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Students under siege defend anti-BDS Canary Mission By Jackson Richman and Alex Traiman, JNS The controversial Canary Mission — an anonymous watchdog group that exposes organizations, academics and activists who demonize Israel on campuses — recently came under fire when the San Francisco Jewish Federation indicated it would no longer facilitate

private-donor funding of the group. The Forward blasted the organization as “shadowy” for refusing to identify its leadership and sources of funding. Yet for pro-Israel students who are fighting bigotry at universities throughout North America, Canary Mission is useful.

Ezra Katz, a senior at Kent State University in Ohio, wholeheartedly agrees. “The number of anti-Semites on campus is rather alarming, and their actions even more so,” he said. “Exposing institutionalized and tolerated anti-Semitism isn’t done often enough, and as someone who has seen such rampant

JEWISH STAR

anti-Semitism on campus, I think it’s more than appropriate to have a supporting site.” People need “to take a step back,” he added. “Why are they mad at a site for exposing anti-Semitism, and ignoring the students and faculty who call Zionists ‘pigs and dirty coloSee Canary on page 15 nists’?”

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Vayera • Oct. 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779 • Torah columns pages 20–21 • Luach page 20 • Vol 17, No 41

Serving our Orthodox communities

US Jews talk Israel At Jewish Federation General Assembly, not everyone is happy

By Ben Sales, JTA TEL AVIV — On Sunday, a day before a few thousand American Jews descended here for the annual General Assembly (GA) of the Jewish Federations of North America,

Whether true of false, does it really matter? Jamal Khashoggi in December 2014.

Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images

By Ron Kampeas, JTA WASHINGTON — Three weeks after he disappeared, Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Washington Post columnist, is getting his reputation run through a wringer, and some proIsrael voices are joining the pile-on. Even as gruesome allegations emerge that he was tortured, mur-

AN EXPLAINER

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin had a listening session. Rivlin invited a select group of about 100 American Jews to his official residence in Jerusalem. While he sat in the center of the room, three leaders of the Diaspora’s largest Jewish community explained their issues with the Jewish state. “The Jewish identity of many young American Jews is reflected through the lens of tikkun olam, social justice values,” said Eric Goldstein, CEO of New York’s UJA-Federation. “And they experience a mental discomfort when they use that lens to look at many current Israeli government policies: settlement policy, nationstate law, treatment of asylum

seekers, marriage equality and marriage rights — more broadly, the monopoly that the Orthodox has over religion and state in Israel.” The GA, while boosting America’s relationship with Israel, was also a platform for a laundry list of grievances from leaders of the American Jewish establishment, who came together, under the banner “We Need to Talk,” for three days of sentimental speeches and panel discussions. Around the conference hall, signs displaying a series of statistics showed that the world’s two largest Jewish populations don’t think alike: Sixty percent of American Jews believe in the possibility See UJA on page 5

HAFTR:

Sixth graders on a Nassau BOCES Project Adventure trip. From left: Ava Windholz, Sofia Glaubach, Hila Nahari of Bat Ami, and Tova Dagan.

Khashoggi whispers Italian bubbe schools dered and dismembered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, some Israel supporters have joined other figures on the right in describing Khashoggi as a terrorist sympathizer and fierce opponent of See Khashoggi on page 24

TV chef Jamie Oliver

By Rachel Myerson, The Nosher via JTA In the “Tuscany” episode of Jamie Oliver’s current television show, “Jamie Cooks Italy,” the Naked Chef promotes wholesome comfort food with the help of adorable Italian

grandmothers who constantly critique his technique while pinching his cheeks affectionately. Jamie visited Pitigliano, a walled hilltop town dubbed “Little Jerusalem” due to its See Bubbe on page 8

A note from one who knew: ‘G-tt tzu dank. A day still alive is a day to be thankful for’ H

By Tehilla R. Goldberg olocaust Day in 2017 was the first one without Elie Wiesel. For this generation, he was a witness to the Holocaust. Mrs. Weissbrot was mine. From time to time, through the years of our friendship, Mrs. Riva (Regina) Weissbrot parted an invisible curtain and let me peek in on dim scenes of a long gone past, so far away yet right there. Like bleak sepia images, I can see splinters: Mrs. Weissbrot, only 12, noticing that a particular female Nazi never actually laid a hand on a Jew … An SS officer assigning her

to clean an apartment where a bowl of milk, ostensibly for the cat, would be waiting for her … upon deportation, that same officer searching her out at the cattle trains with a blanket and a piece of bread … Mrs. Weissbrot and her fellow inmates searching the woods for mushrooms to subsist on, cupping snow in their hands to drink … stacks upon stacks of the dead … You would never guess that she was a survivor; her elegant silhouette gave not a hint of all she had been through. Blessed with advanced years, she went about her life productively and joyously, present in the moment, See My cherished friend on page 23

HALB:

Robby Letterman of the Madison Programs demonstrates the Heimlich maneuver on Rabbi Nossi Lieberman during a course in various life-saving skills.

HANC:

Two students check out some of the offerings on display during HANC HS’s extra-curricular fair last week.

MORE SCHOOLS: PAGES 12-15

First Harvard capped Jews, now it caps Asians By Ben Sales, JTA In 1922, Harvard University President Abbott Lawrence Lowell had a problem: His school had too many Jews. As the country’s Jewish population ballooned in the early 20th century, the Jewish proportion of Harvard students increased exponentially, too. In 1900, just 7 percent of the Ivy League school’s students were Jewish. By 1922, the figure was 21.5 percent. Lowell felt that some were of deficient character. And even if they weren’t, he feared they would drive away the white, AngloSaxon Protestants who would go on to become America’s elite, as well as future donors to schools like Harvard. “The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate, not because the Jews it admits are of bad character, but because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also,” he wrote in a letter to a philosophy professor, as quoted in the book The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, by Jerome Karabel. In response to a letter from an alumnus bemoaning that Harvard was no longer a “white man’s” college, Lowell wrote that he “had foreseen the peril of having too large a number of an alien race, and had tried to prevent it.” Lowell eventually succeeded in changing admissions standards to limit Jews. According to Karabel, instead of admitting students solely based on academics, the school began judging surnames and photographs to determine if they were Jewish, classifying applicants as “J1,” “J2” or “J3” — conclusively, probably or maybe Jewish, respectively. It evaluated “character” as well, allowing Harvard to cap Jewish students at 15 percent until the 1960s. But some say it’s still happening — now, to Asian-Americans. That’s the contention of a lawsuit that began last week at a Boston federal court, arguing that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants. The accusation, made by a group called Students for Fair Admissions, recalls Lowell’s prejudices of nearly a century ago: they say Harvard rejects Asian-Americans because it sees them as academically gifted but unexceptional in character. “Harvard evaluators consistently rank Asian-American candidates below White candidates in ‘personal qualities,’” the lawsuit reads. “In comments written in applicants’ files, Harvard admissions staff repeatedly have described Asian Americans as “being quiet/shy, science/math-oriented, and hard workers.” And the lawsuit makes an explicit connection to Harvard’s history of discrimination against Jews.

A demonstrator in support of a lawsuit against Harvard contending that the university discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions. Jessica Rinaldi/Boston Globe via Getty Images

“Harvard is using racial classifications to engage in the same brand of invidious discrimination against Asian Americans that it formerly used to limit the number of Jewish students in its student body,” it says. “Statistical evidence reveals that Harvard uses ‘holistic’ admissions to disguise the fact that it holds Asian Americans to a far higher standard than other students and essentially forces them to compete against each other for admission.” In a 2012 article in The American Conservative, publisher Ron Unz cited National Center for Education Statistics data to charge that Harvard imposed a quota of 16.5 percent on Asian-American students starting in 1995 — following the example of the Jewish quota. “Even more surprising has been the sheer constancy of these percentages, with almost every year from 1995-2011 showing an Asian enrollment within a single point of the 16.5 percent average,” he wrote. “It is interesting to note that this exactly replicates the historical pattern observed by Karabel, in which Jewish enrollment rose very rapidly, leading to imposition of an informal quota system, after which the number of Jews fell substantially…” But some people, including Karabel himself, dispute that AsianAmericans face the same bigotry as Jews did in the 1920s. Karabel, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley,

sees the lawsuit as an attempt to outlaw affirmative action — a longstanding desire of American conservatives. Indeed, the lawsuit disparages Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, the 1978 Supreme Court decision allowed race to serve as a factor in admission policy. And Karabel says that unlike Jews, Asian Americans have seen their numbers at Harvard increase under a character system. Harvard’s class of 2000 was 16.4 percent Asian. But the incoming class of 2022 is nearly 23 percent Asian. “[T]he analogy between Jews and Asians that frames the current case against Harvard obscures more than it illuminates,” Karabel wrote in the Huffington Post. “Unlike quotas, which substantially reduced Jewish enrollments, affirmative action has proved compatible with both an increase in Asian-American enrollments and expanded opportunities for African-Americans and Latinos.” In other words, character was used to shrink Jewish enrollment in the 1920s. But Karabel and others say that considering extracurricular factors is meant to lead to a more diverse student body. “The ideas being explored today are not so different from the ideas being explored then,” said Jonathan Sarna, the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University. “Diversity and other elements come into play, and that’s an interesting argument. And one might argue that there should be different kinds of universities, some of which would make decisions based purely on the basis of merit.” The lawsuit has divided Asian Americans as well. “There should be more pushback against all this admissions rigging against Asians — especially among liberals, who tend to pride themselves on their championing of minorities and equal opportunity,” Michelle Gao, a Harvard sophomore, wrote in the Harvard Crimson, the student paper. But Robert Rhew, a Harvard alumnus, wrote in The New York Times: “Like many Asian-Americans and many Harvard graduates, I vigorously oppose the lawsuit. I reject the false equivalence of the argument that taking into consideration the race of applicants from underrepresented groups is the same as discriminating against everyone else.” The suit could reach the Supreme Court and may reshape the way universities are allowed to consider race in their admissions. But while quotas haven’t been a directly Jewish issue for half a century, Harvard College’s Jewish population has not recovered. According to Hillel International, it now stands at 11 percent — comfortably below Lowell’s quota.

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Arab preacher: Jews forgot lessons of Nebuchadnezzar, Titus and Hitler

Trump ready to squeeze Netanyahu

President Trump and French President Macron at the White House on April 24. WH/Shealah Craighead

Pesident Donald Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines at the annual U.N. General Assembly last month that he is ready to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting the White House’s much-anticipated peace plan, four Western diplomats familiar with the meeting told Israel’s Channel 10 news. “According to the four Western diplomats, Macron told Trump he has the impression Netanyahu doesn’t really want to move on the peace process ‘because he loves the status quo.’ Trump said he was very close to reaching the same conclusion,” the outlet reported. However, the French leader asked Trump why he mostly puts pressure on Palestinian Authority

leader Mahmoud Abbas, to which Trump responded that he has done so because the Palestinians do not want to engage with the U.S. “peace team.” But Trump assured Macron that he would able to pressure Netanyahu, if necessary. “I can be as tough with Bibi as I have been with the Palestinians,” he reportedly said. The White House did not deny the Channel 10 account, saying “the president believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to pursuing a comprehensive and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.” The peace plan is expected to be revealed between the end of the year and the beginning of January.

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about the Israelites: ‘Whenever they kindled the fire of war, Allah extinguished it.’ “ ‘Whenever,’ in Arabic, indicated continuity. It means that they continue to ignite wars and strife in the world. ‘Whenever they kindled the fire of war, Allah extinguished it.’ Another verse says: ‘Whenever they make a covenant, a party among them casts it aside.’ “These two characteristics go together: igniting wars and strife and reneging on agreements. The occupation government has not learned from what happened to the Israelites throughout history: the banishment, the oppression, and the humiliation. “They have not learned the lesson. But I am telling them that the logic of history will repeat itself once again.”

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not learn from history – from the two times that the Israelites spread corruption upon the land. That government has not learned the lesson. “They have not learned from what was done to them by Nebuchadnezzar. They have not learned from what was done to them by the great Roman leader Titus. They have not learned from what was done to them by Hitler, and by the kings of Europe and Spain. “They have not learned from this, and they continue to act the same way. This is the mentality of supremacy over Mankind, the mentality of isolationism and the removal of the other. This mentality is the result of planning and methodical conduct in order to ignite wards and strife throughout the world. They have not learned from history. Look what the Quran says

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During an Oct. 19 Friday sermon delivered at the village of Khan Al-Ahmar in the West Bank, the preacher said that the Israeli government had not learned the lessons of history, from “the two times that the Israelites spread corruption upon the land.” “They have not learned from what was done to them by Nebuchadnezzar … by the great Roman leader Titus … by Hitler,” he said, warning that “the logic of history will repeat itself once again.” Here’s an excerpt from the sermon, translated by MEMRI, which was broadcast by the Palestinian Authority’s TV channel (a link to the video is at TheJewishStat.com): “The right-wing occupation government and the extremist U.S. administration do not learn from history. The occupation government does

4 October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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firsthand. He also called for a coalition of Israeli and Diaspora Jews to jointly aid the developing world. From talk to action Turns out, both those initiatives are already (kind of) happening. Shazur (Hebrew for “interwoven”), an organization founded this year by Rabbi Amitai Fraiman, organizes one-day tours of Jewish New York for groups of Israelis in America, like young professionals or students. The tours discuss the origins of American Jewish values — from the immigrant experience to civil rights — as well as the American Jewish experience today. And the tours also include groups of American Jews, so that Israelis can meet and talk with them face to face. “Israelis have a huge knowledge gap,” said Fraiman, himself an Israeli with American parents who now lives in New York. “They don’t

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Continued from page 1 of a Palestinian state, versus 40 percent of Israeli Jews. Half of American Jews are liberal. Israeli Jews? Eight percent. And the past couple of years have been especially rough for American Jews with liberal proclivities: leaders negotiated for years to expand a non-Orthodox prayer section at the Western Wall. Last year, the Israeli government scrapped the compromise. The government has also moved to give the haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate more power over Jewish conversion. This year, Israeli police detained a Conservative rabbi for performing a non-Orthodox wedding. Also this year, Israel passed a law defining itself as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Recent months have seen a series of Americans, mostly left-wing activists, detained and questioned at Israel’s border. A two-state solution seems nowhere in sight. President Donald Trump, reviled by American Jewish liberals and never-Trump Republicans, gets high marks among Israelis. Israelis, meanwhile, have chafed at anti-Israel activism among some corners of American Jewry, as well as criticism from its leaders. Government representatives say they make policies according to their security and political realities, and consider the will of the voters who actually live in their country. “Over the last few years, North American Jewry and Israel have defined their relationship by the things we don’t have in common,” Jerry Silverman, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, told JTA. “I think you have an American Jewry that is growing up and is focused, especially in the younger generation, on social action, social justice issues and [who] aren’t really looking through an Israeli lens.” ‘We’re talking about dialogue’ If the two sides “need to talk,” though, it would be far from the first conversation. Those attending this year’s conference could also be forgiven feeling déjà vu: Issues of Israeli religious policy also figured prominently at the last GA to take place in Israel — five years ago. Even so, a range of discontented participants said the GA was not talking about enough things. Some on the left said there was not enough discussion of Israel’s control of the West Bank. Critics on the right complained that not enough settlers were featured. Others wanted more haredi Orthodox voices, or more Mizrachi Jewish voices or more talk of African asylum seekers in Israel. (This reporter heard all of those complaints and more like them.) “I really believe that the leadership of the American Jewish community is smart and sophisticated enough to deal with complex information,” said Jill Jacobs, executive director of the liberal rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, which lobbied for more talk of Israel’s West Bank occupation. “We’re talking about the IsraeliAmerican dialogue and the elephant [in the room] can’t be talked about.” Closing the gaps On the other side of the political map, a right-wing Orthodox group called the Coalition for Jewish Values complained that when the GA talked about American Jews, what it really meant was non-Orthodox Jews. American Orthodox Jews, the group said, tend to be fine with an Orthodox monopoly over marriage and conversion in Israel, as well as a hawkish security policy. “The leadership of the American Orthodox community has been completely left out of the program, despite the fast growth of this demographic,” the group said. Federation staff countered that the GA program indeed had several sessions discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even if none used the word “occupation.” And Silverman noted that non-Orthodox views got exposure because the majority of American Jews are not Orthodox. “At the end of the day, 85 percent of the Diaspora is non-Orthodox,” he told JTA. “The nonOrthodox are still not recognized by Israel, so we have 85 percent of U.S. Jewry Israel does not recognize.” More than anything, the question of what to do about the gaps between Israeli and American Jewry loomed over the gathering. On that, participants had some answers. Rivlin, opening the conference, called for a “reverse Birthright” that would bring Israeli Jews to see American Jewry

but you [also] want to figure out what brings you together.” Given the conference’s theme, keynote speakers devoted surprisingly little time to the Western Wall, conversion and marriage, three topics that have roiled American Jewish-Israeli relations in recent years. Natan Sharansky, the Soviet dissident who previously chaired the Jewish Agency for Israel, was the architect of the Western Wall deal and publicly criticized Netanyahu last year for freezing it. But Isaac Herzog, Sharansky’s successor, in his speech Tuesday to the GA did not even mention the Western Wall. Instead he struck a more conciliatory note and called for Israel to fund Hebrew language education for Diaspora Jews. And on the afternoon of the second day of the conference, he said that, well, we need to talk. “These are two different communities,” Herzog said. “But we must honor our brotherhood as Jews by understanding that there’s a dialogue amid differences.”

