she tosses aside the ordinary-looking shoebox. “It was only a box after all, nothing more,” she says.

But on Yom Kippur, Shani finds the box hidden behind stuffed animals and the next day crafts it into a sukkah. During Hanukkah, a cat discovers the discarded box and uses it to stay warm in the winter. Season to season, the box takes on a magical quality, turning up in new guises and with new uses throughout a year’s worth of Jewish holidays.

The next Rosh Hashanah, when Shani’s father fills the box with a new pair of shoes — this time blue — Shani is reminded of the year’s adventures.

Hoffman’s colorful, animated illustrations draw in readers with vibrant energy. In one scene, as the family prepares the house for Passover, Shani is on a stool cleaning a mirror and her dad is sweeping. It’s refreshing to have a children’s story that depicts a father in everyday roles more commonly associated with moms, like buying shoes for his kids and cleaning the house.

Where’s the Potty on This Ark? Kerry Olitzky; illustration by Abigail Tompkins. Kar-Ben; ages 1-4 Even on Noah’s Ark, the animals need to use the potty. Young kids will be delightfully surprised with this inventive spin on the biblical story of Noah, from the Book of Genesis. As Noah and his wife, Naamah, greet each of the animals onto the ark, Naamah makes sure they are comfortable.

“Be careful not to hit your head on the ceiling,” she warns.

The ark comes well designed, with big potties for the elephants and little ones for smaller friends. When a baby raccoon needs to use the bathroom, Mother Hen patiently guides the young one to learn how. The animals offer an empathetic lesson in taking care of one’s body, complete with a prayer. And off they sail on the ark as the rains begin.

Kerry Olitzky’s simple, lighthearted prose is paired well with Abigail Tompkins’s playful illustrations. The book makes a timely read during the High Holidays because the story of Noah is read in synagogues on the second Shabbat following Simchat Torah, when the cycle of reading the Torah begins anew.

Who’s Got the Etrog?

Jane Kohuth; illustrations by Elissambura.

Kar-Ben; ages 4-8 In this brightly illustrated story for Sukkot,

Jane Kohuth weaves a playful folklike tale told in simple poetic verse.

In her rural village in Uganda, under a bright and full milk-bowl moon, Auntie Sanyu is preparing for the fall harvest holiday when Jews build a hut called a sukkah where they eat, welcome guests and sometimes even sleep. Kids follow Auntie Sanyu as she decorates her sukkah and places a lulav, the bunch of green palm branches, and a bright yellow etrog, the lemon-like fruit, on a tray to be used in the holiday rituals by Auntie Sanyu’s animal guests. But Warthog loves the etrog so much he doesn’t want to hand it over to the lion, parrots or giraffe. A young girl named Sara intervenes.

The story comes to life in Elissambura’s boldly colored, striking collage-style illustra-

tions. The back page explains the history of the Ugandan Jewish community called the Abayudaya, and a glossary explains about the sukkah and lulav and terms like “Oy, vey!”

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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after speaking at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on May 24.

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

tribe of Arabs,” and that “the Jews became reactionaries, turned right, nearly to be fascists.”

Corbyn, whose party resisted calls to kick out Livingstone, said it was a “sad moment.”

Earlier this month, 68 British rabbis published an open letter condemning Labour’s divergence from the IHRA definition as “insulting and arrogant.” The Board of Deputies of British Jews has issued a similar call.

The row has prompted a spate of resignations, including lecturer and Palestinian rights advocate John Strawson, journalists Jane Merrick and Martin Bright, and lawmaker John Woodcock.

Other moderates will resign in September.

Some critics have been less polite, among them Dame Margaret Hodge, a Jewish Labour lawmaker. During a July 17 meeting in Parliament, Hodge told Corbyn, “You’re a f---ing antiSemite and a racist. You have proved you don’t want people like me in the party,” according to witnesses. Labour’s ethics board launched an internal investigation to discipline Hodge.

Some say the conflict has descended to violence: Paul Mason, a journalist and Corbyn supporter, is accused of assaulting a Dutch Jewish activist in the Hague who held up a banner reading “Labour, for the many not the Jew” during Corbyn’s speech.

Separately, Damien Enticott, a Labour representative in south London, admitted to sharing on Facebook a video accusing Jews of drinking blood. He has been suspended pending investigation, one of at least 250 cases of alleged antiSemitism referred to Labour’s ethics panel.

Peter Willsman, a key Corbyn supporter, was recorded saying of Jewish critics, “I am not going to be lectured to by Trump fanatics.” To the 68 rabbis, he said, “Where is your evidence of severe and widespread anti-Semitism in this party?”

Corbyn, who was present when Willsman made the remarks, did not react, witnesses said.

Labour’s homemade anti-Semitism definition follows several failed attempts to appease critics.

In 2016, an internal review found that Labour has an “occasionally toxic atmosphere” against Jews, but no institutional problem. The Board of Deputies called the report a whitewash — especially after its author was promoted to represent Labour in the upper house of Parliament months after submitting it.

Corbyn’s attendance at an alternative Passover Seder dinner in April was also controversial; the group organizing the event, Jewdas, included a “Prayer Against the State of Israel” in its Haggadah that asks God to “smash” the Jewish state. It also included the “Ten Plagues of the Occupation of Palestine.”

“Either Jeremy Corbyn was deliberately provoking the Jewish community or making a catastrophic error of judgment,” Jonathan Arkush, then leader of the Board or Deputies of British Jews, said. “I don’t know which of these is true.”

Keith Kahn-Harris, a London sociologist, wrote that Labour’s definition “has only compounded the problem” it seeks to solve.

But he cannot ascertain whether it was a cynical attempt to give accused anti-Semites a loophole, or a genuine but botched attempt to address the problem.

“Maybe both things are true,” he said.

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By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA It’s been nearly three years since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of Britain’s Labour Party, and he has riled British Jews more than any politician in recent history.

Last week, Great Britain’s three leading Jewish newspapers united to publish a frontpage editorial warning that a Corbyn premiership would constitute an “existential threat to Jewish life in this country.” In May, the previous president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews said Corbyn has “anti-Semitic views” and that his rising popularity is making Jews question their future in the country.

This unprecedented rhetoric, accompanied by street protests, follows Corbyn’s alleged inaction against anti-Semitic speech within the party.

A hard-left politician who called Hezbollah and Hamas officials “friends,” Corbyn is widely accused of tolerating anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism, among other forms of Jew hatred.

Revelations such as his defense of an anti-Semitic mural and membership in anti-Semitic Facebook groups have done little to improve his image.

Ironically, though, the worst crisis yet is currently unfolding not over his party’s inaction, but over its attempt to address the problem: the adoption of a definition of anti-Semitism.

Critics call it a defanged version of the British government’s own definition. The government’s, based on a “working definition” by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, outlines classic expressions of anti-Semitism and ways in which criticism of Israel can be perceived as anti-Semitic.

Labour’s suggests one could compare Israeli policy to Nazis’ and not be an anti-Semite.

Jennie Formby, Labour’s general secretary, said the document will “foster deeper understanding about all forms of anti-Semitism within our movement.” For example, she wrote, Labour’s definition includes certain words and tropes not included in the IHRA’s.

The debate over the quasi-legal document has deteriorated into a fight featuring expletives by lawmakers, racist conspiracy theories and growing despair even among supporters.

Critics’ main grievance is that Labour’s definition omits some Israel-related points. Labour does feature some examples of anti-Israel vitriol, including accusing Israel of exaggerating the Holocaust, but also states that Israel’s description of itself as “a ‘Jewish state’” can “cause particular difficulty in the context of deciding whether language or behavior is anti-Semitic.”

To David Hirsh, a Jewish University of London lecturer who last year published a book on left-wing anti-Semitism in Britain, the definition is a loophole, a way for Labour to articulate “opposition to anti-Semitism which would not define their friends” as anti-Semitic.

The Labour definition, he said, stipulates that offenders must have shown anti-Semitic “intent” in order to be disciplined. “And nobody on the left has anti-Semitic intent,” he said sarcastically.

