CT Jewish Ledger • April 23, 2021 • 11 Iyar 5781 by 2020 Media

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

jewishledger.com

There’s only one place to be seen by everyone. And it’s FREE!

WeHaCAL WeHaCAL

Introducing West Hartford’s all-inclusive online event calendar! List your own event by going to WeHaCal.com and click on ADD MY EVENT. For more information or to advertise on this free service, contact Donna Edelstein at 860-833-0839 or Donna@20media20.com

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

jewishledger.com

INSIDE

this week

CONNECTICUT JEWISH LEDGER | SINCE 1929 | APRIL 23, 2021 | 11 IYAR 5781

7 The Ledger Scoreboard

8 Briefs

11 Milestones

16 Kolot

17 Crossword

18 What’s Happening

House Rules..................................... 5 As the CT General Assembly’s 2021 legislative session reaches its halfway point, the Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut (JFACT), continues to lobby for passage of several bills that will impact the Jewish community.

Talking Heads.............................................................................................................5 Beyond critiquing policy, white supremacists suggest (falsely) that Israel’s immigration system is one more piece of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy white society. And it sounds like FOX News host Tucker Carlson is backing them up.

19 Torah Portion

20 Obituaries

21 Business and Professional Directory

22 Classified

ON THE COVER:

To their credit, several American Jewish groups are speaking out against the campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide directed against the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group who live in Western China. But for the most part, organized Jewish world has not exhibited the same activist spirit that sent Jews into the streets to do something about Darfur some 15 year ago. Why not? PAGE 12 jewishledger.com

Death of a Conman........................ 4 Bernie Madoff, who pulled off the greatest scam in history by networking among his fellow Jews and was subsequently sentenced to 150 years in federal prison, has died.

Campus News................................ 14 Every day more and more flagrant acts of antisemitism are breaking out on American campuses. And so, to keep our readers abreast of the issues facing Jewish students today, with this issue we introduce “Campus News.”

Arts & Entertainment................. 15 The latest news out of Hollywood is that Israeli star Shira Haas and Oscar winner Helen Mirren are both set to portray Israel’s late Prime Minister Golda Meir in separate productions. Still other Israeli prime ministers have already had their close-ups.

CANDLE LIGHTING

Sponsored by:

SHABBAT FRIDAY, APRIL 23 Hartford 7:23 p.m. New Haven: 7:23 p.m. Bridgeport: 7:24p.m. Stamford: 7:25 p.m. To determine the time for Havdalah, add one hour and 10 minutes (to be safe) to candle lighting time.

JEWISH LEDGER

2471 Albany Ave., West Hartford 860.236.1965 • thecrownmarket.com

APRIL 23, 2021

Bennett Center for Judaic Studies LECTURES AND EVENTS: SPRING 2021 Don’t Miss A Single Virtual Moment

Bennett Lecture in Judaic Studies

“State of Play: The Political Future of the American Jewish Community”

David Axelrod

American political consultant and strategist; CNN senior political commentator former chief strategist and senior advisor to President Obama.

Monday, April 26 at 7:30 p.m. - free webinar

Virtual Events Registration required at fairfield.edu/bennettprograms. For questions, contact Virtual the Bennett Center at bennettcenter@fairfield.edu or (203) 254-4000,Event ext. 2066

See the Full Schedule Here 4

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme devastated the Jewish world, dies in prison at 82 BY BEN SALES

(JTA) – Bernie Madoff, the fraudster who ran a $17.5 billion Ponzi scheme ensnaring thousands of investors, including a long list of Jewish organizations and families, has died at 82. The Associated Press reported Madoff’s death Wednesday at a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. Madoff was known as a selective money manager who made fantastic yet consistent profits for his clients until his entire operation was exposed as a scam amid the 2008 financial crisis. Madoff’s confession of his Ponzi scheme, in which he invented fake stock gains on paper and used new investments to pay off withdrawals from other investors, set off a virtual earthquake in the Jewish philanthropic world. Among Madoff’s investors were European hedge funds, elderly retirees and a range of nonprofits. Among his victims were some of the most prominent Jewish institutions in the country, as well as Jewish celebrities like Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and Sandy Koufax, the Hall of Fame pitcher. Madoff’s investors included Yeshiva University, elite Orthodox Jewish day schools in New York and Boston, Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, and other Jewish organizations and family foundations. Many of those investors had met Madoff through the small world of Jewish philanthropy in New York and South Florida, and placed their money with his fund via friends of his such as Jeffrey Picower and J. Ezra Merkin, who operated hedge funds that invested heavily with Madoff. Merkin, a former president of the elite Fifth Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan, directed perhaps $1 billion of congregants’ money to Madoff, according to The New York Times. So when Madoff, facing increasing pressure due to a national financial crisis, confessed his crime in 2008, the effects were felt across American Jewry. Following the confession, the Jewish Funders Network, which convenes Jewish donors, brought together 35 of the largest Jewish foundations to create a plan to provide emergency funding to some of Madoff’s victims. Around that time, the Anti-Defamation League also documented an uptick in antiSemitism that it concluded stemmed from the news of Madoff’s fraud. The consequences of Madoff’s fraud have reverberated through the Jewish world for years. Some Madoff investors, such as Hadassah, had withdrawn more money than they invested over the years, and were subject to “clawback” suits in which they had to pay back the fictitious profits. While

Madoff had claimed to be managing nearly $70 billion, most of that money (aside from what investors gave him) had never actually existed. A trustee, Irving Picard, has spent the years since 2008 trying to recover the actual billions that Madoff stole. As of 2021, they had recovered and restituted more than $14 billion of the $17.5 billion Madoff took. “They really felt that they had so much more money in their accounts,” Richard Greenfield, a lawyer who consulted for a handful of Madoff victims in Florida, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2018. “When they talk about their losses, they talk about the fictitious numbers in their accounts, and for some of them, it’s hard to explain: Your real loss wasn’t $200,000, it’s $10,000, which is what you put in.” Madoff was born in 1938 in Queens, New York, and began working as a stockbroker in 1959. He married his wife, Ruth, that year and had two children. He originally made a name by investing in computerized stock trading in the Nasdaq market, and served as its chairman. He began managing private clients’ wealth in the 1970s. While he told Diana Henriques, who wrote a book about him, that the Ponzi scheme began in 1992, the federal prosecutor who led the criminal investigation of Madoff believes that Madoff started the scheme when he began his money-management business. He collected accolades as his ostensible success grew. Madoff was named the treasurer of Yeshiva University, the flagship Modern Orthodox institution, and gained a reputation as a reserved but effective steward of Jewish organizational finances. Then it abruptly ended. Madoff pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison. His two sons, whom he swore had no involvement in his fraud, predeceased him, one by suicide on the second anniversary of Madoff’s arrest. In 2020, Madoff requested compassionate release from prison, telling the court he was dying from kidney disease. His request was denied. He is survived by his wife.

BERNIE MADOFF, PICTURED IN 2009 AHEAD OF HIS ENTERING A GUILTY PLEA. (STEPHEN CHERNIN/GETTY IMAGES)

jewishledger.com

UP FRONT CONNECTICUT JEWISH LEDGER | SINCE 1929 | APRIL 23, 2021 | 11 IYAR 5781

Hate crimes and security high on JFACT’s 2021 legislative agenda

ARTFORD – Halfway through the Connecticut General Assembly’s 2021 legislative session, the Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut (JFACT), the government and community relations arm of the Jewish Federations in the state, is hard at work lobbying in support of several bills and issues that impact the Jewish community. One of JFACT’s greatest priorities has been educating Jewish agencies around the state about a new state security grant for houses of worship and nonprofit organizations that are at risk of hate crimes. JFACT EXECUTIVE JFACT led the effort to DRECTOR MICHAEL pass the bill approving BLOOM the state grant, and it became law in March of 2020. “The number one priority for the Jewish community over the last few years has been to combat the rise in antisemitism which has been well-documented by the AntiDefamation League and the FBI,” JFACT Executive Director Michael Bloom told the Jewish Ledger last year. “The $5 million inside this legislation will allow Houses of Worship across Connecticut to help secure their buildings against a future attack.” Organizations, like synagogues, day schools and other Jewish and non-Jewish nonprofits whose grant proposals are accepted, could receive as much as $50,000 for security projects. These projects include the reinforcement of entryways with ballistic glass, solid core doors, double door access, computercontrolled electronic locks, remote locks on all entrance and exits, and door buzzer systems; the use of security cameras throughout a building and at all entrances and exits; penetration-resistant vestibules; and other security infrastructure improvements and devices. Gov. Ned Lamont approved the release of the $5 million in state bonding to fund the competitive grant late last year. And it has been competitive indeed. More than 380 organizations have applied for the grant from the Department of Emergency Service and Public Protection. jewishledger.com

Tucker Carlson and the white supremacist ‘open borders for Israel’ meme

BY STACEY DRESNER

“I found out a month ago that 380 had applied, so requests will far exceed the $5 million we were able to secure for this grant,” Bloom said. “I have been reaching out to legislators to see if they would consider playing, adding at least another five million in bonding legislation… I think, especially the Jewish community clearly sees the rise in hate that has been building over the past 10 years in our country. I think now after the Jan. 6 incident at the U.S. Capitol and the rise in Asian-American hate crimes, the eyes of many more have been opened to the growing number of hate crimes in this country.” A bill co-sponsored this legislative session by State Senator Saud Anwar (D-South Windsor) would also deal with hate by creating a new unit of the Connecticut State Police to investigate hate crimes. This bill was voted out of the Public Safety committee by a vote of 22-3 and will now go to the Senate for a vote. “This is great news because more resources are needed to address this new wave of hate,” Bloom said. Senate Bill 122, “An Act Establishing A Unit Within The Division Of State Police To Investigate Hate Crimes And Criminal Acts Committed By Extremist Groups,” would establish a Hate Crimes and Extremist Group Investigative Unit within Connecticut State Police. That unit would prevent, investigate, detect and assist law enforcement concerning any alleged crime violating hate crime statutes or motivated by bigotry or bias, as well as investigate actions by any individual or group encouraging, condoning, justifying or supporting commission of violent crime to achieve political, ideological, religious, social or economic goals. “I wish it weren’t so, but we have seen a rising trend of hate crimes across our country, and the FBI continues to warn of extremists capable of committing violence,” said Sen. Anwar. “We have seen the tragic consequences of leaving this trend unchecked in brutal events that have occurred across the country. As a result, we need to make sure the victims of these crimes can receive restitution – and just as importantly, we must do all we can to prevent and protect against future crimes. I’m encouraged to see the Public Safety

Committee strongly favor this legislation and I look forward to fighting for it on the Senate floor. Our community is only as strong as our unity, and we must stand up against hate when it threatens to divide us.” According to FBI statistics, Connecticut saw 76 hate crimes reported in 2019, the most recent year in which data has been compiled. Of those hate crimes, 48 were directed against an individual’s race, ethnicity or ancestry, 16 involved an individual’s religion, 11 involved sexual orientation and one involved gender. A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League tracked 193 incidents of hate, extremism and antisemitism in Connecticut in 2019 and 2020, additionally noting the year saw the highest level of white supremacist propaganda circulated in the United States in decades. The Hate Crime unit would further compile, maintain and analyze data regarding these crimes and publish an annual report providing information about them. Law enforcement units would also submit reports to the Hate Crimes and Extremist Group Investigative Unit no more than 14 days after reports of hate crimes or extremist acts, and beginning in 2022, state police will develop a standardized form allowing such reports to be easily made. Another bill, SB 989, An Act Concerning Online Harrassment, dealing also with online hate crimes, has also been a priority for both JFACT and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The bill has been introduced to the Senate. Steve Ginsburg, director of the ADL’s Connecticut Regional office, gave testimony in support of the bill to the Judiciary Committee last month. “SB 989 is a critical bill that will close certain gaps in Connecticut’s legal framework and send an important signal all residents in our state,” Ginsburg said. “We’re giving law enforcement the tools they need to hold perpetrators responsible and to protect and empower vulnerable groups and individuals. If passed, this law will bring to light the very serious consequences of malicious and hateful online conduct and make Connecticut a national leader in the fight against online hate.”

BY BEN SALES

(JTA) – In Tucker Carlson’s response to accusations that he endorsed one white supremacist talking point, the Fox News anchor appeared to echo another – this time about Israel. Last week, the popular rightwing talk show host said there was a coordinated Democratic plan to “replace” the existing population of the United States with immigrants from the “Third World.” White supremacists refer to the idea as a “Great Replacement” orchestrated by Jews, and that claim has fueled attacks like the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. After the segment, the AntiDefamation League called on Carlson to be fired. But Fox declined to act, citing Carlson’s claim that he wasn’t talking about race, and Carlson isn’t backing down. On Monday, he delivered a 20-minute defense of his “replacement” idea. At the end he took aim at the ADL, saying its defense of Israel’s Jewish majority and opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees contradicts its advocacy for immigrants in the United States. “In the words of the ADL, why would a government subvert its own sovereign existence?” he wondered, referring to an essay on the ADL’s website. “Good question. Maybe ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt will join ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ some time to explain and tell us whether that same principle applies to the United States.” Perhaps this sounded simply like Carlson going after a group that has been challenging him. But for far-right extremists, his question went beyond a debate about immigration policy. Carlson was alluding to a meme that has traversed white supremacist circles for years and is a direct corollary to the “replacement” theory: Jews want to replace white people in the United States through mass immigration, the theory goes,

JEWISH LEDGER

CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

APRIL 23, 2021

Tucker Carlson CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

but in Israel they protect their own race by restricting immigration. White supremacists often refer to this idea by calling for “Open borders for Israel” – trollishly suggesting that American Jews should support similar immigration policy for the U.S. as they do for Israel. “Open borders for Israel” was a rallying cry at the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where far-right marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us.” A Facebook group called Open Borders for Israel features Pepe the Frog, a cartoon appropriated by the “alt-right.” An “Open Borders for Israel” face mask featuring an anti-Semitic caricature is available for purchase on at least one website, and a white supremacist group distributed flyers with the slogan at Texas Christian University last year, according to TCU360, a campus news website. The contradiction only works in white supremacists’ imaginations. In reality, while American Jews tend to sympathize with immigrants and refugees, few Jews actually call for “open borders” in the U.S. And many Jews and Jewish groups, including the ADL, are particularly critical of Israel’s restrictive refugee policy, which has been a topic of heated debate there for a decade. In the “open borders for Israel” meme, white supremacists take substantive debate beyond the pale of legitimacy. Beyond critiquing policy, they suggest (falsely) that Israel’s immigration system is one more piece of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy white society, and that Jews are playing

a dishonest double game by advocating separate policies for the United States and Israel. On its face, this can be phrased like a normal policy debate. Pro-Trump pundit Charlie Kirk, for example, tweeted this week, “Why is it controversial to say that America should have similarly strict immigration policies the way Israel does?” But to white supremacists, that question sounds like an endorsement of perceived Jewish hypocrisy – and hearing it articulated on one of the most-watched cable news shows in the country was invigorating. An article about Carlson’s monologue by Andrew Anglin in the Daily Stormer, a white supremacist publication, was headlined “Tucker Nukes Israel – Says Jews Have Same Policy They Claim is Racist for Whites!” “Jews come to America and force us to have unlimited immigration,” Anglin wrote, “while in their own country, they have a wall and DNA-based citizenship.” (Israel does not use DNA to determine citizenship.) Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier with 126,000 Twitter followers, tweeted that Carlson “really brought it all together & spelled out explicitly what is happening to the country.” “Demographic replacement, ADL, Israel, it’s all there … a full redpill,” Fuentes wrote, using a term that denotes people being turned onto white supremacist ideas. “On primetime Fox News for 4 million mainstream conservatives. Can you feel it?

