CT Jewish Ledger • May 28, 2021 • 17 Sivan 5781

Friday, May 28, 2021 17 Sivan 5781 Vol. 93 | No. 22 | ©2021 $1.00 | jewishledger.com

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INSIDE

this week

CONNECTICUT JEWISH LEDGER | SINCE 1929 | MAY 28, 2021 | 17 SIVAN 5781

8 Briefs

16 Around Connecticut

17 Crossword

18 Torah Portion

19 What’s Happening

20

The Ledger Scoreboard................. 5 When campers at Ramah Sports Academy in Cheshire visit the infirmary this summer, they may get more than Band-Aids from Dr. John Frank. They may hear stories about the Jewish doctor’s experience playing for two NFL Super Bowl teams.

CAMPUS NEWS................................................................................................................5 One year since antisemitic vandalism was found at the campus Hillel, the Jewish community still feels afraid of rising anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment at UMass Amherst grows

Authors Corner...............................11 Rafael Medoff’s fascinating new study, The Rabbi of Buchenwald, is at once a biography of Rabbi Herschel Schacter and a history of postwar American Jewry, viewed through the lens of a man who left an indelible imprint on American Jewry.

OPINION.............................................10 In 1941, the Farhud Pogrom in Baghdad and Basra left more than 180 Jews dead and hundreds more wounded and raped, paving the way for the dissolution of the Iraqi Jewish community. The parallel between Farhud and the recent riots is unsettling.

Obituaries

21 Business and Professional Directory

22 Classified

Surviving Camp..............................18 A new unaffiliated summer camp aiming to prepare Orthodox Jewish yeshiva boys and girls for what it calls the “political, environmental and economic” changes to come, wont’t accept kids who are COVID vaccinated.

CANDLE LIGHTING ON THE COVER:

For the past several weeks, Jews across the United States have been attacked because of the fighting in Israel and Gaza. As footage of attacks spreads online, American Jews say they’re feeling a renewed anxiety around identifying themselves publicly.

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THE LEDGER SCOREBOARD

Former 49er goes to Jewish summer camp in Cheshire

BY HOWARD BLAS

(JNS) When campers at Ramah Sports Academy in Cheshire, visit the infirmary this summer, they will get more than BandAids, throat lozenges and TLC from Dr. John Frank. They may also hear stories from the nice Jewish boy who began his medical studies while playing tight end with Joe Montana on two NFL Super Bowl San Francisco 49ers teams from 1984 to 1989.

Campers may also learn that Dr. Frank was a founder of the Israel bobsled team.

Adam Benson and Graham Parker of New York City were thrilled when they learned their football-loving son, who is attending Ramah Sports Academy for the first time, would cross paths with Frank.

Adam reports, “Max lives for football, and we think it is awesome that Max will be cared for by a camp doctor who is also a former NFL player.”

Camp director Rabbi Dave Levy could not be happier with Frank joining his staff this summer. “I was speaking with a pediatrician from Columbus, Ohio, whose two sons go to camp, and he said, by the way, I have a friend who might be up for

coming to camp.” Frank, who splits his time between his practice in New York and his home in Columbus, is a boardcertified otolaryngologist (ear, nose and throat doctor), as well as a diplomate of the American Board of Hair Restoration Surgery. He has treated more than 10,000 patients for hair loss and performed more than 2,500 hair transplants.

This summer, Frank, 59, will be attending camp along with his 12-year-old son, spending a week taking care of cuts and sprains, as well as oversee COVID-19 protocols. He will also coach flag football and share his wealth of stories about being a member of the NFL, sharing the importance of teamwork and his life as an observant Jew. “I am excited to have him as a camp doctor and to use his football experience to create a positive experience for campers,” says Levy. “He will lead a multi-day flagfootball experience and talk with the camp divisions about his NFL experiences, including what it was like being on a historic team in the 1980s and being Jewish

JOHN FRANK AND HIS FAMILY.

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CAMPUS NEWS Anti-Israel and antiJewish sentiment on at UMass Amherst grows

A

BY STACEY DRESNER

Frank grew up in Pittsburgh, attended Hebrew school and celebrated his bar mitzvah at Beth El Congregation of the South Hills. He reports, “I was into and not into Hebrew school, but was very much into learning for the bar mitzvah.”

He refers to his father, Alan, as “a celebrated athlete and Pittsburgh Jewish sports legend,” saying he “was a fantastic basketball player in college at Carnegie Tech,” which later became Carnegie Mellon University, and “a strong legacy to uphold.”

When it came time for John to become involved with sports, his mother was lukewarm at best with his desire to play football. His parents and grandparents insisted on examining his peewee football equipment to ensure they provided adequate protection. “I think my mother was terrified by the whole experience,” he recalls.

At every stage of Frank’s sports career, he was aware of just how good an athlete his father was. He feels his father “had it” innately, while he was “only an average football player until my senior year of high school. It just seemed to click.”

Frank attended Ohio State University, majored in chemistry and published academic papers while still an undergraduate. He always planned on attending medical school, even while playing football for the prestigious Ohio State football team.

The starting tight end at Ohio State from 1981 to 83, as well as a two-time Academic All-American, he caught more passes than any other tight end in the school’s history; became the team’s most valuable player; and was selected as a member of the All-

MHERST, Massachusetts – When Noam Borensztajn began attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst two years ago, he was looking forward to having interesting and thoughtful discussions with people who have different opinions on different subjects.

But he has found that having thoughtful conversations about Israel and antisemitism hasn’t been that easy.

“I really thought I would come to college and people would be open and you know, empathetic, and it’s just not the case,” Borensztajn said.

Last month Borensztajn, now president of the Student Alliance for Israel (SAFI) and fellow student Ben Alvarez Dobrusin wrote a letter to UMass’s Daily Collegian to reflect on the atmosphere at UMass one year after the word “Palestine” was spraypainted on the UMass Hillel building on Holocaust Remembrance Day. “The rising tides of hate on college campuses and in society must be addressed,” they said in the letter. “One year since the vandalism at Hillel, the Jewish community at UMass still feels afraid of rising antisemitism. While we greatly appreciate the university administration speaking out against this hatred, we need tangible actions to help Jewish students feel safe.”

Just one week after their letter was published, messages like “From the River 2 the Sea” – a slogan known to be a call for the destruction of Israel – as well as “Palestine will be free” were spray-painted on a tunnel on campus.

StopAntisemitism.org posted photos and a video of graffiti found inside and outside of the South Tunnel student walkway. In both places, the slogan was accompanied by a drawing of the Palestinian flag.

StopAntisemitism.org said “dozens” of Jewish students at the university contacted them “out of safety concerns”

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in the NFL, and about whether it is worth the risk of playing football in its current form. I am excited to have the whole package; he is the embodiment of what our camp is about – Jewish life, sports and bringing those two things together!”

‘A strong legacy to uphold’

JEWISH LEDGER | MAY 28, 2021

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UMass CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

after seeing the graffiti.

The graffiti was painted over and the vandalism is being investigated, according to UMass administration.

UMass Hillel posted a statement on Facebook regarding the vandalism.

“While we support free speech, we condemn the use of inflammatory language and the defacement of public or private property. And we continue to call for a constructive approach to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict through promotion of dialogue, working for peace and affirmation of the humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians.”

While calling for dialogue and peace is important, Borensztajn told the Jewish Ledger that he and many Jewish students at UMass are concerned, if not down-right afraid, when it comes to these incidents, which they see as not only anti-Zionist, but also antisemitic.

“I’d say it’s a combination between fear and anger, because we’re not sure what the next thing is going to be, or when it’s going to come. But we know that it’s going to happen. And we don’t feel like there’s anything really being done to stop it and I think that makes us very nervous,” he said.