The new definition follows decades of accusations involving a former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who quit Labour in May following repeated claims that Zionists collaborated with Hitler. In 1984, he said Jews were “basically a

W

13 THE JEWISH STAR August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778

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August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

14

Israel and White House through 13 presidents

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion with President Dwight Eisenhower at the White House on March 12, 1960.

Keystone/Getty Images

JTA’s veteran Washington reporter Ron Kampeas describes the U.S.-Israel friendship through portraits of 13 of presidents, from Harry Truman to Donald Trump. This is part 1 of a 3-part series.

Harry Truman: Recognizing the new State of Israel On May 12, 1948, two days before David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence, things were tense at the White House. Truman was torn between his secretary of state, George Marshall, who counseled against recognizing the new Jewish state, and Clark Clifford, his White House counsel, who said Truman should recognize Israel.

What tipped the balance? Truman’s deep Christian faith, coupled with his old Army buddy and former haberdashery partner, Eddie Jacobson, who traveled to the White House to make the case for the Jewish state. Truman sent his telegram recognizing Israel 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion proclaimed the country’s existence on May 14, 1948.

Truman also may have recalled a letter he had received a few weeks earlier from Chaim Weizmann, in which the future president of Israel wrote: “The choice for our people, Mr. President, is between statehood and extermination. History and providence have placed this issue in your hands, and I am confident that you will yet decide it in the spirit of the moral law.”

Truman would not be the last president to harbor a passion for Israel, to sustain a close friendship with a Jew ... and to explode into anti-Semitic vituperation (for instance, President Richard Nixon). Truman resented pressure after World War II from Jewish groups to resettle millions of Jewish refugees.

“If Jesus Christ couldn’t satisfy the Jews while on earth, how the hell am I supposed to?” he told his Cabinet in 1946.

His tendency to explode under pressure manifested itself in his relationship with the Jewish state he helped midwife. In 1949, he threatened to break with Israel unless it allowed the return of some Palestinian refugees displaced in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence (Israel agreed, but Arab states rejected the offer). And he pressured Israel, without success, to withdraw from lands captured during that war.

Dwight Eisenhower: War hero seeks a ‘balanced’ approach Eisenhower sailed into office in the 1952 election as the general who ended World War II. There was a Jewish reason to buy into the hero worship: Eisenhower insisted that the world learn of the barbarism he witnessed when he liberated Nazi death and concentration camps because he correctly anticipated there would be efforts to deny it.

Speaking to a group of journalists and congressmen at Buchenwald in 1945, he said: “You saw only one camp yesterday. There are many others. Your responsibilities, I believe, extend into a great field, and informing the people at

President Lyndon Johnson with Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and their wives, Lady Bird Johnson and Miriam Eshkol.

GPO/Wikimedia Commons

home of things like these atrocities is one of them.”

His comprehension of the horror included the realization that Jews were its principal victims.

“The Jews were in the most deplorable condition. For years they had been beaten, starved, and tortured,” he wrote in his 1948 account of the war, “Crusade in Europe.”

Nevertheless, Eisenhower believed Truman had tilted U.S. policy toward Israel and sought a more “balanced” approach, which led to years of frustration with Israel and to the establishment of two important institutions: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which cultivated support for Israel in Congress as a means of tempering Eisenhower’s coolness, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, to show Eisenhower that the U.S. Jewish community was unanimous in its support for Israel. (Eisenhower aides had played up support for Israel-critical policies by marginal Jewish anti-Israel groups.)

The relationship reached a crisis in 1956 after Israel joined Britain and France in capturing the Sinai Peninsula as a means of keeping Egypt from nationalizing the Suez Canal. Eisenhower was furious, and his pressure on Israel forced a pullout. He contemplated cutting off not only U.S. assistance to Israel but private money going to the Jewish state, he later wrote.

Who stood in the Republican president’s way? The Senate majority leader, a Democrat from Texas named Lyndon Baines Johnson, who said that “cracking down” on Israel would show a double standard considering how soft Eisenhower had been on the repression of democratic protesters in Hungary the same year.

John Kennedy: Martyr concerned about nukes The assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, devastated Americans, and Jews were no exception.

On Nov. 25, a Monday, synagogues opened for the national day of mourning — and Jews flocked to services in large numbers. (The night of the assassination, nightclub owner Jack Ruby attended a memorial service for the president at Temple Shearith Israel in Dallas. Two days later, he shot and killed the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, fueling a half-century of conspiracy theories. A key piece of evidence was a film of the motorcade as Kennedy was shot; it was made by a Jewish Kennedy supporter from Dallas named Abraham Zapruder.)

Within weeks of Kennedy’s death, the Jewish National Fund announced plans to build a memorial to the slain president in a Kennedy forest near Jerusalem.

Kennedy was the first non-Protestant, and Irish Catholic to boot, to be elected president.

After he secured the nomination, stories imagining the once-unimaginable proliferated in the Jewish press: Could a Jew be elected president?

More Cabinet-level Jews worked for Kennedy than any predecessor. He overrode Eisenhowerera policies and increased arms sales to Israel.

President John F. Kennedy and Israel Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion at the Waldorf Towers.

Walter Kelleher/NY Daily News via Getty Images

He unabashedly dove into pro-Israel politicking: in 1961, he pardoned Herman Greenspun, the Las Vegas Sun publisher who had been convicted in 1950 for gun running to the nascent Zionist state. On the Dec. 5 after his death, he was to have been the guest of honor at the annual dinner of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Above all, Kennedy feared the proliferation of nuclear weapons on his watch. He demanded an accounting of the nuclear reactor Israel was building near Dimona. At a 1961 meeting in President Richard Nixon with Israeli Foreign Minister Abba New York with Ben-Gurion, the prime Eban in Washington on March 14, 1969. minister noticeably mumbled a lot and PhotoQuest/Getty Images used terms like “for the time being” in promising that the reactor would not produce weapons-grade material.

Kennedy wanted Americans to inspect the plant; Israel dodged the requests. In May 1963, Kennedy threatened to isolate Israel unless it let in the inspectors. Neither he nor Johnson made good on the threat, and today, Israel’s nuclear capabilities are its worstkept secret.

Lyndon Johnson: No better friend After Kennedy was killed and Johnson became the 36th president, LBJ told an Israeli diplomat, “You have lost President Harry Truman with Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. a very great friend. But you have found Abba Eban and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion dura better one.” ing their visit to the United States in January 1951. Israel GPO Indeed, it was Johnson, as Senate majority leader, who years earlier had to Israel’s cause in the lead-up to the Six-Day stood in the way of Dwight Eisenhower’s plans War, but felt constrained from a dramatic show to cut off assistance to Israel. He knew few Jews of military might because of the failures of Vietgrowing up in Texas, but cultivated lifelong nam that dogged his presidency. Nonetheless, he friendships as he rose through the ranks of the ordered warships within 50 miles of Syria’s coast Democratic Party, which had become the natural as a warning to the Soviets not to interfere.

In a speech in the war’s immediate aftermath, political home for most Jews.

Historians regard Johnson as the president Johnson nipped in the bud any speculation that the United States would pressure Israel to unilatmost uniformly friendly to Israel.

“Johnson was the most emotionally commit- erally give up the land it had captured. He laid ted to Israel of any American president — a fact down not only the “land for peace” formula that that is not popularly known but is clear from his would inform subsequent U.N. Security Council background,” Dennis Ross, a veteran Middle East resolutions, but made it clear that any formula negotiator in Republican and Democratic admin- had to ensure Jewish access to Jerusalem’s Old istrations, said last year at a symposium of the City.

Richard Nixon: Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Johnson was the first president to invite an Is- The anti-Semite who saved Israel Nixon liked Israelis — a lot. He was close to raeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol, on a state visit.

They got along so well — both men were farmers Golda Meir, the prime minister; Moshe Dayan, — that Johnson paid Eshkol the rare compliment the defense minister; and Yitzhak Rabin, the ambassador to the United States. Rabin would break of inviting him to his ranch.