We are inevitable.” The idea that Jews adopt white supremacist policy when it comes to Israel was popularized in 2016 and 2017 by Richard Spencer, a white supremacist ideologue. Spencer claimed that all he wanted was for the United States to adopt laws similar to Israel’s – only to benefit white people instead of Jews. In a 2017 interview with Israeli Channel 2, he referred to himself as “a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland for us and ourselves. Just like you want a secure homeland in Israel.” Spencer linked that idea with immigration in response to a question from a rabbi in 2016. “Do you really want radical inclusion into the State of Israel?” he asked. “Maybe all of the Middle East can move into Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Would you really want that?” American Jewish groups reject the comparison. In a statement, the ADL said Carlson quoted its materials “out of context,” and called his claim “an attempt to distract from his promotion of a white supremacist conspiracy theory that is rooted in antisemitism and racism.” “Using Israel and the Jewish people to give cover to this white supremacist theory is pretty disturbing,” the statement said. “It has nothing to do with the ‘Great replacement theory,’ a toxic and extreme ideology that has led to violent attacks both at home and abroad.”

Carlson did not reply to a JTA inquiry asking whether he sees a distinction between his statement and those of white supremacists. But he’s not the only one to note a perceived contradiction in the ADL’s work. Leftist groups in recent years have also criticized what they see as a discrepancy between the ADL’s values at home and its advocacy for Israel. Unlike white supremacists, however, they want the ADL to be more critical of Israeli policy, not more conservative in the U.S., and don’t claim to see evidence of a nefarious Jewish conspiracy. On Wednesday, the left-wing Jewish columnist Peter Beinart tweeted that the contradiction identified by Carlson makes the ADL vulnerable to criticism. “This is the problem with being an anti-bigotry organization in the US but opposing equality for Palestinians,” Beinart tweeted. “You have a glass jaw. As I wrote a while back, white nationalists like Carlson see Israel’s system of ethnic privilege as a model for the US.” Pro-Israel advocates say there’s a reason to differentiate between immigration policies in Israel and the United States. They note that Israel’s immigration system does privilege Jews, offering them automatic citizenship, because Israel was founded in part as a safe haven for Jews after centuries of lethal persecution. By contrast, the United States was founded, in theory, on the promise of equality for all. And unlike the Jews who founded Israel, white people in America are not a persecuted minority. In Israel, non-Jewish Israelis are afforded individual equality under the law. An Arab Israeli sits on the Supreme Court and, following Israel’s most recent election, an Islamist party may act as kingmaker. “Tucker is wrong because the ADL opposing a [Palestinian] ‘right of return’ is about preserving a single, functioning refuge for an oppressed people,” tweeted Gilead Ini, a senior research analyst for the right-wing pro-Israel media watchdog CAMERA. In a subsequent tweet, he wrote, “Surely Tucker understands the difference between what’s described above and the situation of, say, Americans of English descent.” Israel’s immigration policy has led to mass immigration, however, of Jews from around the world. Waves of Jews from the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union have moved to Israel in the seven decades since its founding. But unlike in the United States, where Carlson claims that immigration benefits the left, those groups of Israeli immigrants have largely supported the political right.

TUCKER CARLSON TAKES AIM AT THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE IN A MONOLOGUE ON FOX NEWS, APRIL 12, 2021. (SCREENSHOT)

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

jewishledger.com

THE LEDGER SCOREBOARD Julian Edelman, star Jewish wide receiver for New England Patriots, announces retirement JULIAN EDELMAN CELEBRATES WITH THE VINCE LOMBARDI TROPHY AFTER HIS NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS DEFEATED THE LOS ANGELES RAMS 13-3 WIN IN SUPER BOWL LIII AT MERCEDES-BENZ STADIUM IN ATLANTA, FEB. 3, 2019. EDELMAN WAS THE GAME’S MVP. (AL BELLO/GETTY IMAGES)

jewishledger.com

(JTA) – Julian Edelman, the New England Patriots wide receiver who has shown his Jewish pride on a number of occasions, will retire following a stellar 11-year career in which he won Most Valuable Player in Super Bowl LIII. Edelman, who played in only six games last year due to a chronic knee injury, had his contract terminated Monday, April 9, by the Patriots in a procedural move, ESPN reported. He announced his retirement in a video posted Monday to social media. Unheralded out of Kent State and undersized at 5-10 and less than 2oo pounds, Edelman was at his best in the big games, finishing second all-time with 118 postseason receptions, trailing only Hall of Famer Jerry Rice’s 151. He was a member of three Super Bowl champions. Edelman will also finish second all-time among Patriots receivers with 620 catches, behind Wes Welker’s 672. Edelman, now 34, has a Jewish father but was not raised in the religion. It was during his breakout campaign in 2013 that, coincidentally or not, he identified as Jewish in an interview with the NFL Network. In 2014, he wore a pin featuring the Israeli flag. Edelman has tweeted about Jewish holidays. He even went on a Birthright-style trip to Israel, and in 2019 visited the country with the Patriots’ Jewish owner, Robert Kraft. He wrote a children’s book that references modern-day Zionism founder Theodor Herzl. After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in the fall of 2018 that killed 11, he wore special cleats with Hebrew on them to honor the victims. Last month, he reached out on social media to NBA center Meyers Leonard, who used an antisemitic slur while playing a video game on the public Twitch channel. “Let’s do a Shabbat dinner with some friends,” Edelman wrote Leonard. “I’ll show you a fun time.”

JEWISH LEDGER

APRIL 23, 2021

Briefs

normalization push. Other countries believed to be considering normalization with Israel include Oman and Saudi Arabia. Under the Trump administration, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain established full ties with Israel, and Sudan and Morocco launched the process.

Steven Spielberg launches foundation to fund Jewishthemed documentaries (JTA) – Steven Spielberg has launched a film foundation called Jewish Story Partners to fund documentaries that “tell stories about a diverse spectrum of Jewish experiences, histories, and cultures.” It’s funded by the Righteous Persons Foundation, which Spielberg and his actress wife Kate Capshaw founded after Spielberg’s experience making “Schindler’s List” in 1993. “We are especially proud to help establish this initiative – which will make visible a fuller range of Jewish voices, identities, experiences, and perspectives – at a time when social divisions run painfully deep and mainstream depictions too often fail to reflect the Jewish community in all its complexity,” Spielberg and Capshaw said in a statement Thursday announcing the foundation. The organization, which starts with $2 million, will soon announce its first round of grantees, who will receive $500,000 in total this year. It is already taking applications for a second round of grants and says it hopes to ramp up its funding over time. The project’s director is Roberta Grossman, a filmmaker who has specialized in Jewishthemed documentaries. Caroline Libresco, a longtime Sundance Film Festival programmer, will be its artistic director. And “Friends” creator Marta Kauffman is a board member. “I’m looking forward to helping create a stable and lasting funding organization that can fill the funding gap for independent filmmakers who want to tell a Jewish story,” Kauffman said in a statement.

Antony Blinken expects other countries to sign Abraham Accords this year (JTA) – Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he anticipates more normalization agreements for Israel in the next year. Blinken spoke Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C., at the Israeli Embassy’s virtual celebration of that nation’s Independence Day, or Yom Haatzmaut. He was joined virtually by Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Gilad Erdan. “The United States welcomes and supports the recent normalization agreements,” Blinken said, referring to the Abraham Accords brokered last year by the Trump administration between Israel and four Arab states. “We will continue to urge more countries to normalize relations with Israel – and will look for other opportunities to expand cooperation among countries in the region. As a result, I expect Israel’s group of friends to grow even wider in the year ahead.” The Biden administration has pledged to sustain the Trump administration’s

JEWISH LEDGER

J Street, Americans for Peace Now back bill to restrict Israeli spending of US aid (JTA) – Two groups, J Street and Americans for Peace Now, are backing a House bill to be presented this week that would list actions Israel may not fund with U.S. money. The measure, which will be introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., would restrict Israel from using U.S. funds to detain Palestinian minors, appropriate or destroy Palestinian property or forcibly move Palestinians, or annex Palestinian areas. The endorsement by two groups that describe themselves as pro-Israel and McCollum’s new seniority as the chairwoman of the defense subcommittee of the powerful Appropriations Committee suggest that the bill could attract broader Democratic support than previous attempts to restrict how Israel spends U.S. assistance. Americans for Peace Now is a member of the umbrella Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “It’s time that Congress stand up and defend the human rights of the Palestinian people,” McCollum said Wednesday on Twitter. Spokesmen for J Street and Americans for Peace Now confirmed that they backed the bill. The latter’s president, Hadar Susskind, emphasized that the bill does not condition aid to Israel but restricts it. Thus Israel may carry out the activities named in the bill, but would incur no penalty if it can show the actions were completed without the use of American funds. U.S. assistance to Israel, $3.8 billion a year, overwhelmingly goes to weapons systems. The bill requires State Department and General Accounting Office reporting on whether Israel is using U.S. funds to carry out the restricted activities, but it does not describe a mechanism to penalize Israel. The bill expands prior attempts by McCollum to restrict areas where Israel may spend U.S. funds. Those bills attracted only a handful of backers, and no support from groups that described themselves as pro-Israel. Center and right-wing pro-Israel groups, chief among them AIPAC, have forcefully opposed the McCollum initiatives.

Netanyahu: Israel won’t let Iran to carry out goal of nuclear genocide (JNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will never allow Iran to develop “nuclear capability to

| APRIL 23, 2021

carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel” during a joint press conference with visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Jerusalem on Monday, April 12. “I will never allow Iran the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel. And Israel will continue to defend itself against Iran’s aggression and terrorism,” said Netanyahu. He mentioned the recent commemoration of Yom Hashoah and that Israel “will never allow it [the Holocaust] to happen again.” In his remarks, Austin described his visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and how it impacted him. “I want to reaffirm the administration’s strong commitment to Israel and to the Israeli people. That’s why I thought it was important that we meet face to face and to express our earnest desire for close consultations with Israel, as we address shared challenges in the region,” he stated, adding, “I also wanted to underscore my personal pledge to strengthening Israel’s security and ensuring Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge. He added that they “discussed ways to deepen the defense relationship in the face of regional threats.”

Iran says it will enrich uranium closer to weaponization levels Iran’s top nuclear negotiator and its deputy foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, did not offer an explanation in his announcement. His statement comes on the eve of the second round of talks Wednesday in Vienna, Austria, aimed at getting the United States back into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and Iran in compliance again with its provisions. The agreement trades sanctions relief for a rollback in Iran’s nuclear capability. Iran and Israel have engaged in a shadow war in recent weeks, striking each other’s ships in the region. An attack over the weekend on Natanz, a major Iranian enrichment facility, reportedly has crippled the site. Iran has blamed Israel for the attack; Israel has not commented. President Joe Biden has made a priority of reentering the nuclear deal, which he believes is the best means of keeping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran insists it does not have ambitions for weapons, despite a barrage of Western intelligence evidence to the contrary.

Israel to allow vaccinated tour groups starting in May (JTA) – Israel will be reopening its gates to fully vaccinated tour groups on May 23. The Jewish state hopes to allow individual vaccinated tourists by early July, a source in its Tourism Ministry told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Israel has vaccinated most of its own population, and largely reopened public and recreational spaces, while seeing the number of COVID cases plummet. A few weeks after May 23, if case numbers

remain low, the number of tour groups allowed in per day will rise. Israel then hopes to reopen to individuals and families who are vaccinated. Israel closed nearly all entry to foreigners with the onset of the pandemic, and shut down its main airport completely earlier this year due to rising case numbers.

Did Andrew Cuomo chafe at campaigning on Sukkot? (JTA) – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has long prided himself on his strong relationship with the Jewish community – a relationship he dates back to his father’s three terms as governor. But in a story about Cuomo’s political career, The New York Times Magazine reported Cuomo’s frustration with a campaign appearance at a Sukkot event during his run for attorney general in 2006. “These people and their f***ing tree houses,” Cuomo said to his team, according to The Times. A spokesman denied the comment. “His two sisters married Jewish men, and he has the highest respect for Jewish traditions,” the spokesman said. Cuomo’s relationship with the Jewish community has largely been positive for most of his career. But his ties with the Orthodox Jewish community hit a rough patch in the fall when Cuomo ordered tightened restrictions on a number of Orthodox neighborhoods with heightened COVID test positivity rates during a major surge in cases. Coincidentally or not, those restrictions were announced during Sukkot. One Orthodox advocacy group, One Orthodox advocacy group, Agudath Israel, even sued Cuomo, claiming that a rule restricting attendance at religious services in those neighborhoods was a violation of religious liberty. The Supreme Court agreed with Agudath Israel in November and the rule eventually was amended.