“At the same time, all of these things have been sort of a rallying cry and I think the Jewish community has also come together, and we want to be active and do something about it.”

Defining antisemitism Besides the vandalism at Hillel last Yom Hashoah and the most recent incident this April, some events at UMass have also given the Jewish community pause.

In May of 2019, UMass hosted a proBoycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) event with BDS supporters musician Roger Waters, Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour and Prof. Marc Lamont Hill. Another event “The Attack on BDS and Pro-Palestinian Speech” was held last November.

That same evening, the campus Jewish community, parents and other supporters held a march on campus, “End PolarizationPromote Peace.” After the march, the crowd gathered inside The Newman Center and attendees discussed among other things, promoting respectful dialogue about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Some members of the local Jewish community who attended both BDS events, however, reported experiencing hostility from other members of the audience for things like wear a kippah or not standing and applauding the speakers.

Some Jewish students have also met with disapproval from fellow students on campus for having ties to Israel.

“I have this Jewish identity, which is 6

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an amazingly complex identity and a huge part of that is being from Israel,” said Borensztajn, who was born in Jerusalem and came to the United States when he was two years ago. “So when I see this stuff exists all over campus, it makes me nervous to, for example, tell people my name. My name is an Israeli name and when people ask me where I’m from, I feel like I can’t even tell them because who knows what kind of reactions I’m going to get.

“I’ve had bad experiences where people decide to just walk away and not talk to me anymore. It just makes it harder for me to be a student on this campus because I can’t just say who I am without it having this added political connotation.”

Tamar Stollman, a rising senior at UMass, will serve as vice president of UMass’s J Street club next fall. She is also the founder of “Jew Talk,” a club where Jewish students get together “to talk about Jewish life and being Jewish.”

Stollman describes herself as progressive.

“I was pretty involved with progressive student groups on campus until I started to feel like I was unwelcome because I was Jewish. It was just very uncomfortable to be a Jew in a progressive space,” she said. “I’m not directly offended by this graffiti, but I feel that it is also a bigger picture of what it means to be a Jew on a college campus. It’s just uncomfortable and unsafe.

“It is okay to be anti-Zionist and respectful of Jews, but I think the line is really thin, and it has crossed the line very often on college campuses because I think students just are not the most well-versed in Jewish history.”

And when the line is crossed and discussion about the subject gets heated, that’s when antisemitism sentiment grows on college campuses, including UMass.

“The more intense it gets,” Stollman said, “the more antisemitic it gets as well.”

Stollman was one of the students who helped to organize an April Zoom meeting of various representatives of UMass.’s Jewish student community and the Student Government Association (SGA) focusing on antisemitism. The meeting was open to the public and members of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) joined the Zoom event.

The conversation did not go well, Borensztajn said.

“We wanted to have a conversation about antisemitism generally and talk about how we can combat antisemitism at UMass. And we were explicitly not just talking about Israel. Israel was a part of it, but we also wanted to talk about swastikas that had gone up on campus before and Jews not feeling safe on campus. And some of the SJP students came on and basically said ‘we can’t have this conversation on

| MAY 28, 2021

ANTI-ISRAEL GRAFFITI FOUND ON THE CAMPUS OF UMASS (COURTESY OF STOPANTISEMITISM.ORG)

antisemitism unless you acknowledge that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are different.’ It was super frustrating for nonJews to come in and say that they should be able to define this conversation on antisemitism. It sort of derailed from there.”

“Jews should be deciding what antisemitism is,” Stollman said. “You never see any other marginalized group not deciding what their oppression looks like.

So, it is like a slap in the face to have people who don’t experience antisemitism come and say, ‘well this isn’t antisemitism’ – to say, ‘we don’t believe Israel should exist, but that isn’t antisemitism. It’s not antisemitism because I said it’s not antisemitism.’ That’s not how it works.”

That very principle – who should define antisemitism – was up for discussion at a webinar panel concerning antisemitism on campus held in March in the Greater Hartford area.

In his talk, Ethan Felson, executive director of A Wider Bridge, an organization that works to create equality in Israel by expanding LGBTQ inclusion in Israel, noted that “White people don’t get to define racism, men don’t get to define sexism and people who are not Jewish don’t get to define antisemitism. We need to be able to do that and to insist that Zionism is not separated from Judaism. “Our self-identity is linked to our right to self-determination.

That’s a positive value, that’s a progressive value, self-determination. We need to be able to stand for that,” he said.

That webinar was presented, in part, due to a series of antisemitic incidents at the University of Connecticut in the fall of 2020 and into 2021, including swastikas drawn inside residence halls and on academic buildings. Dori Jacobs, president of UConn Hillel spoke about efforts by students to nudge a response to the antisemitism from UConn’s administration, who were slow to act. Students staged a rally attended by Jewish students as well as representatives from a number of diverse student groups,

who spoke out against the antisemitism and in support of UConn’s Jewish students.

Two weeks ago, Kristopher Peiper, a UConn student from Enfield, was arrested and charged with a hate crime for spraypainting a swastika on the UConn chemistry building on the first day of Passover.

One of the steps UConn Hillel took in battling antisemitism on campus was working with the UConn student government on legislation officially adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

Borenstzajn and Dobrusin’s letter concerning UMass also supported adopting the IHRA’s definition of antisemitismm – “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.

Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Borenstzajn said that working to have the UMass student government and the administration vote on and pass a resolution adopting the IHRA’s formal definition of antisemitism will be SAFI’s main goal next fall.

“That’s something that started brewing this semester and we’re hoping to find an opportunity in the next semester to really pick it up. I think that is a good first step in really addressing the crisis,” he said.

SAFI has also been connecting with Jewish groups from other universities to seek ways to fight antisemitism on the UMass campus.

“Like rallying support through petitions, making sure you can line up votes in student government, trying to sit down and have conversations with people,” he said.

“I think the main thing that we want to do is also just make noise. Make it known that this is what we want and draw attention to it.”

jewishledger.com

Former 49er CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

Century Ohio State Football Team and Ohio State’s Varsity Hall of Fame.

Then Frank was invited to attend “the Combine,” the NFL’s major recruiting event and tryout in 1984, but he declined so he could study for final exams. Much to his surprise, he was drafted in June 1984 in the second round of the NFL draft by the San Francisco 49ers.

‘You know you are different’ In “NFL Films Presents,” Frank recounts the funny, somewhat embarrassing story of the telephone call from the 49ers coach.

“Bill Walsh drafted me in the second round.

I never anticipated playing in the NFL, so

JOHN FRANK ON THE SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS.

I didn’t know who he was. When I was in college, I wasn’t following the NFL – I was a chemistry major on the way to medical school. When the phone rang, he said it was the head coach to say congratulations. The only Coach Welsch I knew was the coach of Army at the time [George Welch]. I said, ‘Hi, Coach Welsh. He said, ‘No John, Coach Walsh. See you when you get out here.’

When Frank arrived at training camp, he was unfamiliar with the 49ers organization and didn’t know much about players on the team, though said he “had heard [quarterback] Joe Montana’s name since he was from Western Pennsylvania where I was from.”

He caught on to the organization and the team’s playbook quickly. His first catch in the NFL was for a touchdown at the Meadowlands in New Jersey during a Monday Night Football game.

Frank wasn’t the only Jewish player on the legendary 49ers team, which consisted of players from various religious backgrounds. “Harris Barton, the all-pro tackle, was the other Jew. We bonded. We had something special. We had fun on the team.”

While Frank says that he never experienced any difficulties being Jewish and notes that at the professional level, jewishledger.com

“it is a business,” and everyone is focused on the job, he observes: “When you are a Jewish athlete in the NFL, you know you are different.”