LBJ soon abandoned pressure on Israel to diplomatic protocol and campaign for Nixon in come clean about the Dimona reactor. He in- 1972. Nixon saw his resolute, paranoid Cold creased arms sales to Israel, and in 1968, after Warrior reflected in Israelis. Like him, they were Israel’s primary supplier, France, imposed an em- hard-edged realists forced to play for the highest bargo as a means of cultivating ties in the Arab stakes of all: their existence.

Nixon stands out among presidents for taking world, the United States became Israel’s main supplier of weapons, launching talks that would the boldest risk for Israel: a much-needed arms airlift during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. An aslead to the sale of Phantom fighter jets to Israel.

See Presidents on page 21 Johnson wanted to commit more forcefully

15 THE JEWISH STAR August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778

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

For some, Long Island means Nassau and Suffolk. Period. Others consider parts of Queens to merit the Long Island moniker. But Long Island extends through Brooklyn too, and if you add the boroughs of New York to your Staycation menu, there’s so much more to do!

Suggest additional venues for future inclusion to Publisher@TheJewishStar.com

Staycation Edited by Rachel Langer

Long Island

Fun Station USA 431 E. Main St., Riverhead, 631-208-9200 funstationusa.com

Quogue Wildlife Refuge 3 Old Country Rd., Quogue, 631-653-4771 quoguewildliferefuge.org

Adventureland 2245 Broad Hollow Road (Route 110) Farmingdale, 631-694-6868 adventureland.us

Harold H. Malkmes Wildlife Education and Ecology Center 249 Buckley Rd., Holtsville, 631-758-9664 abt.cm/29wFmko

Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Museum 200 Main St., Sag Harbor, 631-725-0770 sagharborwhalingmuseum.org

Kaler’s Pond Nature Center Montauk Highway, Center Moriches, 631-878-5576 • kalerspondauduboncenter

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

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

Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium 180 Little Neck Rd., Centerport, 631-854-5555 • vanderbiltmuseum.org

American Airpower Museum 1230 New Highway, Farmingdale 631-293-6398 americanairpowermuseum.com BounceU 101 Carolyn Blvd, Farmingdale 631-777-5867 • bounceu.com Children’s Museum of Science and Technology 250 Jordan Rd, Troy, 518-235-2120 cmost.org Fun 4 All 40 Rocklyn Ave., Lynbrook, 516-599-7757 fun4allpark.com

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

Whaling Museum & Education Center 301 Main St., Cold Spring Harbor, 631-367-3418 • cshwhalingmuseum.org

LI Game Farm Wildlife Park 489 Chapman Boulevard, Manorville.

631-878-6644 • longislandgamefarm.com

White Post Farms 250 Old Country Road, Melville, 631-351-9373 • whitepostfarms.com

LI Maritime Museum 86 W. Ave., West Sayville, 631-HISTORY limaritime.org

Manhattan Build-a-Bear Workshop 22 W 34th St, New York buildabear.com Central Park Zoo E 64th St & 5th Ave, New York, 212-439-6500 centralparkzoo.com Empire State Building Observation Deck 350 5th Ave, New York, 212-736-3100 esbnyc.com Museum of Jewish Heritage 36 Battery Pl, New York, 646-437-4202 mjhnyc.org Museum of Mathematics 11 E 26th St, New York, 212-542-0566 momath.org NYC Fire Museum 278 Spring St, New York, 212-691-1303 nycfiremuseum.org Ripley’s Believe It or Not! 234 W 42nd St, New York, 212-398-3133 ripleysnewyork.com Spyscape 928 8th Ave, New York, 212-549-1941 spyscape.com Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island 393 S. End Ave (at Battery Park), New York, 201-604-2800 •nps.gov/stli Tenement Museum 103 Orchard Street, New York, 212-982-8420 tenement.org

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Seaglass Carousel 1 Whitehall St, New York (GPS: 17 State St) 212-344-3491 seaglasscarousel.nyc

Brooklyn, Queens The Bronx and Staten Island Bronx Equestrian Center 9 Shore Road, Bronx, 718-885-0551 bronxequestriancenter.com Bronx Zoo 2300 Southern Blvd, Bronx, 718-367-1010 bronxzoo.com Brooklyn Bridge Park This new 1.3-mile-long multi-use park provides a thrilling view of Lower Manhattan. Enter at Old Fulton Street in DUMBO or Atlantic Avenue and Joralemon Street in Brooklyn Heights. (For an alternate view, walk the Brookyn Heights Esplanade above the park; enter on Montague Street.)

718-222-9939 • brooklynbridgepark.org Brooklyn Botanic Garden 1000 Washington Ave., 718-623-7200 bbg.org Brooklyn Brewery 79 N 11 St., Brooklyn, 718-486-7422 brooklynbrewery.com Under-21s must be accompanied by parent Brooklyn Children’s Museum 145 Brooklyn Ave., 718-735-4400 brooklynkids.org Funfuzion 29 Lecount Pl, New Rochelle, 914-637-7575 funfuziononline.com Funstation 3555 Victory Blvd, SI, 718-370-0077 funstationsi.com Historic Richmond Town 441 Clarke Ave, Staten Island, 718-351-1611 historicrichmondtown.org Jewish Childen’s Museum 792 Eastern Parkway, 718-467-0600 jcm.museum Jewish Children’s Museum 792 Eastern Pkwy, Brooklyn, 718-467-0600 jcm.museum 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 Museum of the Moving Image 36-01 35th Ave, Queens, 718-777-6800 movingimage.us New York Aquarium Surf Ave. at W. 8 St., Coney Island., 718-265-FISH • nyquarium.com New York Hall of Science 47-01 111 St., Corona, 718-699-0005 nysci.org New York Transit Museum Boerum Pl. at Schermerhorn St., Brooklyn 718-694-5100 • mta.info/mta/museum Prospect Park Zoo 450 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn, 718-399-7339 prospectparkzoo.com Queens Botanical Garden 43-50 Main St, Queens, 718-886-3800 queensbotanical.org

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Howell Lanes 1002 U.S. Route 9, Howell, NJ 732-462-6767 • howelllanes.com

Queens Museum NYC Building, Corona, 718-592-9700 queensmuseum.org

Imagine That!

4 Vreeland Rd., Florham Park, NJ 973-966-8000 •imaginethatmuseum.com

Shell Lanes (bowling) 1 Bouck Ct, Brooklyn, 718-3360-6700 shelllanes.com

iPlay America 110 Schanck Rd., Freehold, NJ 732-577-8200 • iplayamerica.com

Staten Island Ferry 4 South St, Staten Island, 311 • siferry.com Staten Island Zoo 614 Broadway, Staten Island, 718-442-3100 statenislandzoo.org

Wanna Play?

Jenkinson’s Aquarium 300 Ocean Ave, Point Pleasant Beach, NJ 732-899-1212 •jenkinsons.com

New Jersey

Keansburg Amusement Park 275 Beachway Ave., Keansburg, NJ 732-495-1400 keansburgamusementpark.com

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

Lee Turkey Farm 201 Hickory Corner Rd., East Windsor NJ 609-448-0629 • leeturkeyfarm.com

Adventure Aquarium 1 Riverside Drive, Camden, NY 844-474-3474 • adventureaquarium.com

Liberty Science Center 222 Jersey City Blvd., Jersey City, NJ 201-200-1000 • lsc.org

Blackbeard’s Cave 136 Atlantic City Blvd, Bayville, NJ 732-286-4414 •blackbeardscave.com

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Queens County Farm Museum 73-50 Little Neck Pkwy, Queens, 718-347-3276 • queensfarm.org

Make It Glass 40 Chestnut St., Lakewood, NJ 732-994-5000 • makeitglassbyus.com

BounceU 34 Industrial Way WE, Eatontown, NJ 732-935-0010 • bounceu.com

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Build-A-Bear Workshop 1201 Hooper Ave, Toms River, NJ 877-789-2327 • buildabear.com

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Ocean Lanes 2085 Lanes Mill Rd., Lakewood, NJ 732-363-3421 • oceanlanes.com

Clementon Park & Splash World 144 Berlin Rd., Clementon, NJ 856-783-0263 • clementonpark.com

Popcorn Park Zoo 1 Humane Way, Forked River, NJ 609-693-1900 • ahscares.org

Diggerland 100 Pinedge Dr., West Berlin, NJ 856-768-1110 • diggerlandusa.com

Six Flags Great Adventure 1 Six Flags Boulevard, Jackson, NJ 732-928-2000 • sixflags.com

Eastmont Orchards 181 County Rd 537, Colts Neck, NJ 732-542-5404 • eastmontorchards.com

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Hallock’s U-Pick Farm 38 Fischer Rd., New Egypt, NJ 609-758-8847 • hallocksupick.com

Sky Zone Trampoline Park 2355 Route 66, Ocean Township, NJ 732-200-4344 • skyzone.com

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Cape May Whale Watcher 1218 Wilson Drive, Cape May, NJ 609-884-5445 • capemaywhalewatcher.com Space Farms Zoo & Museum 218 County Road 519, Sussex, NJ 973-875-5800 • spacefarms.com

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Turtle Back Zoo 560 Northfield Ave, West Orange, NJ 973-731-5800 • turtlebackzoo.com

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Bringing back the majesty of our people Parsha of the Week

Rabbi avi billet Jewish Star columnist

T

he rules for appointing a king are followed by a few personal restrictions the Torah places on him: he must be an observant Jew with all that entails, and he may not have an excess of horses, money, or wives.