Biden: We have UNRWA’s commitment to ‘zero tolerance’ for antisemitism (JTA) – Days after resuming U.S. funding for the troubled U.N. agency that administers to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, the Biden administration says it has the commitment of UNRWA to “zero tolerance” for antisemitism, racism or discrimination. “UNWRA has made clear their rock-solid commitments to the United States on the issues of transparency, accountability, and neutrality in all its operations,” a senior U.S. official said in an interview this weekend, describing the process that led last week to the administration announcing the resumption of funding for the agency. “And what neutrality means in the context of the United Nations is zero tolerance for racism, discrimination, and antisemitism.” The official said the resumption of aid was consistent with a Biden administration policy of favoring a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. UNRWA has been plagued for years by reports of mismanagement and of antijewishledger.com

Semitic content in the textbooks used by the agency in the school it administers. The Biden administration official, who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly, reached out to JTA. The call was consistent with what has become a Biden administration practice: rolling back Trump administration policies that Israel favored, but leavening the change with pledges and actions that reassure Israel of U.S. support. A similar dynamic is playing out in the administration’s bid to reenter the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. President Donald Trump ended assistance to UNRWA in 2018. Trump administration officials said the agency’s precept – treating millions of Palestinians as refugees – perpetuated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That was the claim by Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, in a highly unusual rebuke of the Biden administration when the $150 million in assistance was announced. Biden campaigned on refunding UNRWA – on humanitarian grounds and to restore American influence in the region. In January, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, a watchdog, reported that UNRWA textbooks were “rife with problematic content that contradicts stated U.N. values.” The Biden official rejected the precept that designating the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees perpetuated the conflict. The refugee problem would be addressed in a two-state solution, the official said, which was the end goal of the Biden administration. A UNRWA spokesman did not reply to a JTA request for comment.

J Street to present Jimmy Carter with peacemaker award (JTA) – J Street, the self-described liberal pro-Israel group, is presenting Jimmy Carter with a peacemaker award at its conference, recognizing the former president, who has frequently tangled with the mainstream proIsrael community, for brokering the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace. “By helping to broker the incredible Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, President Carter demonstrated that determined American diplomacy can end decades of conflict and bring together even the most determined foes,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said Monday, April 12, in a release sent to JTA. J Street’s Tzedek v’Shalom award goes to “distinguished individuals who have made critical contributions in their lives to the cause of peace for Israelis, Palestinians and the wider Middle East,” the release said. The award is in line with the longstanding claim by J Street, itself a group that forcefully criticizes Israeli policies and pro-Israel orthodoxies, that doing good work on Israel’s behalf sometimes requires tough love. “With visionary moral clarity, he has emphasized that the well-being of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples are inextricably intertwined – and has never given up the hope that the occupation and their conflict can and jewishledger.com

must be brought to a just and peaceful end,” Ben-Ami said. Carter had fraught relations with Israel and the pro-Israel community during his presidency. He sought to leverage arms sales to Israel to extract concessions, the third rail for pro-Israel groups, and he made it clear that he saw Menachem Begin, then the prime minister, as more recalcitrant than Anwar Sadat, then the Egyptian president. The relationship between Carter and U.S. Jewish leaders, if anything, worsened in Carter’s post-presidency. Carter became more sharply critical of Israel, and in 2006 he published a book titled “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” stirring outrage in Israel and among its American friends for likening Israeli practices to the racist South African apartheid regime. Democrats kept Carter from speaking at their 2008 convention, which nominated Barack Obama for president, in part because the book had opened wounds between Jewish Democrats and the ex-president. He spoke in 2012, although mainstream Jewish groups were none too happy about it. Carter, more broadly, has enjoyed more popularity post-presidency than he did during his one term. In 2009, Carter contacted JTA to apologize for using the word “apartheid” in the title of his book, saying it was meant to describe a possible outcome of Israeli policies and not the current reality. He used the Hebrew term “al het,” for seeking repentance. The April 18-19 J Street conference, which features speakers identified with the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, will be virtual in line with coronavirus pandemic restrictions. The 96-year-old Carter, who is frail, will not accept the award. Paige Alexander, the CEO of The Carter Center, an NGO founded by the ex-president to promote peace, will accept on his behalf.

Pollard brings Torah scroll to Joseph’s Tomb (Israel Hayom via JNS) Convicted spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard on Monday night dedicated a Torah scroll that he brought to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. He commissioned the writing of the Torah scroll 12 years ago, while he was in a U.S. federal prison, serving a 35-year sentence. Pollard traveled to Samaria with his wife, Esther, and the Shomron Regional Council head Yossi Dagan. “I feel a very personal connection to this place and to Joseph who is buried here, and everything he went through,” said Pollard. “When I was in jail, the guards enjoyed humiliating me when they would ask me if I thought I would ever get home. And I always answered in the same way: I would ask, ‘Do you believe in God?’ And most of them would say, ‘yes,’ and then I would ask, ‘Do you think God can work miracles?’ And they would say, ‘clearly.’ Well, now we are here.”

At the Hebrew Center for Health and Rehabilitation, we understand that comfort and familiarity is a key part of the journey to wellness. We also understand that maintaining your religious beliefs and principles is fundamental in continued enrichment of life. Our Kosher meal services allow residents to maintain their dietary requirements throughout their stay with us. At the Hebrew Center, we ensure we follow all principles of Kosher including purchase, storage, preparation, and service.

At the Hebrew Center for Health and Rehabilitation, we also offer a variety of other services and amenities to ensure your stay is as comfortable as possible. THESE SERVICES INCLUDE: • Passport to Rehabilitation Program • Long-Term Skilled Nursing Care • Specialized Memory Care • Respite Care Program • Palliative Care and Hospice Services Coordination

OUR AMENITIES INCLUDE: • Barber/Beauty Shop • Café • Cultural Menus • Laundry and housekeeping services • Patient and Family education • Life Enrichment

HKC

‫כשר‬

For more information on our Kosher program, please contact: DIRECTOR, PASTORAL SERVICES - (860) 523-3800 Hebrew Center for Health and Rehabilitation One Abrahms Boulevard, West Hartford, CT 06117

L IKE U S ON

JEWISH LEDGER

APRIL 23, 2021

OPINION

Blinken’s Holocaust gaffe BY RAFAEL MEDOFF

as Breckinridge Long our 32nd president, rather than Franklin Roosevelt? From Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent remarks, one could erroneously conclude that it was actually Assistant Secretary of State Long, not President Roosevelt, who decided American immigration policy in the 1930s and 1940s, and Long, not Roosevelt, who decided that the U.S. should refrain from intervening to aid European Jewry. Long, a campaign contributor and personal friend of the president, was FDR’s first ambassador to Italy. One of the first to praise Mussolini for making the trains run on time, Long was promoted by FDR to assistant secretary of state, putting him in charge of 23 of the State Department’s 42 divisions, including the crucial Visa Division. Speaking at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on April 8, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Secretary Blinken described how Long “had immense power to help those being persecuted,” yet “made it harder and harder for Jews to be granted refuge in the United States.” That’s correct, but misleading. It wasn’t as if Long conducted some kind of rogue operation. Numerous documents, including Long’s posthumously published diaries, recount how he regularly briefed President Roosevelt on his efforts to keep the Jews out. In one diary entry from 1940, Long wrote that in a discussion at the White House on ways to curtail immigration, he “found that [FDR] was 100% in accord with my ideas,” and “expressed himself as in entire accord” and “wholeheartedly in support” of what Long was doing. Blinken recalled Long’s infamous advice to his State Department colleagues “to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.” True– but the president was fully aware that these tactics were successfully suppressing immigration far below what the law allowed. In a 1935 letter concerning visa applicants from Germany, FDR wrote: “I am informed that nearly all immigration quotas have been considerably under-issued during the past four years.” He even cited the year-by-year statistics. According to Secretary Blinken, Long “established onerous security checks, 10

JEWISH LEDGER

claiming they were necessary to prevent enemy spies from infiltrating the U.S., even though there was no evidence that refugees posed that risk.” But it was President Roosevelt who falsely claimed at a June 1940 press conference that some refugees, “especially Jewish refugees,” had agreed to spy for the Nazis for fear that their relatives back in Germany “would be taken out and shot.” That became a stock excuse for shutting America’s doors even tighter. “Assistant Secretary Long did still worse,” Blinken continued. “He blocked cables with reports of the mass killing, which would have increased pressure for America to take in more Jews.” That’s correct. But the president, too, often ignored or downplayed news of Nazi persecution. In 430 press conferences from 1933 until late 1938, FDR never once mentioned the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany. This policy of minimizing the focus on the Jews continued into the 1940s, even after the administration itself had verified, in late 1942, that mass murder was underway. At his August 21, 1942, press conference, for example, FDR referred to “barbaric crimes against civilian populations,” without mentioning Jews. On October 7, 1942, and again on July 30, 1943, the president declared that war criminals would be punished, but failed to explain what war crimes were being perpetrated, or against whom. In 1944, the White House issued a statement commemorating the anniversary of the Jewish revolt against the Nazis in Warsaw–without mentioning Jews. Secretary Blinken continued: “And [Long] lied to Congress. He told them the State Department was doing everything in its power to rescue Jews from Europe…” That’s right. But the reason Long was testifying to Congress (in November 1943) was that the Roosevelt administration was trying to block a resolution urging the president to create a refugee rescue agency. FDR didn’t want to create the agency–since he opposed using even minimal government resources to aid Europe’s Jews–so Long was sent to Capitol Hill to shoot down the proposal. Finally, near the end of his remarks, Blinken mentioned President Roosevelt–in order to portray him as a savior of the Jews. According to Blinken, the Treasury Department brought the president documentation of Long’s obstructionism and “six days later, Roosevelt announced

| APRIL 23, 2021

U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN SPEAKING AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT IN WASHINGTON, D.C., ON FEB. 26, 2021. (STATE DEPARTMENT PHOTO BY RON PRZYSUCHA)

the creation of the War Refugee Board.” What really happened was quite different. Long’s lies to Congress were exposed by the news media and rescue advocates. The administration was subjected to withering public criticism. The resolution that Roosevelt tried to block was adopted unanimously by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was heading to the full Senate for a vote. With Congressional pressure mounting, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and two aides met with the president to discuss the rescue resolution, which Morgenthau called “a boiling pot on Capitol Hill.” When they began to describe Long’s obstructionist actions, FDR vigorously defended his old friend “Breck.” He claimed Long “soured on the [refugee] problem when Rabbi [Stephen] Wise got Long to approve a long list of people being brought into this country many of whom turned out to be bad people.” Still, FDR could read the political writing on the wall. It was January 1944–an election year had begun. Not a good time for FDR to be quarreling with Congress, the Jewish community, and the many prominent liberal voices that were criticizing him over his refugee policy, such as The New Republic and The Nation. So the president reluctantly created the rescue agency that the Congressional resolution was demanding, and which he had unsuccessfully tried to block. In other words, Roosevelt was against the War Refugee Board before he was for it. On the surface, it appeared to be a belated reversal of the administration’s no-rescue policy. In practice, however, the president’s treatment of the War Refugee Board was tepid or worse. He gave the new Board only token funding; 90% of

its funds were supplied by private Jewish organizations. He seldom adopted its proposals; for example, the Board wanted Roosevelt to grant temporary haven to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, but he admitted only 982 (not all of them Jews), who were held in a detention facility in upstate New York. Roosevelt’s decisions throughout this period–from keeping quiet about the Nazis singling out Jews to admitting only a handful of refugees–were made by Roosevelt. Because government policy is decided by the president. Secretary Blinken should know that better than anyone. After all, Blinken doesn’t make up his own policies. He implements the policies that are decided by the president. Which is exactly what Long did. Undoubtedly, Blinken offers advice, like Long did; but the president decides. Likewise, one may assume Blinken doesn’t keep the president in the dark about how the policies are being implemented; surely he briefs the president on how he is implementing them. So did Long. When a Secretary of State prepares to speak publicly on any subject, he trusts the people around him to make sure his remarks are historically accurate. All the more so when the speech is going to be delivered at an institution that focuses on a sensitive historical subject. Whomever among Secretary Blinken’s aides or the Holocaust Museum staff helped prepare these remarks did him a significant disservice. As published in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles - April 11, 2021.

jewishledger.com

MILESTONES Paul Berger elected president of Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy Paul Berger of Stamford has been elected president of the Board of Directors of Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy of Connecticut, it was announced recently by outgoing BCHA Board President David Pitkoff. In addition to Dr. Berger, other newly elected members of the BCHA Board include vice presidents Dan Haron, Greg Teitel and Linda Russ, Board treasurer David Zizmor and Board secretary Meredith Cohen. “Dr. Berger is one of the true gadols [greats] of our school having previously served as president of the Board,” said Mr. Pitkoff in a letter to the BCHA community. “His leadership and commitment to the mission of our school is unparalleled.” Rabbi Tzvi Bernstein, who currently serves as dean of BCHA and will take over as interim head of school in June, when Jackie Herman retires, agrees. “BCHA is very fortunate to have a long history of brilliant, caring and dedicated Board presidents who have contributed great amounts of time and all of their talents to ensure that BCHA accomplishes its mission to provide an excellent Judaic and general studies education to the children of our community and the greater Fairfield County and Westchester County region” says Rabbi Bernstein. “Dr. Berger has already distinguished himself as such an individual when he first served as president from 2006-2010, [when] I was privileged to serve under him as a member of the Board of Directors. I am excited that I will once again have the opportunity to benefit from his very capable leadership.” A native of Providence, R.I., Dr. Berger and his wife, Dina, moved to Westport from New York in 1979. The couple moved to Stamford following his retirement in 2010 from Bridgeport Hospital, where he served for 30 years as chief of oncology. The Bergers’ three children – a daughter and

two sons – are all BCHA alumni, married and with families of their own. Through the years, Dr. Berger has remained an active member of the BCHA Board. So when the school asked him to once again serve as president, he couldn’t say no. “It’s an interesting time; a time when we’re going through a lot of transitions. And it’s a time of peril and opportunity and difficult times for day schools, specifically in terms of the cost of school and trying to make day school education available to as many people as possible without sacrificing the quality of the education,” he says. On the other hand, he points out, “A lot of people from New York are moving to Stamford [in search of] a better quality of life. So, it’s an opportunity to make things grow. He looks forward to working with Rabbi Bernstein, as well as Rachel Haron, currently principal of the BCHA Lower School, who take on the role of interim associate head of school. “We were looking for the right person and we had a very talented person in Tzvi Bernstein,” says Dr. Berger. “He’s exceptionally smart. He gave up a very successful law career, because at that point in his life he just wanted to dedicate his time to Jewish education. We’re lucky to have him. And we’re lucky to have Rachel [Haron] as well. She’s a wonderful person and so very talented.” Dr. Berger calls his predecessor, David Pitkoff, “The best president Bi-Cultural has ever had,” adding, “He’s a special, special man.” Likewise, Mr. Pitkoff feels confident he is leaving the school in good hands. Says Mr. Pitkoff: “We are thrilled to have such an amazing and talented group of leaders as we move towards an even brighter future.”