In fact, he recounts a touching story of Coach Walsh’s sensitivity. When Walsh read a story about anti-Semitic graffiti on a local San Francisco synagogue, he reached out to his player. “He pulled me aside, said he heard about the graffiti and said if you need to talk about the impact it is having, we are here. He was very sensitive,” remembers Frank.

During Frank’s first NFL season, he mostly worked as a reserve tight as the team went 18-1 and defeated the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX. He saw limited action due to an elbow injury. By his fourth season, he became the starting tight end.

In his fifth and final season, he played in Super Bowl XXIII. He caught two passes, including one thrown by Montana during the winning touchdown drive. Following the game and to the surprise of many, Frank announced his retirement to devote himself full-time to medical school. During his fiveyear pro career, he caught 65 passes for a total of 662 yards.

Frank earned his M.D. from Ohio State in 1992 and completed his training in Chicago. He then established a plastic surgery clinic in San Francisco, specializing in cosmetic facial plastic surgery and hair transplantation. The NFL film, “Why John Frank, M.D., Choose Medicine Over a Career in the NFL” featured on Frank’s professional website shows his gentle touch and playful banter with a patient who consults with him for an ear problem. He notes that on occasion, patients learn his “back story” and ask about his NFL career.

As for his involvement with the Israel bobsled team, Frank recounts that years ago, he and a friend “were on a ski chairlift and were talking about the Jamaican bobsled team. We got the idea for an Israel bobsled team. It developed organically. It was really special.”

Frank, who also holds Israeli citizenship, notes that the bobsled team made it to the world championships in the early 2000s.

For now, he is getting prepared for and even excited about Ramah, just as campers look forward to returning after a year of too much time inside. “I am looking forward to being outdoors in the summertime, to be with my son, and to be around Jews and sports.”

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Briefs ‘Queen’s Speech’ outlines measures to halt UK officials from implementing BDS (JNS) Queen Elizabeth II has tasked the government of the United Kingdom with stopping local councils from implementing BDS activity against Israel and Jewish companies. Though BDS is not specifically mentioned in her “Queen’s Speech” before the House of Lords on May 11 to open a new session of Parliament, she said that “measures will be introduced that support for businesses reflects the United Kingdom’s strategic interests and drives economic growth.”

According to a memorandum from the Office of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the queen’s announcement is tied to legislation “ … to stop public bodies from imposing their own approach or views about international relations, through preventing boycott, divestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries.” The legislation would, in part, prevent public institutions from carrying out boycotts, divestments and sanctions against foreign countries, or those linked to them, in addition to the sale of goods and services from foreign countries. The Jewish Human Rights Watch group in England praised the move and noted that several local councils who had chosen such measures were taken to court to “highlight the injustice of the practice.”

In introducing the legislative agenda, the prime minister’s office noted: “Unofficial boycotts have been associated with antisemitism in the United Kingdom, including kosher food being removed from supermarket shelves, Jewish films being banned from a film festival, and a student union holding a vote on blocking the formation of a Jewish student society.”

Ocasio-Cortez leads push in Congress to block arms sale to Israel (JTA) – A trio of progressive Congress members is about to propose a resolution to block a $735 million weapons sale to Israel over concerns about its actions in Gaza, Jewish Currents reported, citing an early draft of the resolution. The sponsors of the legislation targeting the transfer of precision-guided missiles to Israel are Reps. Alexandria OcasioCortez of New York, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, all Democrats.

“At a time when so many, including our president, support a ceasefire, we should not be sending ‘direct attack’ weaponry to prime minister Netanyahu to prolong this violence,” says an email obtained by Jewish Currents that was sent out by Ocasio-Cortez’s office to ask other lawmakers for support.

“It is long past time to end the US policy of 8

JEWISH LEDGER

unconditional military arms sales, particularly to governments that have violated human rights.”

The progressive lawmakers appear to be picking up where the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, a fellow Democrat, left off. Meeks had considered sending a letter to the White House asking for a delay in the transfer of the arms shipment in light of the hostilities, but ultimately decided against it. His momentary consideration marked a shift in how congressional leaders have traditionally related to Israeli security matters.

Rep. Cori Bush won’t speak to St. Louis Jewish newspaper, its editors say (JTA) – Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, the progressive freshman Democratic congresswoman who has made many statements critical of Israel, is refusing to participate in an interview with the St. Louis Jewish Light, the leading Jewish newspaper in the city, according to its editors.

In a May 12 editorial, the paper’s editors said they have been ignored by the congresswoman’s staff in their efforts to interview Bush about her views on Israel and other topics. The lawmaker’s staff last communicated with the biweekly in an April 20 email. Bush’s response to their interview requests “should trouble our readers,” the unsigned editorial said.

Bush, who was elected last year, is among the few House members who have expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting organizations that do business in Israel. Her campaign website deleted a page supporting BDS during the 2020 campaign after her primary opponent challenged her on the issue.

The Jewish Light said its goal is to clarify Bush’s views on the topic, as well as her social media posts comparing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to racial justice protests in the United States. “What of Bush’s concern for her St. Louis Jewish constituents, who may see her linking Black people’s struggle in the United States with Palestinians’ struggle in the Middle East as an unfair conflation of two separate, complex issues?” the editorial wrote. “Or her concern for Israelis?”

Most recently, Bush has tweeted about the ongoing violence in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, writing May 18 that the Israeli army is committing “an outright massacre … that we must immediately stop funding.” She also echoed New York Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez’s description of Israel as an “apartheid state.” Bush is a member of “The Squad,” six progressive Democrats including OcasioCortez as well as two others who back BDS, Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

“As someone who has been brutalized by police, I continue to stand in strong solidarity with Palestinians rising up against military, police, and state violence,” Bush wrote on May 11.

| MAY 28, 2021

AP pretends it didn’t know it was sharing a building with Hamas

By Daniel Greenfield (JNS) You can absolutely trust the Associated Press’s coverage of Israel.

After an Israeli airstrike took out a building in the Gaza Strip with tenants that included Hamas and Al Jazeera, controlled by Qatar, a backer of Hamas, the main story in the media was about … the media. Specifically, the AP‘s presence in the same building. “We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there.

We received a warning that the building would be hit,” the AP‘s statement says.

And the AP is complaining about what?

Israel warned it that the building was a target.

AP chose to share a building with Hamas and pretend not to know about it. “This strike is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time,” the AP complained.

Except that it was warned and was able to evacuate the building. So the pretense that its personnel were ever at risk is nonsense.

Finally, the AP claimed, “We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building. This is something we actively check to the best of our ability.”

You can believe the AP–or its former correspondent, Matti Friedman, who wrote about the service’s dishonesty back in 2014.

“The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby–and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff–and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. ” The AP claimed that its interactions with Hamas terrorists isn’t news. “Colford, the AP spokesman, confirmed that armed militants entered the AP’s Gaza office in the early days of the war to complain about a photo showing the location of a rocket launch, though he said that Hamas claimed that the men ‘did not represent the group.’

Israeli comedian Tom Aharon blasts John Oliver (JTA) – In case you missed it, BritishAmerican comedian John Oliver unloaded on Israel in a widely viewed segment of his weekly HBO show “Last Week Tonight” on Sunday night. Unsurprisingly it prompted

heated social media responses from both sides, but it also inspired an extended answer from a popular Israeli comedian who modeled his own show after Oliver’s.

Tom Aharon hosted “Pa’am Be’shavu’a im Tom Aharon” (“Once a Week with Tom Aharon”) on Israeli TV from 2018 to 2020 and is now developing a new show. He is of Mizrahi descent and often critical of his native country, but he argues in a seven-minute video that Oliver’s critique went too far. “I would hope to someday have just a fraction of a white man’s confidence when I’m talking about things that happen thousands of miles from where I live,” he says in the video posted Wednesday, which as of Thursday morning had garnered nearly 44,000 YouTube views in a day. “S***, I don’t even have that much certainty about things that happen in my own home.”