Beyond that, the Torah gives him specific commandments. He must commission a Torah scroll and read it every day, so that he be G-dfearing and observant. Midrash Tanaim suggest that when he is not busy with other things — his family, his job — this is how he should spend his time. Through his learning, and even more so through his teaching, he will come to fear G-d.

The Alshich notes that the king’s three restrictions parallel the three crowns discussed in Avot and Shemot Rabbah — the crowns of Torah, Kehunah, and Malchut. Torah is the only one open to all, regardless of birth, and is the key to success in the other two. A king or kohen without Torah will be a failure. But someone who acquires Torah has the chance to achieve majesty equal to kehunah and malchut.

The Alshich goes one step further, because

there is a fourth crown, that of a good name.

This Keter Shem Tov is achieved when people say, “That’s a good man. That’s a good woman.

What a cheerful, positive soul. I wish I could be like that.”

He explains that the acquisition of a “good name” comes from the best self-help book in the world, which addresses every character-building skill we might need to achieve it: the Torah. hammai famously taught that a person should set a regular time for Torah study. Fascinatingly, in that same list of his top three teachings, he also says to greet everyone with a smile. In other words, maybe the door to majesty begins with being happy.

Avot D’Rabbi Nassan steps up a level: the majestic countenance is achieved through making another person feel good. A person who gives charity with a sour face is counted as having given nothing. But a person who gives nothing but a smile is considered to have given a lot.

Anyone with children and grandchildren knows this. The gifts are nice, but they want to see a smile, to hear how proud we are of them.

S

How many people tell their adult children that? “Son. Daughter. You work hard. You support yourself, your family. Your children are beautiful. I’m proud of how you are raising them.”

As a mohel, I see many people interact with adult children. In many cases, for example, more than wanting their parents to pay for the bris, all they want from the baby’s grandparents is love and support. Those grandparents say, “I’m here for you. Let me know how I can help.” Or they do what is needed. They get it. They are wonderful. They are loved and appreciated because they love and appreciate.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen the other side as well. Telling the new parents what to do, how to parent, not trusting them to make choices, the mistakes they need to make, the lessons they need to learn from experience.

Sadly, some relationships end over these things.

Parents write off their children, new parents write off their parents, don’t give them access to the grandchildren. Unfortunate and tragic.

We need to be less critical, more embrac-

They are loved and appreciated because they love and appreciate.

ing. We have to smile more. Be happier. It will change our lives immeasurably. ennis Prager, author of “Happiness is a Serious Problem,” has argued that people have a moral obligation to be happy and bring cheer to others.

We’re not going to do it all the time. It’s an imperfect world, and burnout is possible. But imagine: if we greeted others with a smile, could we leave a room any less cheerful than it was when we entered?

Think of people you know who seem to always have a smile on their faces. Don’t we naturally feel happier, more at ease, when we think of them? Now think about someone who always seem to look miserable. I rest my case.

It’s a life challenge for all of us. If we can greet people with a smile, or even better, with joy, we will achieve majesty. We will be kinglike. We will carry the Keter Shem Tov with pride and dignity.

If we study and know Torah and use it as a guide for moral character development, we will be honored. And if we tell children and grandchildren we believe in them and are proud of them, we will be loved even without giving physical gifts.

Being positive is a challenge, but it is doable. And to be kingly, we must take upon ourselves to do it.

D

Shoftim: Everyone is innocent until proven guilty From Heart of Jerusalem

Rabbi biNNY FReeDMaN

Jewish Star columnist

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magine the scene: A beautiful afternoon, with a breeze blowing a group of children and teenagers’ kites in the wind. The sound of their laughter carries across the sand. An innocent scene, a beautiful afternoon on the coast.

Only this is not the Long Island Sound; it’s the Gaza Strip. And this is no innocent scene; the kites these children fly are laden with petrol bombs, aimed at their Jewish cousins in playgrounds a few kilometers away.

This is the new generation of “RPG kids,” and like the seven- and eight-year-old Lebanese children trained by the PLO to fire RPG anti-tank weapons at Israeli tanks in Lebanon in the 1980’s, they are soldiers in the new children’s army of Hamas.

How are our soldiers, armed with tanks and sniper rifles, meant to respond? his week we read the portion of Shoftim, the practical application of last week’s vision in Re’eh. If last week we spoke of choosing the path of blessing, this week we read of the need for judges and police. If last week we spoke of a society of peace and morality and the dangers of false prophecy, this week we read of the need for a monarchial system that can enforce law and order and lead us in our political decisions as well as on the battlefield.

In the midst of all this, the Torah (Devarim 19:15-21) teaches us the need for a minimum of two witnesses in criminal cases, and describes a fascinating case: Two witnesses testify someone has committed a crime. Upon interrogation, they are believed and the criminal is apprehended. If a second set of witnesses come forward and prove that the first are liars, they are believed, and the first set of witnesses are now the criminals. Their punishment is

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whatever would have befallen the target of their false testimony.

This is a novel, even illogical idea. By what logic should we accept the second witnesses over the first? Perhaps it is they who are lying! Indeed, Rav Chisda posits (Baba Batra 31b) that we should simply invalidate both! What are we meant to understand from the fact that the Torah prefers the testimony of the second set of witnesses?

Perhaps the Torah is trying to tell us how much we should want to find a person innocent.

Think about it: to find someone guilty of murder and liable for a death sentence is nearly impossible in Jewish law. The witnesses must see the crime being committed, must see each other, must issue a very specific warning to the sinner immediately prior to the action.

Tradition teaches us (Mishnah Makkot 1:10) that “a Sanhedrin [that] puts a man to death once in seven (and according to Rav Elazar ben Azaria once in 70) years is considered a cruel court.”

If a Sanhedrin issued a unanimous guilty verdict, the defendant is automatically exonerated. It is assumed they must not have reviewed the case enough, or that each judge’s ruling may have been influenced by the verdict of the previous one (Maimonides Hilchot Sanhedrin 9:1).

Even in the context of a terrible offense like murder, we should want to see the person as innocent. Certainly, we should seek every avenue to avoid meting out punishment. To quote the English jurist William Blackstone, “Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

And yet the Torah adds three words here that are somewhat unique. In describing how the first set of witnesses, for having attempted to frame a

person for murder, should be put to death as they would have seen done to the person they testified against, the pasuk says “Velo tachos einecha,” your eye shall not pity them (Devarim 19:21).

On the one hand, we should want to find a person innocent. We should not want to mete out punishment. But when the moral fabric of society and effective rule of law require a harsh judgment, pity can be dangerous. erhaps this is the true challenge for a Jewish soldier in a Jewish army. We should want to see children playing with kites as innocents. We should want the sounds of their laughter to warm our hearts.

And yet: “Velo tachos einecha,” your eye shall not pity them.

We have a responsibility to know our priorities, to see the kites for the terrible tools of terrorism that Hamas has made them to be. And make no mistake about it: incendiary kites exploding in Israel’s towns are as much an act of terrorism as a suicide bombing. The difference is only in degree.