5 THE JEWISH STAR October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779

UJA Federation GA…

have an emotional connection because they can’t sympathize with a country they can’t understand. When you’re able to see with your eyes and walk with your feet in these places, you make this emotional connection, you can empathize with the other.” On the developing world front, Olam, a coalition of Jewish global service groups, is hoping to work with Rivlin on promoting joint American-Israeli Jewish international aid work. Olam helped organize Rivlin’s recent trip to Ethiopia, and its executive director, Dyonna Ginsburg, says working in the developing world appeals to both American and Israeli Jewish sensibilities. Israelis can appreciate the opportunity to put their scrappy entrepreneurial instincts to work, and Americans can engage in hands-on tikkun olam. “I don’t believe it’s a panacea,” Ginsburg said regarding the potential of aid work to resolve strife between American and Israeli Jews. “But I think those two things can happen in tandem. If any relationship between two human beings is strained, you want to work on that relationship,

October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

Advancing toward Biblical vegetarianism Kosher Kitchen

Joni SChoCkeTT

Jewish Star columnist

ately I have been doing a lot of research on vegetarian eating. While I’m not ready to give up my occasional medium-rare steak, or my Shabbat chicken dinners, or brisket, I am ready to lean more towards a vegetarian diet and have been doing so for several months. Still I research, trying to find ideas and reasons for a permanent, all-in lifestyle change. The main reason for a change is that vegetarian meals seem to agree with my digestive system better than meat meals. My stomach just feels much better after a stir-fry of veggies and tempeh than it does after a burger and salad. Maybe I really don’t like meat all that much and would much rather eat the varied flavors of veggies. Or maybe my stomach is telling me it’s time to make a change. JewishVeg.org has become one of my favorite websites — it has recipes, ideas and much more. It also has a lot of salient reasons why we should all be vegetarians, or at least eat more vegetables. Still, most people are not ready to cut out all meat. JewishVeg grew out of an organization called the Jewish Vegetarians of North America. While working for the Pittsburgh Federation, the current CEO, Jeffrey Cohan, discovered this group and its volunteers, went to New York to meet them, and ended up taking over the organization. The group, renamed JewishVeg, has recently partnered with Hillel throughout North America to get the vegetarian message to young people. I learned a lot from this site and from a recent article about Cohan. He believes that there is a Biblical basis for vegetarianism, including the prohibition of causing animals any pain or suffering. There are other Jewish reasons behind the movement’s rabbinic statement, which has been signed by 75 members of the clergy. If you are thinking of adding more vegetarian meals to your diet, do some research and find sites that inspire you. JewishVeg has lots of information and recipes, but other sites are also helpful. There are too many to name. Even if you can’t give up on meat and chicken altogether, incorporating more vegetarian meals in our diets is good for our health and the health of our planet. Beans, Tempeh and Mushrooms Casserole (Pareve) 3 to 4 cups canned white beans, drained and rinsed 8 oz. tempeh, cut into strips or 1/2-inch cubes 2 Tbsp. cornstarch or tapioca starch 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil 2 onions, diced 2 leeks, white part only, thinly sliced 2 to 4 carrots, peeled and sliced 2 to 4 stalks of celery, sliced thinly 5 to 8 cloves of garlic, finely minced or grated 10 oz. mushrooms, sliced (a mix of white and baby bellas is good) 2 large tomatoes, diced, or a small can of diced tomatoes, drained (reserve juice) 1 fresh bay leaf 1/2 to 1 cup dry red wine Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste 2 to 3 Tbsp. fresh parsley, minced Cut the tempeh and place in a bowl. Add cornstarch and toss to coat evenly. Heat a large frying pan and add the oil. Add the tempeh and cook, turning frequently

until golden brown. Scrape into a bowl and set aside. Add the rest of the olive oil and add the onions and leeks. Sauté until golden, about 9 to 13 minutes. Add the celery and carrots and cook until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook until they exude their liquid. Add the wine and cook until reduced a bit, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the tomatoes and the beans and the bay leaf. Mix well. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. If the liquid gets too low, add some water or the juice from the canned tomatoes. Let cook about 10 to 15 minutes, to bring the flavors together. Remove the bay leaves and season with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with the parsley. Serves 4 to 6. NOTE: Serve over polenta, rice or mashed potatoes for a full meal. Simple Veggie Stir Fry with Brown or Basmati Rice (Pareve) One of my favorite quick dinners. Yes, it looks like a lot of ingredients, but once you have the ingredients for the sauce on hand, you can use any veggies you have in the fridge. Simple to make, season and enjoy. A great comfort food to eat while watching a good movie! 1 large onion, diced 1 Tbsp. fresh ginger, grated 1 Tbsp. finely minced or grated garlic

2 to 3 carrots, peeled, sliced on an angle, sliced cut in thirds 1 green pepper, seeded and coarsely chopped Celery, sliced Bok choy, cut into bite-sized pieces Mushrooms, sliced Peapods, trimmed and cut in half Broccoli, cut into small florets Green beans, trimmed and cut into bitesized pieces Sauce: 2 Tbsp. cornstarch, 1/4 cup water 1 tsp. fresh garlic grated 1 tsp. grated fresh ginger 1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce (low sodium) 2 to 4 Tbsp. dark brown sugar, to taste 2 Tbsp. honey 1 tsp. toasted sesame oil 2 tsp. rice wine vinegar 1 tsp. mirin rice wine GARNISH: 2 Tbsp. sesame seeds OPTIONAL: Sriracha sauce for heat

NOTE: All ingredients are to taste — use more of what you like and less or none of what you don’t. No mirin? No problem. Use a bit of sherry or sweet white wine. You can use any vegetables and you can add tofu or tempeh, if you like. And yes, leftover chicken and even steak are delicious in this. Cut up the veggies in advance and keep them in separate bowls. Heat a wok or deep skillet and add the oil. Add the onions and move constantly until translucent and lightly golden in a few places. Add the garlic and ginger and stir for 30 seconds. Add the carrots and mix for one minute. Add the pepper and celery and mix for a minute. Add the veggies one at a time and cook until they soften and are brightened in color. Mix the sauce ingredients together in a bowl and whisk to blend. Add to the wok and mix constantly until the sauce thickens and coats the veggies. If it is too thick, add more stock or water. Serve over brown rice or Udon noodles. Garnish with sesame seeds. Serves 4 to 8.

Super Simple Blistered Green Beans (Pareve) My kids adored these and even ate them cold in lunch boxes for school. A simple go-to when time is tight. 2-1/2 pounds fresh green beans, trimmed, washed and dried 2 Tbsp. Canola oil 2 to 4 cloves garlic 2 Tbsp. dark brown sugar, more or less to taste Sesame seeds for garnish Line a large rimmed baking sheet with foil. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Wash and trim the green beans and place them on paper towels to dry. Pat dry to absorb all the water. Finely mince the garlic, or press the cloves through a garlic press into a small cup. Place the green beans in a large bowl. Add the oil and toss to coat the beans evenly. Add the garlic and toss to mix evenly. Add half the brown sugar and toss to coat evenly. Pour the beans onto the prepared pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the beans. Place in the oven and roast until the beans begin to turn brown and blister in spots. Watch closely. Garnish with sesame seeds. Serves 8 to 10.

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October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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Wine & Dine

Babka French toast By Kim Kushner, The Nosher via JTA This is one of those recipes that sounds super complicated, but is actually very simple. Using store-bought babka will make this French toast loaf as easy as 1-2-3, but if you happen to bake your own babka, definitely use it! Instead of serving the babka slices arranged on a serving platter, I transfer the slices into a loaf pan and line them up in a row, so they go back to forming the original loaf shape. When you serve the “loaf,” your guests will be pleasantly surprised to see that has in fact already been sliced into crispy, thick slices of toasty, chewy babka French toast. Make-ahead tip: Babka French Toast Loaf may be prepared up to 2 days in advance and stored, covered, in the refrigerator. If preparing ahead of time, do not bake in the oven before refrigerating (skip the last step in the recipe). Can I freeze it? Babka French Toast Loaf may be stored in the freezer for up to 1 month. If preparing ahead of time, do not bake in the oven

before freezing (skip the last step in the recipe). How to reheat: Babka French Toast Loaf may be reheated, uncovered, in a 400 F oven for 10 minutes just before serving. The frozen loaf may be thawed in the fridge overnight and reheated as indicated in the recipe above. Ingredients: 1/4 cup (4 Tbsp.) unsalted butter, plus more for greasing 1 babka loaf or cinnamon loaf, about 15 ounces 3 large eggs 1/3 cup heavy cream 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract or seeds from 1 vanilla bean 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon Directions: 1. Preheat the oven to 300 F. Grease a loaf pan with butter and set aside. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. 2. Use a large chef’s knife to cut the babka into slices 1 inch thick. Lay the slices on the pre-

pared baking sheet and set aside. 3. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, cream, vanilla and cinnamon. Dip the babka

slices, 1 slice at a time, in the egg mixture. Coat both sides for about 30 seconds or so, allowing the babka slice to absorb some of the egg mixture without getting too soggy or falling apart. Repeat with all of the slices, placing them back on the parchment-lined baking sheet while you finish. 4. In a large sauté pan, heat 1 tablespoon of butter over medium-high heat. Once the butter is melted, add 2 slices of babka and fry, turning once, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Be careful that the heat isn’t too high to avoid burning the babka slices. Transfer the browned slices to your prepared loaf pan, lining up the slices to re-create the original loaf shape. Continue heating 1 Tbsp. of butter at a time in a pan and browning the babka slices in batches, 2 slices at a time, and transferring them to the loaf pan. Use all of the French toast slices to fill the loaf pan. 5. If serving right away, place the loaf pan in the oven, uncovered, for 5 to 7 minutes longer. This will heat up all the slices to the same temperature and make them nice and toasty. Serves 8 to 10. Reprinted from “I ♥ Kosher: Beautiful Recipes from My Kitchen,” with permission from Weldon Owen Publishing.

Georgian-style stuffed tomatoes By Sonya Sanford, The Nosher via JTA There can never be too many tomatoes. August’s heat is always made more bearable for me by peak tomato season. I love to eat them cut into thick rounds and topped on crusty well-buttered toasted bread, or chopped small in a simple Israeli salad alongside cucumber and herbs. By this time of year, I end up with way more tomatoes from the garden and market than I could possibly use in sandwiches and salads alone. I’ll use the extra tomatoes to make sauce, but I also like to find a few more creative ways to take advantage of the bounty of summer. Stuffed vegetables of all kinds were regularly made and eaten in our home, just as they are in many other Russian Jewish kitchens. Stuffed cabbage, stuffed peppers and stuffed mushrooms are regional staples. As I’ve explored and learned to cook the food of the former Soviet Union and of my family, Georgian cuisine has always stood out for its uniqueness. Georgia’s food is an intersection of cuisines from the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, due to Georgia’s location on the eastern edge of the Black Sea, north of Turkey and south of Russia. Ingredients like hot peppers and ajika (a hot sauce made out of them), fenugreek and pomegranate molasses appear in Georgian dishes alongside more familiar Eastern European staples such as beets, cabbage, dill, and mushrooms. Georgian cuisine also benefits from its climate and terrain, which is extremely conducive to agriculture. The country is known for its wine and vast variety of food products including grains, melons, potatoes and much more. Each region in Georgia has its own distinctive and rich cuisine. One of my favorite books on Georgian cooking is Carla Capalbo’s Tasting Georgia: A Food And Wine Journey in the Caucasus. Capalbo offers an encyclopedic account of Georgian cuisine filled with detailed history and delicious recipes. I especially love her recipe for stuffed tomatoes. With her recipe as a guide, and inspired by a few other Georgian stuffed tomato recipes, over time I’ve adapted the dish to my taste and simplified some of the steps.

Bubbe…

Continued from page 1 once-flourishing Jewish community and the old city-esque cobbled, narrow streets of its ancient Jewish quarter. Pitagliano’s Jewish population peaked in the early 19th century, when it accounted for some 20 percent of the town’s inhabitants. But after Italy was unified in 1861, Pitagliano Jews began immigrating to larger cities with greater economic promise. The town’s dwindling community decreased further after Italy’s Racial Laws were implemented in 1938, which restricted Jewish civil rights and prohibited Jews from education and public office.

What makes this stuffed tomato unique is the addition of the herb fenugreek, which adds a complex and almost curry-like flavor to the tomatoes. You can find fenugreek at most Middle Eastern and Persian markets, or online. The stuffing is made of earthy garlicky sautéed mushrooms, rice, and fresh parsley and dill. The tomatoes are nestled into a simple aromatic sauce, and then each one is topped with mozzarella that gets melty and burnished in the oven. This dish is substantial enough to be served as a vegetarian main course, but it is not too rich and could easily be served as a side dish to a heartier meal. Like any good stuffed food, these taste even better when they are reheated the next day. Ingredients: 8 large firm tomatoes Olive oil or sunflower oil, as needed 1 medium yellow or white onion, diced fine 1/2 tsp. dried fenugreek 1/2 tsp. ground coriander 1/2 tsp. dried red hot pepper or red pepper flakes, or to taste 1/2 cup water, or as needed 14 to 16 oz. cremini, oyster, or maitake mushrooms, diced small 2 large cloves garlic, minced fine Salt and pepper, to taste 1 cup cooked rice 3 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh dill 4 oz. mozzarella, sliced to cover the top of the tomatoes, about 1/2-inch thick Directions: 1. Preheat the oven to 375 F. 2. Start by hollowing out the tomatoes: Cut off the top fifth, then run a small knife around the interior of the tomato. Carefully scoop out the inside. Finely chop up the remaining tops and what has been scooped out of them. Reserve. 3. To make the sauce: Add 2 Tbsp. of oil to a large pan over medium heat. Add the diced onions to the oil and sauté until softened and translucent. Add the fenugreek, coriander and hot pepper to the onions and sauté for 1 to 2 minutes, or until fra-

grant. Add the reserved tomato mixture to the pan and 1/2 cup of water and bring the mixture to a simmer. Depending on how much liquid you have from your tomatoes, you may need to add more or less water. You want the sauce to resemble a thick tomato sauce in consistency. Simmer on low for 10 to 15 minutes to allow the sauce to reduce slightly while you prepare the filling. If desired, you can blend the sauce with an immersion blender or blender, although I prefer to keep small pieces of tomato intact. 4. To make the filling: Add 2 Tbsp. of oil to a large pan over medium high heat. Add the mushrooms to the pan and season with salt and pepper. Sauté the mushrooms until their liquid has been fully released and the mushrooms have begun to brown. During the last 2 minutes of cooking, add the minced garlic to the pan and sauté until the garlic is fragrant. Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl. Add a cup of cooked rice, the chopped parsley and the chopped dill to the mushroom mixture. Taste and season with salt and pepper, if needed. 5. To assemble: Add the sauce to a baking or casserole dish that can snugly fit all of the tomatoes. On top of the sauce, place the hollowed out tomatoes. Generously fill each tomato with the mushroom mixture, and top with slices of mozzarella. 6. Bake the tomatoes for 30 to 40 minutes, or until hot, bubbly and with the cheese beginning to brown. Serve warm. Leftover tomatoes can be reheated in either an oven or microwave the next day. Serves 6 to 8. Sonya Sanford is a chef, food stylist and writer.

mother’s stuffed artichokes alongThose who remained were side Jamie, she explains the method forced to hide, often in the surover coffee and sends him away to rounding farmland, aided by the lohave a go. Jamie dutifully stuffs cal population. After the war, only the artichokes with ground beef 30 Jews returned to Pitigliano, and seasoned with parsley, basil and a these days there’s less than a handpinch of dry chili, then breads and ful left. The Jewish quarter is now fries them before braising in a sweet a museum, meticulously restored so tomato sauce. After a nap, Elena is that those visiting the synagogue, ready to taste his efforts and nods communal kosher oven and mikapprovingly. vah can imagine Jewish life during Little Jerusalem’s heyday. “You’re a very good chef,” she Nonna Elena. Twitter says with a bubbe-like kvell. Oliver does just that, exclaiming, What Jamie missed in his quest to discover “Oh, the stories these walls could tell” in his distinctive Essex twang as he walks to the syna- “the spiritual home of Jewish-Italian cooking” gogue to meet nonna Elana, one of Pitigliano’s is a Jewish delicacy unique to Pitigliano called remaining Jews. At 87, Elena is bright-eyed but sfratto — a cookie filled with honey and walfrail after a recent fall, so instead of cooking her nuts shaped like a stick. The cookie’s shape

and name — sfratto means “eviction” — recall the treatment of the Jews under Medici rule in the 1620s, when officers wielding sticks would evict families from their homes and move them to the Jewish ghetto. Years later it became tradition to serve sfratti on Rosh Hashanah as a symbol to ward off any future evictions, which inspired Pitigliano’s Christian neighbors, who served the cookies at weddings to keep any marital conflict at bay. The history of Pitigliano’s Jews exhibits the classic tropes of communities worldwide, alternating between being beloved and persecuted, and then often departed. Their food, however, lives on, and while we don’t need Jamie Oliver’s encouragement to continue stuffing artichokes and rolling sfratto, it’s nice to know we have it.