Aharon begins by pointing out just a few of the many celebrities who have come out strongly against Israel’s actions in the ongoing military conflict with Gaza. He also shows snippets from Oliver’s segment, including one in which Oliver raises his voice to call Israel “an a**hole.” “Everyone has a right to criticize Israel, it’s ok – I mean, the Holocaust did just happen, but ok, if you have to, that’s how I make my living,” he says in response. “Some might even conclude that we’re the bad guys – someone’s gotta be it right? But I also believe that simplifying a complex matter doesn’t do justice to either side.”

Aharon then goes after the specifics of Oliver’s arguments, including one about the imbalance of military power between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Does being stronger bear certain responsibilities? Sure. But does it automatically mean you’re at fault? Of course not. It almost sounds like you’re mad at us for not taking more casualties,” he says. “Claiming that imbalance is immoral is the privilege of those who don’t need to make the choice between their own safety and their care for others.”

Aharon became a known comedian through appearances on Lior Schlein’s satirical Israeli news show “Gav HaUma” – the closest thing Israel has to a “Daily Show” equivalent.

Aharon then modeled his own show after Oliver’s HBO series, which he humorously calls “the incredibly popular HBO show I never stole format from.” “It pained me to see a personal hero of mine saying something” he found so “unfair, unjust” and “simplistic,” Aharon added.

President Biden: Attacks on Jewish community ‘must stop’ (JTA) — President Joe Biden on Monday condemned attacks on Jews in the United States and overseas, saying “they must stop.

His pronouncement on Twitter came days after leading national Jewish organizations urged him to speak out. “The recent attacks on the Jewish community are despicable, and they must stop,” Biden tweeted. “I condemn jewishledger.com

this hateful behavior at home and abroad — it’s up to all of us to give hate no safe harbor.”

Attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in the United States appear to have spiked since the launch of hostilities two weeks ago between Israel and Hamas. The Biden administration last week helped Egypt broker a ceasefire, but the attacks on Jewish communities abroad have continued. On Friday, five major national Jewish groups wrote to Biden urging him to speak out on the issue and address it through legislation and initiatives.

1,500 rally for Israel in London (JTA) – About 1,500 people rallied in support of Israel in London. In addition to hundreds of Israeli flags at Sunday’s rally on Kensington High Street, participants also waved flags of Portugal, India and the Netherlands, The Jewish Chronicle reported. The rally was scheduled last week, when Israel and Hamas were engaged in hostilities with Hamas, the ruling political party in Gaza that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, European Union and others.

Antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed in Europe and the United States in connection with the fighting.

Among the participants was Stephen Christopher Yaxley, a far-right activist better known as Tommy Robinson who has spoken out against Islam as a religion. Following jihadist terrorist attacks in London, he said during a speech in 2011 that all Muslims “got away” with the attack and vows that “the Islamic community will feel the full force of the English Defense League if we see any of our citizens killed, maimed or hurt.”

Yaxley has since quit the radical English Defense League and apologized for blaming all Muslims for terrorism, but has remained a vocal opponent of Muslims seeking asylum in the United Kingdom. CST, British Jewry’s main security unit, criticized Robinson’s presence at the event, saying in a statement that he is “an extremist and we utterly reject his message of hate and division. His so-called support for our community is not welcome or helpful.”

Kim Kardashian, Mayim Bialik and others condemn attacks on American Jews (JTA) – Kim Kardashian, Debra Messing, Mayim Bialik and other celebrities are speaking out in the wake of altercations between pro-Palestinian protesters and Jews and acts of antisemitism across the United States in recent days. Kardashian, a reality TV star, model and businesswoman who is not Jewish, posted an Instagram story to her 222 million followers on Wednesday with a message from a progressive Zionist activist that read: “I don’t know who needs to hear this but both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in peace and safety. Anyone trying to convince you that one must come at the jewishledger.com

expense of the other does not support human rights for all humans.” Many celebrities have stuck to posting messages critical of Israel.

Bialik, the star of “The Big Bang Theory” who has written extensively about her Jewish identity, tweeted Wednesday about the groups of pro-Palestinian protesters who attacked Jews in Los Angeles in two separate incidents this week. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is Jewish, said the city would investigate the attacks as antisemitic hate crimes. “I’m speechless and devastated by the antiSemitic attacks in my home city as well as the vandalism very close to my home targeting Jewish businesses in the past 24 hours,” Bialik wrote. “I don’t even know what else to say. …There is so much disinformation about Israel being spread and it is getting people hurt,” she wrote. “There are videos from all over the world, including the US, of crowds of pro-Palestinian protesters attacking, beating, kicking, using pipes as weapons against Jews.

It’s horrifying.”

Jewish actor Michael Rapaport posted proIsrael messages on social media as well.

“The Holocaust happened Bc we didn’t have Israel,” he wrote Thursday.

Variety reported on additional celebrities who took up the cause.

TV star Erica Mena: There’s ‘special place in hell’ for ‘These Jewish people’ (JTA) – Reality TV star Erica Mena tweeted “These Jewish people are really killing children” and added “A real special place in hell for them all.” “I’m so disgusted with Israel,” Mena wrote to her nearly 275,000 Twitter followers, apparently referencing the ongoing violence between Israel and Gaza.

Journalist John-Paul Pagano captured the tweet from Monday, May 17, before she took it down.

Mena appeared as a dancer in music videos for several famous rappers before appearing on VH1’s “Love & Hip Hop: New York” and “Kourtney and Kim Take Miami,” a spinoff of the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” show. Mena has nearly 5.5 million followers on Instagram. After taking down her original tweet, she added one on May 17 that called Israel “devils” that are carrying out a “genocide.” “I don’t care what anyone has to say. If you think it’s okay to kill young innocent children and remove people from their homes, you can go to hell along with the devils of Israel that are taking part in a genocide right now as we speak,” she wrote.

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OPINION

The Farhud Pogrom: From Iraq to Israel

BY ISRAEL KASNETT

(JNS) Rioters stormed the streets, lit synagogues on fire, looted and destroyed Jewish homes and stabbed a Jew in the back. No, it wasn’t 1938 in Germany or 1929 in Hebron. These riots were instigated last week by Arabs against Jews in Jerusalem, Lod, Bat Yam, Jaffa, Haifa, Akko and Tiberias, and are eerily reminiscent of the Farhud – a terrible pogrom that took place 80 years ago in Baghdad, Iraq, during Shavuot.

On June 1, 1941, while celebrating the holiday, a group of Jews in Baghdad were ambushed by an armed Arab mob.

The attacks and rioting continued for two days. While the exact figure is not known, it is estimated that at least 180 Jews were killed in Baghdad and Basra – and perhaps as many as 600 – with hundreds more wounded. Jewish women were gang-raped and mutilated. Jewish shops and homes were looted and then torched. Synagogues were looted and Torah scrolls burned.

This pogrom was named the Farhud, which in Arabic means “violent dispossession.” The Jews were an integral part of Iraqi society, dating their heritage there back to the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. The security and confidence of Iraqi Jews were shattered by the pro-German military coup of April 1941. While the coup leaders were quickly defeated by British forces, their departure was followed by the Farhud.

It marked an irrevocable loss for Jewish life in Iraq and paved the way for the dissolution of the 2,600-yearold Jewish community 10 years later.

Forced out by fears of a second Farhud and denationalizing legislation that made them stateless refugees, the overwhelming majority of Iraq’s Jewish community immigrated to Israel after 1948. Others held on for a few more decades; however, today, the historic Jewish community of Iraq is no more.