In Shoftim, we see the Torah’s recipe for maintaining the soul of morality while conquering the land of Israel and managing the practical challenges of building a society of law.

Three thousand years later, we struggle with these same challenges.

We dare not ignore the terrorism that plagues our borders, but we must be careful lest we stop seeing its perpetrators as human beings, even as they remain our enemies. We must see the kites as weapons of terror while seeing the children who fly them as children.

To paraphrase Golda Meir: We will finally know peace when they love their children more than they hate ours.

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To find someone liable for a death sentence is nearly impossible in Jewish law.

luach Fri Aug 17 • 7 Elul Shoftim Candlelighting: 7:32 pm Havdalah: 8:39 pm

Fri Aug 24 • 14 Elul Ki Seitzei Candlelighting: 7:22 pm Havdalah: 8:29 pm

Fri Aug 31 • 21 Elul Ki Savo Candlelighting: 7:11 pm Havdalah: 8:18 pm

Fri Sept 7 • 28 Elul Nitzavim Candlelighting: 6:59 pm Havdalah: 8:07 pm

Fri Sept 14 • 6 Tishrei Vayeilech Candlelighting: 6:48 pm Havdalah: 7:55 pm

Fri Sept 21 • 13 Tishrei Haazinu Candlelighting: 6:36 pm Havdalah: 7:43 pm

Fri Sept 28 • 20 Tishrei Chol Hamoed Sukkos Candlelighting: 6:24 pm Havdalah: 7:31 pm

Five Towns times from White Shul

Kosher bookworm

AlAn JAy geRbeR

Jewish Star columnist

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ith the onset of Elul, the prelude to the upcoming High Holiday season, it is my sacred honor to bring to your attention the publication of a new English translation and commentary of Rabbeinu Yonah’s classic commentary, Shaarei Teshuva, by Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit (Adir Press).

Rabbi Wegbreit was born in New York and was raised both there and in Atlanta, Georgia and Memphis, Tennessee. He attended Pomona College for his undergraduate studies and later earned a Ph.D in Organizational Psychology from Claremont Graduate School. He worked as a management consultant in the area of organizational development with prominent companies in both the United States and Europe.

Rabbi Wegbreit received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Shimon Green and Rabbi Shlomo Zafrani.

In addition to teaching Talmud at Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah in Jerusalem to a broad range of students from beginner to advanced, the rabbi serves as the mashgiach ruchani of the yeshiva.

Using classic and beloved texts such as Proverbs and Pirkei Avos, he tries to reveal to his students the tremendous insight of the Torah Sages’ approach to an inspired and growth-oriented life.

His previous literary works are two classic commentaries on the Psalm of Ashrei and the liturgical prayer Aleinu. Both deserve your attention, especially at this season.

Rabbi Wegbreit lives in the Old City of Jerusalem with his wife Ayelet and their children. n his introduction to this timely work on the deeper meaning of spiritual repentance, Rabbi Wegbreit teaches us the following: “No one can deny that Shaarei Teshuvah is one of the most important texts in Jewish history. Other than the Rambam’s Hilchos Teshuva, Shaarei Teshuva arguably stands alone as a guide of inspiration for the profoundly important mitzvah of teshuvah.

“However, due to the depth and subtlety contained in any text of the Rishonim, and in particular, the great genius Rabbeinu Yonah, the insightful observations of later commentators are indispensible to understanding this work … I resolved to provide an English commentary that

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is based on some of the highly of rebuke and its focus on fear regarded commentaries available of punishment that was presented by earlier mussar works. This in Hebrew … These will bring is because the spiritual strength out myriad deep and masterand stamina of previous genful insights in Rabbeinu Yonah’s erations made them far more work. capable of such focus. How“In addition, I felt that there ever, in my opinion, believing was another that we are incapable of gaincompelling ing at all from such works is a reason to attreacherous misconception, protempt a conmulgated by the yetzer hara in temporary order to keep us away from the version of this life-saving and enhancing ideas classic work: I was concerned Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit contained in this work.”

It was from these concerns that the relevance of this text to our lives and misapprehensions that Rabbi Wegbreit de— and our obligation of yiras voted his time to bring to us this major comHashem, the mitzvah to fear mentary that will serve as a valuable companG-d — can be lost in a mere ion to the High Holiday machzor.

The rabbi concludes his introductory teachtranslation into English. This is due to the perceived fragil- ing with the following invitation: “Let us imity of our generation. Many great rabbis have merse in the waters of purification and emcautioned against placing too much emphasis brace the life-giving qualities of fear of Hashem on the topic of ‘fear of punishment.’ Therefore, a which was made available to us from the holy modern-day reader who reads Shaarei Teshuvah sefer, Shaarei Teshuvah.”

I personally endorse Rabbi Wegbreit’s efmay be afraid to focus on what appears to be a forts in this cause. His commentary will suregreat deal of ‘fire and brimstone.’

“Admittedly, it is true that our generation is ly enrich your High Holiday journey toward less likely to be receptive to the heavy standard meaningful repentance.

A modernday reader may be afraid to focus on the ‘fire and brimstone.’

The pursuit and power of tzedek Torah

RAbbi dAvid eTengoff

Jewish Star columnist

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ur parasha, Shoftim, contains the celebrated verse, “Justice, justice shall you pursue, [in order] that you may live and possess the land the L-rd, your G-d, is giving you.” (Devarim 16:20). In his commentary, Rashi, basing himself on a variety of rabbinic sources, explains the words as referring to one’s obligation to “seek out a good court,” in order to ensure that true and abiding justice be achieved. Given Rashi’s stature, this has become the classic understanding of the phrase.

Rabbi Benjamin Yudin shlita, rav in Fairlawn, New Jersey and rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University, once made reference to a different application of tzedek: “affirming with certain-

ty that what’s yours is really yours.”

Alexander the Great once visited the community of Afriki and wished to observe its judicial system. Two men came before the king for justice. The first said, “I purchased a plot of land from this man, and when I dug to lay the foundation of a home, I found a treasure buried there. I only bought the land, not the treasure, therefore it is not mine.” The seller said, “I, too, am fearful of the biblical prohibition of ‘do not steal,’ and I, too, do not want it back unless it is definitely mine.” The king asked the buyer if he had a son; he answered “yes.” The seller answered positively to having a daughter. “Wonderful,” said the king, “let them marry and share the treasure” (Midrash Vayikra Rabbah 27:1).

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ike the story in this Midrash, Rabbeinu Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa stresses the importance of tzedek in all of our actions.

In so doing, he explains the pasuk’s repetition of “tzedek” in a highly original manner: “One must be particularly careful to infuse both his actions and words with justice; for it is precisely these matters wherein it is possible for a person to harm himself and others. Therefore, the verse states ‘tzedek’ twice — once to refer to him and once to others … As such, it is fitting and proper for every Jewish person to ensure that their words and actions are permeated with justice. As the text states: ‘The remnant of Israel shall neither commit injustice nor speak lies; neither shall deceitful speech be found in their mouth, for they shall graze

One must be careful to infuse both his actions and words with justice.”

and lie down, with no one to cause them to shudder’” (Tzephaniah 3:13).

Without a doubt, the expression “tzedek, tzedek tirdof” has become a watchword among the Jewish people. This concept was given powerful voice in our own time by United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a stirring speech at the Capitol Rotunda on Holocaust Memorial Day in 2004.

“My heritage as a Jew and my occupation as a judge fit together symmetrically,” she said.

“The demand for justice runs through the entirety of Jewish history and Jewish tradition. I take pride in and draw strength from my heritage, as signs in my chambers attest: a large silver mezuzah on my door post … on three walls, in artists’ renditions of Hebrew letters, the command from Deuteronomy: ‘Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof’ — ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue.’”

With Hashem’s help, may we pursue the noble goal of tzedek, so that we may be counted among those who “neither commit injustice nor speak lies.” If we can achieve this lofty goal, we will be well on our way to fulfilling the prophet Micha’s ancient words (6:8): “O man, what is good, and what does the L-rd demand of you? Only to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your G-d.”