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Rube Goldberg: Lots more than wacky machines By Stephen Silver, JTA At the name “Rube Goldberg,” one concept instantly comes to mind: fun machines that complete simple tasks in overly complicated, humorous ways. Think a ball rolling down a long ramp that hits a series of dominoes, which hits something else, so on and so on. Nearly 50 years after his death, Goldberg’s name will come up in politics or another field to explain something that’s unnecessarily complex. “Maus” cartoonist Art Spiegelman once said that “Rube Goldberg knew how to get from Left: An iconic Rube Goldberg cartoon on A to B using all the letters in the alphabet.” But as a new exhibit that opened last week at a U.S. postal stamp; Right: One of Rube the National Museum of American Jewish History Goldberg’s political cartoons on display. in Philadelphia points out, there was a lot more to Bottom right: Rube Goldberg on a poster by the Pathé news agency calling him the Rube Goldberg than the machines he drew. Goldberg, who was born in 1883 and died “world’s most famous newspaper cartoonist.” in 1970, also was an extremely prolific editorial cartoonist, as well as an inventor, engineer, humorist and au- amounts of hate mail for thor. He had stints in the advertising industry and in Hollywood his political cartoons, in a career that spanned over 70 years. He won a Pulitzer in but there is debate 1948 for his political cartoons, and is an enduring inspiration to within the family over children in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math- whether the name’s obvious Jewishness had ematics) fields, where his creations are still used in lessons. “The Art of Rube Goldberg” exhibit consists of machines and anything to do with it. cartoons, as well as artifacts from Goldberg’s life. Included are nu- Goldberg was the son merous editorial and political cartoons — on topics ranging from of Jewish parents in government austerity measures to the continual struggle for peace San Francisco and lived through a time of harsh between Jews and Arabs — that wouldn’t be out of place today. before Goldberg, in fact, drew an estimated 50,000 cartoons in his anti-Semitism career, only a fraction of which were related to his eponymous the world wars. The exhibition also machines, his granddaughter Jennifer George said. He started includes personal, nevthe machine drawings in the late 1920s in one of his several syndicated series, one involving a character named Professor er-before-seen items, such as a cigar box belonging to Goldberg’s father. There’s a video installation showing modern-day movies — Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. The exhibit in Philadelphia is presented with the cooperation from Wes Anderson flicks to Wallace and Gromit tales to “Pee Wee’s of two of of Goldberg’s grandchildren — George and her cousin, Big Adventure” — that have used Rube Goldberg-like concepts. Goldberg died when Jennifer George was 11 years old, but she John George, both children of Goldberg’s sons. The two sons, Thomas and George, changed their surname to George at the is the primary custodian of his intellectual property and legacy. “I remember him through the lens of a child. But when carinsistence of their father (yes, one became George George). He claimed that it was for their safety because he received copious rying on the legacy of Rube fell into my lap when my dad died,

Top: Wall at the Philadelphia exhibit. Left: Rube Goldberg even waded into the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

over a decade ago … I really had to do some heavy lifting,” she said. “All of the cartoons that had once been on the walls of the den in the house that I grew up in, and in our grandparents’ study, which I had never read, suddenly I had to start reading them, and I had to start educating myself as to who Rube Goldberg was, through the lens of an adult, at least if I was going to do this correctly.” “We are preparing for a lot of serious and zany fun,” Ivy Barsky, the museum’s CEO, said at the press preview last week. “Which we don’t get to say a lot at a history museum.” “The Art of Rube Goldberg” runs through Jan. 21, 2019 at the National Museum of American Jewish History, 101 South Independence Mall East, Philadelphia. NMAJH.org/rube.

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sem publicly repudiating her past actions and By Jackson Richman, JNS The Israel Supreme Court’s ruling last expressing clear opposition to BDS, she should week allowing entry to 22-year-old American not have been allowed into Israel.” Weiss added, “The narrow fact-based deciBDS activist Lara Alqasem after initially refusing to let her enter provoked mixed reaction sion of the Supreme Court attempting to distinguish between political views and actions taken among American Jews. Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East in support of BDS when Alqasem has not repuForum, told JNS said this case is a “lose-lose” diated her past actions is in our view a mistake by Israel’s Supreme Court.” situation for Israel. However, groups such as J Street rejoiced over “Only take such a step when confident of strategic and tactical success. Even if Alqasem the admittance of Alqasem, who is expected to do had been excluded, an obscure anti-Zionist graduate work at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “This decision should be celwould have been turned into a ebrated as a major victory for heroic figure,” he said. “But the common sense and a testament failure to exclude her enhances to the importance and impact her yet further. What a fiasco.” of a fully independent judiAttorney Alan Dershowitz, ciary,” said J Street President a vocal advocate for the JewJeremy Ben-Ami. “It is a strong ish state, said, “I strongly supsign of the continued vitality of port the decision. Israel never pro-democratic forces in Israel should have detained her.” — and a rebuke to the dangerZionist Organization of America President Mort Klein, ous and repressive policies of on the other hand, slammed Lara Alqasem. Miriam Alster/Flash90 the Netanyahu government.” “An American student who the decision. “ZOA opposes the Israeli Supreme Court’s wishes to study at a prominent Israeli univerdecision allowing Lara Alqasem … to enter Is- sity should be welcomed, not excluded and rael and study at Hebrew University,” Klein told falsely maligned as a security threat because of JNS. “Alqasem and her SJP chapter has held a her political beliefs,” he added. In the ruling, Justice Neal Hendel said: “Since ‘national day of action’ supporting Rasmea Odeh — the convicted terrorist who masterminded the the appellant’s actions do not raise satisfactory murder of two American Jewish college students cause to bar her to entry to Israel, the inevitable at Hebrew University in Israel, and a key military impression is that invalidating the visa given to operative of designated foreign terrorist group her was due to the political opinions she holds,” the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” read the verdict. “If this is truly the case, then Klein continued, “The Israeli Supreme we are talking about an extreme and dangerous Court’s Alqasem decision also violates the step, which could lead to the crumbling of the court’s own precedents which upheld Israel’s pillars upon which democracy in Israel stands.” Law professor Eugene Kontorovich said the anti-BDS law as ‘political terrorism.’” “It is appalling that the Israeli Supreme Court court overstepped its boundaries. “Whether the security benefits outweighed is permitting an SJP leader to enter Israel, to unthe bad press is a debatable question — but it is dermine the country from within,” he added. National Council of Young Israel President one for the government to decide,” he told JNS. “Whatever one thinks of the dangers to deFarley Weiss, who was a volunteer law clerk at the Israel Supreme Court in 1988, was also mocracy from denying entry to BDS activists, the dangers are much greater from a Court, disappointed by the decision. “The court, however, in our view mistaken- with no legal basis other than its view of what ly made a distinction between having a politi- is right, micromanaging and essentially taking cal belief in support of BDS and taking action government decisions about border control,” he continued. “Today, the real Security Minister is for BDS,” he told JNS. “Clearly, Alqasem took action for BDS at the Neal Hendel.” “The Supreme Court knows no more about University of Florida as the head of Students and the Supreme Court agreed with that assessment these diplomatic trade offs that the ministers, but said since they did not know of any actions and probably less, but is has basically substitutshe had taken in the last 18 months and she stated its judgment for that of the government, deed she would not take such action in Israel they spite the government violating now law,” added decided to allow her into Israel,” added Weiss. Kontorovich. “Basically, they accepted the dip“The fact she deleted her social media just lomatic opinion of Hebrew University as trumpbefore arriving in Israel likely indicates that she ing that of people’s elected representatives.” is not being honest by claiming she did not enThe ruling, however, did not strike down Isgage in BDS activities over the past 18 months,” rael’s law banning BDS supporters from entercontinued Weiss. “In our view, without Alqa- ing the country.

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Around the 5 Towns…

Clockwise from top left: Students at DRS Yeshiva HS for Boys greeted prospective students at a Sunday open house. At Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls, where chesed is a prime imperatve, girls helped setup Wednesday’s community Challah Bake. Also at SKA, these girls helped introduce their school to prospective students at an open house. At HAFTR HS, GOP congressional candidate Ameer Benno judged opening night of a new debate season. At the Shulamith School for Girls, “Big Sisters” and “Little Sisters” display their emojis.

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Clockwise from top left: A handson children’s garden was planted at HAFTR’s Early Childhood Center in memory of Morah Betty Karp by her daughter and son-in-law Sharon and Gary Hoffman and family. At HALB, sixth graders enjoyed a leadership challenge workshop with Rabbi Tani Prero in which faculty participated. A back-to-school carnival put everyone (from all HAFTR divisions) in flyinghigh spirits. And children from YOSS’ early childhood center visited Grant Park for Tashlich, throwing their aveiros away and posing for this photo.

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By Celia Weintrob Photos by Doni Kessler note remarks that opened the fourth While Torah is nual an- passed down way for the mesorahforever true, the ideal tive Five Towns Community Collaboraaccording Conference on to be conveyed the time, emphasizing to the middah of children — and Sunday. “What is the Torah how an everlastingto our that the primary of Torah and the kids need now?” ingredent needed in Yiddishkeit is embeddedlove he asked. “What today’s chinuch simcha. their beings — worked in 1972 is in necessarily changes won’t work today.” Twenty-six speakers, “You’re still talking over time. Rabbi Weinberger, about what rebbetzins, educators, including rabbis, for you in 1972 and insisting thatworked d’asrah of Congregationfounding morah ers and community leadwhat should work lecturers that’s Woodmere Aish Kodesh in and mashpia at sue that challengeeach addressed a key isMoshe Weinberger, for your kid,” Rabbi the YU, reminded families and parents Shila”a, said in key- that Torah and educators in attendance frum communities. The event, schools in will not be received the Young Israel hosted at of Woodmere, if it’s not was orgaSee 5 Towns Rabbi Moshe hosts on page Weinberger, of 15 Kodesh in Woodmere, Congregation Aish delivered keynote

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to an — we believe investiture speech Delivering his Wilf Campus in at YU’sThe Newspaper of our Orthodox communities with many assembly of 2,000 Washington Heights, in by livestream, more listening spoke of the Rabbi Berman the five central “Five Torot, or institution.” teachings, of our believe in Tor“We do not just Chayyim — Torat at Emet but also and values must that our truths he said. live in the world,” teachings, YU’s other central Adam,” “Torat he said, are “Torat Tziyyon, the Chesed,” and “Torat Torah of Redemption.” formal cereFollowing the community parmonies, the YU street fair at an “InvestFest” Am- tied street fair on Amsterdam Avenue. 11 was a along at the “InvestFest” See YU on page

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t was a minor news story when it broke in the summer of 2016. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced he was suing Great Britain over the Balfour Declaration, issued on Nov. 2, 1917. But as we observe the centennial of the document this week, it’s important to understand that although his lawsuit was a stunt, Abbas was serious. More than that, the symbolism of his See Tobin on page 22

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Britain Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn— who in 2009 called Hezbollah and Hamas his “friends” — said he would not attend a dinner commemorating the centennial of the Balfour Declaration. Prime Minister Theresa May she would attend “with pride” and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would be her guest. “We are proud of the role we played in the creation of the State of Israel and we will certainly mark the centenary with pride,” May said. “I am also pleased that good trade relations and other relations that we have with Israel we are building on and enhancing.”

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By Ron Kampeas, JTA Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and WASHINGTON — For 17 years, the then the wildfires in northern California. Israeli NGO IsraAID has been performPolizer recalls that he was wrapping ing search and rescue, purifying water, up a visit to IsraAID’s new American providing emergency medical assistance headquarters in Palo Alto on Oct. 8 and and walking victims of trauma back to was on his way to a flight to Mexico to psychological health in dozens of disas- oversee operations after a devastating ter-hit countries. No 25 earthquake there when he got word of • Vol 16, But no season has been busier than the wildfires. “I literally had Luach page 19 9:15 • to do a Uthis past summer and fall, its co-CEO Yo- turn,” he said Havdalah this week in an interview 8:07 pm, tam Polizer said in an interview — and ting Candleligh at the Israeli embassy in Washington. Towns nowhere more than in the United States. Polizer spoke with the exhilaration 5777 • Five Tamuz, “The last few months have been un- of an executive whose team has come 2017 • 20 believable,” he said, listing a succession through a daunting challenge. “We’re Parsha Pinchas of disasters that occupied local staff and the people who stay past the ‘aid festiNiveen Rizkalla working with IsraAID in Santa Rosa, Calif., in volunteers since August: Hurricane Har- val’,” he said, grinning, describing the the wake of deadly wildfires there. vey in Texas, Hurricane Irma in Florida, See IsraAID on page 5

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or the Palestinians, the year zero is not 1948, when the state of Israel came into being, but 1917, when Great Britain issued, on Nov. 2, the Balfour Declaration—expressing support for the establishment of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine. So central is the Balfour Declaration to Palestinian political identity that the “Zionist invasion” is officially deemed to have begun in 1917—not in 1882, when the first trickle of Jewish pioneers from Russia began arriving, nor in 1897, when the Zionist movement held its first congress in Basel, nor in the late 1920s, when thousands of German Jews fleeing the rise of Nazism chose to go to Palestine. The year 1917 is the critical date because that is when, as an anti-Zionist might say, the Zionist hand slipped effortlessly into the British imperial glove. It is a neat, simple historical proposition upon which the entire Palestinian version of events rests: an empire came to our land and gave it to foreigners, we were dispossessed, and for five generations now, we have continued to resist. Moreover, it is given official sanction in the Palestine National Covenant of 1968, in which article 6 defines Jews who “were living permanently in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion” as “Palestinians”—an invasion that is dated as 1917 in the covenants’ notes. As the Balfour Declaration’s centenary approached, this theme is much in evidence. There is now a dedicated Balfour Apology See Cohen on page 22

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By Jeffrey Bessen, Nassau Herald Six tables, three on each side of the gymnasium, were beautifully adorned with place settings and candlelight, as in a restaurant or a portion of banquet hall. In between was the food. Shopped for, prepared and cooked by middle school and high school aged young people and adults guided by teachers and professionals, including chef Nina Vincenzina. Kulanu Academy, a Cedarhurst-based school for children, teenagers and adults with developmental disabilities, unveiled its new state-of-the-art commercial kitchen on Oct. 18. It will be used to teach its clients how to prepare for a career in the culinary arts. Joe Geiger, president and chief executive officer of Pennsylvania-based First Nonprofit Foundation, first visited four years ago after learning about Kulanu from a foundation board member. The organization gave $100,000 to Kulanu to kick off its campaign to build the commercial kitchen. “Kulanu has a terrific program and people with special needs are undervalued in our society,” Geiger said. “We want people that thy have value and can contribute to society.” State Sen. Todd Kaminsky of Long Beach and former Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder of Far Rockaway had teamed up to win a $250,000 grant to aid the kitchen installation. The kitchen has two ovens, a stove, several prep tables, a commercial-grade walk-in refrigerator, multiple sinks and a dishwasher. “It is literally soup to nuts,” said Beth Raskin, Kulanu’s executive director. On the day we visited, the menu included breaded eggplant and ricotta rolls, cream cheese and smoked salmon bits with dill,

Chef Nina Vincenzina carved up a salmon in Kulanu Adademy’s new commercial-grade kitchen.

crudités cups with zesty cream, small shell past with tomato, feta and basil, cole slaw cops, cucumber hummus spirals, spanakopita (spinach-filled filo dough), salmon and tuna tartar spoons with crispy twills, mozzarella and cherry tomato skewers with honey balsamic glaze, assorted cut hero slices, eggplant roster peppers and fresh mozzarella, grilled vegetables with Swiss garlic mayonnaise, Portobello mushroom brie cranberry redox, sushi, pastries and strawberries. Judging by how many times the guests returned to the buffet table, the food was me’od ta’im (very tasty).