HASSLE FREE LIVING There’s no place like

B’NAI MITZVAH REBECCA BOMZER, daughter of Lara and David Bomzer, will celebrate her Bat Mitzvah on Saturday April 24, 2021, at The Emanuel Synagogue in West Hartford.

FEDERATION HOMES Affordable Living for Older Adults 62+ and Individuals with Disabilities 156 Wintonbury Ave., Bloomfield, CT

Call (860)243-2535 or visit us at www.federationhomes.org Sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford with funding from the Department of Housing & Urban Development

jewishledger.com

JEWISH LEDGER

APRIL 23, 2021

These American Jewish activists are trying t BY RON KAMPEAS

(JTA) – When Rayhan Asat attended a Passover seder last month, its contours seemed familiar and different at once – especially the tradition of leaving a seat empty at the table. It reminded Asat, a lawyer, of leaving a seat empty for her brother, Ekpar, at her graduation from Harvard Law School in 2016. Ekpar, a member of China’s Uighur minority, had been disappeared by the Chinese government. Jewish World Watch, an anti-genocide group that hosted the online seder for Uighurs on March 30, suggested that families leave a seat at the seder table for the more than a million people whom China’s government has imprisoned or otherwise disappeared.

A MAN HOLDS UP A SIGN PROTESTING THE GENOCIDE AGAINST UYGHUR MUSLIMS BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT. CREDIT: ANDRIIKOVAL/SHUTTERSTOCK.

“As a sister of an imprisoned victim of China’s anti-Uighur campaign, Ekpar Asat, I’m grateful a seat has been reserved for him on this Passover,” Asat said as she participated in the recitation of the plagues. “This seat is very different than Ekpar’s seat that remained empty at my Harvard graduation.” In an interview a couple of days later, Asat told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that her first encounter with Jews was when she befriended Jewish students at Harvard. She quickly realized that they would be compassionate allies in the struggle of her Muslim ethnic minority. “Other people, you know, they might ask questions like, ‘Oh why did they put him in the camp?’ or ‘How did this happen?’” Asat said. “And what is so assuring was the level of compassion and understanding that comes from the Jewish community because of the history and the community’s deep understanding of how these things do happen, and I don’t have to explain it to them.” One of the friends Asat made at Harvard, Amy Woolfson, has become a leading campaigner for the Uighurs in her native England, where British Jews have emerged as 12

JEWISH LEDGER

leading champions for the Uighur cause. Now Jewish organizers in the United States are hoping to galvanize American Jews in the same way through a major Jewish advocacy campaign on a par with the Save Darfur campaign of the 2000s. That campaign helped bring about a peace process that culminated last year in an agreement between Sudan and the Darfur rebel groups. Many Jewish groups have already issued statements and taken policy positions as an early step, and a community effort in Indianapolis is emerging as a local model. But even as they ramp up their activity on the issue, the organizers say they recognize that going up against China is potentially a more fraught endeavor for American Jews. “Anytime that one deals with a government that has an important relationship with Israel and with the United States, one needs to weigh the pluses and minuses of criticism,” said Jason Isaacson, the chief policy and political affairs officer for the American Jewish Committee. “There are times when the demands of conscience require kind of a reassessment of that balance, but we have never wanted to behave in a way that would prevent continued contact for mutual interest.” In recent months, attention to the Uighur cause has deepened, with new reports about how China’s government has interned members of the Turkic Muslim minority in “reeducation” camps. The government said the move is meant to combat terrorism. Reports, denied by the government, say the captive Uighurs are pressured to abandon their culture and have been forced into labor, and that women have been sterilized. The Trump administration designated the atrocities against the Uighur a genocide, and in a rare foreign policy consistency across administrations, President Joe Biden has embraced the term as well. “It clearly has deep resonance to Jewish history,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, who led the Jewish campaign for Darfur when he helmed the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center. “It has evoked a response. “There are a number of grassroots groups around the country that have mobilized around Uighur issues, a number of national groups have taken policy positions on it, and speak out on it, including the [Union for Reform Judaism] and the American Jewish Committee and others,” said Saperstein, who participated in the online seder and is now a senior adviser to the Religious Action Center. Other major Jewish groups involved in Uighur activism include the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, the AntiDefamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish

| APRIL 23, 2021

Organizations. So far it hasn’t translated into widespread action like that generated by the Darfur issue, when teens donated their bar and bat mitzvah money to the cause. Serena Oberstein, the Jewish World Watch executive director who is at the nexus of the emerging campaign, identified a number of factors to explain why the rollout has yet to achieve the intensity of the Jewish Darfur activism 15 years ago. Oberstein named the difficulties of direct action during the pandemic, and China’s world preeminence – compared to Sudan’s relative powerlessness – and how that can inhibit Jewish action. “I think that because of how integral China is to the world’s economy, people really want to support in theory, and so it’s a matter of taking it beyond just words and turning it into deeds, getting corporations to end partnerships to pull their labor force out,” she said. That effort gets sensitive when a Jewish organization is partnered with a corporation that does business in China, or when board members of an organization do business in China, Oberstein said. “I’ve heard from a number of people who have said things like, ‘I want to be supportive, but my business has a headquarters in Shanghai,’” she said. “They work in the private sector and they don’t want to be pushed out of the Shanghai market. And so that is something that is really hard to hear.” Another factor, Oberstein said, is the trepidation about validating boycotts (although Uighur activists and their allies are not yet calling for boycotts) at a time that the mainstream Jewish community is trying to face down calls from the left to boycott Israel. Isaacson acknowledged the risks of taking on a major power, particularly for an organization like his. The American Jewish Committee fashions itself as the Jewish community’s diplomatic arm. But the persecution of the Uighurs are so acute, he said, it necessitated some form of action. “You also recognize that we’re an organization that has a long-standing relationship with China, we have an Asia Pacific Institute that has maintained a high level of contact in Beijing and through consulates and the embassy and the U.N. mission in New York,” he said. “So we take our diplomatic contact very seriously and we recognize that this is a government that we want to remain in contact with, but terrible abuses are being committed and they need to be addressed.” A number of the Jewish groups now speaking out on the Uighur issue have already been advocating for the Rohingya, the Muslim minority facing the depredations of

a government ethnic-cleansing campaign in Myanmar. They are also looking to Europe, where the Jewish campaign for the Uighurs is more advanced. In England, students have taken the lead in advocacy, and have recruited to their cause the British chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who rarely involves himself in political issues. A trigger in Europe for activism is the concentration in that continent of fashion designers, who import Chinese cotton. About a fifth of the world’s cotton is produced in the Xinjiang region, where the Uighurs are indigenous. Human rights groups say forced Uighur labor is being used to produce cotton. The United States banned cotton from Xinjiang earlier this year. Among its actions, the American Jewish Committee welcomed the Trump administration designation last year of the

OPINION: WH BY JONATHAN S. TOBIN

(JNS) In the spring of 2006, thousands of Jew on Washington for a protest about an ongoing going on in a western province of Sudan. Only after the Jewish community had commemorat Hashoah, the same “never again” rhetoric was the Mall. There, along with other supporters of Darfur Coalition,” they heard from celebrities l Wiesel, actor George Clooney and a freshman s from Illinois named Barack Obama about stop slaughter of civilians caught in a brutal civil wa African nation. Similar events took place in a s other cities around the country. The protest was part of a campaign that las 2004 to 2012, during a period when Darfur wa to a brutal extermination campaign largely car by the Muslim Arab government against Christ animists and ethnic tribes opposed to the rule President Omar Al-Bashir. As many as 400,00 were killed in a genocide that was accompanied rape and other horrific crimes. At the forefront of the effort to respond to t atrocities were American Jews. While Al-Bashi stay in power until an April 2019 military coup and international pressure generated by the pr did help end most of the violence in Sudan. Th who marched to save Darfur can at least say th seriously the lessons of the Holocaust about no silent in the face of genocide. Fifteen years later, another genocide is taki and yet the same activist spirit that sent Jews i streets to do something about Darfur seems to when it comes to the fate of the Uyghurs of Ch The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim e group who live in the Xinjiang region of Weste Since 2014, China’s ruling Communist Party ha carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing an against them. Acting under the authority of Pre Xi Jinping, crimesjewishledger.com against humanity have been

to make the Uighur cause another Darfur anti-Uighur persecution as a genocide, and it backs legislation under consideration in Congress that would ban the entry into the United States of goods believed to be manufactured in Uighur labor camps, and that would elevate the refugee status of Uighurs. The two pieces of legislation, with bipartisan support, have become the focus of Jewish community lobbying. Rep. Ted Deutch, a Jewish Democrat from Florida, is a lead sponsor of the refugee bill, which would reclassify Uighur refugees for more immediate access to U.S. resettlement. He told JTA that his Jewish involvement was a leading factor in advancing the bill. “Jewish communities have lived in countries with antagonistic rulers where we’ve been forced into ghettos,” he said. “We’ve been used as scapegoats for issues within countries, there have been efforts to force us

to give up our traditions, made to convert under the threat of death.” At this stage, national action is focusing on educating Jewish communities, said Tammy Gilden, the associate director for policy at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, or JCPA, the umbrella body for national and regional community relations groups. But that will transition soon to activism. A webinar for constituent groups in January that included Asat sparked enough interest for a repeat last week, and the JCPA is shaping a resolution to guide further action. “We received this deluge of requests for a more public lengthy or more in-depth conversation on the issue,” she said. Leading the more recent JCPA webinar was the Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Council, which is already active in advocating for Uighurs, in part because Indiana Sen. Todd Young, a Republican, has

previously sponsored legislation tackling genocide issues. Young is sponsoring the Senate version of the legislation that would ban the entry of goods made in the Uighur detention camps. Amber Maze, the Indianapolis JCRC’s Holocaust educator, said the strategy is to get lawmakers like Young who are already engaged on the Uighur issue to pressure their peers to sign on. “We are hoping at the Indianapolis JCRC to become a model for other JCRCs across the nation on how they can really engage in the genocide prevention mass atrocity prevention,” she said. Aaron Welcher, the Indianapolis JCRC’s communications associate, said one aim was to persuade other Jewish communities that genocide was not too big an issue for grassroots group to tackle. “Genocide and mass atrocities does seem

like such a big issue that people don’t want to engage in it, but we have formed the opposite opinion that actually it’s at the local level that a lot of change is made,” he said. China’s government is acutely aware of the potency of grassroots activism. Samuel Chu, an American activist who targets China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, warned participants in the most recent JCPA panel that they could face legal consequences: Last year, China issued an arrest warrant for Chu, who is a U.S. citizen and not a citizen of China, a first. Such warrants could inhibit travel for activists. Rabbi Lee Paskind, the social justice commission chairman at the Rabbinical Assembly, said the group was encouraging constituent synagogues to take action locally. “It’s really gaining traction – a lot,” he said.

HY AREN’T JEWS UP IN ARMS ABOUT UYGHUR GENOCIDE?

ws descended genocide days ted Yom heard on f the “Save like Elie senator pping the ar in that score of

place there on an enormous scale, including mass imprisonment, systematic torture, rape, forced abortions and sterilizations. At least one million Uyghurs have been sent to the laogai – the Chinese gulag of prison camps. It is the largest systematic assault and imprisonment of an ethnic or religious minority since the Holocaust. Unlike the relatively isolated government of Sudan or the Rwandan and Serbian perpetrators of other genocides in the 1990s, standing up against China is not cost-free. With the world’s second-largest economy that may well overtake that of the United States later in this decade, nations confront this rising superpower at their peril. sted from In the United States, both Democrats and Republicans as subjected have tried to have it both ways when it comes to China. rried out Though he often talked tough about China, former tians, President Donald Trump also boasted of his friendship of Sudanese with Xi. Still, on its last day in office, the Trump 00 people administration formally recognized that what was going d by mass on in Xinjiang was genocide, an important step towards treating this catastrophe with the seriousness it deserves. these Since then, the Biden administration has seemed to ir would take a step forward towards helping the Uyghurs but p, American then took one back. The United States slapped sanctions rotests on Chinese officials directly implicated in the genocide; hose however, when asked about the issue, President Joe Biden hey took has given vague denunciations of Chinese human-rights ot being violations. Then, at a CNN town hall event last month, he seemed to rationalize the genocide by speaking of ing place, the Chinese desire for “national unity,” and that others into the must recognize that each nation has its own culture and o be missing observes “different norms” – a signal that he recognized hina. the right of Xi to do as he likes within the borders of ethnic China, even if that meant genocide. As with the Trump ern China. administration until that last day, there is no talk of a as been serious effort to help the Uyghurs or even to boycott the nd genocide 2022 Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing. esident While we may understand, if not condone, the n taking jewishledger.com reluctance of world leaders to stand up to China, what’s

the excuse of the organized Jewish world for its relative inaction in response to crimes on a far greater scale than those that took place in Darfur only a few years ago? That is not to say that Jews have been entirely silent on the issue (see story p.12). British Jews have been quite outspoken. Chief of the United Kingdom Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has issued an important statement of conscience calling for action. American Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism have also issued statements about the Uyghurs. Jewish World Watch has organized “freedom seders” held in solidarity with the Uyghurs and other events. But the same activist spirit is for the most part conspicuous by its absence when it comes to more than press releases. While there is talk of more to be done in the future, the major Jewish groups have not been so quick to call for boycotts or action. Why so cautious while genocide is happening? The answer is obvious. Just as the United States must weigh how its economy has become inextricably linked to that of China’s growing power in determining how to respond to these atrocities, the organized Jewish world is also reluctant to stick its neck out on the issue. After all, countless American institutions are heavily invested in a solid relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, and many major donors to Jewish groups would be hurt by a campaign that called for more than lip service to the Uyghurs. There’s also a political dimension to this problem. Over the course of the last year, antagonism towards Beijing has become a source of partisan contention with Republicans speaking up to blame the Chinese Communist Party for its role in preventing any real effort at discovering the source of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, while Democrats have responded reflexively by branding the GOP stance as racist. Jewish liberals, who have become accustomed to

opposing anything that Trump and the GOP say, aren’t eager to do anything that could be mistaken for hostility to a nation that has become the locus of their political opponents’ anger. The same liberal Jewish activist energy that might have been used on behalf of the Uyghurs the way it was deployed on Darfur has instead been diverted to more fashionable causes, such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Corporations that have spoken out about their opposition to Georgia’s voting law that has been falsely labeled as racist continue business as usual with a Chinese regime engaged in genocide. In the same way, many Jews are just as hypocritical when it comes to China. The pandemic has also put the traditional mechanisms of Jewish activism out of action. Zoom webinars simply don’t have the same impact as demonstrations or in-person lobbying – measures that have, except for “mostly peaceful” BLM protests, been shelved over the course of the last year. Whatever the reason for this diffidence on China, the fact remains that many Jews, who on Yom Hashoah go on and on about “never again” regarding genocide in the world, are doing nothing about a case of mass murder that is going on right now. In doing so, Jews are not any more or less cowardly than the rest of a world that is too busy or too intimidated by China to do more than raise a token protest about what’s happening to the Uyghurs. But for those who spend so much time lecturing other Jews and everyone else about the universal lessons of the Holocaust, their indifference to what is arguably among the worst instances of genocide since 1945 is especially disturbing. Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS– Jewish News Syndicate.