The general parallel between the Farhud pogrom and the riots of last week is unsettling.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Arab nationalists in Iraq “perceived the Baghdad Jews as Zionists or Zionist sympathizers and justified the attacks as a response to Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine.”

The Arabs claim their rioting this week is a reaction to the Arab-Jewish conflict in Sheikh Jarrah and the Temple Mount, both in Jerusalem. But it only drives home the point that antisemitism still exists and must be fought everywhere.

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‘Double standard in application of international law, human rights’ The “Remember the Farhud” project aims to educate the public on the history of the Farhud and asks the public to light a virtual candle in memory of the 180 pogrom victims. It also asks readers to add a specially created frame to their Facebook profile in order to spread awareness of the Farhud and express solidarity with the families who mourn those who were killed during the deadly pogrom.

“The Farhud was a tragic event that sounded the death knell for the oldest Jewish Diaspora community,” said Iraqi-British Jewish businessman and philanthropist David Dangoor, the initiator of the “Remember the Farhud” initiative. “It is vital that the Jewish world and beyond commemorate the Farhud to understand better how to deal with hate, incitement and violence, and prevent such events from happening in the present and future.”

Former Knesset member Michal CotlerWunsh from the Blue and White Party told JNS “what we see in Israel’s streets is actually stoked by what is happening on digital platforms utilizing antisemitic tropes. It is imperative for Israel to engage in discussion, to learn about and identify antisemitism for what it is,” she said.

“Antisemitism is always there and has the ability to mutate,” she said. “The point is to identify it. The imam inciting the masses in the mosque? That’s antisemitism.”

Cotler-Wunsh noted that an official definition of antisemitism now exists and has been adopted by more than 34 countries in order to fight global antisemitism.

“We cannot just scream antisemitism,” she said. “We have to be able to say it is the violation of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. Unless we define it, we cannot combat it.”

The definition makes clear the three “d’s,” according to Cotler-Wunsh: demonization, delegitimization and doublestandards.

“What we’re seeing now in terms of a lot of the international response to what is happening [in Israel] is the double standard in the application of international law and human rights,” she said.

“Israel must utilize the language of rights in order to identify, expose and address the double standards in their application,” she said. “Once you apply international law with double standards by singling out one country, you essentially

JEWISH LEDGER | MAY 28, 2021

undermine the entire system.”

With regard to the Farhud, CotlerWunsh said she is “very wary” of the flip narrative that says Israel exists because the Holocaust happened or because the Farhud happened. “I say the opposite,” she said.

“The Holocaust would not have happened, the Farhud would not have happened had there been a state of Israel.”

“What is happening in the mixed cities in Israel is not a Farhud because we are in a sovereign State of Israel. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the same antisemitic tropes, and we have to expose that. That is the double standard.”

Cotler-Wunsh pointed out that the Farhud was part of a larger picture that

after the establishment of modern-day Israel in 1948 resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 850,000 Jews from Arab lands and Iran.

“Arabs and Jews must acknowledge the Jews from Arab lands whose history and story weren’t – and aren’t – fully told in this country to our own detriment,” she said.

“The underlying instigator for the Farhud and for what we have seen this past week is raw antisemitism,” she said.

“Luckily, we know how to define it.”

According to Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s focus must be on spreading that definition, and in that regard, she emphasized, “We definitely have our work cut out for us,” she said.

A GROUP OF IRAQI JEWS WHO FLED TO THE BRITISH MANDATE OF PALESTINE FOLLOWING THE 1941 FARHUD POGROM IN BAGHDAD. (CREDIT: MOSHE BARUCH VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

IRAQI JEWS LEAVING LOD AIRPORT IN ISRAEL ON THEIR WAY TO THE MA’ABARA TRANSIT CAMP, 1951.

(SOURCE: ISRAEL GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE)

jewishledger.com

AUTHORS CORNER

An American Rabbi in Buchenwald

BY BAT-AMI ZUCKER

A review of The Rabbi of Buchenwald by Rafael Medoff (Yeshiva University Press; distributed by ktav.com; 502 pages., $29.95.)

T

here is a remarkable scene, early in The Rabbi of Buchenwald, which sounds like something out of a movie – and perhaps should be. It takes place in May 1945, soon after the American Army liberated that notorious Nazi concentration camp.

The Swiss government has just offered to admit 350 Buchenwald children under the age of 16. The problem is that not enough children survived that Nazi hell to take full advantage of the offer.

An intrepid United States Army chaplain, Rabbi Herschel Schacter, tries to pass off a number of young adults as young teens so they can board the train taking them to a new life. A suspicious Swiss Red Cross inspector, one Sister Kasser, disqualifies many of the would-be passengers for exceeding the age limit.

Rabbi Schacter finds a printer in nearby Weimar to create a rubber stamp bearing the Red Cross emblem. The rabbi and two confederates break into Kasser’s office, help themselves to blank cards of the type she gave to qualified passengers, and spend the night forging the signatures needed to confirm that the holder is of the required age. The next morning, as Kasser stalks through the train in search of stowaways, older children in cars ahead of her elude

discovery by jumping from the train and running back to the cars through which she has already passed. In this madcap fashion, many more than 350 Buchenwald children make it to Switzerland.

Some years ago, I wrote a book about the American Jewish social worker Cecilia Razovsky, who aided Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, and who was there in 1945 to help organize the Buchenwald children’s train. Now I see that the determined and resourceful Razovsky had her counterpart – and then some – in the young U.S. Army chaplain whom she assisted in Buchenwald.

Rafael Medoff’s new study, The Rabbi of Buchenwald, is at once a biography of Schacter and a history of postwar American Jewry, viewed through the lens of the many leadership positions Schacter held and the ways he impacted the community.

During the course of nearly half a century in Jewish public life, Schacter was the rabbi of a successful synagogue in the Bronx and a pioneer in early U.S. Orthodox outreach efforts, as well as chairman of national Jewish organizations such as the Religious Zionists of America, the American Conference on Soviet Jewry and, most important, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Schacter was the first Orthodox Jew to

chair the Presidents Conference, which, Medoff shows, represented a kind of coming-of-age for Orthodox Judaism in America. The old stereotype of Orthodox Jews as insular and unsophisticated gave way, in the 1960s, to a generation of young rabbis such as Schacter – impeccably tailored, speaking unaccented English, and entirely capable of leading the entire Jewish community, not merely its religiously observant minority.

Deeply researched through archival documents and numerous interviews, Medoff’s well-written narrative explores Schacter’s involvement in a slew of Jewish public controversies. Some of those conflicts will seem familiar to contemporary readers, from disputes over Israel’s Jewish identity to clashes with U.S. government officials who were pressuring Israel to make onesided territorial concessions. We read of a rain-drenched Schacter picketing the Polish Embassy in Washington (to protest that government’s scapegoating of Jews), a magnanimous Schacter inviting Jewish militant hecklers to join him on the podium, and a rather chutzpahdik Schacter entangled in a comic incident involving the president of the United States and a pair of cufflinks – to mention a few of the many episodes in this scholarly but very readable

work.

The Rabbi of Buchenwald illustrates Medoff’s versatility as a historian. Founding director of The David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, much of his earlier, critically acclaimed scholarship focused on how President Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Jewish leaders responded to news of the Holocaust. This story, however, begins where his earlier chronicles left off, just as the Holocaust is ending. It focuses on an American Jew who did not merely read about Nazi atrocities or watch newsreel footage of the liberated camps, but actually chose to spend 10 nightmarish weeks in Buchenwald, assisting the survivors as they tried to rebuild their lives.

The Rabbi of Buchenwald is not hagiography. Medoff presents a full picture of Herschel Schacter, the leader and the man, and he was not flawless.

Serious scholarship shows us history in its full scope, not just the most flattering or pleasant parts.

