The JEWISH
STAR
TheJewishStar.com
Ki Savo • August 31, 2018 • 20 Elul, 5778 • Torah columns pages 22–23 • Luach page 23 • Vol 17, No 34
The Newspaper of our Orthodox communities
Rambam students helped give NY’s ‘last Nazi’ the boot
Sen. John McCain at the Kotel with Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2008.
Nati Shohat /FLASH90
Israel loses an authentic friend By Jackson Richman, JNS Sen. John McCain, who died on Aug. 25 at the age of 81, was a longtime friend of Israel. The Arizona Republican, a frequent visitor to the Jewish state, was a Vietnam War hero, two-time presidential candidate and 35-year member of Congress. He first visited Israel in 1979, accompanying Washington Democratic Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Jackson “had the special respect of the Jewish people — the kind of respect accorded to brave and faithful friends,” McCain told the American Israel Political Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference in 2008. McCain took Jackson’s mantle and never looked back. “As the people of Israel know better
than most, the safety of free people can never be taken for granted,” McCain said at the conference. “And in a world full of dangers, Israel and the United States must always stand together.” In July 2017, after McCain was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted, “Godspeed, @SenJohnMcCain. A hero. A fighter. A friend. Israel is with you.” “I am deeply saddened by the passing of John McCain, a great American patriot and a great supporter of Israel. I will always treasure the constant friendship he showed to the people of Israel and to me personally,” Netanyahu posted on Twitter on Sunday. “His support for Israel never waivered [sic]. See McCain on page 12
By Jeffrey Bessen, Nassau Herald Rambam Mesivta High School in Lawrence has only 170 students, but these teenage boys have had a huge impact. The school’s dean, Rabbi Zev Friedman, received a flood of emails from former students when it was reported that 95-year-old Nazi war criminal Jakiw Palij had been deported to Germany on Aug. 21. For years, Rambam students, Rabbi Friedman and other administrators and teachers had protested outside Palij’s Jackson Heights home, calling attention to his history as a former SS guard at the Trawniki labor camp in Poland. “Since the school was founded, we decided that it’s important to provide the kids with not just a classroom education, but one outside the classroom,” Rabbi Friedman said. “It’s very, very important for is to be involved in the community.” That commitment began two years after the school was founded in 1992. Rambam students became involved in efforts to deport a native Lithuanian, Aleksandras Lileikis, who was accused of being a Nazi war criminal. A 1994 article in USA Today brought the story to students’ attention. Initially, Rabbi Friedman and the students rallied outside Lileikis’s house in Norwood, Mass. “Unprecedented,” he called it. The Rambam action caught See Rambam on page 16
The sound of Elul at Darchei
Rabbi Avrohom Moshe Heller, a second grade rebbi at Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway, blows the shofar of a kudu for his class on Tuesday, the first day of school.
Empire chicken alert A “public health alert” invoving raw Empire kosher chickens was announced by the Department of Agriculture “out of an abundance of caution due to concerns about Salmonella illnesses.” The agency said it found “a potential link” between the Empire products and an “illness cluster” affecting “multiple” patients between last September and June. The agency urged consumers who may still have raw products
from that period in their freezers “to properly handle” them. An Empire spokeswoman emphasized that its chicken was not being recalled and “is safe to consume when stored, handled, and cooked properly.” “You can remove all bacteria from raw poultry through proper cooking to a minimum of 165 degrees Fahrenheit as measured with a thermometer at the thickest part,” she said.
J.K. Rowling tweet-downs a Jew-baiting Brit J.K. Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter universe, went headto-head last weekend with a fellow British writer over his criticism of Jewish complaints about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Simon Maginn, who has written five thrillers under his own name and satirical comedies under the name Simon Nolan, in a Sunday tweet called Jewish outrage over Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s 2013 comments that “Zionists” do not understand British culture “patently synthetic outrage.” Maginn called on a Jewish tweeter to “Explain your deep and wounding sense of injury.” Rowling, who is not Jewish, tweeted in response: “How dare you tell a Jew that their outrage is ‘patently synthetic’? How dare you demand that they lay bare their pain and fear on demand, for your personal evaluation? What other minority would you speak to this way?” Maginn called on Rowling to explain, noting that Corbyn has said that his comments did not refer to Jews but was “a rather complicated joke about the Palestinian Ambassador’s
J.K. Rowling at opening night of the Broadway show “Harry Potter and The Cursed Child” in New York on April 22. Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic
fluency in English.” The opening salvos set up a back-and-forth that lasted throughout Sunday. Rowling tweeted several quotes from Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay “Anti-Semite and Jew” and lambasted Maginn for demanding that a British Jew explain how he feels under anti-Semitic attack “when there are literally hundreds of accounts currently online explaining how British Jews currently feel.” Maginn accused Rowling of “libel” for publicly calling him an anti-Semite in one of her tweets, but tweeted that “I’m not going to mount a legal action against you because I haven’t got any money and you’ve got a lot, but false + defamatory = libellous. What a class act you are. What a nasty vicious little bully. Blocked.” Early Monday morning he continued his harangue, opening with a tweet reading: “BREAKING NEWS: From today, any statement by Jeremy Corbyn or his supporters is now *auSee J.K. Rowling on page 16