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October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

Jumpstart your career!

Jeffrey Bessen

CAMERA begins helping students in UK Twenty students from the United Kingdom and Ireland participated in the first high-level training conference there organized by CAMERA on Campus UK. The event, held in London on Oct. 14, emphasized the empowerment of students to be proud, informed Zionists.

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Continued from page 1 Meyer Grunberg, a senior at Florida International University in Miami, echoed Katz. “I support Canary’s Mission because there is a need to call out folks who claim to stand for ‘justice for all … except Zionists and those who support them’,” he said. “That sort of doublestandard is rarely accepted in any scenario, yet seems to be tolerated when it comes to Israel.” “The people [listed] there are there for a reason,” Grunberg said. “Why should we simply sit back and allow the hate to fester, when no other country in the world deals with such a level of double-standards and revisionist history?” Pro-Israel students’ difficult battle Canary Mission claims to aggregate publicly available information, exposing participants in “anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry on the farright, far-left and among the array of organizations which constitute the BDS movement.” According to its website, “If you’re racist, the world should know.” In D.C., George Washington University’s Shep Gerszberg suggests that profiling students can have unintended consequences. “Organizations like Canary Mission can help Jewish students know which professors to avoid,” he said. “But when they go after students that are anti-Israel/pro-Palestine, it just contributes to their ability to portray themselves as victims.” Katherine Dolgenos, former president of the Israel Alliance at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., said that “the default viewpoint on many campuses, especially liberal-arts schools, is that Israel is an illegitimate apartheid state.” Many students, she said, attend Palestinian solidarity events without fully understanding the conflict. Some arrive at Students for Justice in Palestine meetings without knowing what the organization stands for, and may then find themselves targeted. She complained that Canary Mission sometimes “publishes personal information about students with dubious anti-Zionist connections — for example, some students on the website have merely attended Students for Justice in Palestine meetings and are not necessarily members.” Brooke Goldstein, executive director of the Lawfare Project, says everyone is fair game. “Why do we have to be afraid to publicly expose those who are rabidly anti-Semitic? Have we learned nothing from our tragic past?” “Insinuating that we should somehow be embarrassed of a website that merely states the facts is ludicrous,” she said. “The only people who should be embarrassed are those featured on the website for their racism.” According to Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, “Canary Mission is highly effective against the BDS movement, and it is also hated by some Jewish progressives. I believe these two facts are not unrelated.” Controversy over funding Canary Mission keeps its funding sources anonymous. According to media reports, the Los Angeles Federation transacted $250,000 by an anonymous donor to Megamot Shalom, which allegedly operates Canary Mission. In 2016, San Francisco Federation transacted a $100,000 grant by Helen Diller Family Foundation, a major philanthropic group in the Bay Area, through the Central Fund of Israel, earmarked to support Canary Mission. Both indicated that they will not continue funding. Kerry Philp, San Francisco Federation’s senior director for strategic marketing and communications, told JNS that the “Federation seeks to support the philanthropic needs of our donors and the broad range of views that they represent. “A one-time grant was made in 2016 by the Helen Diller Family Foundation, a supporting foundation of the Federation, to the Central Fund of Israel and earmarked to support the work of the Canary Mission,” she explained. “In 2017, we strengthened the implementation of our review process and determined that the Central Fund of

15 THE JEWISH STAR October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779

Canary...

Israel is not in compliance with our guidelines.” The national umbrella organization Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) said that the decisions were made at the local level and were not part of a national directive. “We very much support the right of our Federations to make grant decisions. Each Federation is independent and diverse,” said a JFNA spokesperson. JFNA notes funds were not given from Federation budgets, but from external philanthropists who rely on Federation recommendations. Commenting on The Forward and Haaretz articles, Pollak notes that “these critics have never been able to show that Canary’s profiles are inaccurate, so instead they pound the table and use words like ‘blacklist’ to delegitimize a watchdog that compiles examples of BDS activists celebrating Hitler and Hamas on social media.” “Canary Mission is indispensable in the fight against BDS, and I am grateful for it.”

Where does Dem Joe Kennedy stand on Israel? Backgrounder by Jacob Kamaras, JNS Ahead of November’s midterm elections, much Jewish communal concern and debate has centered on the anti-Israel views of Democratic congressional candidates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib in New York and Michigan, respectively, coming against the backdrop of the growing partisan divide on Israel. Meanwhile, in New England, a young Democrat with a rising national profile and highly recognizable surname is running unopposed for a fourth term in the region’s most Jewish congressional district. As rumored 2020 presidential candidate Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.) — grandson of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, grandnephew of President John F. Kennedy, and son of Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy

II — assumes the spotlight through platforms like his rebuttal of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, the 38-year-old lawmaker’s policies on Israeli and Jewish issues could draw increased attention. Brett M. Rhyne, editor of The Jewish Advocate in Boston, believes that Kennedy “is in a somewhat challenging position vis-à-vis Israel and the Jewish community” in his district, which includes the heavily Jewish areas of Brookline and Newton. “This Jewish community supports Israel, but most Jews here don’t support the rightwing policies of the Netanyahu government,” Rhyne told JNS. “So Kennedy, who I think tends to the hawkish side when it comes to Israel, must also cater to his constituents’ conciliatory feelings toward the Palestinians

and downright oppositional feelings toward Netanyahu. He also has to serve the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s liberal bent.” Both ways on Black Lives Matter Having it ‘both ways’ on Black Lives Matter In January’s State of the Union rebuttal, Kennedy’s line of “You steadfastly say, black lives matter” might not register as relevant to Israel for the average observer. Yet the official Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement’s platform calls to end “US aid to Israel’s military industrial complex,” and accuses Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide” against the Palestinians. Dream Defenders, a BLM offshoot, in 2016 took a tour of eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank that was led by a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group.

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“I don’t see how Representative Kennedy can support Black Lives Matter while choosing strategically to ignore its anti-Israel platform,” Jason D. Hill, a black immigrant from Jamaica and author of We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People, told JNS. “If you look at the manifesto that Black Lives Matter has put forward, I think the direct anti-Israel position they have taken is a constitutive feature of the movement. “No politician or no public figure can attempt to separate that kind of alignment of Black Lives Matter with such a statement or a position, and then try to say there is a movement called Black Lives Matter that we can also defend.” In a statement provided through his communications director, Kennedy told JNS, “Even in the midst of this deeply polarized moment, the bonds between the United States and Israel remain strong because they are grounded in our communities, strengthened by friends, neighbors and colleagues. Rather than allowing partisan headlines to divide us, our two nations remain united by our shared values and a shared commitment to democracy. That is why I have been a strong supporter of Israel and the entire Jewish community since the day I was sworn into Congress.” He declined to address issues such as the “black lives matter” reference in his State of the Union rebuttal, as well as his positions regarding ongoing violence at the Israel-Gaza border, the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and former President Bill Clinton’s recent sharing of a stage with anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan at the funeral of Aretha Franklin. Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at the D.C.based World Affairs Institute and author of Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel, told JNS that it “rings hollow to affirm ‘support’ for Israel while lambasting it for defending itself.” In May, Kennedy had stated, “While Israel has every right to defend her borders, the excessive use of lethal force — combined with abhorrent incitement and instigation by Hamas — has taken too many innocent lives. This must end. Neither is the United States blameless. Our embassy in Israel ultimately belongs in Jerusalem. But the Trump administration’s hasty relocation was certain to spark anger, violence and unrest.” Muravchik called the comments “clearly an anti-Israel position.” “The criticism of Hamas embedded in his statement is clearly a kind of throwaway line,” he said. “This is something that Hamas was doing and Israel was reacting to in self-defense, and to respond to it with a statement like this which puts the primary blame on Israel and the secondary blame on Hamas reflects a clear bias against Israel.” ‘Deep thoughfulness over time’ Jeffrey S. Robbins, a partner in a Boston law firm and a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission under President Bill Clinton, met with Kennedy in the aftermath of his Gaza statement, and was “powerfully impressed” for a number of reasons. “One is the uncommon depth of knowledge that he has of this conflict and of the nuances of the conflict … and of the complications within the American-Jewish community regarding the conflict,” Robbins told JNS. “The second is I was reminded that he is genuinely one of the most important friends that Israel has in American politics. It is because he combines [his knowledge with] tremendous respect among the progressive subconstituencies of the Democratic Party all across America.” Regarding the “black lives matter” reference, Robbins said he is “not at all concerned about the fact that he embraces the positive aspects of Bllack Lives Matter, the positive aspects of civil-rights movements, which since time immemorial have had complicated relationships sometimes with the Jewish community and with Israel.” See Joe Kennedy on page 24

17 THE JEWISH STAR October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779

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Israel tightens relations with Christian media and confused with legitimate criticism of Israel, and under By Alex Traiman, JNS the guise of free speech. As envoys of your countries, my The Government Press Office and the Ministry of Jeruhope is that you will return to your countries and spread salem Affairs and Heritage hosted 180 influential Christian the good news about Zion.” broadcasters and producers for a four-day summit to learn “We don’t force them to write anything about Israel,” the “truth about Israel,” in the hopes that the experience will Chen told JNS. “But by strengthening our connection and turn them into better advocates for the Jewish state. providing Christian journalists with access, with footage The second annual Christian Media Summit featured adand with good story ideas, we are hopeful that they will dresses by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Presiwrite good things about Israel.” dent Reuven Rivlin, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David FriedDavid Parsons, vice president and senior international man and numerous ministers and Knesset members, with spokesperson of the International Christian Embassy in Jethe goal of strengthening the relationship with Israel’s most rusalem, told JNS that targeting Christian media is not only fervent non-Jewish religious supporters. sound on an ideological level, but also makes sense if you look “This conference represents a major breakthrough by the at the reach of Christian media around the world. government of Israel, whereby it is willing to invest heavily in “If you take a look at TBN or Daystar, they each have the relationship between the state and the journalists that covmany more viewers than CNN, so the government of Israel er breaking events here, in order to make sure that Christian realizes that this is a great way to get Israel’s message out journalists aren’t learning about Israel from third parties, but there,” said Parsons. rather are getting their information directly from the source,” Esther Ohana, tours director of InnovatioNation for Kessaid Nitzan Chen, director of the Government Press Office. “We hope the participants will become unofficial ambas- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to members of the Chris- het, a leading tour provider for Christians, who arranged logistics for the conference, told JNS that hosting a confersadors for Israel,” Chen told JNS. tian press during an event in Jerusalem on Oct. 14. Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 ence of influencers affects public opinion and has an impact In an intimate question-and-answer session, a relaxed on Christian tourism. Netanyahu told Christian broadcasters visiting Israel from “We don’t only protect Christian holy sites. We protect Chris“When you bring people to Israel at a conference like this — nearly 40 different countries, “We have no better friends than tians.” our Christian friends. You are champions of truth. There is only Speaking about the spiritual connection between Jews, Chris- to see what there is and to get a taste of what Israel has to offer one thing that I ask of you: to tell the truth.” tians and the land of Israel, Netanyahu told guests, “Every Shabbat, — they are going to go back and say, ‘Listen guys, if you want to “Israel is a robust democracy,” he said. “It supports the rights I pick up a certain book. It is a very good book. It was written here. understand what is going on here, you have to come. You canof all: Jews, Christians and Muslims. We are the only ones who It is always relevant, it is always inspiring. There is nothing like the not understand it just from reading the news,’ ” said Ohana. “I am hopeful that the participants here will influence people from do so in this region,” he said, stressing that “people should sup- Bible. It is the best book ever. I truly practice what I preach.” port Israel” because “it’s the right thing to do.” Ambassador Friedman followed Netanyahu. “Not a day goes their churches and their communities to come to come to Israel, Netanyahu used Bethlehem, the city of Jesus’ birth, as an ex- by that I don’t thank G-d for being the first U.S. ambassador to and see Israel and learn firsthand what is going on here.” Parsons, who served as a consultant to the GPO for this conample of what happens when Christian populations are placed serve from the embassy in Jerusalem,” he said. He called the ference, believes that Christians are coming not only out of curiunder Muslim authoritarian rule. “When we handed Bethlehem broadcasters “the vanguards of truth.” over to the Palestinian Authority, the Christian population there He acknowledged that as an observant Jew, “my religious osity, but also out of a sense of duty. “I believe that Christians have a very unique moral role and was 80 percent. You know what it is now? 20 percent,” he said. observance ends at the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.” He “I would tell people everywhere that Israel is the vanguard then cited the Christian book of John: “Then you will know the duty in this day because Christianity spread so many lies and blood libels against the Jews. We have a moral duty today to tell of freedom in the Middle East,” the prime minister explained. truth, and the truth will set you free.” “Without Israel, radical Islam would overrun the entire Middle “This is where you come in,” said Friedman. “All of you are the truth about Israel and the Jewish people,” he said. “Today, the truth of Israel is the same of Israel in the Bible East. Who’s fighting the Iranian takeover of the region? Israel on the front lines of the mission to convey the truth to an audiand biblical times. It is one and the same people. And it was is fighting it. Israel has prevented at least 40 terrorist attacks ence which thirsts for the truth.”’ by [ISIS, known in Israel by its Arabic name] Daesh. Israel has Chen told the audience that today, “there has been an up- G-d who scattered you, and G-d who brought you back. And we prevented these attacks with superior intelligence.” tick in anti-Semitism and BDS. Both have become acceptable believe that Israel has a bright future.”