Anti-Semitism: an affront to humanity and G-d Angel for Shabbat

RAbbi mARc d. Angel JewishIdeas.org

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ach generation of Jewish parents seems to face the same dilemma. We teach our children that all humans are created in the image of G-d; to respect and assist others; that love of G-d means love of G-d’s creations.

This week’s Torah reading teaches tzedek tzedek tirdof, pursue justice. Repetition of the word tzedek emphasizes that justice is not easily attained; it requires vigilance, clear thinking, honest and fair treatment of others.

Yet these teachings are challenged by the realities our children witness with their own eyes. They see missiles shot at Israel by Hamas terrorists with the aim of killing as many Jews as possible. They see throngs of Palestinians cheering. They hear the President of Iran call for the annihilation of Israel. They read anti-

Semitic diatribes throughout the world. They hear white supremacists chant anti-Jewish canards. They see the United Nations voting against Israel, siding with those who would destroy it. They know of the socalled humanitarian groups and journalists who seem to find fault only with Israel, but rarely, if ever, with its vicious enemies.

We Jewish parents teach our youth about love of G-d, love of humanity, the sanctity of human life. Yet millions of fellow human beings are saturated with hatred and engage in murderous activities against us. And millions of others are complicit by their silence.

How can we teach love in a world filled with hatred? How can we teach that all humans are created in the image of G-d when so many are trying to murder us? How can we preach the goodness of humankind, when so much of humankind is engaged in violence?

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or thousands of years, our people have weathered the storms. In spite of the senseless hatred and violence perpetrated against us, the Jewish people are still here to tell our story. Our enemies always disappear; we always survive.

That is an iron law. And that bothers anti-Semites.

Why do people who do not even know us express hatred toward us? Why do Israel’s enemies persist in demonizing the Jewish State, rather than finding a way to coexist?

Our enemies are troubled by the fact that such a tiny people has accomplished so much.

We gave the world Moses, King David, Isaiah and Queen Esther. Our Bible is venerated by Christianity and Islam and has been a major influence for human civilization. Our sages have produced an unmatched legacy of literature dedicated to righteousness, ethics and law. For thousands of years, our communities have striven to maintain

How can we teach love in a world filled with hatred?

the highest ideals of our tradition.

Jews have distinguished themselves far out of proportion to our numbers. Our enemies resent our persistent commitment to excellence: generations of Jewish doctors and teachers, social workers and scientists, artists and philanthropists, business people and diplomats. They resent the incredibly high proportion of Jewish Nobel Prize winners and other world-class intellectuals.

We are an annoying paradigm. The enemies of Israel do not understand how a tiny Jewish State has become a world leader in science and technology, agriculture and industry. How can such a small state, constantly embattled and boycotted, be so amazingly successful? How is it that only Israel of all countries in the Middle East has been able to maintain a vibrant and dynamic democracy?

Our enemies solve their dilemma by denying Jewish virtues, or by blaming us for their shortcomings. If anything, their anti-Semitism is a blatant admission of their own failings and See Humanity on page 21

THE JEWISH STAR August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778

Opening the gates of teshuva as Elul arrives

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August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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Myths and facts about an ‘illiberal’ Israel Jonathan S. tobin

Jewish News Syndicate

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f American Jews are unhappy with Israel, it may not be so much a function of the new nation-state law as the growing consensus that it is “illiberal.”

In articles in both secular and Jewish media, the critique has not been so much about the law as the notion that Israel no longer represents liberal Jewish values that Diaspora Jews consider integral to their identity. Sometimes this thesis is put forward from those who consider themselves Zionists, and sometimes from those who make the case that Zionism is itself illiberal. But the consistent theme is that contemporary Israel no longer fits with the way most American Jews think, and that the fault lies squarely with Israel.

What makes Israel illiberal in the eyes of American Jews?

A lot of the focus in recent months has been on religious pluralism in Israel. While the com-

plaints are largely justified, most American Jews don’t understand that the problem is a function of the enormous clout of Israel’s Orthodox political parties, the complete lack of such clout on the part of the Conservative and Reform movements, and the general indifference of most secular and traditional Israelis to non-Orthodox movements.

But this critique of Israel is about more than pluralism. For many Diaspora Jews, it’s more a matter of what they see as a decline of Israeli democracy. The failure of the nation-state law’s authors to mention democracy and equal rights for all the country’s citizens is viewed as a betrayal of the Declaration of Independence, which mentioned both while still affirming that Israel was a Jewish state.

The straw that breaks the camel’s back for many Americans is that most Israelis like President Donald Trump, whom the vast majority of American Jews despise. The fact that Israelis prefer Trump to Obama, who won overwhelming majorities of the Jewish vote in 2008 and 2012, and are grateful to Trump for changing U.S. policy on Jerusalem, the peace process and relations with Iran, has created a political chasm that’s hard to bridge.

There are two major problems with this narrative. The first is that Israel isn’t as illiberal as its critics think. The other is that American Jewish perceptions of these issues is a function of a declining sense of Jewish peoplehood in a rapidly assimilating population. he notion that Israel is becoming less democratic is simply false. To the contrary, the country’s critics really don’t like is the fact that it is democratic — which is to say, the majority of Israelis consistent rejected their left-wing parties. Most Israelis understand that their nation must defend itself against those pledged to their destruction and see territorial withdrawals without a Palestinian peace partner as insane.

The majority also sees nothing wrong with reaffirming the truth that the country is a Jewish state and understand that minority rights are already protected by other basic laws.

Far from being illiberal, Israel is a diverse, chaotic nation in which the contradictions between its religious roots and largely secular reality are still being sorted out 70 years later. It may not be the embodiment of its founders’ romantic dreams, but it has remained remarkably democratic despite never knowing a moment of

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complete peace.

Perhaps what critics dislike the most is that Israel has become a stable, prosperous and largely secure nation without comprehensive peace being reached, in the face of constant jeremiads from the left about all this being impossible.

Reasonable people can disagree about peace, settlements, borders, religious pluralism and even the nation-state law. However, the disillusionment that we hear is primarily driven by the sense on the part of many in the Diaspora that any country whose identity is primarily ethnoreligious, rather than strictly pluralistic, is inherently racist.

An American Jewish community that defines itself primarily by liberal politics, food or humor — the factors that surveys of American Jews tell us are the strongest aspects of Jewish identity these days — is bound to have difficulty understanding any kind of Jewish nationalism, even if it’s tied to a deeply democratic form of government.

That, and not Netanyahu’s or Trump’s behavior, is the source of much of the support for antiIsrael groups among Jews.

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

If Israel’s PR is lousy, why is country so popular? andrew SilowCarroll

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he first mention in JTA of the Hebrew word hasbarah was in 1988, at the height of the first intifada. The article focused on Israeli and American Jews’ concern that the media were showing the Israeli military in a bad light.

The answer, interviewees agreed, was better hasbarah — a word, explained the author (OK, it was me), “whose meaning falls somewhere between information and propaganda.”

“Israel has never actually looked at hasbarah as an integral part of policymaking,” said Dan Pattir, former press secretary to Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin.

Fast forward 30 years. Writing last week in the Los Angeles Times, Noga Tarnopolsky makes a convincing case that Israel’s public diplomacy efforts are flawed and out-of-touch.

Critics say Netanyahu relies too much on social media videos to defend Israel and that its military spokespeople are ill-prepared to answer questions about controversial events, like May’s deadly riots on the Gaza border. ““There is … no single authority that coordinates and supervises these various activities,” complains Michael Oren, who is (wait for it) Israel’s deputy minister in charge of

public diplomacy.

The critics, however, don’t make a convincing case why any of this matters.

Complaints about hasbarah are as regular and ritualistic as the Jewish holidays. Without answers from a strong PR campaign, the theory goes, anti-Israel charges gain traction.

But among whom? Israel remains hugely popular among the American public. According to Gallup, 64 percent of the U.S. population sympathizes with Israelis over Palestinians, with only 19 percent saying the reverse.

Congress remains firmly pro-Israel. Yes, a Pew survey in January showed a wide partisan divide, with 79 percent of Republicans and only 27 percent of Democratic sympathizing more with Israel than with Palestinians. But poll questions forced respondents to choose between Israelis and Palestinians (why not both?), and the results may have reflected only the partisan nature of American politics — not something you can hasbarah away.