JEWISH LEDGER

APRIL 23, 2021

FUN, FRIENDS, FOREVER CT’s Premier Jewish Co-ed Overnight Summer Camp

CAMPUS NEWS U of Illinois to create Jewish students’ dorm following antisemitic incidents (JTA) – A year after the filing of a federal civil rights complaint alleging an “unrelenting campaign of antisemitic harassment” at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the school is set to have a new dorm specifically for Jewish students. Illini Chabad will run the dorm in partnership with the university, the Forward reported. The dorm, which joins a list of faith-based housing options, will have room for 32 students. The bottom floors will serve as the Chabad center and kosher dining hall. While the dorm is meant to be a place where Shabbat and kosher observance will be easier, it is also intended to be a response to the recent spate of antisemitic incidents on campus. In March 2020, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of students over an alleged pattern of antisemitism, including instances of swastika graffiti, vandalism at Jewish centers, and harassment of Jewish and pro-Israel students. The complaint was enabled by the Trump administration’s 2019 decision directing the Education Department to include Jewish students in anti-discrimination protections. In September, the school’s student government passed a resolution supporting the Black Lives Matter movement that also included a call to divest from companies that do business with Israel. In November, the university said it would work with Jewish and pro-Israel students to make sure they felt safe at school. Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, director of Illini Chabad, told the Forward he hoped the new dorm would be help students feel safer on campus. “If there’s one place on campus you want to be comfortable, it’s at least where you go to sleep at night,” Tiechtel said.

U of Wisconsin to start academic year on Rosh Hashanah

For more information or a personal guided tour, please contact us. 463 Summer Hill Rd. Madison, CT PART OF THE 2018-19 BEMA CONCERT SERIES www.laurelwood.org 2626203.421.3736 ALBANY AVENUE • WEST HARTFORD • 860.233.9696 14

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

State Journal, Jewish leaders sent a letter expressing their concern back in February to former Gov. Tommy Thompson, currently the interim president of the University of Wisconsin, as well as members of the Board of Regents and the individual university chancellors. The university system’s leadership said they understand the concern but maintain that the calendar is set far in advance and cannot be changed.

U of Kentucky fraternity members greet pledge with Nazi salute (JNS) An anonymous Instagram post by a Jewish college student last week revealed that members of a fraternity at the University of Kentucky greeted a pledge with Nazi salutes. The post was uploaded by the Instagram account “Jewish on Campus,” which shares testimonies from college students across the United States who have faced antisemitism. The anonymous testimony by a Jewish student was posted on April 1 with a tag to the University of Kentucky. “After telling them I was actually Jewish, they continued to do it even more, laughing about it,” went the testimony. The student also noted that he “always noticeably” wears a Star of David necklace and has a tattoo in Hebrew. He said he originally joined the fraternity “because it seems like the only way to make friends.” The university’s Interfraternity Council, the ruling body of 19 of the school’s fraternities, released a statement on Wednesday, about the incident. “We are absolutely disgusted and upset by the behavior of those members,” said the council’s Diversity and Inclusion chair Brandon Brown. “We completely condemn any and all antisemitic, anti-black, antiAsian and anti-brotherhood actions. … Actions, words, thoughts and feelings of that kind do not have a place in our community.” University spokesperson Jay Blanton said that the case has been reported to the Office of Student Conduct, and that the school is taking the issue “very seriously.”

(JNS) The University of Wisconsin is coming under fire from Jewish students, staff and community leaders as the fall semester for its schools is set to start on Sept. 7 or 8, both of which coincide with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Most affected by the start date will be those at the main campus, the University of WisconsinMadison, which has an estimated 4,000 Jewish students as well as Jewish staffers. Classes there are slated to start on Sept. 8, the second day of the New Year. According to a report in the Wisconsin jewishledger.com

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Before Helen Mirren plays Golda Meir, here are 7 other stars who have played Israeli prime ministers BY GABE FRIEDMAN

(JTA) – Just a month after it was announced that the Israeli star Shira Haas would portray Meir in a TV series, The Hollywood Reporter revealed this week that Oscar winner Helen Mirren would portray Israel’s only female prime minister in an upcoming biopic. While Haas, who is best known for her star turn in the miniseries “Unorthodox,” is Jewish, Mirren is not. But she did win international acclaim and the Academy Award for her performance as another historic leading lady: England’s Queen Elizabeth II in 2006’s “The Queen.” It won’t be the first time that Meir has been portrayed in a big production. And here are seven other stars – Jewish and non – who have also played Israeli prime ministers over the years.

Anthony Hopkins Yitzhak Rabin in “Victory at Entebbe” (1976) “Victory at Entebbe,” a TV film that aired on ABC, was the first of three 1970s movies based on the Israeli army’s rescue mission of over 100 hostages from a Ugandan airport in 1976. (FOX PHOTOS/GETTY (Another was made IMAGES) in 2018.) Palestinian terrorists hijacked a plane that was heading from Tel Aviv to Paris and held nearly 250 hostages for a week before Israeli commandos flew in on a July night, killing the Palestinians and dozens of Ugandan soldiers who supported the hijacking. The cast was loaded with big names. Hopkins, then 39 and better known in his native United Kingdom, portrayed Rabin, who was in his first term as prime minister. Richard Dreyfuss played nowPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yoni, who died in the raid; Kirk Douglas and Elizabeth Taylor were a Jewish couple and the parents of a daughter played by Linda Blair; and Burt Lancaster was featured as Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defense minister. The director was Marvin Chomsky, a Jewish Emmy winner and cousin of the famed linguist and political theorist Noam Chomsky.

jewishledger.com

Peter Finch Rabin in “Raid on Entebbe” (1977)

Barry Morse Menachem Begin in “Sadat” (1983)

Simon Russell Beale David Ben-Gurion in “Operation Finale” (2018)

NBC’s TV movie version of the story aired a month later, in January 1977, with far fewer stars in the cast. Still, the movie has gone down as the final film in the acclaimed career of Peter Finch, (REG INNELL/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES) who was the only actor at the time to posthumously win an Academy Award, for his lead role in 1976’s “Network.” (Heath Ledger would be similarly recognized three decades later as a supporting actor in “The Dark Knight.”) Five days after “Raid on Entebbe” premiered, Finch died of a heart attack at age 60.

Morse was an often overlooked English actor who had thousands of credits to his name. The most well-known was a starring role on the 1960s crime drama “The Fugitive.” Here he played Begin, Israel’s sixth PM, in a two-part, four-hour made-for-TV movie about the life and changing political philosophy of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who had been assassinated in 1981, just two years after striking a historic peace deal with Israel. The movie follows Sadat from the Yom Kippur War he helped wage to his peace negotiations with Begin, which led to a treaty in 1979. Egypt banned the film, not appreciating the casting of a Black non-Arab actor, Louis Gossett Jr., as Sadat, in addition to its overall portrayal of the nation’s late leader.

Ingrid Bergman Meir in “A Woman Called Golda” (1982)

Lynn Cohen Meir in “Munich” (2005)

Since the 1980s, Beale has been known as one of the U.K.’s finest theater actors, but he has seamlessly transitioned into Hollywood roles over the past two decades. He’s been in dramas (DAVID M. BENETT/ such as “The Deep Blue GETTY IMAGES) Sea,” “My Week With Marilyn” and “The Death of Stalin.” In 2018 (a year strangely packed with Israeli commando thrillers), Beale played Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, in “Operation Finale.” The film follows the Mossad’s efforts to track down the infamous Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann, who by 1960, the year the film is set, had escaped Europe to hide in Argentina. Ben Kingsley played Eichmann, but the Oscar winner and Beale couldn’t stave off the critics, who panned the film.

The legendary Ingrid Bergman’s last acting role was as Meir in the syndicated TV movie “A Woman Called Golda,” a biopic about her improbable rise to power. The film was released in April; (SCREENSHOT FROM Bergman died of breast YOUTUBE) cancer in August. The following year she was awarded the Emmy for best actress in a miniseries or TV special and a Golden Globe in a similar category. Her daughter Pia Lindstrom accepted the trophies. The Jewish actor Leonard Nimoy also was nominated for an Emmy for his performance as Morris Meyerson, Meir’s husband who died in 1951.

Steven Spielberg’s film “Munich” dramatized (and somewhat exaggerated) the story behind the Mossad’s mission to exact revenge for the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics, in which Palestinian terrorists tortured and killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. Among the starstudded cast (Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds) was Cohen, a lesser-known Jewish actress, as Meir. Cohen also played the recurring character Magda on “Sex and the City” and starred in the recent horror flick “The Vigil,” which features Yiddish and centers on an Orthodox ritual gone wrong.

Lior Ashkenazi Rabin in “7 Days in Entebbe” (2018) This widely criticized version of the Entebbe story focuses on the conflicted experiences of the two Germans who allied with Palestinian terrorists to hijack the Paris-bound plane, played by Rosamund Pike and Daniel Bruhl. Rabin is portrayed here by Ashkenazi, a veteran Israeli actor who in recent years has broken out internationally after being a star for decades in his native country. He played a prominent role in the epic Israeli series “Valley of Tears” about the 1973 Yom Kippur War and streaming on HBO Max. JEWISH LEDGER

APRIL 23, 2021

KOLOT

The Evil Eye Should Not Look Upon You BY BLU BERMAN

Newington 860.333.9032

Willimantic 860.717.9333

2280 Berlin Tpk. Newington, CT

1548 W Main St. Willimantic, CT

(In the MedCare Express plaza-use side entrance)

(Across from Papa’s Pizza)

hello@finefettle.com

newington@finefettle.com

Good Health. Good Condition. Stop by to speak to one of our pharmacists about Connecticut’s Medical Marijuana Program No appointment necessary and consultations are always free

hen I was a new bride, many moons ago, the only superstition I had was avoiding walking under ladders, avoiding black cats, and knocking on a piece of wood. I felt that those icons of the world of charms, omens and the supernatural would be sufficient protection. Of course, if anyone near you sneezes, I never hesitate to quickly say, ”God bless you”. I had heard that if one doesn’t say that, then the devil will be drawn into the body, shortly afterwards. But me? I’m really not superstitious. When I am at the table, if the salt spills over, I’ll give a flick of salt over my shoulder. The French throw a little spilled salt behind them in order to hit the devil in the eye. Never hand a knife to anyone with the blade toward them. Otherwise, it will cut the relationship. Who me? Superstitious. Not really, not in depth, not before I became the daughter-in-law. It seems that Grandma Ida, came from a family of eight. When asked how many in the family, Ida would reply, not one, not two, not three not four and so on. She said she was only protecting the family from the all seeing “Evil Eye”. When the baby in the family was perambulated down main street, many women would come over to the carriage and cluck, over the baby and say, “Oh, what a beautiful baby! So cute, so sweet, what a darling!” His grandmother would quickly spit on his head – pft, pft, pft – you know, to ward off the evil eye. By the time the baby returned home, he’d be soaking wet. What a funny story I’d say to my mother-in-law. But somehow it stayed in my head. When my first child was born, Grandma came over to reconnoiter his room, to make sure that the moonlight did not shine upon the sleeping child. Silly Grandma, I thought. But I moved his crib just a little to a non-moonlit location. But me? No, that’s old wives tales, isn’t it? Pity the poor kids of yesteryear both in the Jewish shtetls in

Europe, and in Sicily and over parts of Italy. They had to hang a small cloth bag of garlic tied with a red ribbon around their necks. You can guess who it was supposed to keep at bay. In the meantime, the poor kid was so odoriferous, that it kept everyone away. About 20 years ago the entertainment queen Madonna discovered the mysteries of the Kabbala. Many others in the world of theater and film were attracted to it. Red strings around the wrist could be seen on their wrists to be ammunition against you know who. Others followed suit, and I imagine the stock on red string quintupled around the world. Did you ever hear of something so preposterous? What’s that sticking up between my bracelet and my watch? Oh that little red string – someone I knew, said “put out your wrist. Soooooo, what could I do? Well, it certainly can’t hurt. And it stays there in the shower and the swimming pool. You never know where that evil fellow will pop up next, do you? And so my mother-in-law Ida taught me well, whenever anyone admires you or your family members – or anything good that you’ve achieved– don’t just stand there and say “thank you.” Stay on guard and in soto voce say, “ken eineh hurra”, because Grandma was our sentinel against the “dark one” who might wish us ill. Nowadays, I wear on a gold chain around my neck, a “chai”, a “chumsah” (the hand of God), a tiny star of David and a miniature blue eye, which is forever scanning the world around me. Preposterous? Stu? id…Mishuga…? Well maybe, but these days you can’t be too careful. Formerly of West Hartford, Charlotte “Blu” Berman has been living in Rockville, Maryland for the past three years. She resides in a kosher, independent living residence. Her time is spent writing, doing artwork and attending many enrichment classes.

Offering:

• Discounts for Senior Citizens, Veterans, and Low-Income Individuals • Huge Savings through our free Fine Fettle Club • Online ordering and more at www.finefettle.com A conversation with a healthcare provider can help you determine whether medical marijuana may be right for you. 16

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

Find us online: jewishledger.com jewishledger.com

THE KOSHER CROSSWORD APRIL 23, 2021 “Heroic Quotes” By: Yoni Glatt

Difficulty Level: Medium

Vol. 93 No. 17 JHL Ledger LLC Publisher Henry M. Zachs Managing Partner

Curbside pick up and local home delivery available!