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ing her and her father briefly — until her mothBy Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA AMSTERDAM — When her classmates were er got them freed on account of their Hungarsent from occupied Holland to death camps, ian citizenship. As the Netherlands became increasingly danEmmy Korodi and her Dutch-Jewish family were safe in Hungary — one of Nazi Germany’s gerous for the Hungarian Jews, their government told them it could no longer vouch for their closest allies. Her family were among some 90 Jews who, safety in Holland and arranged special trains to at the height of World War II, survived for the bring them back. unlikeliest reasons: They fled the Germans and local police in the Netherlands — a country that many people credit for its population’s efforts to save Jews — and found safety in Hungary, a perceived perpetrator nation of the Holocaust. The story of Dutch-Jewish refugees in Hungary was told for the first time this year in a documentary titled “The Train Journey” by award-winning DutchIsraeli filmmaker Willy A Jewish family reunited in Budapest in 1943 following the arrival there of Lindwer. Its premiere on family members from Holland. the Netherlands’ RememHungarian-Jewish men, including the ones brance Day in May was accompanied by the release of Lindwer’s new book by the same title, who returned from Holland, were drafted to special labor units supervised by police and and generated intense interest in Dutch media. Amid new revelations about Europe’s Holo- the military. Many died from as a result of the caust-era record, the film highlights in a striking grueling conditions suffered by those drafted. manner the complexity of the Shoah in countries Anyone caught dodging the draft would be summarily shot, sometimes with their relatives. with checkered histories. But at least their wives and children were “Compared to life in Holland, life in Budapest was fantastic,” Korodi, a Holocaust survivor who safe. Living in Hungary also meant more and better was a child when her family fled to Hungary in 1942, said in the documentary. “We could go food than in the Netherlands, where some 22,000 out, there was a wonderful swimming pool be- people died of famine during World War II. “We were extremely happy because there was tween Buda and Pest with hot springs. You’d see food [in Budapest],” said Vera Gyergyoi-Rudnai, there men playing chess in the water.” Holland’s collaborationist police force left another person who survived the Holocaust by the Korodis alone in Holland, later allowing fleeing from Holland to Hungary. But the overthrow of Horthy in 1944 and them to come to Hungary, because they were Hungarian citizens with the active protection of his replacement with the Nazi puppet Ferenc Hungary’s pro-Nazi government under Miklós Szálasi of the fascist Arrow Cross movement Horthy. Hungarian Jews in Holland were even again threatened the survival of the 800,000 Jews then living in Hungary. Notorious for their exempted from wearing the yellow star. The murder of Hungarian Jewry began in thirst for Jewish blood, Szálasi’s men murdered earnest in May 1944, after the Germans invaded thousands of Jews in Budapest and helped the Germans transport and murder more than and had Horthy replaced. Unlike Nazi-allied governments in Italy, 400,000 Jews from outside the capital in the Croatia and Vichy France, Horthy defended the space of merely six weeks. In 1944, Emmy Korodi nearly became one of vast majority of his country’s Jews from being the victims of the Arrow Cross, who would mutistripped of citizenship and murdered. Neverthelate Jews on the street and shoot them in groups less, he was a hardened anti-Semite whose polion the banks of the Danube river. cies of exclusion earned Hungary its reputation Running errands for her family because she as one of Europe’s most anti-Semitic nations. was blonde and did not look stereotypically JewYears before the Nazis’ rise to power, Hungary ish, she was nonetheless arrested by the dreaded under him became the first European country to Arrow Cross, who said she had escaped the ghetimplement a quota on Jews in higher education to. Normally, any person facing the accusation and some professions. would be immediately killed. His policies led thousands of Jews to leave Korodi remembers seeing the bodies of an enHungary — including for Holland. One of them tire Jewish family who had been shot by Arrow was Korodi’s father, a retired army officer who set Cross militiamen propped up on a park bench, up a business selling dentures in the Netherlands. either as a perverse joke or attempt to terrorize “When he came to Holland he saw it’s a other victims. lovely place, there was no anti-Semitism and Yet she and many of the Dutch refugees were after World War I he moved here,” Korodi said able to survive the purge thanks to another twist of her father. in their fateful story: They obtained life-saving “Horthy protected the interests of all Hungar- documents from Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish ians living abroad — even the Jews,” said Willy diplomat who saved tens of thousands of HunLindwer, the filmmaker. A “convinced anti-Sem- garian Jews by issuing them Swedish passports. ite,” Horthy’s “nationalist feelings were never“I let them see the Wallenberg papers and theless stronger,” Lindwer added. they let me go,” Korodi recalls in the documenMeanwhile in the Netherlands, a democracy tary, which will next year begin its internawhose relative tolerance had drawn Emmy Koro- tional distribution, including in Israel and the di’s father to settle there before the Germans oc- United States. cupied it in 1940, local police and volunteers were Of the 89 Jews who fled Holland to Hunhunting for Jews — including Hungarian ones. gary, 73 survived World War II. None of them In 1942, Korodi recalls Dutch police arrest- remained in Hungary.

‫כוכב של שבת‬

SHAbbAT STAR

October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

The Akedah: Loving and fearing G-d Parsha of the Week

Rabbi avi billet Jewish Star columnist

ne of the most enduring challenges in the Binding of Isaac story, the Akedah, is that as much as we explore it, the less we understand it. Which is why the challenge to understand the narrative, the episode, the exchange, the commitment, the relationships becomes ever greater the more we try to unravel what is taking place. A number of years ago I had a discussion with a fellow educator about this. He was thoroughly convinced that his “approach” to understanding the Akedah was “correct,” while he evaded every question I sent his way, unsatisfactorily resolving the ones he took on, while sidestepping the questions that didn’t jibe with his personal narrative of what the Akedah “means.” ne thing that is very clear to me is that G-d never intended for Yitzchak to die on the mountain. I am also pretty confident that Avraham was meant to take Yitzchak to this particular place to give Yitzchak his own “Lech Lecha experience” (compare 12:1 to 22:2), since Yitzchak had no reason to abandon his father’s household in order to find G-d. I am also mostly convinced that when Avra-

ham is told “Haalehu sham l’olah” (22:2) (“raise him up there to an offering”), that Yitzchak is meant to go up a mountain to experience an olah, and not to himself be the olah. In fact, when we compare the way the Torah describes Yitzchak being placed on the altar (22:9) to the way the ram is ultimately placed there (22:13), the language makes it clear that Avraham fulfills the commandment with the ram: “Vayalehu l’olah.” There are many words in the narrative that are unclear or confusing. None of them can be ignored, and each one must have a good reason for why it is used. Two of these words are maachelet, a very strange word for what seems to be a knife for slaughter, and achar, the position in which Avraham notices the ram. For perhaps the most heretical line of the day, I am also not convinced that the word nisa (22:1), which many translate as “tested,” indicates a test at all. In other places in the Torah, the word nes is more accurately defined as “banner.” Ibn Ezra essentially argues that nisa means Avraham was “raised,” that G-d was “showing his [Avraham’s] righteousness to other humans.” Radak even notes that this is the strangest of “tests” because no one was on the mountain to see it! And so, he argues, the whole episode is meant to show Avraham’s love for the Almighty. G-d tells him to jump, he jumps.

Rabbi biNNY FReeDMaN

Jewish Star columnist

keidat Yitzchak, the binding of Isaac, one of the most challenging stories in Jewish history. A parent is asked to do the unthinkable: to sacrifice his beloved only son, in the name of … what? It is a script that is all too familiar to many families in Israel. y first day after finishing my army service was supposed to be a happy one. After four and a half years, I had received my honorable discharge and returned my gear. It was supposed to be my first day of real freedom. No orders to analyze and fulfill, no inspections, patrols, guard duty stints or maneuvers — just a long, lazy day in the August sunshine. And it was, until I watched the news, and the nightmare unfolded onscreen. My unit had drawn what was thought to be a ‘good’ station: patrols on the Jordanian border, which was quiet, especially relative to the areas in Lebanon we had been in last time around. Normally, I would have gone with them, but as I was getting out the next day, there was no reason to learn the area. A Jordanian soldier snuck across the border and ambushed one of the patrols. Ronen, a sergeant from our battalion, was killed. News like that hits you right in the gut. The next day, instead of a long lazy day, I celebrated my freedom at Ronen’s funeral. It was very different from the western, Ashkenazi funerals I had attended. In the west, you keep a stiff upper lip, though one hears the occasional muffled sob as the family tries to maintain a certain dignity and keep it together. But Sephardim are different; they let it all out, crying

He was ready to do what he had been asked.

A living offering From heart of Jerusalem

But what of the view that the grammar is wrong? The conjugation of nisa doesn’t imply that G-d is about to do anything to Avraham (whether “test” or “raise him up”). It is a confirmation of what has already been proven (see Malbim and Haktav Vehakabbalah). abbeinu Bachaye notes that the purpose of the Akedah was to publicize to the nations Avraham’s awe and love of G-d. Love, Rabbeinu Bachaye explains, is demonstrated in three ways: 1. A person loves his king and demonstrates this through singing praises. But he will not spend money to show this love. 2. A person who loves the king even more will give everything he has for him, but not his life. 3. Finally, there is a person who sings in praise of his king, is willing to give everything he has for him, even his life. Rabbeinu Bachaye argues that Avraham had already achieved this highest level. But in his being asked to kill Yitzchak, he was asked to prove his love even more. That approach might work if Avraham had been asked to kill Yitzchak. But Rashi is the first to note that G-d only told Avraham “Haalehu,” raise him up, not “shachtehu,” slaughter him. So what is the purpose? I think what Rabbeinu Bachaye leaves out of his explanation opens the door for the Sfas Emes. In a drasha of

hysterically, even yelling. I will never forget the sheer tragedy of Ronen’s mother, inconsolable in her grief. Screaming and shouting, she threw herself on her son’s coffin, refusing to let him go, and screamed: “Lama? Lama? Al taazov oti!” Why? Why? Don’t leave me! How do you answer such a question? keidat Yitzchak is not some ancient story to merely remember. In every community in Israel there are modern day Avrahams and Sarahs who struggle with it every day. Perhaps a closer look at the story is in order. G-d presents Avraham with his greatest challenge: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Yitzchak, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him up there on one of the mountains that I will show you” (Bereishit 22:2). This, then, is the test: Avraham is to sacrifice his only son, Yitzchak, as an offering to G-d, and this is supposed to demonstrate … what? What on earth could possibly be the motivation behind such a test? What are we meant to learn from it? And most of all: why must this be such an integral part of life? How can a world in which loving parents lower their sons, their only sons (and every son is an only son, because there never was and never will be another son just like him), into the ground, be the same world that G-d describes as being “very good” (Genesis 1:31)? What is the purpose of all these tests we seem to encounter so often in life? he Talmud, struggling with the question of human suffering in this world, makes a very challenging statement: “If a person suffers travail, let him review his actions” (Berachot 5a). This damning statement seems to imply that if a person is suffering, he or she must have done something to deserve it! But elsewhere, in Moed Katan, the Talmud suggests: “A person’s life, children and livelihood, are not dependant on merit, but rather on mazal, luck.” In other words, don’t assume the

challenges and suffering a person experiences, or for that matter the joy and reward they receive, have anything to do with whether or not they are a good person. All of this is simply fate. So which is it? Is our suffering of cause, or simply bad luck? The end of this story is even more puzzling: Just as Avraham is ready to fulfill this most horrible of commands, an angel calls out: “Do not send out your hand against the lad… for now I know [ata yadati] that you truly fear G-d” (22:12). What does this mean? How can G-d now know something? Was there something G-d once did not know? he Ramban (Nachmanides) suggests: “Do not read ‘now I know’ [yadati] but ‘now I have made known’ [hodati].” In other words, somehow, Avraham achieved something that only G-d knew he was capable of. Until this moment, the Avraham that passed the test existed only in potential. Now it became reality. Many commentaries suggest that this is the basis for our trials and tribulations: through our struggles, we live up to our potential. But this idea leaves one feeling challenged. Why does G-d have to do this in order to make us grow? Who really wants to live through such an ordeal just to discover who they are after it? There is a fascinating comment that Rashi makes at the beginning of this story. G-d commands Avraham “haalehu,” offer him up (22:2), to which Rashi says, “It does not say ‘slaughter him.’” What is Rashi suggesting? What is the difference between slaughtering Yitzchak and offering him up? After all, wasn’t Avraham asked to sacrifice his son, to slaughter him on the altar before G-d? Indeed, the end of this story clearly has Avraham, knife in hand, ready to do just that, before an angel arrives just in time to save the day. hat if Avraham was not sure what G-d really wanted of him? And what if this was the point of the exercise? Avraham lived in a time when it was the norm to sacrifice children to the gods. Dying for G-d was exactly what the people of his day would have assumed the test to be. But, says

1880, he observes that the mission is deemed to be a success the second time Avraham declares “Hineni” (after saying it to Yitzchak earlier). The angel who stops him calls, “Avraham, Avraham,” he responds with “Hineni,” and is told, “Don’t send out your hand to the young man, don’t do a thing to him, for now I know that you are G-d-fearing…” This, the Sfas Emes explains, was the test. We all know Avraham loved G-d. Avraham is the only person in the Bible described as “My beloved” by G-d (Yeshayahu 41:8). When G-d tells him to do something, he jumps to do it without questioning. But everything he did until now entailed demonstrating love for G-d. In contrast, this episode was meant to demonstrate reverence. On the one hand, as the Sfas Emes explains, it showed that Avraham was prepared to slaughter his son despite the command’s challenging his love of G-d. How could you ask me to kill my son when you told me he is my whole future? The Sfas Emes says Avraham proves his fear of G-d by not doing anything to Yitzchak, because he was ready to do what he had been asked. There is another view, however that it was more difficult for Avraham to take Yitzchak down from the altar, when his passion to fulfill G-d’s will had almost overtaken him. And I think that in staying his hand, Avraham demonstrated the highest level of both love of G-d and reverence at the same time. If there is any take home message we can emerge with, it is that our charge is to love G-d and to be in awe of G-d at all times. And if we can only serve Him through those lenses, we would also be worthy of being called the children of Avraham. Rashi, G-d doesn’t ask Avraham to slaughter his son. Rather, He asks him to offer him up. The challenge of this world, Judaism suggests, is not to die for G-d, but to live for G-d. Indeed, there are indications in the text that support this idea. At the beginning of this story, it is G-d Himself who speaks with Avraham, but at the end, G-d’s word through the medium of an angel, indicating distance. One might suggest that you cannot pick up a knife to slaughter your son and not end up distanced from G-d, however much it may be a part of what G-d wants you to do. But one might also suggest that Avraham was distanced from G-d because he misunderstood what G-d wanted. At a time when men were glorifying death in battle and throwing their sons into ritual fires, the world needed to learn, through one incredible individual, that the real challenge is how to live. Every day, in every moment, we make a choice: a life over death. And it is in that choice that we discover not only who we are, but also all that we can be. Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.

luach

Fri Oct 26 / 17 Cheshvan Vayera Candlelighting: 5:41 pm Havdalah: 6:49 pm

Fri Nov 2 / 24 Cheshvan Chayei Sara Candlelighting: 5:32 pm Havdalah: 6:30 pm

Thurs Nov 8 / 30 Cheshvan Rosh Chodesh Five Towns times from White Shul

Kosher bookworm

AlAn JAy geRbeR

Jewish Star columnist

ith the advent of the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, I will dedicate the next two reviews to the history of Holocaust tragedies, as they relate to us and our children. This week I am focusing on two works — Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz by Prof. Omer Bartov of Brown University (Simon & Schuster 2018), and The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the 20th Century by Prof. Vladimir Tismaneanu of the University of Maryland. In Anatomy of a Genocide, Bartov demonstrates in graphic style that ethnic cleansing does not happen overnight. It starts not with the quick rise of a tyrant or with troops barging into homes

at midnight. Quite the opposite: the horrors are slow in coming. At first they often go unnoticed, the accumulation of pent-up slights and grudges, real or imagined, as well a personal indignities. Often, the perpetrators are neighbors, friends and even family. They are plain people, average men and women who come from elsewhere, often with their families into a life style of bourgeois comfort that evolve into bouts of mass murder — an island of normality in a sea of blood and flesh. Bartov honors his family’s legacy with this study of his mother’s hometown: Buczacz, Ukraine. In the space of just a few years, German and Ukrainian police and troops murdered the entire Jewish population. In recording this sad saga, Bartov has done something groundbreaking. No such reconstruction of the Holocaust on the local level has ever been undertaken in this manner. Ideally, this book should profoundly change our understanding of the social and political dynamics of geno-

On being Avraham’s children Torah

RAbbi dAvid eTengoff

Jewish Star columnist

ne of the many famous topics in our parasha is the destruction of the thoroughly wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. As the entire Land of Israel would one day belong to Avraham’s inhabitants, the Almighty sought to inform him of the impending devastation: “And the L-rd said, “Shall I conceal from Avraham what I am doing? … For I have known him [yedativ], because he commands his sons and his household after him, to keep the way of the L-rd to do righteousness and justice, in order that the L-rd bring upon Avraham that which He said of him” (Bereishit 18:17-19). The word yedativ is difficult to translate, since this is the only place in Tanach where it appears. Rashi suggests two interpretations of the term in his Commentary on the Torah, namely, “beloved” and “knowing”: “Yedativ, an expression of love … But, in fact, the primary meaning of them all is none other than an expression of knowing [on the emotional level],

for if one loves a person, he draws him near to himself and knows him and is familiar with him.” nitially, the Ramban, in his Commentary on the Torah, cites Rashi’s complete explanation of yedativ. He proceeds to reject it, however, and offers his own explication of the term: “In my estimation, the correct meaning of this expression is actual knowledge. Yedativ alludes to this idea, since Hashem’s knowledge refers to His Divine Providence [hashgacha] in the lower world, which is limited to the protection of general categories of beings [i.e. plants, animals etc.]. This includes mankind who is subject to various occurrences [within the Laws of Nature] that take place at their own time.” For the Ramban, the world at large, including mankind, is protected by general Divine Providence. In contrast, there is category of people who are individually shielded by the Almighty’s hashgacha, namely, His virtuous followers: “But, in the case of one of His righteous ones, Hashem pays direct and immediate attention to him, to know him as an individual [hashgacha pratit] so that His protection will permanently cleave to him. Moreover, this [level] of Divine Providence and recognition will never depart from him … As the verse says: ‘Be-

hold, the eye of the L-rd is to those who hold Him in awe, to those who hope for His kindness’ (Tehillim 33:18).” n his commentary on the Torah, Rabbeinu Bachya references the Ramban’s interpretation of yedativ and makes it accessible to all. He suggests that there are actually two types of hashgacha pratit. On the first level, Hashem knows all people’s actions and thoughts. The second level includes the first, and adds, as well, Hashem’s protection of an individual from harm. It is crucial to note that level one includes all people, as Tehillim states, “The L-rd looked from heaven; He saw all the sons of men. From His dwelling place He oversees all the inhabitants of the earth. He Who forms their hearts together, Who understands all their deeds” (33:13-15). The second level, according to Rabbeinu Bachya, excludes most of the world, Jew and gentile alike, and only includes the tzaddikim — the manifestly righteous: “The Holy One, Blessed be He, saves the tzaddikim from the natural occurrences of the world to which the rest of man-

maneanu’s work, we come to better understand how capitalism, the free economy and the republican form of government are in danger from both the extreme left and the extreme right. The book explains that no party, movement or leader holds the right to dictate and undermine the sanctity of human life, whose subjugation is the common goal of communism, socialism and fascism and Nazism. Commemorating Kristallnacht serves as an apt opportunity to further demonstrate the lessons that our struggle for freedom is a neverending one, to teach our children and for them to appreciate and pass down to their children for all time to come. kind is subject. Moreover, He never rejects His righteous ones and never removes His ‘eye’ from them, rather, His Divine Providence is always with the tzaddik, and will never depart from him. This, then, is the explanation of, ‘for I have known him,’ namely, that His providence is upon the tzaddik individually, and upon tzaddikim as a category — in order to save them from the trials and tribulations that affect the rest of mankind.” Based upon Rabbeinu Bachya’s insight, we are in a much better position to understand how, and why, G-d treats tzaddikim such as Avraham with hashgacha pratit. In a very real sense, these exceptional individuals have reached the level that David Hamelech describes in Ashrei: “The L-rd is near to all who call Him, to all who call Him with sincerity. He does the will of those who fear Him, and He hears their cry and saves them. The L-rd guards all who love Him, and He destroys all the wicked.” People have changed little from the time of Avraham, and the vast majority of us are not tzaddikim. Nonetheless, if we honestly do our best to “keep the way of the L-rd to perform righteousness and justice,” (18:19) then we will be worthy of the name b’nai Avraham, and, for this alone, deserving of Hashem’s Divine Providence.