Most of all, what Medoff shows is that while Schacter left Buchenwald after two and a half months, Buchenwald never left Schacter. “What I saw in Buchenwald was seared into my heart and mind,” Schacter often said. He saw, first hand, the consequences of the Nazis’ depravity and the Jews’ vulnerability, and he devoted the rest of his life to ensuring that the Jewish people would have the military, political and spiritual fortitude to prevent it from ever happening again.

Bat-Ami Zucker is a professor of history at Bar-Ilan University.

RABBI HERSCHEL SCHACTER SPEAKING AT THE 2017 CELEBRATION HIS 50 YEARS OF SERVICE TO YESHIVA UNIVERSITY. (YESHIVA UNIVERSITY)

jewishledger.com

Reprinted from the Washington Jewish Week by permission of the author. It has been lightly edited for space.

JEWISH LEDGER | MAY 28, 2021

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FEAR & LOATHING on the Streets of America.

A VIEW OF A STREET IN NEW YORK’S DIAMOND DISTRICT, MAY 21, 2021.

(GABE FRIEDMAN)

MANY AMERICAN JEWS ARE HIDING THEIR JEWISH IDENTITIES AMID A W

BY SHIRA HANAU AND BEN SALES

(JTA) – When Ricki moved into her new ground floor apartment in New York City less than a year ago, she felt perfectly comfortable placing a mezuzah on the front door for all who passed through the lobby to see.

Today she feels less sanguine about that choice.

Ricki hasn’t removed the mezuzah, but she has asked the building’s management to put bars on her windows. And she’s still considering taking down the Jewish symbol.

“When I put it up I was really proud of it,” Ricki said, declining to use her last name due to privacy concerns. “I’m not embarrassed of being Jewish, I knew when I put it up that people would see it. But I really didn’t think twice about it.”

She’s not alone in having second thoughts now.

For the past two weeks, Jews across the United States have been attacked because of the fighting in Israel and Gaza. In Los Angeles, pro-Palestinian attackers threw punches and bottles at diners at a sushi

(YING TANG/ NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES)

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JEWISH LEDGER

restaurant. In New York’s heavily Jewish Diamond District, protesters of Israel threw fireworks from a car amid a violent street altercation.

As footage of those attacks and others spreads online, American Jews say they are feeling a renewed anxiety around identifying themselves publicly as Jews. Some are taking off their kippahs or Star of David necklaces.

Others, like Ricki, are considering the removal of their mezuzahs. Some are mulling whether it’s safe to walk into synagogue.

That anxiety has long been familiar to Jews in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

At times it has reared its head in the United States, like in 2018 following the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

A survey last year by the American Jewish Committee found that nearly a quarter of Jewish respondents avoided wearing or displaying something that would mark them as Jewish at some point in the previous two years.

This week, American Jews feared they could be targeted due to an association, real or imagined, with Israel and its actions regarding the Palestinians. For some American Jews, that fear is manifesting in decisions to tamp down their public displays of Jewishness as a way to protect themselves.

“On the one hand I want to be a proud Jew and express to the world that that’s something I’m passionate about,” said Drew Feldman, a theater director and writer who has taken to wearing a baseball cap more often in recent days rather than his kippah due to the tension he feels around the conflict in Israel. “On the other hand, the Torah says we have to put life above all else.”

| MAY 28, 2021

Feldman, who spent the past several months living in Tennessee, first started wearing a kippah regularly in 2015 as he became more interested in his Judaism and more observant. He recently called his rabbi to discuss whether it would be appropriate to stop wearing it for a while.

“When I’ve traveled to Europe, I’ve done that because I’ve been told it’s a safer thing to do in places like France,” Feldman said. “This is really the first time outside of traveling to Europe or elsewhere that I’ve put on a different hat or baseball cap and not done it simply for fashion, done it out of a sense of anxiety or maybe fear.”

Rabbi Adir Yolkut of Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York, said he had never seriously worried for his safety walking to synagogue on Shabbat morning wearing a kippah.

“I just sort of had a fleeting thought that was not so fleeting, is this something I should be nervous about?” he said. “Should I take more precautions than I usually need to?

Because it feels like you don’t know where it’s coming from.”

On Friday, May 21, the Diamond District was calm and host to a typical range of Jewish characters: Men in kippahs stood on every corner, a group of haredi Orthodox boys fist bumped a store owner dressed in jeans and a T shirt, a group of ChabadLubavitch emissaries approached bystanders asking “Are you Jewish?”

But there was a smattering of police throughout the neighborhood’s few blocks, and some Jewish store employees were wary.

Emanuel Shimunov had witnessed the previous day’s violence through his store

window. According to Shimunov, it started when a Jewish boy said “Peace in Israel” to the pro-Palestinian protesters driving through the street. They began cursing at him, then fought with a man who came out to protect the boy.

“There are a lot of people who will be affected,” said Shimunov, a descendant of Bukharan Jews. “There are a lot of people like that.”

Ian Steiner, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which has a large Jewish population, doesn’t attend synagogue frequently. But after seeing the news about attacks on Jews in New York City and Los Angeles, he decided to offer to escort other Jews to and from synagogue if they felt unsafe walking alone.

“I’m a bigger guy and I’m not scared,” he said. “I know I’m strong and I’m young and agile, and if an older person or someone is afraid to go to shul or to practice their religion, I have the duty to do something to make sure they feel safe.”

The Secure Community Network, which coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, has received dozens of reports of antisemitic incidents over the past week, said its CEO, Michael Masters. He said a big difference between what happened this week and during the last Gaza War in 2014 is that social media is playing a larger role in fueling discord regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States.

“We’ve seen an incredible surge in online incidents and events, online acts of targeting or hate speech, as well as the ability of the [Jewish] community to share information about incidents and events,” he said. “If jewishledger.com

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‘NOT GOOD FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH’ Jewish Instagrammers struggle amid Israel-Gaza conflict and antisemitic violence

BY PHILISSA CRAMER

(JTA) – Ilyssa Minkus usually spends a chunk of her day on Instagram. That’s where she promotes her business producing party decorations and Jewish-themed crafts.

But after Israel began trading bombs with Hamas in Gaza last week, she tried – often without succeeding – to stay away.

“I don’t want to go on because I’m just bombarded with anti-Israel message after anti-Israel message,” Minkus said a week into the latest conflict. “I felt so differently when the [Jan. 6] attack on the Capitol happened and when influencers were not addressing the issue. But this is something

where I am holding my breath when somebody I like posts something.”

At one point, an influencer Minkus admires posted a video titled “Gaza is Under Attack.” Minkus reached out to let her know that the post felt one-sided and didn’t acknowledge the role that Gaza’s leadership had played in instigating the bombing.

Minkus, who lives in Chicago, wasn’t the only person to reach out: The influencer took down the video, saying that while she thought the post was clear and unbiased, she had heard from many people who disagreed.

Minkus felt relieved that her advocacy

WAVE OF ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS

we look at the process by which people are motivated to violence, whether they are someone who follows supremacist ideology or they support Hamas, there’s absolutely no doubt that the proliferation of messaging on social media plays a role.”

The spate of attacks on Jews has given Jewish security officials deja vu to 2019, when antisemitism spiked in and around New York City and Jews suffered two lethal attacks.

Evan Bernstein, who runs the Community Security Service, a volunteer synagogue security organization, said when it comes to attacking Jews, the incidents in New York this week make it seem like the city has picked up from where it left off before last year’s pandemic restrictions took people off the streets. The attacks also come as many synagogues are transitioning back into holding services inside their buildings following a year of worshipping outdoors or virtually.

“So many people in the Jewish community thought that we just didn’t have to deal with this kind of antisemitism,” said Bernstein, whose organization is based in New York. “I kind of knew COVID was going to be the pause button on that. I’m sad that I’m right.”