Leslie Iarusso Associate Publisher Judie Jacobson Editor judiej@jewishledger.com • x3024 Hillary Sarrasin Digital Media Manager hillaryp@jewishledger.com EDITORIAL Stacey Dresner Massachusetts Editor staceyd@jewishledger.com • x3008 Tim Knecht Proofreader

SHABBAT DINNER TRADITIONAL DAIRY LUNCHEON DELI SANDWICH PLATTER DINNER MENU

ADVERTISING Donna Edelstein, Senior Account Executive NonProfit & JHL Ledger LLC Media Marketing donnae@jewishledger.com • x3028 Joyce Cohen, Account Executive joycec@jewishledger.com • (860) 836-9195 Amy Oved, MA Account Executive amyo@jewishledger.com • (860) 841-8607 Trudy Goldstein, Account Executive (860) 573-1575 PRODUCTION Elisa S. Wagner, Creative Director elisaw@jewishledger.com • x3009 Christopher D. Bonito, Graphic Designer chrisb@jewishledger.com ADMINISTRATIVE Judy Yung, Accounting Manager judyy@jewishledger.com • x3016 Howard Meyerowitz, Office Manager howardm@jewishledger.com • x3035 Samuel Neusner, Founder (1929-1960) Rabbi Abraham J. Feldman, CoFounder and Editor (1929-1977) Berthold Gaster, Editor (1977-1992) N. Richard Greenfield, Publisher (1994-2014) PUBLISHER’S STATEMENT Editorial deadline: All public and social announcements must be received by Tuesday 5 p.m. 10 days prior to publication. Advertising deadline: Tuesday noon one week prior to issue. JHL Ledger LLC and Jewish Ledger shall not be liable for failure to publish an ad for typographical error or errors in the publication except to the extent of the cost of the space which the actual error appeared in the first insertion. Publishers reserve the right to refuse advertising for any reason and to alter advertising copy or graphics deemed unacceptable. The publishers cannot warrant, nor assume responsibility for, the legitimacy, reputability or legality of any products or services offered in advertisements in any of its publications. The entire contents of the Jewish Ledger are copyright © 2021. No portion may be reproduced without written permission of the publishers. JHL Ledger LLC also publishes Jewish Ledger MA, All Things Jewish CT, and All Things Jewish MA.

ANSWERS TO APRIL 16 CROSSWORD

jewishledger.com

Across 1. “Freudian” oops 5. Book about the Trojan War 10. They guarded the Ark, in a Spielberg classic 14. Bava ___ 15. He wrote commentary on 14-Across 16. Bit of bridal attire 17. With 21-Across, self-motivating words from Captain America...or one fasting 19. Mystic glow 20. Blake of jazz fame 21. See 17-Across 23. What the Human Torch might say at the start of havdallah

26. Supermarket chain headquartered in Chicago 27. Had some kichel 28. Big letters in gaming often mistaken for laughter? 29. Some navy officers: Abbr. 30. Depended on 32. “Invoice of Israel” author 34. Cautious 35. Words of warning from Bruce Banner...or from Shimon or Levi 42. Yogi Bear co-creator William 43. Geppetto’s pet goldfish 44. Estate measurement 47. HBO competitor 50. Curved Alaskan knife 51. Opioids watchdog org.

52. Name essential to this puzzle 53. The Hulk’s description of Loki...or Eliyahu’s of Baal? 55. Source for the quotes in this puzzle 57. Deep valley 58. “Gotcha” 59. Boasting words from Tony Stark or Tubal-Cain 64. Depend (on) 65. Kosher animal few have eaten 66. Ki follower 67. Ice cream brand that’s “Grand” 68. How Scott Lang might feel before a major mission? 69. ABC show that left many viewers disappointed

Down 1. One way to go downhill 2. Kawhi Leonard’s team, on the scoreboard 3. Israeli mom 4. Fictional land in “The Hunger Games” 5. 1950 Asimov classic 6. Classical, Modern and Late 7. “Who ___ kidding?” 8. Tuna option 9. Not be onboard 10. Israeli but 11. HaMafseket, e.g. 12. Sea scoundrel 13. Won a 18-Down, perhaps 18. Dangerous competition 22. A Bush

23. Ran 24. Spanish for “wolf” 25. First name behind “The Case for Israel” 26. Gossip nugget 31. Link, as smartphone to speaker 33. “Boyz ___ Hood” 34. Place to pasture 36. Adumim of note 37. Mouse ballerina 38. Capped body part 39. Word that aptly rhymes with chug 40. Move, for short 41. “___ Be Surprised” (Irving Berlin song) 44. Be a fan of 45. Called it quits

46. Like how often Purim calls out on Friday 47. War benefits 48. “Woohoo!” 49. Progress 54. “Boy” in a Isaac Bashevis Singer classic 56. Oys partners 57. Aspiring MBA’s exam 60. “The Fountainhead” novelist Rand 61. Long March leader of China 62. Colorado NHL team, in headlines 63. How many a (lame) joke might end

JEWISH LEDGER

APRIL 23, 2021

WHAT’S HAPPENING Jewish organizations are invited to submit their upcoming events to the our What’s Happening section. Events are placed on the Ledger website on Tuesday afternoons. Deadline for submission of calendar items is the previous Tuesday. Send items to: judiej@ jewishledger.com.

TUESDAY, APRIL 20 How digital platforms and spaces can enable hate and bias “Social Media and Extremism” is the focus of a panel discussion hosted by ADL Connecticut on April 20, 12 noon - 1 p.m. The discussion will explore the intersections of extremism, free speech, technology, and the future of public digital discourse. Panelists include Graeme Wood, staff writer at The Atlantic; Susan Benesch, director of The Dangerous Speech Project; Oren Segal, ADL vice presidents of the Center on Extremism; and Lauren Krapt, ADL National Policy Counsel. For more information, email Nora Cohen at ncohen@adl.org. Register at: https://adl. zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_N5-7B2UUS_ aZuVGbKDIRAA Harry Potter in Yiddish, Magic in Mame-Loshn, with Arun Schaechter Viswanath

JCC in Sherman announces line-up for 2021 Great Decisions 2021 Great Decisions, a nation-wide discussion group on U.S. foreign policy and global affairs sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association (FPA) and co-hosted by the JCC in Sherman and The Sherman Library, will begin on April 20, 7 - 8:30 p.m. on Zoom. The 8-session monthly program will run on Tuesdays through November. Each month participants will review and discuss a critical world issue facing America today. Topics for 2021 are: Global Supply Chains and the U.S. National Security; The Future of Persian Gulf Security; Brexit: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead; The Coldest War: Toward a Return to Great Power Competition in the Arctic, China and Africa; The Two Koreas; The World Health Organization’s Response to Covid-19; and, The End of Globalization. Briefing booklets: $20, purchase and pick up at the Sherman Library. Call (860) 3542455 to schedule a pick-up time. Register early to receive a briefing book.

JEWISH LEDGER

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21 “Alternate History of Antisemitism & Fascism in American Culture” Since the 1930s, many American novels, films, TV shows and comic books have explored the possibility that the U.S. might one day embrace fascism. Today pessimistic assessments have saturated American culture as never before. Gavriel Rosenfeld, PhD, Professor of History and director of Judaic Studies at Fairfield University will examine fictitious scenarios of collaboration, racism and antisemitism, on April 21 at 7:30. p.m. FREE. To register, visit ujf.ticketspice.org. Book Talk: Author Iris Krasnow will talk about “Camp Girls” New York Times bestselling author Iris Krasnow will discuss her new book her memoir “Camp Girls: Lessons on Friendship, Courage and Loyalty” on Zoom, April 21 at 10:30 a.m. Hosted by UJA-JCC Greenwich. For more information, visit ujajcc.org or call (203) 552-1818.

THURSDAY, APRIL 22

Arun Schaechter Viswanath will discuss “Harry Potter in Yiddish, Magic in MameLoshn,” on April 20 at 5:30 p.m. Hosted by UConn Judaic Studies. For more information, visit judaicstudies.uconn.edu/upcomingevents/

For information: info@jccinsherman.org, or visit jccinsherman.org/greatdecisions.

“Hava Nagila” – Film Screening and Discussion A screening and discussion of the awardwinning documentary “Hava Nagila” on April 22 at 7 p.m. Follow the story of this infectious party song from the shtetls of Eastern Europe and Ukraine to the Catskills to Greenwich Village to Hollywood in this hilarious and surprisingly deep film. Featuring interviews with Harry Belafonte, Connie Francis, Glen Campbell, Leonard Nimoy, Regina Spektor and more.For more information or to register, visit cbict.org/calendar.

SUNDAY, APRIL 25 Mitzvah Project/Social Action Engagement Fair Temple Sholom in Greenwich will host a virtual fair featuring community organizations currently seeking volunteers, on April 25, 1 - 3 p.m.. Representatives from these organizations will share info about their not-for-profit and how you can get involved. Perfect for volunteers of all ages, including pre b’nai mitzvah students interested in finding an appropriate mitzvah project that matches their interests. Admission is FREE. To register and to receive the Zoom link, contact Lori Baden at lori.baden@templesholom.com.

| APRIL 23, 2021

Making Art About What Matters “Partners in Creation: Making Art About What Matter” with Rabbi Debra Cantor and art instructor Melinda Write will be hosted by B’nai Tikvoh-Sholom in Bloomfield and held virtually on April 25 at 11 a.m. Bring a pencil/ pen and any kind of paper (pencil and paper will, but feel free to bring other art supplies, such as crayons, colored pencils, watercolors or other art supplies). Together, participants will reflect on a short Jewish teaching and relate it to the challenges, uncertainties and opportunities of our own time, and then do some creative writing and expressive art with items easily found around the house. For more information, call (860) 243-3576. Eat, Drink & Connect JTConnect will honor Rabbi Steven Chatinover, Audrey Lichter and Cyral Sheldon at an an evening of inspiration and celebration to benefit JTConnect’s work inspiring the next generation of Jewish leaders, to be held on Zoom, April 25 at 5 p.m. For tickets and more information:, visit jtconnect.org.

MONDAY, APRIL 26 State of Play: The Political Future of the American Jewish Community David Axelrod, political consultant/strategist; CNN senior political commentator former chief strategist and senior advisor to President Obama, will discuss the political future of the American Jewish community at a FREE seminar to be held on Zoom, April 26 at 7:30 p.m. Axelrod’s talk is co-sponsored by the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies at Fairfield University. Registration required at fairfield. edu/bennettprograms. For information: bennettcenter@fairfield.edu or (203) 2544000 x2066. The Jewish Idea of A Perfect World A six-part virtual course that will be held on Mondays, 7:30 - 9 p.m., beginning April 26 that will demystify the Jewish idea of a perfect world and uncover a practical path for reaching it in our lifetime. Hosted by Chabad of Greater Hartford and led by Rabbi Shaya Gopin. For more information, including a course syllabus, and to register, visit chabadhartford.com. $99/includes textbook. Introduction Into Polish-Jewish Genealogy Voices of Hope will host a virtual talk PolishJewish Genealogy by Jeffrey Cymbler on April 26 at 7 p.m. Registration required. For more information: ctvoiceofhope.org or (860) 4705591.

APRIL 28 & MAY 5 A Virtual Historical Tour of Jewish Argentina A two-part virtual historical tour of Jewish Argentina with Claudia Hercman, an Argentinian tour guide and translator. She is also a sculptor and painter, and honors her four grandparents who emigrated from Poland to Argentina. Hosted by Congregation Beth Israel. Session 1, April 28 at 8 p.m. – The Argentinian Jewish community is the 6th largest in the world. The first Jewish communities in Latin America were Sephardic. What happened to those Jews during the Inquisition? Why, if Latin America was part of the Spanish Empire, is the Jewish Community in Argentina 80% Ashkenazi and only 20% Sephardic today? Session 2, Thursday, May 5 at 8pm – Before WWII many Jews came to Argentina. In a country of immigrants, it became a very important and strong community. What happened in Argentina during and after the Holocaust? Who was Perón; what was his policy towards the Jews? Did he really help the Nazis come to Argentina? For information, visit www.cbict.org/ calendar.

THURSDAY, APRIL 29 Manchester Memories: Jewish History Through the Decades Prof. Arnie Dashefsky will moderate a panel discussion on “Manchester Memories: Jewish History Through the Decades,” featuring panelists Will Bayer, Sissy Seader, Rabbi Richard Plavin, and Joel Wind. Co-sponsored by Beth Sholom B’nai Israel and the Manchester Historical Society, the discussion will be held April 29 at 7:30 p.m. Those who have memories of Jewish Manchester to share are invited to submit them when they register To register and receive the Zoom link, visit jhsgh.org/manechestermemries/ Short Story Coffee Break A Zoom discussion of short stories and poetry by Erika Dreifus, Congregation Beth Israel’s Learning Center (Virtual) Writer in Residence, will be held APril 29 at 11 a.m. To register and receive a copy of the next short story and a link to the Zoom discussion, email kbeyard@ cbict.org. Book Discussion at Congregation Beth Israel The Book of the Lost Names by Kristin Harmel will be the focus of a book discussion hosted by Congregation Beth Israel’s Sisterhood on April 29 at 7 p.m. The Book of Lost Names is inspired by a true story that takes place during World War II, about a young woman with a talent for forgery who helps thousands jewishledger.com

APRIL 20 – JUNE 17 of Jewish children flee the Nazis. A social hour will follow. For more information, contact Rabbi Tami Elliott Goodman at ravgoodman@ icloud.com.

Hosted by Voice of Hope, the Zoom event will be held May 4 at 5 p.m. Registration required. For more information: ctvoicesofhope.org or (860) 470-5591.

MONDAY, MAY 2

THURSDAY, MAY 6

Cookbook author Susie Fishbein to headline West Hartford fundraiser

On Zionism, Israel, and Social Justice

World-famous kosher chef Susie Fishbein, author of the Kosher by Design cookbook series will be guest speaker at “Celebrate by Design,” the virtual fundraiser of the Young Israel of West Hartford, to be held Monday, May 2 at 8 p.m. Fishbein has been named one of the 50 most influential Jews by The Forward. She has appeared on dozens of network TV and radio shows, and has been an honored guest at the White House in recognition of National Jewish Heritage Month. At the Young Israel even, Fishbein will discuss her career highlights and prepareo three amazing and tasty courses. For more information, contact David Rosen at davidsrosen.au@gmail.com. To register, visit youngisraelwh.org/celebrate www. youngisraelwh.org/celebrate.