‘If one loves a person, he draws him near and knows him.’

Passion for compassion: thoughts for Vayera Angel for Shabbat

RAbbi mARc d. Angel

he opening paragraph of the Amidah, recited as the central prayer of our daily liturgy, refers to the “G-d of Avraham, G-d of Yitzchak and G-d of Yaakov.” And yet, when the blessing is actually recited at the end of this passage, it praises G-d as “the Shield of Avraham.” Only Avraham’s name is mentioned. Why? One explanation is that Avraham is identified in rabbinic tradition with the quality of chessed, compassion. While both Yitzchak and Yaakov had other important qualities associated with them, Avraham is the special exemplar of kindness. By singling out Avraham in the first blessing of the Amidah, our sages were thereby underscoring the unique importance of chessed. This week’s parasha begins with the story of Avraham’s remarkable hospitality to three strangers (who later turned out to be angels). Avraham not only instructs the members of his household to prepare a meal for the guests, but he himself rushes around to see that things are done properly. Avraham demonstrated that chessed is manifested in good intentions and more especially in

actual deeds of kindness. Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulai (1724-1806) referred to the quality of chessed as a vital principle of halachic decision-making. Proper halachic rulings take into consideration the human predicament, how halachic rulings will impact on people’s lives. Halacha is not a cold, hard system of inflexible laws, but is a meaningful framework for happy and constructive living. Chessed entails empathy for others. It eschews judgmental and extreme positions. rom time to time I receive comments from Institute members about new chumrot that are being introduced at their synagogues. In one case, the congregation engaged a new rabbi who promptly raised the mechitza, forbade women’s hakafot on Simchat Torah, and took a “black hat” approach to other issues. A group of congregants became so fed up that they quit the synagogue and started their own modern Orthodox congregation. In another case, a new rabbi discarded long-established congregational practices with the claim that he wished to “raise halachic standards.” Although this has caused grief among congregants, people think that there’s nothing they can do to

alter the situation. After all, the rabbi is trying to make them “more religious.” In yet other cases, rabbis have chosen to avoid getting involved in conversions, telling candidates to go to the RCA. These rabbis do not wish to take responsibility in this important area, preferring to pass the buck to the RCA and its many chumrot. The resultant frustrations and alienations are painful beyond words. One disgruntled person told me: “Our rabbi is introducing stringencies and he is too frum.” I replied: A rabbi who introduces stringencies does not thereby gain the title of being “frum.” On the contrary, being frum is most aptly demonstrated when the rabbi makes halachic decisions that demonstrate sensitivity to the needs of the community. To declare something forbidden is far easier than to declare something permissible. A really frum rabbi (or lay person) is most often characterized by a spirit of compassion, intellectual openness, and a desire to expand, rather than contract, legitimate religious observance. A frum person demonstrates respect for established customs and practices and seeks to support rather than undermine them. While it may happen that halachic considerations will lead to added stringencies, changes

Halacha is not a cold, hard system of inflexible laws.

should be made only with the utmost care, when there is no valid halachic alternative, and with due consultation with those who will be affected. hat is severely missing in much of modernday Orthodox Judaism is Avraham’s example of chessed. A prevailing view seems to equate strictness and exclusionary attitudes with true religiosity. If people dress the dress and shuckle the shuckle, they are deemed to be “frum”; otherwise, they are thought to be somehow deficient in their religiosity. Rabbi Rafael Aharon ben Shimon, a great rabbinic figure of the early 20th century, wrote: “Our fathers and rabbis have taught us a great principle: to hide one’s deeds if they are in the category of excessive piety. One may act as he pleases in the privacy of his own home, and may take on stringencies and pious niceties. But when he is among friends, he should blend in with them…” External shows of excessive piety may often be the result of egotism, or abject conformity to the frum crowd. A truly pious person serves the Lord as humbly and inconspicuously as possible. The quality of chessed motivates a pious person to want to associate lovingly with others, not to stand out and separate himself/herself from the community. When we recite the Amidah, we need to focus on the first blessing that singles out Avraham as a religious exemplar. The quality of chessed is at the core of piety and righteousness.

21 THE JEWISH STAR October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779

Anatomy of a genocide

cide, relations among the victims, the perpetrators as well as the so-called bystanders and the core nature of the Holocaust as a whole. This work surely is historic inasmuch as this accurately and in great detail demonstrates the reconstruction of the Holocaust on the local level, as has never been done before. he second volume, “The Devil in History,” is a provocative analysis of the close relationship between communism, fascism and Nazism. This relationship makes for interesting and disturbing reading. Yet one should not be shocked by these revelations of ideological kinship. After all, the very word “Nazi” is a contraction of “National Socialist Workers Party.” Through Dr. Tis-

October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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Looking for anti-Semitism in all the wrong places JONatHaN S. tOBiN

Jewish News Syndicate

ith weeks to go before the midterms, both political parties are pulling out all the stops to win. Which in most cases means doing their best to make the voters hate the other side and whoever is funding them. This is business as usual for 21st-century American politics, but the latest twist has been the claim that attacks on liberal mega-donor George Soros aren’t normal political warfare, but insidious anti-Semitism. Soros is something of an expletive on the political right. He’s seen as the most sinister of liberal moneybags that have funded efforts to push for gun control laws, loosen immigration enforcement, oppose U.S. foreign policy initiatives, criticize Israel, oppose the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh and, above all, elect Democrats. here are places where criticisms of Soros are more than political combat. In Eastern Europe, local autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz Party have always ferociously resisted Soros’s Open Society Foundation’s promotion of democracy and free speech. There he is openly depicted as a stereotypical rich Jew meddling in Hungary and threatening its security.

In other places, Soros’s work as a currency trader also engenders enmity. In Malaysia nobody has forgotten his role in a 1990s currency collapse, and in that Muslim society, anger has been mixed with anti-Semitic invective. The depiction of Jews as shadowy figures who use their wealth to buy influence and manipulate non-Jews has been a staple of anti-Semitic invective for many centuries. That’s why those who single out rich Jews for opprobrium need to be careful not to cross over from legitimate criticism of an individual’s actions to symbolism or messages that are redolent of the standard memes of the anti-Semite’s playbook. But while attacks on Soros may mean one thing in Eastern Europe, it would be a mistake to treat what is said in the United States as having the same meaning. et that is exactly what’s happening. Attacks on Soros by American conservatives are treated as evidence of an anti-Semitic surge among Republicans. Ads calling out candidates for taking Soros’s money are seen as no different from Orbán’s attacks. Even more speciously, those who noted Soros’s support for groups protesting Kavanaugh — including President Donald Trump and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley — were accused of

dog whistling to anti-Semites. But the problem is that while some of those who attack Soros have been anti-Semites, it is absurd to assume that is the only possible motivation for anyone to criticize him, especially in the United States, where he is viewed very differently than in Hungary. In the United States, Soros isn’t the boogeyman of Hungarian politics or, as he is in Israel, as a supporter of the Palestinians. He’s just one more billionaire shelling out dough to Democrats. While some extremists — on both the right and the left — may see only Jews when names like Steyer, Bloomberg or Soros — are raised, a largely philoSemitic and overwhelmingly pro-Israel American right sees rich liberals. If Republicans bash Soros, it’s not because he’s Jewish. It’s because he has been spending freely to defeat them. While their criticism of Soros has sometimes been inappropriate (such as those who recycled charges about his behavior during the Holocaust when he was a boy in Hungary), their attacks are no different from the way Democrats have demonized the billionaire Koch Brothers — non-Jewish libertarians who spent freely on behalf of Republicans. Just as some extremists associate Soros with

He’s just one more billionaire shelling out dough to Democrats.

WWI armistice’s link to Kristallnacht Viewpoint

BEN COHEN

Jewish News Service

wo grimly sobering anniversaries fall in November. On the 9th and 10th, we will mark the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht — the orgy of murder and violence that devastated Jewish communities across Nazi Germany in 1938. The following day, Nov. 11, we will mark the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I — the most devastating military conflict the world had so far experienced. These two events, occurring exactly 20 years apart, were intimately connected. Some historians argue that the 20th century really began with World War I, which buried the geriatric Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, and set the stage for the modern totalitarian systems of communism and fascism — directly paving the way

for the rise in Germany of National Socialism and its unprecedented war on the Jews. In all senses one can think of, there was a dramatic transformation in the position of Europe’s Jews between the end of the “Great War,” as it was dubbed, and the Nazi Holocaust that consumed nearly two-thirds of their number. For one thing, the record of Jewish military service in the war rather gruesomely demonstrated that Jews were also loyal, grateful citizens of the countries in which they lived. Given that French-Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted of treason in an anti-Semitic show trial only two decades earlier, that record was even more striking. More than 50,000 Jews fought on the British and Commonwealth side, 100,000 with the Germans and 300,000 with Austria-Hungary — many thousands of whom lost their lives in

the process. From outside Europe, more than 200,000 Jews were among the approximately 5 million American service personnel in 1917, when the United States joined the Allied side. hen it came to Jewish civilians, the toll in the eastern half of Europe was particularly brutal, with hundreds of thousands of Jews deported to the Russian interior or murdered in bloody pogroms. Those ravages led several thousand Jews to join the ranks of the Bolshevik Revolution and even serve in its senior posts, but by the mid-1920s, the ruling Communist Party was no longer a polyglot underground organization. It was, in dramatic contrast, a ruling bureaucracy undergoing a profound process of “Russification.” The experience of World War I left some Jewish communities feeling more integrated and

The old libels against the Jews returned with a vengeance.

a nefarious global Jewish conspiracy, left-wing screeds against the Kochs that claim they are carrying out an equally awful plot to defraud American democracy plays upon the same themes, minus the Jewish angle. laims that all Soros-bashing is implicitly anti-Semitic are also hypocritical. Casino billionaire and Jewish philanthropist Sheldon Adelson is often accused of buying support for Israel with his massive donations to Republicans, but those who make such charges stick to the absurd argument that anyone who talks about Soros is a Jew-hater. It may be hypocritical for American conservatives, who rightly view political spending as constitutionally protected free speech, to see something sinister about Soros’s efforts. But their animus is no more illegitimate than the left’s bashing of GOP donors. In an American context, criticism of Soros isn’t anti-Semitic. Nor is there any reason to believe that Trump or Grassley are anti-Semites. Like most attacks on donors, painting Soros as a puppeteer rather than just another political big giver is a way to delegitimize the causes and candidates he supports rather than to address the issues he cares about. But calling his critics anti-Semites is neither accurate nor fair. In other times and places, criticism of wealthy Jewish individuals was part of an anti-Semitic narrative. But in 21st-century America, Soros is fair game. Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.

secure, while others were exposed as highly vulnerable, or even decimated out of existence. It also made realistic the proposal of a national home for the Jewish people, an end-goal the British government regarded “with favor” in its Balfour Declaration of 1917. On Nov. 11, 1918, then, the world’s Jews could spy the promise of redemption on all the political paths — liberal-assimilationist, revolutionary, Zionist — that were available to them. Hardly any of them believed that mass extermination was awaiting them within a generation. To have even suggested such a thing to one of the 7,000 Jews decorated by Germany for their war service would probably have been insulting. ut as the polarizing settlement that ended World War I finally crumbled with Hitler’s launching of World War II, the old libels against the Jews — that they were tribally disloyal, that they profited from war both economically and in terms of political influence — returned with a vengeance. The British writer George Orwell noted the reluctance of his own government to combat such slanders. “To publicize the exploits of Jewish soldiers, or even to admit the existence of a See Kristallnacht on page 23

View from Central Park

tehilla r. goldberg

Intermountain Jewish News Continued from page 1 not one to harp on the past. Aside from the long friendships with her contemporaries that she so faithfully maintained, aside from the people one and even two generations younger who flocked to her door, she was constantly managing her own affairs. A force to be reckoned with. She was a friend like no other. A confidante like no other. A maternal authority like no other. After dispensing her wisdom and sharing homebaked, cinnamon mandelbrot, Mrs. Weissbrot would put the refrain of her life in three words: “G-tt tzu dank.” Thank G-d. She could often be heard saying: “G-tt tzu dank, a day still alive is a day to be thankful for.” For her, it wasn’t a hollow platitude; it rang with the essence of truth. For so many years, as nightfall came, each morning was a gamble. Tenuousness was tangible, death stalked at every corner. So it became a day-byday, minute-to-minute existence, a life strung together by moments of “G-tt tzu dank.” We didn’t usually talk about the war. We talked for hours, but about life. For years, we sat around her kitchen table or cozied on her sofa, long into the night. Whatever came up, be it psychology, Torah, politics or just a schmooze, Mrs. Weissbrot crystallized her insights into a word or two, or a pithy Yiddish phrase that summed up the essence of the conversation. I learned so many wonderful expressions this way, a precious and intimate remnant of a bygone life. But beneath this easy friendship laid a subtext. Inevitably our conversation would reach

a pause, pregnant with the unsaid implication of the Holocaust, an implied reluctance that brought the topic to an end. marvel at how survivors could have gone through what they did and still build such strong, such beautiful lives. So it was with Mrs. Weissbrot. She remembered the pre-war years well. She was born and raised in Sosnowiec, a large metropolitan center of Jewish life in Poland before the war. When she was young, the famed Sara Schenirer paid a visit to her community. When I spoke with Mrs. Weissbrot, I was looking into eyes that saw Sarah Schenirer. But more than that, I was looking into the eyes of someone who saw a thriving Jewish world completely destroyed. And then, somehow, rebuilt again. During the week her father managed a store, but on Sundays he served as a scholar and a rabbinic judge, a borer, in the court of Reb Shaya Englard of Sosnowiec. Conflicts, divorces and other disputes would be brought forth to be resolved. Around them thrived many different chassidic courts, such as Belz and Radomsk. On Shabbos, the whole city smelled of cholent. Although Mrs. Weissbrot was only 12 when the Nazis invaded, the day was etched in her mind. On that day, her childhood innocence was shattered. One day, the town under occupation, Mrs. Weissbrot and her sister were sitting in the living room when Nazis barged in and dragged their mother off. A few months later, a week before Pesach, they heard that she was dead. Beautiful shuls stood near her home, one two stories tall and crowned by Chagall-like windows. A week after the Nazis arrived, they were burned down.