Regarding antisemitism, while Bernstein said “the climate around us is very different” than it was a couple weeks ago, he isn’t giving his volunteer security patrols any special instructions for the coming Shabbat.

Nor does he think New York has reached a point where people necessarily need to take off their kippahs in public, as many Jews do in Europe. jewishledger.com

“I don’t think we should stop being openly Jewish,” he said. “If we get to that point in the United States where we can’t wear our yarmulkes comfortably and openly, we’re at a whole different level, and I hope that’s a conversation we don’t have to have.”

To Ricki, the fear that she may have to take down her mezuzah feels ironically painful. Grappling with the decision this week, she thought of her grandparents, who were Holocaust survivors. Growing up, she had felt safe as a Jew in America.

Antisemitism had never felt like such an immediate threat as it did to her now in downtown Manhattan.

“I was always told that antisemitism is really real, but as someone in the millennial generation, maybe I was blind to it,” she said.

“But now I’m like wow, I see it.”

had worked – but then she looked around and across her feed saw post after post that felt similarly slanted, or worse. She didn’t reach out to anyone else.

“It’s not good for my mental health,” she said. “I worry that I won’t have the correct answers to rebut what somebody says. And that makes me anxious.”

Minkus’s calculation was one that Jews on social media have made countless times over the past two weeks as an explosion of tensions thrust the IsraeliPalestinian conflict into international headlines. Influencers who are not Jewish or Palestinian and more often post about parenting, pop culture or their personal lives have posted about the conflict, sometimes sharing misinformation, while prominent Jewish account operators have waded into the conflict, sometimes with hesitation – and sometimes received antisemitic comments in response.

Meanwhile, their followers have found themselves having to weigh the costs and benefits of taking a stand or combating misinformation on an incredibly fraught topic.

And now, with a ceasefire in place but antisemitic incidents cropping up across America, Jews on social media fear their decisions are becoming even higher-stakes.

“It’s important for people to know how exhausting and draining and souldestroying it is to be constantly advocating for your right to exist, and your children’s right to exist and their physical, and your physical, safety, with this torrent of people who don’t understand the ways they’re

inciting violence because they feel like they have to make a statement about things they don’t know anything about,” said Meg Keene, a Jewish businesswoman in Oakland, California, who frequently shares information about Judaism and Israel with the 6,600 followers on her personal Instagram account.

“The only way I can keep it together is I won’t do one to one,” Keene said. “I won’t fight in the comments or DM people and say this is why you are wrong. I think this is useless and draining.”

The anxieties are most pronounced on Instagram, the social photo app owned

by Facebook that emerged as a hotbed of activism in the past year and is widely used by women. During the racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd, Instagram slideshows that drew on corporate aesthetics became a dominant tool for conveying information – and sharing them became a signifier for allyship.

That style has now become ubiquitous, and over the past two weeks influencers, advocates, news organizations and just regular Instagrammers have flooded the app with memes and slides about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In one prominent example, model Bella Hadid shared a graphic that featured two women, one of whom asks, “So aren’t Israelis and Palestinians just fighting over religion?”

The other woman responds: “They are not ‘fighting,’ Israelis are the oppressors and Palestinians are the oppressed and the CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Gabe Friedman contributed reporting.

JEWISH INFLUENCERS AND USERS OF INSTAGRAM SAY IT BECAME A CHALLENGING PLACE DURING THE RECENT ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT. (SCREENSHOT)

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situation is about anything but religion.” That post spawned a trove of parodies representing every conceivable ideological position on the conflict and region.

Instagram’s potency is also a liability, writes Emily Burack in an Alma essay titled “So you want to post about Israel and Palestine on Instagram.” Burack argues that many users trust content just because it is aesthetically pleasing and shareable, even when it is false, and that small images – even a series of them – are inadequate to summarize what’s going on in the Middle East.

“When it comes to one of the most fraught and complex conflicts in the world, which has been unfolding over the course of thousands of years, an infographic alone is just not going to cut it,” she writes.

Burack advises to use Instagram as a starting point for learning, not the only source of information.

That may not be practical for many people, especially those who may not be passionate or informed about the Middle East but might feel pressure to take a stand nonetheless – such as the influencer Maya Zemel reached out to this week.

Zemel, a Los Angeles occupational therapist who typically follows parenting accounts, was unsettled by a post she saw from an influencer with more than 200,000 followers. A white woman who posted extensively about how to diversify a home library and raise anti-racist children a year ago, the influencer shared information about how to help Palestinian children.

The daughter of Israeli immigrants, Zemel thought of her relatives huddling in bomb shelters in Israel and sent a message encouraging the account’s operator to include Israeli children in future posts about the conflict. The response surprised her.

“She basically wrote to me that she felt a tremendous amount of pressure to post something and she didn’t want to – a strong amount of pressure from her followers” to post in support of Palestinians, Zemel recalled.

Some Instagram users have resisted the pressure to post about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last week, for example, Jake Cohen, a Jewish food blogger, posted a message telling his 345,000 followers that they would have to go elsewhere for posts about the conflict.

But many others have weighed in despite not previously engaging on the issue. Whitney Fisch, a longtime Instagram influencer who posts about Jewish food and parenting, said she attributed the flurry of misinformation to people wanting to take as strong a stand now as they did last year about racial justice but not understanding the unique context of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

“It is more important to so many people that they appear to be active and liberal and educated as they made their persona online to be,” Fisch said. “That’s more important than

doing the research and supporting a Jewish community. That’s my theory.”

Fisch, the executive director of the Hillel at Miami University in Ohio, said she had not observed bullying or conflict related to Israel on campus in recent weeks. But her Instagram feed showed a different story.

After a friend posted a video from a proPalestinian march with a caption that included the words “From the river to the sea,” Fisch reached out to let her know that the phrase is painful to many Jews, who understand it as a rallying cry for those who want Israel not to exist at all. Fisch said her friend was apologetic that she had amplified something she didn’t understand.

“But the thing that killed me is I’m preaching to the choir,” she said. Like Minkus, Fisch was dismayed about her limited impact and how many other ideas were circulating that she had no power to counter. “I just need someone to call out Hamas. Anyone.”

Keene, too, said she had been inspired in part because of the undertones she saw in some pro-Palestinian content that entered her feed.

She said she saw herself as a bit of an unlikely Instagram advocate for Israel, since she is a progressive on most issues and has always belonged to liberal synagogues where members are attuned to the plight of Palestinians.

But Keene said the misinformation she had encountered had unnerved her.

“The way I have seen the left online in the last week is not dissimilar to the way the right has behaved around QAnon,” Keene said. “The left is passing along misinformation graphics, all but quoting Hamas talking points.”

Instead of battling other influencers, Keene has been producing content of her own, adding her own insights to slides produced by a handful of other accounts she trusts. She has been active on social media for well over a decade. So she has developed a thick skin: Unlike some less seasoned influencers she knows, Keene doesn’t check the messages that roll in from people she isn’t already in touch with – she knows they are likely to include antisemitism and doesn’t want to see it.

“More women than not are thinking I can’t do this right now, I can’t do this anymore,” Keene said. But, she said, “I’m built for this.

It’s miserable but someone has to do the work.

There are a handful of us and we’re leaning on each other.”

Keene said she knows that she has helped some Instagram users feel more informed about Judaism and Israel issues because they have told her so. But she also said what she sees is often dispiriting.

“You are seeing people that you love and care about who are reading your stories … and then you are turning around and seeing people you love and care about post exactly the thing you just warned about,” Keene said. “That’s very betraying and terrifying.”

For some, the response to seeing slanted or

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uninformed Instagram posts about the IsraeliPalestinian conflict is to unfollow, or tell the app not to show new posts from the people who created them.