TUESDAY, MAY 4 Tackling Antisemitism and Bigotry UJA-JCC Greenwich will host a free virtual talk by Zach Banner, offensive tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers, on Tuesday, May 4 at 7 p.m. When Banner posted a video on Twitter protesting an antisemitic Instagram post by DeSean Jackson, he became one of the first NFL players to speak out on the issue. Banner’s video quickly drew more than 700,000 views and an outpouring of praise. For more information, visit ujajcc.org. Jason and Paris Rosenthal, co-author of Dear Boy, team up for talk The Israel Cancer Research Fund will host Jason Rosenthal and Paris Rosenthal on Tuesday, May 4, 8 p.m for. “A Journey of Hope,” a live virtual interactive conversation. Guest speakers are Jason Rosenthal and his daughter Paris Rosentahl, the team behind the New York Times bestselling book, Dear Boy. Jason is author of the memoir, My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, an inspiring personal account of life, love, loss and new beginnings. Paris is the co-author of the #1 New York Times best-seller Dear Girl, a collaboration with her late mother, Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She also wrote Dear Baby, Dear Teacher, and Project 1,2,3. For information: beth_belkin@emus.gov.it. Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s classroom Ariel Burger, author of Witness: Lessons From Elie Wiesel’s Classroom, will talk about his experiences as Elie Wiesel’s teaching assistant. jewishledger.com

Prof. Gil Troy, McGill University will discuss “On Zionism, Israel and Social Justice,” on Zoom, May 6 at 7:30 p.m. The lecture is part o ALEPH: The Institute of Jewish Ideas, a community-wide Jewish learning initiative co-sponsored by the Mandell JCC and UConn Judaic Studies. Troy’s lecture will analyze the central theme in Zionism ideology, assessing what Israel has achieved – and where it has fallen short – in creating a nation that fulfills the Torah’s commandment to seek justice. For more information, visit judaicstudies.uconn. edu or mandelljcc.org.

SUNDAY, MAY 16 & MONDAY, MAY 17 Tikkun Leil Shavuot A virtual annual celebration of Shavuot, co-sponsored by Beth Tikvoh-Sholom and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, will be held May 16 and 17 at noon. Participation is FREE. For more information, call (860) 243-3576.

SUNDAY, MAY 23 BTS FIlm Schmooze: “Hava Nagila (The Movie)” First, watch the film “Hava Nagila (The Movie),” a fun and fascinating journey through history, mystery and meaning of this great Jewish standard, featuring interviews with Harry Belafonte, Leonard Nimoy, Connie Francis, Glen Campbell, Regina Spektor and more (available on Amazon Prime, iTunes and Google Play). Then join a virtual discussion of the film on May 23 at 7 p.m., led by Shari J. Cantor, who has an MA in Judaic Studies and has danced the hora at a wedding a time or two. For more information, call (860) 2433576.

THURSDAY, JUNE 17 Virtual Spring Celebration honoring Rabbi Herbert Brockman Rabbi Herbert Brockman, rabbi emeritus at Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden, will be honored at a virtual celebration hosted by Jewish Family Services of Greater New Haven on June 17 at 7 p.m. The evening will also include a look at the impact of JFS of Greater New Haven on the community. For more info: (203) 389-5599 x110, jfsnh.org.

TORAHPortion Tazriya Metzora

BY RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB

e never returned phone calls. He certainly never returned e-mails. He rarely smiled. He had very sophisticated tastes in wine and fine liquor. He had the vocabulary of a sailor and seemed to be acquainted with the profanities of every known language. Don’t get me wrong. He had many fine qualities, and considered himself to be religious, even pious. “After all,” he would say, “I am careful that the meals that I order are always absolutely kosher. The Torah doesn’t prohibit wine, nor does it require us to refrain from delicious food, and it places no limits on the quantity of food that we eat.” He would expound upon the fact that he found nothing in the Torah requiring one to return phone calls or e-mails. He even insisted that, at least in the written Torah, he found no objection to the use of vulgar language. I knew this person, let’s call him Reuben, for nearly 50 years. I was associated with him in various capacities, and often worked with him on charity projects. He was generous by almost all standards. Reuben died a few months ago. One of his close business associates, who knew him as a religious Jew, eulogized him as a person who exhibited holiness. “He was no saint,” proclaimed this associate, “but from my perspective as an irreligious person, Reuben was a holy man.” Now, it is common, and even to some extent permissible, to exaggerate the merits of the deceased during a eulogy for him. But there was something about the adjective “holy” that I simply could not accept and feel compelled to protest. What does it mean to be holy? Let us examine a verse at the beginning of the second of this week’s double-Torah portions, Acharei Mot and Kedoshim (Exodus 16:1-20:27). The verse reads: “Ye shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.” The two greatest commentators on the Bible in the Jewish tradition, Rashi and Ramban (Nachmanides), enunciate definitions of “holiness.” Rashi insists that to be holy means to be separate, distant, from various sinful exploits, especially sexual promiscuity. He says that the Hebrew words, “kedoshim tihyu, ye shall be holy,” are best understood as, “perushim tihyu, ye shall keep a distance.” Ramban, however, takes issue with Rashi, with great courtesy and reverence. Ramban’s definition of holiness expresses

one of his most basic teachings, and in my opinion, one of the perspectives of Judaism which is often forgotten and needs to be re-emphasized from time to time. Ramban writes that there is more to being holy than merely to abide by the rules and regulations of the Torah. Yes, he writes, the Torah does not forbid gluttony, and it is quite possible to be a glutton yet not violate any of the laws of kashrut. True, he continues, one can use all manner of vulgar language yet violate no explicit biblical command. A man can observe every detail of the Torah’s laws about family purity yet not be a loving husband. Ramban coins a phrase: “Naval bereshut hatorah,” which can be translated either as, “a knave within the bounds of Torah,” or alternatively, “a knave with the Torah’s permission.” Holiness, for Ramban, consists of all those behaviors which are to be expected from a decent human being, even if those behaviors are not explicitly prescribed by the Torah. Reuben had his positive qualities and I cannot take it upon myself to condemn him. But he was not holy. Indeed, he missed the point about what the Jewish religion was all about. Our religion is indeed about obedience and compliance to a set of laws–some ordained by God and some instituted by wise and holy men–but that is not all that it is about. It is about attitudes, and it is about relationships. It is about ethical behaviors which need not be prescribed in the form of rules, but is to be expected of every reasonable human being. Some would explain Ramban’s thesis in terms of the age-old distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. That is certainly one way of understanding it. Our daily prayer book contains the following verse in Isaiah 59:21: “This is my covenant with them says the Lord: My spirit which is upon you, and the words I have placed in your mouth, shall not depart from you or your children or your children’s children...” Clearly, the Almighty’s covenant has two components: His spirit and His words. Holiness consists of adherence to them both. Ramban teaches us that holiness is about that spirit. The Torah itself, by addressing the commandment “kedoshim tiheyu, be holy” to all of us, is teaching us that we are all capable of achieving that spirit. We are expected to be a goy kadosh, a holy people. Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is executive vice president, emeritus of the Orthodox Union.

JEWISH LEDGER

APRIL 23, 2021

OBITUARIES COHEN William B. Cohen, 91, died April 9. He was the widower of Barbara Cohen. Born in New Haven, he was the son of Ben and Ida Cohen. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean conflict. He is survived by his sister, Vera Lee; his children, Jay and Jane Cohen, and Beth and Jon Bressman; his grandchildren, Lauren and Bailey Bressman, and Annie and Andy Cohen; his sister-in-law Sandee Solomon; and numerous nieces and nephews. He was also predeceased by his sisters, Anne Baker and Edith Schwartz. GILMAN Celia (Silverstein) Gilman, 74, of Avon, formerly of Bloomfield, died April 11. Born in Hartford, she was the daughter of Joseph and Yetta (Toyen) Silverstein. She is survived by her children, Gayle Santee of Wethersfield and Scott Gilman of Seattle, Wash.; her grandchildren, Jacob Newman, Shayna Gilman, Brianna Gilman and Izzy Gilman; her sisters, Ruth Jackson of Bloomfield and Toby Goldstein and her husband Bernard Goldstein of Texas; four nephews, and many grand-nieces and nephews. She was also predeceased by her brother-in-law, Harold Jackson.

GLASER Sonya Saxe Glaser, formerly of Hamden and Delray Beach, Fla., died April 3. She was the widow of Herbert A. Saxe and William Glaser. Born in Baltimore, and raised in Clarksburg, West Virginia and Chester, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of the late Reba and Maurice Caplan. She was also predeceased by her brother. She is survived by her daughters, Lauri Saxe Sila and her husband Kyle, and Melissa Saxe Rich and her husband Bruce; four grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. KAHN Sherman (Zezi) Kahn, 86, of Hamden, died April 10. Born in New Haven, he was the son of the late Nathan and Ruth (Seigelevitch) Kahn. He is survived by his children, Scott Kahn of Waterbury, and Elizabeth Kahn Alexander and her husband Mark Alexander) of Cheshire; and his grandchildren, Benjamin, Zachary and Samantha Alexander. He was the brother of the late Aaron Kahn of Hamden and Alan Kahn of New Haven. MYRUN Sophie Myrun, 103, of Washington, D.C., formerly of Hartford and West Hartford,

Lichtenstein Company Maker of MONUMENTS for 4 Generations

323 Washington Ave., Hamden AT WHITNEY AVE. (opposite K of C Hall)

CALL 1.800.852.8865 • 203.287.1593 • nolanshamdenmonumentco.com

S.L. ZOCCO MEMORIALS, INC. MONUMENTS CEMETERY LETTERING BRONZE & GRANITE MARKERS 804 BLUE HILLS AVE.

860.242.7371

BLOOMFIELD, CT 06002

860.242.5881

SERVING ALL FAITHS IN ALL CEMETERIES

zoccomemorials.net

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

died April 9. She was the widow of Maurice Myrun. She was born in Hartford. She was also predeceased by her son and her daughter, Bonnie Milstein, and her sonin-law Juan Villamarin. She is survived by her daughter Judy Villamarin; her grandchildren, Joann Villamarin and her husband Joseph Cutter of Colorado, and Jake Milstein and his wife Jennifer Arterburn of Seattle, Wash.; her greatgrandchildren, Willow and Bo Milstein, Jasmine Cutter and her partner Carson Butler, and Noah Villamarin-Cutter and his fiancée Flora Liu; and many nieces and nephews. MEYERS Jodi A. Meyers, 59, of New Haven, died April 8. Born in Stamford and raised in Longmeadow, Mass., she was the daughter of Louis ‘Kris’ Meyers and the late Robert Meyers. In addition to her mother, she is survived by her sister Ellen Meyers; her sister-in-law Kim Anno; her nephew Jack Anno-Meyers; her stepmother Sarah Meyers; and her half brothers David and Alex Meyers. RAGO Fredda Lynn (Boehm) Rago, 65, of Wethersfield, died April 8. She was the wife of Robert J. Rago. Born in Boston, and raised in Dorchester, Mass., later moving to Mattapan, she was the daughter of the late Edna (Bloom) Boehm and the late Salo Boehm. In addition to her husband,

she is survived by her sons, Michael Elliott and Joseph Robert; her sister Charlotte Lindsay; her brothers, Mitchell Boehm and his wife Elisa Gilner, and Leonard Boehm and his fiance Norma Farinha; her aunt Irma Bloom; and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews, including her cousin Judith (Auntie Judy) Weiner, 102, of Canton, Mass. She was also predeceased by her uncles Herbert, Frederick and Daniel Bloom, and Karl Boehm. WEINTRAUB David Weintraub, 96, of West Hartford died March 18. He was the widower Shirley Weintraub. He was the son of the late Anna and Isaac Weintraub. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, serving in Kodiak , Alaska. He was a founding member of Beth El Temple in West Hartford. He is survived by his children, Susan (Sue) Weintraub and her fiancé, Che Cartafalsa, Marleen (Leni) Weintraub, and Jay Weintraub and his wife Sandra; his grandchildren, Jeffrey Weintraub and his partner Erin Hutchins, and Julie Carlson and her husband Aaron; his great-grandchildren, Caleb and Kai; and many nieces and nephews. He was also predeceased by his in-laws, Jenny and Morris Bufferd; his brothers, Abraham (Al) Weintraub and his wife Sonia, Harry Weintraub and his wife Sylvia, and Louis (Lou) Weintraub and his wife Lillian; and his brother-and sister-in-law, Mandell and Patricia Bufferd.

Honor the memory of your loved one... Call 860.231.2424 x3028 to place your memorial in the Ledger.

AlwAys PlAcing your FAmily First

CARMON FUNERAL HOMES Owned & Operated by the Carmon Family

Serving families of all faiths and cultures for over 65 years, strictly adhering to valued traditions and rituals. Our locations in the Farmington Valley, Hartford and Tolland counties offer exceptional, caring service at affordable prices.

888.688.8475

www.carmonfuneralhome.com jewishledger.com

BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY COLLEGE FINANCIAL AID

Coming Up Short?

Let us help you through the long and complicated process of filing for college financial aid. With 20+ years experience, and our proven record, we will: • Increase your eligibility for aid • Complete your financial aid forms • Work with you through the entire financial aid process

We’re your #1 College Financial Aid Resource

Call for a FREE Consult 800.669.9111 or 860.683.2320

COMPUTER TECH

Innovate|Simplify

Professional IT Consulting Upgrade home|office equipment Networking Home Theater Website Design Photo and Music Consolidation Security Cameras

860.301.7019 • searobintech.com

ENERGY

HOME CARE

For maintenance on your fuel oil or natural gas heating or cooling system, call:

We offer quality, loving in-home care services for families like yours.

S-1 303418 • HOD 0000962

Office: 860.728.5431 • Cell: 860-558-5948 40 Woodland Street (Rear), Hartford, CT 06105 www.deitchenergy.com

CALL US FOR OUR FUEL PRICES SERVING CONNECTICUT SINCE 1910

MATH TUTOR

Specializing in Dementia/Alzheimer’s INDEPENDENCE • COMPANIONSHIP • TRANSPORTATION LIVE-IN CARE • MEAL PREPARATION • HOME MAKING NURSING ASSISTANT CARE • SPECIAL CARE

Marcia Loving Care

Home Care Agency 860.461.0556 • marcialovingcare.com

23 Bidwell St., East Hartford, CT • Open Mon.-Fri. 9-5

DRUM LESSONS

PRIVATE DRUM INSTRUCTION All ages and levels

CHRIS BONITO 860.748.0004 BA Music Performance 20+ years private instruction References available

MASONRY

D & M MASONRY Chimney Repair Specialist

CELLARS WATERPROOFED / PATIOS / WALKS New • Bluestone • Rebuild Brick • Pointing • Concrete Foundation Cracks Repaired Servicing All Your Masonry Needs Since 1994 Service • Reasonable Rates • Free Estimates • Fully Insured

860.930.2536 • Dan Messina ROOFING

PEST CONTROL

Online Math Tutoring College and High School Prep Teacher Praxis Certification Medical calculations (RN, LPN)

WITH ZAMAN ROOFING

You’re in Good Hands

Contact: mathtutordamoreonline@gmail.com

Emilio N. Polce 860.432.9444 • Fax 860.432.7559 109 Strawberry Lane • Manchester, CT epolce@ecochoicepest.com ecochoicepest.com

SNOW REMOVAL

TAX PREPARATION

One-on-one sessions $75 Per Hour

SNOW West Hartford Only

860.666.9999 naturalchoicelawncare.com jewishledger.com

Daniel S. Levine, CPA Certified Public Accountant

Individual and Business Tax Preparaion Low Reasonable Rates

860.729.6036

email: dansethlev@cox.net Willing to travel to residence

n Roof Replacements n Roof Repairs n Gutters n Exterior Carpentry

Call to schedule your free estimate today.