Later that year, Mrs. Weissbrot was home one day with her two sisters — “by that time only Chavala and Manya were left” — they suddenly heard terrorizing sounds. Nazis were coming closer. Driven by the adrenaline of terror and the primal instinct of survival, they ran for their lives. Mrs. Weissbrot ran to cellar, the brutish shouts of “Juden raus!” above her. But the devils hunted her down, and she and her sisters were dragged out to the local high school. When we spoke of those times, Mrs. Weissbrot would sing. Her face would take on a faraway look. During the Yamim Noraim especially, like a cantor, she would cry out a heartfelt Shema Koleinu that brought tears to my eyes. “But I can’t cry, Tehilla,” she said. “Ever since the war, I can’t cry. Why can’t I cry anymore?” Perhaps like the memories, the tears, too, were locked away with G-d, never to be opened, for the risk of unlocking them was too great. ne day, Mrs. Weissbrot invited me to bake challah. By the time I arrived, her counters were already covered with the first batch. I had never seen her in anything but her signature formal dresses. This time, her hair was up in curls, her hands deep in flour; she wore a short-sleeved housecoat. We were side by side, braiding the challahs, when I froze. I saw it. I felt like I had laid eyes on something both holy and profane that I wasn’t supposed to see. The awkwardness must have been tangible, because Mrs. Weissbrot casually said, “Gleiwitz was part of Auschwitz.” Taking her words as permission to look, my eyes found her tattoo: 79260. It was rare for Mrs. Weissbrot to share her painful past. Her memories were always cau-

What I knew was only the tip of an iceberg of unspeakable trauma.

Advocating from Israel: Reflections on ‘aliyah’ arsen ostroVsky

Jewish News Service

efore the establishment of the State of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, the nation’s first president and one of the greatest Zionist leaders, reportedly traveled to London, where he was asked by a Lord in the British Parliament: “Mr. Weizmann, why Palestine? Why not try elsewhere, somewhere with less enemies, less struggle, less difficulty, somewhere closer?” Weizmann replied: “My dear Lord, why is it that you insist on driving two-and-half hours every weekend to visit your elderly mother, when there is a perfectly decent nice old lady living just across the street?” So why did I travel all the way from Austra-

lia, about as far away from Israel as possible? That’s what I reflect on as I celebrate six years since my aliyah. Six years, four apartments, three elections, two wars, one wife, a child and a puppy later, with each passing day I feel only a sense of reaffirmation that this was unequivocally the best decision of my life. was born in Odessa, then still in the Soviet Union, and not far from where the great Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky lived, as did many other iconic Jewish figures. Although I made aliyah on a Nefesh B’Nefesh flight from New York, where I had been working in international law and Israel advocacy, I grew up in Sydney, Australia. In many ways, Australia was an oasis compared to Israel. But Australia, for all its boundless opportunity and ease of life, and for all my eternal gratitude for giving our family a sanctuary to flee Soviet persecution, was not Israel,

Kristallnacht… Continued from page 23 considerable Jewish army in the Middle East, rouses hostility in South Africa, the Arab countries and elsewhere,” he wrote during World War II. “It is easier to ignore the whole subject and allow the man in the street to go on thinking that Jews are exceptionally clever at dodging military service.” But the British were far from alone in falling for the myth that Jews are at their most disloyal in times, like wartime, when everyone else is at their most loyal. That trope was among the many anti-Semitic fabrications of the Nazis, whose dehumanizing propaganda campaigns and notorious racial laws discriminating against Jews exploded in the violence of Kristallnacht. More than 100 Jews

were murdered on the streets of Germany during those hours of fire and broken glass, while 30,000 more were deported to camps whose names — Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Dachau — are now indelibly associated with the Holocaust. These are the basic facts that the forthcoming commemorations of these two events will reflect. For Jews, these are occasions for profound historical reflection, in a year that has already witnessed the seventieth anniversary of the State of Israel’s creation. Both anniversaries are occasions to ponder how the crooked road of Jewish emancipation, whose benefits these days still far outweigh the persistence of anti-Semitism, felt for those who came before us.

and I was missing one crucial element: an emotional attachment to the land of Israel that, for me, could only be fulfilled in the Jewish state itself. It’s not that I ever felt out of place in Australia. It’s just that in Israel, I have at last found a place where I truly belong. Having been so deeply involved in the Diaspora as a pro-Israel activist, which I continue to be professionally today, I truly believe in the principle of kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh — that all Jews are responsible for one another, that we are one people whose future is so inextricably intertwined. Just as we grieve and fight together, so to do we rejoice and celebrate as one. But at the same time, looking at Israel from a distance, I made the choice to no longer be a bystander in this incredible, inspiring and still unfolding Zionist story. This is not in any way meant to diminish the indelible contribution of Jews in the Diaspora, which we in Israel so greatly appreciate. Rather, I wanted to be part of the change and shape the future of the Jewish state — something that for me could only be done as a citizen of this state. ince making aliyah, I have been tremendously fortunate to continue my work as an international human rights lawyer and serve as the executive director of a terrific organization, the Israeli Jewish Congress. This has allowed me to continue my Israel advocacy, and has led me to represent Israel at the United Nations, and throughout Europe and the United States, while working to help bridge and strengthen the special bond between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. It is, I suspect, largely due to this effort that I was deeply privileged this year, as we celebrated 70 years since the establishment of the modern State of Israel, to be awarded the prestigious Sylvan Adams Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Prize in the field of Israel advocacy during a ceremony at the Knesset on Oct. 28, when I will be joined by six other outstanding immigrants to Israel who

are being honored by Nefesh B’Nefesh in their respective fields. While I am honored to receive an award for doing something so inherently right and moral, I became an advocate primarily because Zionism goes to the very core of who I am. When I see the State of Israel singled out and delegitimized, and the Jewish people denied equal rights, I feel a need to stand up, to act and be heard. My desire and ambition upon receiving the Bonei Zion award from this special organization helping to realize the dreams of so many new immigrants like myself is to motivate and help unite other Israel advocates worldwide, in order to amplify the power of their unique contributions and our collective message of support for the Jewish state. eflecting upon my six years of living in Israel, there is no shortage of defining moments — from rushing to bomb shelters, to voting in elections, to celebrating the Jewish holidays and the birth of my daughter, the first “sabra” in our family. But this summer, in the space of 24 hours, one moment stands out in particular. I joined a group of pro-Israel advocates on a trip to southern Israel, where we inspected firsthand the enormous damage done from the Gaza kite fires, saw a Hamas terror tunnel and spoke with residents, including small children who live on the Gaza periphery, about how they are coping with the ongoing threat of terror. The very next day, I had the tremendous privilege to witness 232 new olim arrive at BenGurion Airport on a Nefesh B’Nefesh charter flight, just like I did, realizing their dream to make their home in Israel. In 24 hours, I felt this jarring dichotomy that so perfectly embodies life here. Notwithstanding the challenges and threats we face, Israel will always be the homeland and nation-state of all the Jewish people. Arsen Ostrovsky is executive director of the Israeli Jewish Congress.

23 THE JEWISH STAR October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779

My cherished friend Mrs. Weissbrot

tious. She invoked the word “camp” so undramatically that had I not known it was a reference to Auschwitz or Ravensbrück, I could have mistaken it for summer camp. Afterward, as I sat there dumfounded, she would smile reassuringly and simply say, “It’s OK. G-tt tzu dank. G-tt tzu dank.” What I knew was only the tip of an iceberg of unspeakable trauma. But above those shattering stories thrived a spunky and vivacious person. Her house was a place of gathering; the four walls of her home witnessed thousands of beautiful Shabbos and Yom Tov meals and simchas. For years after the “War,” as she called it, she and her husband would gather in fellowship with fellow survivors every Saturday night to play cards or board games together. For those hours, they didn’t need to explain themselves; without speaking, everything was understood, a reprieve from the composed masks they wore “for the sake of the children.” She told me that during the War, the awareness of suicide was constantly around her, how there were those who braved the electric wire in an attempt to escape, but others who threw themselves on it, ending their lives. “Did you ever consider it?” I asked. “No,” she said. “Never.” So what was it that kept her going? This time she paused. “Zug nisht kein mol az du geist dem letsten veig, don’t say this is the last going-away. You know what this means?” She broke into song, the simultaneously mournful and optimistic Song of the Partisans. The Yiddish lyrics flowed from her lips. She sang steadily, firmly holding my gaze, translating. “Don’t say to anybody that you are going on the last road. The last way. Don’t say it. Keep hoping that there will open another way, there will open another road.” She sang the anthem of her generation and her life: “Zug nisht kein mol az du geist dem letsten veig…” Tears were streaming down my face. And now, all I can think is, “G-tt tzu dank, Mrs. Weissbrot, G-tt tzu dank.”

October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

Khashoggi whispers... Continued from page 1 Israel. Their goal appears to be to counter a portrait of Khashoggi as a Saudi reformer and free speech activist, and perhaps derail pressure building on the White House to punish Saudi Arabia for his disappearance and presumed murder. Notably, mainstream pro-Israel groups, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, did not join the attacks, and Israeli officials were silent as well. None of the purveyors of the attacks on Khashoggi agreed to an on-the-record interview, although other observers suggested that the public fight over Khashoggi’s reputation has to do with a number of issues central to the latest crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations: cultivating Saudi cooperation in the diplomatic fight against Iran, keeping the Saudis on board the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and maintaining the kingdom as a bulwark against violent forms of radical Islam. Who’s saying what The hits on Khashoggi, deriding him as a radical Islamist and an anti-Semite, have emerged alongside gruesome reports by official Turkish sources about his disappearance: According to the Turkish reports, the U.S.-based columnist entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for some paperwork ahead of his planned wedding to a Turkish national, and a team of 15 Saudi agents was waiting to torture and kill him. As reported Friday in the Washington Post, the anti-Khashoggi narrative is emerging among hard-line conservatives and is being circulated in Republican congressional offices. Donald Trump Jr. retweeted one of the earliest attacks on Khashoggi, from a correspondent for the PJ Media conservative website. The correspondent, Patrick Poole, had posted photos of interviews Khashoggi had conducted in the late 1980s with Osama bin Laden, who went on to found al-Qaeda and to plot the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “I didn’t realize until yesterday that Jamal Khashoggi was the author of this notorious 1988 Arab News article of him tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam,” Poole tweeted on Oct. 12, 10 days after Khashoggi’s disappearance. “He’s just a democrat reformer journalist holding a RPG with jihadists.” A photo showed Khashoggi posing with a rocket-propelled grenade. The interview was at a time when the Reagan administration was backing insurgents in Afghanistan. Khashoggi was indeed sympathetic to bin Laden (the Khashoggi and bin Laden families were close). When bin Laden launched terrorism operations against the West, however, Khashoggi disavowed him. Other joined the fray. FrontPage Mag, helmed by right-wing provocateur David

that they always felt he was with them,” the New York Times reported, referring to the multinational Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood. “Many of his secular friends would not have believed it.” If Khashoggi was a member of the pre-eminent Islamist organization in the Middle East, his critics charge, whitewashing that affiliation is a disservice to history, and helps elevate a group that should be marginalized. “#Khashoggi did not deserve his fate,” tweeted David Reaboi, an analyst with a conservative think tank, Security Studies Group. “That said, the misrepresentation of his Islamist views as championing ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ is a repulsive whitewash.” “[U]nless you are rooting for an Islamist Middle East, it seems doubtful that Khashoggi’s vision for the region was a big improvement over the agenda of the autocratic Saudis,” wrote Petra Marquardt-Bigman, a journalist, in an op-ed in Haaretz outlining Khashoggi’s sympathetic views on Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brooking Institution, knew Khashoggi for a decade. She warned against a simplistic take both on Khashoggi’s views and on the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, she pointed out, is a presence in parliaments of U.S. allies in the region, like Jordan, and in the governments of allies like Morocco. “The Muslim Brotherhood is in the mainstream,” Wittes said, and noted that Saudi hostility to the group was recent. For decades, Saudis welcomed and promoted the group. “There was nothing out of the mainstream, nothing oppositional about being sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia until a few years ago,” she said. Khashoggi, moreover, belonged to the wing of the Muslim Brotherhood that counseled advancement through civil and democratic means, she said. ‘We need Saudi Arabia’ argument White House adviser Jared Kushner sees the Saudis, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in particular, as key to advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal he hopes to unveil soon. Right-wing pro-Israel figures have embraced Trump because he has embraced their outlook, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and now they may be returning the favor, said Michael Koplow, the policy director for the Israel Policy Forum, a group that backs the twostate solution. Kushner has not revealed details of the plan, but right-wingers are hopeful that it rolls back many of the pro-Palestinian orthodoxies of past plans, including statehood as an outcome and a presence in Jerusalem’s Old City. Netanyahu’s counting on Saudi Arabia Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has touted emerging ties with Saudi Arabia and other countries as validating his strategy

of downplaying peace with the Palestinians, believing he can make Israel at home in the region without the Palestinians. Bin Salman was a key figure in this strategy. “Much of the Israeli argument for the lack of Israel’s isolation hinges on the fact that Saudis are behind the scenes friendly in ways we couldn’t imagine before,” Koplow said. Wittes was skeptical that Israeli officials have encouraged the efforts to puncture Khashoggi’s reputation. Instead, she said, the attacks seemed to be a result of the polarization on the American political scene, in which allies on the left or the right attack the other side in a way that does not necessarily serve their particular interests. “What we’ve witnessed in American politics is this intense polarization, and when a stance is taken” by your side, “you tend to echo that without reflection on your interests,” she said. Don’t forget about Iran Israel and the Trump administration see Saudi Arabia as key to containing the influence of Iran in the region. Some of the pundits highlighting Khashoggi’s Muslim Brotherhood past suspect that supporters of the Iran deal are behind an effort to smear the Saudis. Isolating the Saudis, they fear, would undercut support for the Trump administration’s hard line on Iran, and his rejection of the sanctions-relief-for-nuclear-rollback deal negotiated by Trump’s hated predecessor, President Barack Obama. Khashoggi “made a tactical alliance with former Obama officials who seek to depict Trump’s pro-Saudi and anti-Iranian policy as a disaster,” Mike Doran of the conservative Hudson Institute and Tony Badran of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, write this week in the New York Post. “Trump, in this view, is the enabler of a young, impetuous crown prince. Conflicts such as Yemen result from Saudi recklessness rather than Iranian expansionism.” Bin Salman has directed a bombing campaign against Iranian-backed forces in Yemen. Daniel Shapiro, Obama’s ambassador to Israel, rejects the argument that confronting Iran is more important than dealing with Khashoggi’s murder. “It has a whiff of trying to say this murder wasn’t as bad as it is because of the investment made in Saudia Arabia under [bin Salman] as a strategic anchor under the antiIran coalition,” Shapiro, a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, said in an interview. Groups that want Iran isolated, and quickly, are frustrated by the Khashoggi distraction, Shapiro said. “If indeed the United States cannot conduct business as usual while this is unresolved, it puts at risk that whole kind of strategic concept Israel has counted on and strong opponents of Iran have counted on,” he said.

tainly in the Democratic Caucus.” Burton said Kennedy is “constantly checking in with a wide range of leaders and individuals in the Jewish community.” Richard A. Landes, a retired profes- Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) delivers a response to President Trump’s sor of history who State of the Union address in January 2018. Joseph Kennedy via Twitter taught at Boston University for 25 years, said he believes that This election season has seen a surge in farKennedy “represents sort of the middle of the left candidates emerging within the DemocratDemocratic Party, which would under normal ic Party that have been accused of holding anticircumstances be pro-Israel, but is unable to Israel views. New York Democratic candidate stand up to the pressure coming from what I Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who upset longtime call a lethal journalism-fed hysteria about Is- incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a party primarael’s ‘excessive use of force’.” ry in June, has accused Israel of committing a

“massacre” in the Gaza Strip. Minnesota Democratic candidate Ilhan Omar has also accused Israel of “evil doings” and of being an “apartheid state.” Similarly, Leslie Cockburn, the Democratic candidate for Virginia’s fifth congressional district, wrote a book back into the early 1990s titled Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship that has been panned for peddling conspiracies theories and smears that depict Israel as manipulating U.S. foreign policy. “The Democratic Party is increasingly intolerant of those who enthusiastically support Israel, and increasingly friendly to those who demonize Israel,” Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby told JNS. “There aren’t a lot of Harry Truman Democrats anymore. Young, up-and-coming Democratic leaders today know that if they aren’t at least as critical of Israel as they are of Israel’s enemies, they may alienate a good chunk of their base. As an unabashed Zionist, I would like U.S. support for Israel to be broad and bipartisan. Unfortunately, it no longer is.”