Despite wide publicity and Jewish consternation, the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement hasn’t taken root outside the far left. As of June, 25 states have enacted anti-BDS laws. In fact, the whole point of BDS is that Israel has a positive image that needs to be undermined. You wouldn’t know about BDS if celebrities didn’t regularly include Israel on their world tours.

The charge of “pinkwashing” — that Israel touts its relatively progressive record on LGBT

rights to distract the world from the occupation — targets what BDS folk think is effective hasbarah — otherwise, why would they bother? Paradoxically, every charge of pinkwashing only reminds the casual reader of Israel’s strong LGBT record.

Two kinds of critics, often overlapping, criticize Israel’s hasbarah.

The first is convinced that the media have in it for Israel. Such critics also mistakenly beliebe that the media tell a story as they would have it told. Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hardly perfect, and examples abound of stories becoming stories only when Palestinians are the victims, or headlines that ignore cause (a terror attack) for effect (the Israeli response). In general, however, Palestinians have a point when they complain that the media often shape the narrative from an Israeli point of view. If you want to see coverage that looks otherwise, read a pro-Palestinian website like Electronic Intifada or a far-left Israeli site like +972. It’s nothing like the Israel coverage you see in the mainstream media.

The other kind of critic blames unpopular policy on bad hasbarah. Good hasbarah, they insist, could presumably have forestalled the brouhaha over the Israeli nation-state law (a brouhaha, I’d wager, that most Americans never heard about). That story got legs not because of a bad marketing rollout, but because the law was a policy decision that fed directly into a perception that Israel’s right-

wing government was growing less democratic and more nationalistic.

Passage of the law capped a week in which the Knesset allowed the education minister to bar groups critical of government policies from speaking in public schools, made it harder for Palestinians to win land disputes and blocked single men and gay couples from having children through surrogacy. More broadly, Netanyahu’s close ties with Trump may be understandable and justifiable, as is his outreach to European nationalists, but there is a political and PR price to be paid for such embraces.

Netanyahu has good instincts for Englishspeaking audiences, and he knows that a positive pitch only gets you so far. In the past few weeks, left-wing activists have complained that Israeli airport security have detained them and asked specifically about their activism and their political beliefs. On Monday, after the liberal Zionist writer Peter Beinart said he was stopped and interrogated, Netanyahu issued a statement saying it was an “administrative mistake,” adding that “Israel is the only country in the Middle East where people voice their opinions freely and robustly.”

The latter statement is a staple of pro-Israel hasbarah. It’s a terrific policy, as long as it has the added benefit of being true. But when actions prove unpopular, PR won’t save you.

The root meaning of hasbarah is “explanation,” not “alchemy.”

Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor of JTA.

Presidents...

Continued from page 14 tonishing 567 missions by American aircraft (not to mention deliveries by sea and El Al flights) kept Israel fighting. Nixon ignored the counsel of his closest adviser, Henry Kissinger, a Jew, who wanted to allow the war to play out for a while longer to give Egyptian President Anwar Sadat political cover to make peace in its aftermath.

ficult times together, and I can only say that the friendship that we have for this nation, the respect and the admiration we have for the people of this nation, their courage, their tenacity, their firmness in the face of very great odds, is one that makes us proud to stand with Israel, as we have in the past in times of trouble, and now to work with Israel in a better time, a time that we trust will be a time of peace.”

Humanity...

Continued from page 19 weaknesses. Those who devote themselves to hatred undermine their own humanity. he Jewish people are persistent in believing in the ultimate goodness of humanity.

In spite of our enemies and their hatred, we remain optimistic. We work to make society better and to alleviate suffering. We believe that even wicked human beings can be redeemed through love and compassion.

When we come under fire, we call on our collective memory to give us strength. We have survived the millennia due to the incredible courage and fortitude of our forebears. We are the children of the prophets who taught justice, righteousness and love. The world simply hasn’t absorbed our teachings yet.

How can we teach of love in a world filled with hatred? How can we teach that all humans are created in the image of God? How can we preach the goodness of humankind?

We teach these things because they are true, and because they are the ideals that can best bring fulfillment to humanity. In spite of so much hatred and evil in the world, the Jews teach love and righteousness.

The day will come when hatred and bigotry will disappear. In the meanwhile, we must stay strong, courageous and faithful to our tradition, and to our collective Jewish memory.

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986374

Continued from page 6 Jews, noting that anti-Semites hate Jews for their “Jewish blood.”

However, especially on the left, some see anti-Semitism as wholly separate from — and perhaps lesser than — racism. Racism, in this line of thinking, is fundamentally worse than all other forms of prejudice precisely because it is systemic.

“I want to make the distinction that while anti-Semitism is something that impacts Jewish Americans, it’s different than anti-black racism or Islamophobia because it’s not systemic,” said Sarsour, the Women’s March leader and prominent activist in the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, in a video posted to Facebook by Jewish Voice for Peace in April. “We need to make that distinction.”

Jews, this argument purports, are too embedded within the system — that is, too powerful — to have prejudice effectively wielded against them as racism.

Jill Jacobs, executive director of the leftleaning T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, largely refutes this idea.

“There is a difference between anti-Semitism and accusations of racism against white people, who are not a coherent historical ethnic group and who have never been the victims of systemic prejudice,” Jacobs told JTA. “Jews have experienced a genocide within living memory, and continue to experience anti-Semitism both in words and in actions.

“Ashkenazi Jews enjoy white privilege much of the time, but also regularly encounter antiSemitism perpetrated by people of many backgrounds.”

Johnson and others suggest that the prejudice-plus-power dynamic is in play in England, where Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of enabling anti-Semitism within his party. According to this theory, Labour is

The stakes were too high for Israel to play with timing, Nixon told Kissinger.

Nixon had little to gain and much to lose. He was in his second term, and the Republican was never going to win over the largely liberal Jewish vote. The airlift spurred an Arab oil embargo, driving gasoline prices sky-high. Preoccupied by Watergate, mired in Vietnam, and against advice, Nixon risked a new war with the Soviets to save Israel.

Nixon “made it possible for Israel to win, at some risk to his own reputation and at great risk to the American economy,” historian Stephen Ambrose said.

Israel’s leadership knew it.

“President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing,” Meir said, toasting Nixon during his 1974 visit. “All I can say, Mr. President, as friends and as an Israeli citizen to a great American president, thank you.”

The man who saved Israel, however, was obsessed with Jews, as White House tapes released after Nixon’s resignation revealed. He shared with underlings a host of complaints: “The Jews are all over the government.” “Most Jews are disloyal.” “You can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you.” “The Jews are born spies.” Jews were prevalent on Nixon’s infamous “enemies list,” drawn up, according to a 1971 memo by White House counsel John Dean, to assess “how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The same year, Nixon asked White House personnel chief Fred Malek to count and name the Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He was convinced they were skewing jobs numbers to make him look bad.

Yet in June 1974, in the darkness of Watergate, weeks before he would be the first president to resign, Nixon became the first president to visit Israel on the job. Speaking on the Ben Gurion Airport tarmac, he sounded relieved, like he had come home.

“We have been through, over these years, some difficult times,” he said. “During the period that I have served as president of the United States, we have been through some dif-

21 THE JEWISH STAR August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778

Racism...

nonchalant about attacks on Jews because they are relatively affluent and politically influential, unlike Muslims, who lack the same institutional power and therefore need increased defending.

“We’ve had a preview of how this approach operates with recent events in the U.K. with the Labour Party,” Johnson told JTA. Corbyn “understands racism purely through the prism of power — which, in his simplistic and vulgar Marxist worldview, Jews possess,” according to Brookings Institution fellow James Kirchick.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens also worries about the effects of redefining racism as only able to “punch down.”

“The criterion for racism is either objective or it’s meaningless,” he wrote in a column welcoming Jeong to The Times. “If liberals get to decide for themselves who is or isn’t a racist according to their political lights, conservatives will be within their rights to ignore them.”