860.977.8042

www.zamanroofing.com

WEB SOLUTIONS

Web Design • SEO • Branding • Marketing UX/UI Design • Social Media Management E-Commerce • Graphic Design • Videography

860.595.2018 westhartfordwebsolutions.com JEWISH LEDGER

APRIL 23, 2021

CLASSIFIED

LOOK for these MAGAZINES in your INBOX!

To Place An Ad: PH: 860.231.2424 x3035 • Fax: 860.231.2485 Email: howardm@jewishledger.com

The Jewish Ledger assumes no responsibility for the product and services advertised

TRENDING

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Needed, a live-in caregiver for an elderly female home owner in Bloomfield. Duties include trash out, availability at night in case of emergency - attached apartment provided at reduced rent. Applicant must submit 3 references. Call Vivian at 860301-2066.

CELEBRATIONS • JUNE SENIOR LIVING • AUG.

MARCH JUNE SEPTEMBER NOVEMBER

BLACK FRIDAY GIFT GUIDE: NOVEMBER

Kosher NEW ENGLAND

MARCH

CNA - Five or Seven Days - Live In - Seventeen Years Experience - References Available - 860938-1476. Mary and Alex Housecleaning. We have experience and references. We are an insured company. Please call or Txt for a free quote. 860-328-1757 or servicesam.llc@gmail.com. NURSE SEEKING POSITION: GETTING BETTER TOGETHER! Adult care only. Live-in, days or nights and weekends. Responsible and dedicated caregiver with medical education. Leave message: 860229-2038 No Text or Email. Caregiver - Willing to care for your loved ones overnight - Excellent local references Avoid nursing home or hospital in light of Covid 19. Call 860550-0483. Tricia’s Cleaning Service - Residential & Commercial Detailed cleaning for Home & Office - For Free Quote call 860477-8636. Polish certified nursing assistant. Twenty years experience in hospitals, nursing homes and private home settings looking to help your loved ones. Please call 860-803-6007. Mikael Poreshi - Remodeling & Painting - 860-978-2505 - miki. pori87@gmail.com.

All Things

JEWISH

CNA - 8 Years Experience Reliable - Own Car - Live-in 24/7 - Negotiable Rates - Please call Tina 860-461-8692.

CONNECTICUT September

Compassionate Elder Companion - Driver & Cook Beth: alifeofplantsandart@gmail. com.

MASSACHUSETTS December For more information on advertising in these magazines, call Donna 860.833.0839 or DonnaE@jewishledger.com 22

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

P.C.A. - HHA Caregiver - 17 Years Experience - Available Live In or Live Out - Five Days a Week - Car Available - Have References - Please Call K.B. 860-796-8468.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Nurse (LPN, Male). 2 Years Experience in long term care. 4 Years Home Care as CNA and Nurse. Seeks Private duty. Reliable, honest, hardworking. 860-656-8280.

CHAUFFEUR, WEST HARTFORD will drive you to New York, Boston, New England tri-state area. Reasonable rates. References. Call Jeff 860-7124115.

Home Health Aide - Two Years Experience - Reliable - Livein seven days. References available, negotiable rates. Call Kwasi 774-253-5479.

FOR SALE OR SEASONAL RENTAL

Driver available for shopping & errands in the greater Hartford area. Reasonable rates, senior discount and references available. Call Ira 860-849-0999. Caregiver looking for full time live-in job - HHA/Precursor CNA - 12 Years experience - Friendly, outgoing, dependable - Please call Janet at 412-527-9285. CNA with 25 years experience, reliable car, live-in or hourly. References available, and negotiable rates. Call Sandy 860-460-3051.

Two bedroom, two bath villa in Boynton Beach. Available immediately. $2800 monthly for winter season plus utilities. Community pool, tennis and pickleball courts 561-632-6662. WANTED TO BUY

Third Generation Jeweler - Gold & Diamond Buyer - Is Buying All Gold Jewelry - Sterling Silver Flatware Sets - Diamonds Over 2 Carats - Fast Payment Contact - mitchellrosin@gmail. com. Collector looking to purchase coins and currency, silver, copper, and gold. No collection is too small. Will travel. Call 860951-5191 paprfred@aol.com.

Farmington Valley Jewish Congregation – Emek Shalom, a warm, vibrant, inclusive Reform synagogue in Simsbury, CT is seeking Sunday morning and/or Wednesday afternoon Judaica and Hebrew teaching staff for the 2021-2022 school year. We are looking for energetic, creative individuals who can help young people build a strong sense of Jewish identity and commitment to Jewish life. Opportunities for teaching in grades kindergarten through seventh available. Must be eager to work in a collaborative environment. An ideal candidate will be a motivated individual with a passion for encouraging and inspiring students to love learning and Judaism. Please submit your resume for consideration to school@fvjc.org.

Have something to sell? Have something to rent? Have a service to promote? Reach our highly qualified readers by placing your display classified ad in our digital issue with a LIVE link to your website!

Contact Leslie 860.231.2424 or leslie@jewishledger.com jewishledger.com

CT SYNAGOGUE DIRECTORY To join our synagogue directories, contact Howard Meyerowitz at (860) 231-2424 x3035 or howardm@jewishledger.com. BLOOMFIELD B’nai Tikvoh-Sholom/ Neshama Center for Lifelong Learning Conservative Rabbi Debra Cantor (860) 243-3576 office@BTSonline.org www.btsonline.org BRIDGEPORT Congregation B’nai Israel Reform Rabbi Evan Schultz (203) 336-1858 info@cbibpt.org www.cbibpt.org Congregation Rodeph Sholom Conservative (203) 334-0159 Rabbi Richard Eisenberg, Cantor Niema Hirsch info@rodephsholom.com www.rodephsholom.com CHESHIRE Temple Beth David Reform Rabbi Micah Ellenson (203) 272-0037 office@TBDCheshire.org www.TBDCheshire.org CHESTER Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek Reform Rabbi Marci Bellows (860) 526-8920 rabbibellows@cbsrz.org www.cbsrz.org

COLCHESTER Congregation Ahavath Achim Conservative Rabbi Kenneth Alter (860) 537-2809 secretary@congregationahavathachim.org

Temple Sholom Conservative Rabbi Mitchell M. Hurvitz Rabbi Kevin Peters Cantor Sandy Bernstein (203) 869-7191 info@templesholom.com www.templesholom.com

EAST HARTFORD Temple Beth Tefilah Conservative Rabbi Yisroel Snyder (860) 569-0670 templebetht@yahoo.com

HAMDEN Temple Beth Sholom Conservative Rabbi Benjamin Edidin Scolnic (203) 288-7748 tbsoffice@tbshamden.com www.tbshamden.com

FAIRFIELD Congregation Ahavath Achim Orthodox (203) 372-6529 office@ahavathachim.org www.ahavathachim.org Congregation Beth El, Fairfield Conservative Rabbi Marcelo Kormis (203) 374-5544 office@bethelfairfield.org www.bethelfairfield.org GLASTONBURY Congregation Kol Haverim Reform Rabbi Dr. Kari Tuling (860) 633-3966 office@kolhaverim.org www.kolhaverim.org GREENWICH Greenwich Reform Synagogue Reform Rabbi Jordie Gerson (203) 629-0018 hadaselias@grs.org www.grs.org

MADISON Temple Beth Tikvah Reform Rabbi Stacy Offner (203) 245-7028 office@tbtshoreline.org www.tbtshoreline.org MANCHESTER Beth Sholom B’nai Israel Conservative Rabbi Randall Konigsburg (860) 643-9563 Rabbenu@myshul.org programming@myshul.org www.myshul.org MIDDLETOWN Adath Israel Conservative Rabbi Nelly Altenburger (860) 346-4709 office@adathisraelct.org www.adathisraelct.org

Paid Advertisers

NEW HAVEN The Towers at Tower Lane Conservative Ruth Greenblatt, Spiritual Leader Sarah Moskowitz, Spiritual Leader (203) 772-1816 rebecca@towerlane.org www.towerlane.org Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel Conservative Rabbi Jon-Jay Tilsen (203) 389-2108 office@BEKI.org www.BEKI.org Orchard Street ShulCongregation Beth Israel Orthodox Rabbi Mendy Hecht 203-776-1468 www.orchardstreetshul.org NEW LONDON Ahavath Chesed Synagogue Orthodox Rabbi Avrohom Sternberg 860-442-3234 Ahavath.chesed@att.net Congregation Beth El Conservative Rabbi Earl Kideckel (860) 442-0418 office@bethel-nl.org www.bethel-nl.org NEWINGTON Temple Sinai Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Bennett (860) 561-1055 templesinaict@gmail.com www.sinaict.org NEWTOWN Congregation Adath Israel Conservative Rabbi Barukh Schectman (203) 426-5188 office@congadathisrael.org www.congadathisrael.org

NORWALK Beth Israel Synagogue – Chabad of Westport/ Norwalk Orthodox-Chabad Rabbi Yehoshua S. Hecht (203) 866-0534 info@bethisraelchabad.org bethisraelchabad.org

jewishledger.com

Temple Shalom Reform Rabbi Cantor Shirah Sklar (203) 866-0148 admin@templeshalomweb.org www.templeshalomweb.org ORANGE Chabad of Orange/ Woodbridge Chabad Rabbi Sheya Hecht (203) 795-5261 info@chabadow.org www.chabadow.org Congregation Or Shalom Conservative Rabbi Alvin Wainhaus (203) 799-2341 info@orshalomct.org www.orshalomct.org SIMSBURY Chabad of the Farmington Valley Chabad Rabbi Mendel Samuels (860) 658-4903 chabadsimsbury@gmail.com www.chabadotvalley.org Farmington Valley Jewish Congregation, Emek Shalom Reform Rabbi Rebekah Goldman Mag (860) 658-1075 admin@fvjc.org www.fvjc.org SOUTH WINDSOR Temple Beth Hillel of South Windsor Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Glickman (860) 282-8466 tbhrabbi@gmail.com www.tbhsw.org

WALLINGFORD Beth Israel Synagogue Conservative Rabbi Bruce Alpert (203) 269-5983 info@bethisraelwallingford. org www.bethisraelwallingford. org WASHINGTON Greater Washington Coalition for Jewish Life Rabbi James Greene (860) 868-2434 jewishlifect@gmail.com www.jewishlife.org WATERFORD Temple Emanu - El Reform Rabbi Marc Ekstrand Rabbi Emeritus Aaron Rosenberg (860) 443-3005 office@tewaterfrord.org www.tewaterford.org WEST HARTFORD Beth David Synagogue Orthodox Rabbi Yitzchok Adler (860) 236-1241 office@bethdavidwh.org www.bethdavidwh.org Beth El Temple Conservative Rabbi James Rosen Rabbi Ilana Garber (860) 233-9696 hsowalsky@bethelwh.org www.bethelwesthartford.org Chabad House of Greater Hartford Rabbi Joseph Gopin Rabbi Shaya Gopin, Director of Education (860) 232-1116 info@chabadhartford.com www.chabadhartford.com

SOUTHINGTON Gishrei Shalom Jewish Congregation Reform Rabbi Alana Wasserman (860) 276-9113 President@gsjc.org www.gsjc.org TRUMBULL Congregation B’nai Torah Conservative Rabbi Colin Brodie (203) 268-6940 office@bnaitorahct.org www.bnaitorahct.org

Congregation Beth Israel Reform Rabbi Michael Pincus Rabbi Andi Fliegel Cantor Stephanie Kupfer (860) 233-8215 bethisrael@cbict.org www.cbict.org Congregation P’nai Or Jewish Renewal Shabbat Services Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener (860) 561-5905 pnaiorct@gmail.com www.jewishrenewalct.org

JEWISH LEDGER

Kehilat Chaverim of Greater Hartford Chavurah Adm. - Nancy Malley (860) 951-6877 mnmalley@yahoo.com www.kehilatchaverim.org The Emanuel Synagogue Conservative Rabbi David J. Small (860) 236-1275 communications@emanuelsynagogue.org www.emanuelsynagogue.org United Synagogues of Greater Hartford Orthodox Rabbi Eli Ostrozynsk i synagogue voice mail (860) 586-8067 Rabbi’s mobile (718) 6794446 ostro770@hotmail.com www.usgh.org Young Israel of West Hartford Orthodox Rabbi Tuvia Brander (860) 233-3084 info@youngisraelwh.org www.youngisraelwh.org WESTPORT Temple Israel Reform Rabbi Michael S. Friedman, Senior Rabbi Rabbi Danny M. Moss, Associate Rabbi Rabbi Elana Nemitoff-Bresler, Rabbi Educator (203) 227-1293 info@tiwestport.org www.tiwestport.org WETHERSFIELD Temple Beth Torah Unaffiliated Rabbi Seth Riemer (860) 828-3377 tbt.w.ct@gmail.com templebethtorahwethersfield. org WOODBRIDGE Congregation B’nai Jacob Conservative Rabbi Rona Shapiro (203) 389-2111 info@bnaijacob.org www.bnaijacob.org

APRIL 23, 2021

Crown Market

2471 Albany Ave | West Hartford, CT | 860.236.1965

www.thecrownmarket.com

Blending tradition and excellence for nearly 80 years.

New Promotions And Sales Coming Soon! Available Only Through Your Bonus Bucks Account! In Order For Us To Notify You Of Custom-Curated Sales and Coupons Just For YOU, We Need Your Email Address!

Is YOUR Bonus Bucks Account Up To Date? Need to update your account? Email info@thecrownmarket.com and put Bonus Bucks in the subject line and in the email give us your Bonus Bucks telephone number and we’ll update it for you! Need to register? thecrownmarket.com and click right on Bonus Bucks logo! 24

JEWISH LEDGER

| APRIL 23, 2021

jewishledger.com