Horowitz, ran an article the same day declaring, “Jamal Khashoggi blamed 9/11 on U.S. support for Israel.” The article cites a piece Khashoggi wrote in 2001 after the attacks, published in Arab News and the Guardian, in which Khashoggi sympathetically describes Saudi reactions to the attacks but does not outright endorse them. Khashoggi’s piece falls short of blaming U.S. support for Israel for the attacks, although he says that Saudis saw the Sept. 11 attacks as of a piece with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians — a posture that would offend Israelis and many Americans. When Khashoggi does express his opinion, it is to condemn bin Laden for targeting civilians. On Oct. 17, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s European office sent out a release titled “Wiesenthal Centre Exposes Jamal Khashoggi Antisemitic Tweets.” “The Wiesenthal Centre expresses its horror and revulsion at the presumed gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the release said. “In a search, however, of his official Twitter account, Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, discovered the following tweets of 16 October 2015.” In the tweets, Khashoggi denies any Jewish connection to the land of Israel, and says the Western Wall was a Muslim construction — a false narrative that infuriates Israelis, and is commonplace in the region, particularly among Palestinians. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Wiesenthal Center’s Los Angeles-based associate dean, told JTA that Samuels’s post was premature. “It could be that Shimon in Europe is not as sensitive” to the repercussions of Khashoggi’s reported murder, he said. “There’s a lot of appropriate anger” at the Saudis. At a later date, the center might publish a fuller and nuanced account of Khashoggi’s life and influence, Cooper said. Josh Block, CEO of the Israel Project, has posted multiple tweets implicating Khashoggi in an array of terrorist activities. On Oct. 18, Block quoted a New Yorker article describing Khashoggi as a journalist, and commented, “Uh, U mean frontman for Islamists & paid spook for Qatar, Turkey & Turki al Faisal, whose ‘journalism’ was a cover for his real work, just as he wrapped his Islamist ideas in flowery language of ‘human rights’ as he praised Hamas & called for Israel to be destroyed by violence.” Block declined to comment and his sources are not clear. What is motivating the attacks on Khashoggi? Some possibilities: The Muslim Brotherhood connection Some accounts in mainstream media have suggested that Khashoggi was a more complex figure than the reformer that his friends and allies have depicted. “Several Muslim Brothers said this week

Joe Kennedy... Continued from page 16 Kennedy’s office pointed to his co-sponsorship of the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018 and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Economic Exclusion Act. Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, told JNS that support for U.S.-Israel ties is “deep within [Kennedy’s] kishkes, having heard him talk both privately and publicly over the last seven years over and over again about everything from his grandfather’s experience as a journalist in Jerusalem in 1948 to his own experiences visiting Israel, engaging with Israelis, to his really deep thoughtfulness over time about U.S. interest in the region and the U.S.-Israel partnership. I take to heart that he is one of the strongest supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship in Congress and cer-

bers that on the eve of her family’s departure, her father called his bank manager after hours to receive cash to pay for the boat ride. But she is not bitter. “The fisherman who took us across was so scared that the Germans would come for him after they found out the Jews had gone that he stayed in Sweden,” she said. “He needed some money to get by, too.” Tchernia’s father looked for a crossing point for days before he found the captain. At one point he arrived in Gilleleje, a fishing village 40 miles north of Copenhagen, where locals hid 86 Jews in an attic before the Nazis discovered them. A refugee from Russia who grew up hearing about pogroms, the father “took one look and said there were too many people in one small place,” and took his family elsewhere, Tchernia said.

On Sept. 26, the Hebrew anniversary of the crossing, she and dozens of other Danish Jews attended a reenactment organized by Rabbi Yitzi and Rochel Loewenthal, Chabad emissaries in Denmark. The event featured a klezmer band and testimonies by survivors like Tchernia. Despite the gratitude she feels to the Danes who saved her family, Tchernia and others living in Denmark today say the tolerance that inspired the operation has diminished following a backlash against Muslim immigrants. Over the past decade, Denmark has developed some of Europe’s strictest immigration policies, which The Washington Post last year called “a Muslim ban [that] was just called something else.” The country is now preparing to vote on a parliamentary resolution whose premise is that nonmedical circumcision of boys is a form of child abuse.

“It’s not safe to wear a kippah on the street,” Tchernia said, noting the 2015 murder of a Jewish guard, Dan Uzan, outside the synagogue by a jihadist. Anti-Semitic violence in Denmark mostly comes from Muslims, “But it’s not only Muslims who are creating the problem. It’s changed the whole society.” Rochel Lowenthal wonders if the Danish Holocaust story would have been different had the country’s Jews, like today’s Muslims, been more easily identifiable as outsiders. “Danish Jews were always very integrated,” said Lowenthal, who like her husband wears the distinctive modest garb of haredi Orthodox Jews. “And I can’t help but wonder if they would almost all have been rescued if they looked like me and my husband.”

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By Celia Weintrob Photos by Doni Kessler note remarks that opened the fourth While Torah is nual anway for the mesorahforever true, the ideal tive Five Towns Community Collabora Conference on to be conveyed children — and Sunday. “What how an everlastin to our of Torah and g love he asked. is the Torah the kids need now?” Yiddishkeit is embedde their beings — d in necessari “What worked in 1972 won’t changes ly work today.” “You’re still talking over time. Rabbi Weinberg about what worked for you in 1972 er, founding d’asrah of and insisting that morah what should work that’s Woodme Congregation Aish Kodesh in re and mashpia Moshe Weinberg for your kid,” Rabbi the at YU, reminded er, Shila”a, said parents and educators in key- that in attendance Torah will not be received if it’s not

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Star the loss, By The Jewish to remember Cedarhurst pausedmiracles of 9/11, at the the on Sunday. the heroism, and commemoration Schachter village’s annual , Rabbi Shay In his invocationthe Young Israel of Woodof the Master and (top right photo) pray that G-d, all the strength mere said, “we world, grant us Creator of the to stand firm together against of and the fortitude of extremism, of bigotry, all forms of terror, and of all evil that can be hatred, of racism, forms in our world.” who found in different obligation to those “We have a solemn on Sept. 11th to never injured Benjamin died or were ,” said Mayor forget what happened“We saw evil, but we also (bottom). Weinstock America.” saw the best of n (middle), a 9/11 survivor Ari Schonbur Fate of 78,” re“Miracle and was waitand author of es that day. He called his experienc on the 78th floor when elevators ing to change hit. nt Chief the first plane st Fire Departme Lawrence-Cedarhur during the playing of saluting David Campell, 9/11 victims. names of local Taps, read the

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By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA COPENHAGEN, Denmark — All over the world, Holocaust commemoration events follow a certain protocol. Somber affairs where participants dress in dark colors, they might feature a soulful “Kel Malei Rachamim” sung by an anguished cantor who names Nazi death camps and the horrible ways Jews were murdered there. Less traditional ceremonies may include a low-key mourning song, often from Israel, and “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem. Not so in Denmark, the only country where nearly all Jews were rescued by the local population in a grassroots operation that involved thousands of people. Seventy-five years ago, 7,200 Jews from the Nazi-occupied Scandinavian land were ferried aboard small ships to neutral Sweden in a matter of just a few days. The annual commemoration here occurs on the anniversary of the rescue. There is mourning for the 51 Danish Jews who died in the genocide. But it is mostly a cheerful event where one unique community unites to celebrate its rescue amid song, backslapping, and sometimes a festive communal dinner. On Oct. 11, hundreds filled the Great Synagogue of Copenhagen to capacity, greeting Crown Prince Federik with a silent ovation and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin with a roaring one. Susanne Bier, an Oscar-winning Jewish director, wore a tight red dress reminiscent of gala wear. The ceremony ended with an upbeat performance by a girls’ choir from a Jewish school singing “Ya’ase Shalom” and a patriotic Danish song by national writer Hans Christian Andersen. “This ceremony has some sadness for those who didn’t make it and for our brethren who perished,” said Helle Fromberg, a kindergarten teacher whose mother was rescued. “But inevitably it’s also a celebration of the rescue, without which most of the people here would not be alive today.” Fromberg and her husband, Norway-born Thomas Gorlen, celebrate how the Danish resistance movement made the country a hospitable place for Jews right up to the present. “There is this mentality here that it doesn’t matter so much who or what you are as long as you follow the rules and integrate,” he said. “And Danish Jews did, so they were never seen as the ‘other.’” The couple, who lived together in Norway, are “very happy we ended up settling in Denmark and raising our children here,” Fromberg said. Denmark’s history means that “the Jewish community is more self-assured and belonging” than in countries where Jews were killed by the Nazis, often with collaboration by locals. “Throughout most of Europe, police helped the Nazis kill the Jews,” Fromberg said. “Here, police helped the Jews escape the Nazis.” There are other ways in which Denmark contrasted with the rest of Nazi-controlled Europe. Annelise Tchernia, 79, recalls finding her family’s home “exactly as we left it” when she and her parents returned from Sweden three years after their escape, which was carried out with the help of their family doctor, resistance hero Borghild Andersson. Andersson also took care of Tchernia’s childhood home, letting those in need of housing stay there — on condition that they leave as soon as the owners return. While some Danish Jews did lose property, its return in full to others is unheard of anywhere else in Europe. In Denmark, concern for the Jews ran all the way to the top. King Christian X did not, contrary to popular myth, ride his horse through Copenhagen wearing the Star of David. But he did make it clear, as he wrote in his diary, that he considered “our own Jews to be Danish citizens, and the Germans could not touch them.” Danish Prime Minister Laros Lokke Rasmussen echoed those words during his Oct. 11 speech at the synagogue. “An attack on Danish Jews,” he said, “is an attack on Denmark.” Still, Danish Jewry’s rescue had less photogenic aspects. Many of the fishermen who transported the Jews across the Oresund Strait to Sweden demanded payment. Tchernia remem-

THE JEWISH STAR October 26, 2018 • 17 Cheshvan 5779

In Denmark, a happy Shoah commemoration

The JEWISH STAR

CAlendar of Events

Send your events to Calendar@TheJewishStar.com • Deadline noon Monday • Compiled by Rachel Langer Challah Bake: Get ready for Shabbos at the Sands Atlantic Beach. Refreshments, music and dancing. For women only. 6:45 pm. 1395 Beech St, Atlantic Beach. $39. challahbakeli.com.

Thursday October 25

Exp lore Shabbat: Fathers and sons are invited to a fun and interactive shared experience to learn about the meaning of Shabbat. Hosted by Chazaq, NCSY, Partners in Torah, and JEP. 7 pm. 2 Forest Hills Lane, Lawrence. RSVP at challahbakeli.com Hear the Difference: “Perception of Beauty: Why we like what we hear,” a musical performance and talk at Ramaz. 5 pm. 60 East 78th St, Manhattan. RSVP at ramaz.org/SandersMusic. Understanding Jewish Cancers: Gural JCC hosts a talk by international expert Dr. Kenneth Offit. 7:30 pm. 207 Grove Ave, Cedarhurst. Free registration. 569-6733.

Saturday October 27

Scholar in Residence: Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau at the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst. Shabbat Drasha at 9 am. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst. Call 516-569-3324 for Friday night dinner reservations. Melaveh Malka: Wine and cheese and art auction to support Young Israel of Hewlett. 8 pm. Bakayev home, 125 Piermont Ave, Hewlett. $18; $25 per couple. Carlebach Concert: A tribute for the 24th yahrzeit of R. Shlomo Carlebach, featuring Yehuda Green, Eli Schwebel, Shloime Dachs, and Eli Beer. Doors open 9 pm; concert at 9:30. 120 W. 76th St, Manhattan. $45. thecarlebachshul. org.

Sunday October 28

Horseback for Hunger: Help feed the needy at Masbia’s annual breakfast. Free horseback ride home! 9 am to 12 pm. 75-01 137th St, Flushing. RSVP masbia.org/laubbreakfast2018 Run for MAY: Mesivta Ateres Yaakov invites men to participate in a 5K on the boardwalk. Registration at 12 pm; race begins at 1. Raise $180 minimum. MAY5K.com. Wines: Winemakers, stores, distributors, and enthusiasts are invited to the Long Island Kosher Wine Expo. 6 pm. Cradle of Aviation Museum, Charles Lindbergh Blvd, Garden City. $75 advance, $99 at the door. KosherWineExpo.com

Tuesday October 30

Emunah Tea: The Esther Phillips chapter of Emunah holds its annual membership tea. Guest speaker Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato. 2 pm. 726 Empire Bldv, Far Rockaway. 718-8683853. Free admission. AMIT Gala: Join AMIT in honoring outstanding Long Island leaders. 6:30 pm. 775 Branch Blvd, Cedarhurst. 516-551-1058; 212-477-5465. Hollywood at Rockaway: Learn about the influence of Jewish music on American film. 8 pm. 134-01 Rockaway Beach Boulevard. 718634-8100. Shurat Hadin: Senior attorney Rachel May Weiser speaks at Young Israel of North Woodmere on “Bankrupting Terrorism One Lawsuit at a Time.” 8:30 pm. 634 Hungry Harbor Rd, Woodmere.

Wednesday October 31

YU Community Beit Midrash [weekly]: Learning opportunities open to men and women. Dr. Rona Novick, “Social Responsibility in Today’s World,” 10:30 to 11:30 am. Mrs. Shoshana

Saturday November 3

Motzei Shabbos inspiration: Yeshiva Tiferes Moshe invites the community to an evening with Charlie Harary. 8:30 pm. 274 Sycamore St, West Hempstead.

Sunday November 4

Annual Brunch: Shalom Task Force brunch honors Shani Traube, Frady Kess, Rachel Hercman, Dr. Sarah Chana Silverman, and Rabbi Peretz Steinberg. 9:30 am. 775 Branch Blvd, Cedarhurst. $75. RSVP shalomtaskforce.org/brunch. Superstar Gala: Zionist Organization of America. Reception 4:30 pm. 1535 Broadway, Manhattan. 212-481-1500; dinner@zoa.org. $750.

Tuesday November 6

OneIsrael Dinner: OneIsrael Fund hosts keynote speaker Caroline Glick and MC Ben Brafman. 6:30 pm. 10 Desbrosses Street, Manhattan. 516-239-9202 x 19. dinner@oneisraelfund.org.

Wednesday November 7

YU Community Beit Midrash [weekly]: Learning opportunities open to men and women. Dr. Rona Novick, “Social Responsibility in Today’s World,” 10:30 to 11:30 am. Mrs. Shoshana Schachter, “Avraham: The First Lonely Man of Faith,” 11:45 am to 12:45 pm. 215 Lexington Ave, Manhattan. $25. YU.edu/sternlearn. An Evening of Commemoration: Kehillas Bais Yehudah Tzvi hosts special guest speaker Theodore Roosevelt IV on the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Free admission. 7:30 pm. 395 Oakland Ave, Cedarhurst. 516-374-9293.

Madraigos Parenting Support: Dr. David H. Rosmarin and Rabbi Ephraim Eliyahu Shapiro discuss “Managing Anxiety in Parents and in Our Children.” 7:45 pm. 728 Empire Ave., Far Rockaway. Free admission. 516-371-3250 x112.

Sunday November 11

Our Israel Story: Emunah of America invites you to its 70-year anniversary dinner, honoring Myrna Zisman, Rubin Margules, Lisa & Jonathan Schechter, and Samantha Bryk. 5 pm. 1515 Broadway, Manhattan. 917-287-5846. Opening Minds: Ohel honors the Kaylies at its 49th annual gala. 5 pm. 811 Seventh Avenue, Manhattan. ohelgala.org.

Tuesday November 13

Kosher Taste: Come sample Long Island’s best glatt kosher food, wine and beer at an auction to benefit the Jewish Community Relations Council of Long Island. 7 pm to 9 pm. 401 Roslyn Rd, Roslyn Heights. $50. 516-433-0433. Narcan Training: Learn to recognize signs of overdose and reverse it at the Friedberg JCC. Free Naloxone kit for participants. 7 pm. 15 Neil Court, Oceanside. Free. 516-634-4010. Tefillah BeShanah [weekly]: Rabbi Arye Ben David of Ayeka explores Jewish prayer, at YI North Woodmere. 8 pm. 634 Hungry Hollow Rd, North Woodmere. YINW.org/event/tb.

Wednesday November 14

YU Community Beit Midrash [weekly]: Fo men and women. Dr. Rona Novick, “Social Responsibility in Today’s World,” 10:30 to 11:30 am. Mrs. Shoshana Schachter, “Avraham: First Lonely Man of Faith,” 11:45 am to 12:45 pm. 215 Lexington Ave, Manhattan. $25. YU.edu/ sternlearn.

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