Jacobs, on the other hand, said she is interested in moving beyond the so-called “oppression Olympics“ and toward actual problemsolving.

“There is still a lot of work to be done to dismantle racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and other isms within our society,” she told JTA. “We should focus on doing that work rather than argue about hierarchies of privilege and power.”

The JEWISH STAR

CAlendar of Events

Send your events to Calendar@TheJewishStar.com • New deadline: Monday 9 am Thursday August 16

Parsha Shiur: Join Michal Horowitz at the YI of Woodmere for a special shiur on the parsha to end the summer learning program. 9:30 am. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. 516-295-0950.

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

9:45 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

Morning Shiur: [Weekly] Esther Wein offers words of Torah and spiritual insight from her years of classes, lectures and travels. 10 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

LSTA1 0816

Lunch and Learn: Join Rabbi Eliyahu Wolf and Rabbi Shay Schachter for the last summer lunch and learn at Traditions. $13 per person.

12:30-1:30 pm. 516-398-3094.

Learn Maseches Brachos: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Eliyahu Wolf at the YI of Woodmere for a shiur on Maseches Brachos. 5:15 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. 516-295-0950.

Support Kiruv: Wine and sushi event to benefit Meor NYU. 7:30 pm. 538 Hazel Dr, Woodmere.

Parsha Shiur [Weekly]: Learn the Sfas Emes on the parsha with Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum.

Around 8:30 pm. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

Public Notices

Place a notice by phone at 516-569-4000 x232 or email: legalnotices@liherald.com

LEGAL NOTICE NOTICE TO BIDDERS SEALED PROPOSAL WILL BE RECEIVED by the Division of Purchasing of the Town of Hempstead, 350 Front Street, Room 122, Hempstead, NY 11550-4037 until 11:00 A.M. prevailing time on Friday, August 24, 2018 at which time the following Contract will be publicly opened, read and awarded as soon thereafter as practicable: YEARLY REQUIREMENTS FOR: C#80A-2018 Public Information Policy Consultant.

The Town Of Hempstead Seeks Proposals From Qualifying Firms Located And Authorized To Do Business In The State Of New York To Provide C o n s u l t i n g Services Related To The Development Of A Comprehensive Public Information Policy For The Town.

ALL OF THE ABOVE ITEMS AS PER SPECIFICATIONS & CONDITIONS. TOWN BOARD TO MAKE AWARD Bids may be picked up only between the hours of 9:00 A.M. to 4:15 P.M. All bids must be made on bidding sheets furnished by the Division of Purchasing of

responsible bid by greater than 15%. It is incumbent on you to submit all required documentation to the Town, demonstrating your qualification for treatment under that section. You should consult your attorney to determine your qualification for treatment under this provision.

DATED: August 16, 2018 HEMPSTEAD, NY LAURA A. GILLEN SUPERVISOR SYLVIA A. CABANA TOWN CLERK GORDON J. FOX DIVISION OF PURCHASING 99489

the Town of Hempstead and subject to all specifications, terms and conditions stated therein. The Division of Purchasing and or the Town Board reserves the right to reject any and all bids, and to accept the bid that is deemed most favorable to the interests of the Town.

ATTENTION VETERANS: You may have certain rights under Section 162 of the New York State Finance Law in connection with public contracts for the purchase of commodities or provision of services. Specifically, this law may authorize acceptance of a bid submitted by a “qualified veteran’s workshop,” provided that the bid shall not exceed the lowest

Search for notices online at: www.mypublicnotices.com

Halacha Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Yoni Levin at Aish Kodesh for a halacha shiur. 9:30 pm.

894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Friday August 17

Erev Shabbos Kollel: [Weekly] Eruv Shabbos Kollel starting with 6 am Chassidus shiur with Rav Moshe Weinberger and concluding with 9 am Chevrusah Learning session with Rabbi Yoni Levin. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere. 390 Broadway, Lawrence. 516-569-3600.

Sunday August 19

Timely Torah: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Ya’akov Trump, assistant rabbi of the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst, for a shiur on relevant Halachic and philosophical topics related to Parsha Moadim and contemporary issues. Coffee and pastries.

8 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

Learning Program: [Weekly] At Aish Kodesh led by Rav Moshe Weinberger following 8:15 Shacharis including 9 am breakfast and shiurim on subjects such as halacha, Gemara and divrei chizuk. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Gemara Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Moshe Sokoloff at the YI of Woodmere for a Gemara shiur. 9:15 am. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

516-295-0950.

Torah 4 Teens: [Weekly] Yeshiva program for boys and young adults with Rabbi Matis Friedman. 9:15 am-12:30 pm. 410 Hungry Harbor Rd, Valley Stream. Torah4teens5T@gmail.com.

Monday August 20

Sefer Ezra: [Weekly] Dr. Anette Labovitz’s women shiur will continue at Aish Kodesh. 10 am.

894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Seeing Things Clearly: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Shalom Yona Weis at Aish Kodesh for a shiur

for women and high school girls titled “Seeing Things Clearly- Learning to View Our World and Our Lives Through Positive Lenses.” 8:45 pm. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Tuesday August 21

Weekly Shiur: [Weekly] Rebbetzin Tehila Jaeger speaks at Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst. 10:30 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst.

Women’s Shiur: [Weekly] Rebbetzin Weinberger, Aish Kodesh on “Midah of Seder in our Avodas Hashem.” 11 am. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

The Word of Rabbi Tzadok: [Weekly] Rabbi Yussie Zakutinsky discusses the World of Reb Tzadok HaKohen at Aish Kodesh. 8:30pm. 894 Woodmere Pl, Woodmere.

Halacha Shiur: [Weekly] Join Rabbi Moshe Sokoloff at the YI of Woodmere for a halacha shiur. 8:40 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere.

516-295-0950.

Gemara Shiur: [Weekly] Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt at the YI of Woodmere. 9:15 pm. 859 Peninsula Blvd, Woodmere. 516-295-0950.

Wednesday August 22

Bilingual Reading: Hempstead Town supervisor and clerk will read stories in English and Spanish at Peninsula Library. 11 am to 2 pm. 280 Central Ave, Lawrence. Contact events@tohmail.org.

Blood Drive: Congregation Sons of Israel and the Irving Place Minyan will host their annual Summer Blood Drive. Donors receive New York Mets T-shirts. 3 pm to 9 pm. 111 Irving Place, Woodmere. Call 516-374-0655 to register.

Cunningham Concert: Free Jewish music at Cunningham Park. This week, a Bukharian international festival featuring Albert Narkalayev and orchestra. 7 pm. 196th St & Union Tpk, Queens.

QJCC.org.

Happy New Year • 5779 • Send your High Holiday greetings thru The Jewish New Year begins Sunday Night, September 9.

The Jewish Star will publish a special Rosh Hashanah greetings section on Thursday, September 6.

Copy deadline: Friday, August 31.

Full Page

$750

Half Page

$500

Quarter Page

$300

Eighth Page

$175

Add a Sukkot greeting on Sept. 20 • Contact Tovah (TRichler@TheJewishStar.com) 516-622-7461 ext. 306.

986666

August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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23 THE JEWISH STAR August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778

“When I needed a new heart valve, I went to the TAVR center with the best outcomes on Long Island.”

For John Elliott, sailing is living. He’s been on the water for most of his 90-plus years. In all three theaters during World War 2, as a merchant seaman, and for the last 70 years sailing out of the Rockaway Point Yacht Club.

But recently John was so fatigued and short of breath, he could only walk a few steps. His aortic valve was failing. His daughter, a nurse, told John about a minimally invasive valve replacement procedure called TAVR. She took him to NYU Winthrop Hospital, one of the busiest TAVR centers in the country, with the best TAVR outcomes on Long Island. They replaced John’s valve through an artery in his leg. In no time at all, he was back to sailing off Breezy Point.

If you suffer from aortic stenosis, you may be a candidate for TAVR.

259 First Street, Mineola, New York 11501 • 1.866.WINTHROP • nyuwinthrop.org

986902

To learn more, call 1-866-WINTHROP or visit nyuwinthrop.org.

985497

August 17, 2018 • 7 Elul, 5778 THE JEWISH STAR

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