The Sephardi Sisters, a Jewish account that does not typically engage heavily in Israel issues, posted a meme on Wednesday that took aim at the dynamic. Above a gif of Jennifer Aniston of “Friends” fame saying “I’m through with these people and I want new ones” were the words “Jews finding out half the people they follow on Instagram want them dead.”

In the comments, followers shared how many people they had unfollowed this week: 20, one person posted. Another counted 40; another yet 50.

“Heart is broken,” one commenter wrote, saying that it had hurt to see misinformation shared by “women and artists I looked up to and admired.”

But some say they feel that disengaging represents a form of concession – even if remaining engaged comes at significant personal cost.

“It almost feels like my responsibility to be vigilant,” said Zemel, the Los Angeles woman who took the uncharacteristic step of reaching out to an influencer this week. “I also feel completely helpless. It feels exhausting to know what to say.”

HUNDREDS RALLY FOR ISRAEL IN NYC FOLLOWING SPATE OF ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS

BY BEN SALES

(JTA) – Hundreds of people rallied for Israel in New York City days after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and following a string of antisemitic assaults and harassment in the United States.

The demonstration on Sunday in lower Manhattan, organized by the Israeli-American Council and other proIsrael organizations, principally featured traditional messages of supporting Israel.

Speakers asserted that Israel and Jews in New York City faced a common enemy.

“We are here today against terror, united against terrorism,” said Tal Shuster, one of the event’s organizers, in a speech. “We do not accept any type of terror, not in New York, not in Israel, not anywhere in the world.”

The rally, one of 15 similar demonstrations organized nationwide, came after weeks in which Jewish communities across the country experienced antisemitism during and after the conflict in Gaza and Israel. In New York City, amid dueling pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies on Thursday, multiple Jews were assaulted in the street.

In the days following, Jews across New York posted on social media about being

threatened, harassed or otherwise attacked for being Jewish. The reports were reminiscent of a string of antisemitic incidents in New York in the months before the pandemic shut down street life globally. Nationwide, the AntiDefamation League recorded an increase in antisemitic incidents in the first week of the Israel-Hamas fighting.

There were attacks on synagogues and individual Jews in other cities as well.

Synagogues in Florida, Illinois and Arizona were targeted. Earlier in the week, two antisemitic incidents were caught on video in Los Angeles.

The antisemitic incidents have led some to refrain from wearing Jewish symbols publicly out of fear of being attacked. But people at the New York rally said that even though the news of the recent attacks concerned them, they hadn’t gotten to the point of taking off their kippahs or jewelry featuring Stars of David.

“I want to show the world that the Jewish nation is strong and will not give up, and to show that, walking with a kippa, I don’t need to be afraid,” said Gershon Abergel, an Israel who has lived in New York for 18 years and who wears a kippa.h “It’s strange but it will pass. I’m trying to be strong.”

Speakers at the rally, held near the National September 11 Memorial & Museum,

Multiple antisemitic incidents reported over the weekend across US (JTA) – At least four cases of intimidation or assault against Jews have been reported in the United States since Thursday, in a continuation of what many fear is one of the country’s worst spate in years of antisemitic violence.

On Saturday, six men assaulted and punched two Jewish teenagers in Brooklyn on 18th Avenue and Ocean Parkway, reported VINnews. The news site interviewed Mitchel Schwartz, the father of one of the teenagers.

One of the men told the teenagers “free Palestine” and made additional references to Israel, the report said.

The report did not say whether the teenagers were hurt or whether they had complained to police. An Uber driver who witnessed the scene told the teens to get into the car and took them to safety, the report also said. The driver was Muslim.

On Friday, Israel and Hamas in Gaza agreed to a ceasefire that ended 11 days of exchanges of fire. That night, Luca Lewis, a

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20-year-old professional soccer player who plays for the New York Red Bulls, said he was threatened by men holding knives who asked if he was Jewish, and who told him they would kill him if his answer were yes.

The incident happened in New York, he wrote on Instagram. A group of men passed him and a friend on the street when one of the men asked Lewis if he was Jewish, according to Lewis.

“I paused for a moment in confusion and thought about it, then I saw them withdrawing knives,” Lewis wrote in his post.

“I obviously said no. The guy looked at me with such disgust in his eyes and said ‘Good’.”

This made Lewis angry and he asked what would happen if he were Jewish, he wrote. “‘I’ll beat the f*ckin sh*t out of you and kill you’,” Lewis quoted the man as replying.

Earlier last week, pro-Palestinian attackers threw punches and bottles at diners at a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles. In New York’s heavily Jewish Diamond District,

protesters of Israel threw fireworks from a car amid a violent street altercation.

In Hallandale Beach, Florida a man directed antisemitic abuse in addressing a local rabbi and later emptied a bag containing human feces outside the rabbi’s synagogue on Friday, WSVN reported. Police are investigating the case. The report offered no information linking the incident to Israel.

On May 14 a Hallandale Beach man reported having rocks thrown at him as he walked back from synagogue.

In Tucson, Arizona unidentified individuals hurled a large object through the glass door of a synagogue, Congregation Chaverim on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, AZcentral reported. Police are investigating that incident, as well.

On Thursday, dueling pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrations clashed in Times Square, where protesters from both demonstrations broke out into brawls.

ATTENDEES AT THE PRO-ISRAEL RALLY IN NEW YORK CITY ON MAY 23, 2021.

(BEN SALES)

condemned the antisemitism amid an event that, mostly, was focused on Israel. Upbeat Israeli music blasted before the event agenda got underway, and demonstrators wore shirts that said “I stand with Israel” and, in Hebrew, “Israel is in my heart.” The backdrop to the dais featured two signs that said “Hamas = Terrorists” and “Stop supporting Hamas.”

The crowd cheered for the NYPD near the beginning of the event.

Curtis Sliwa, a Republican candidate for New York City mayor and the founder of the Guardian Angels, a volunteer crime prevention organization, showed up wearing his trademark red beret. On the sides of the crowd, Chabad emissaries wrapped tefillin on men’s arms. Across a barricade far from the crowd, a small group of anti-Zionist haredi Orthodox Jews, from the Neturei Karta movement, protested the rally. But the rally was devoid of the physical fighting that occurred at the rallies on Thursday.

Speakers included Israel’s acting consul general in New York, Israel Nitzan, as well as Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the pro-Israel and conservative activist.

Peter Fox, a writer and pro-Israel activist, condemned Jewish extremists who assaulted Arabs in Israel in recent weeks at a speech at the rally. Elisha Wiesel, the son of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, condemned “antisemitic Marxists” before saying that Israel and the Palestinians deserve to live in peace, and leading a chant of “Salaam Aleikum” – peace be with you, in Arabic – to emphasize the quest for peace.

“Jews are the oldest tribe but we cannot allow ourselves to be tribal,” Fox said. “Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve much better.”

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AROUND CT National Council of Jewish Women closes its Hartford section HARTFORD – National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) has announced that will closed it’s Greater Hartford section on Thursday, May 20.

“On behalf of the Board of Directors of the National Council of Jewish Women, Inc. (NCJW), we want to express our deep appreciation for all that the NCJW Greater Hartford Section has accomplished over the years,” wrote NCJW President Dana Gerson, and CEO Sheila Katz in a letter to members.

“The outstanding members of NCJW Greater Hartford Section have helped build the foundation of NCJW. Your contributions have been remarkable and inspirational. Thank you for your years of commitment, support and dedicated service to affecting change and improving the lives of those in your community and throughout the country,” they said.

Going forward, said Gerson and Katz, Greater Hartford member will become NCJW Advocates which the describe as “the heart of the movement.” Advocates are kept abreast of Action Alerts and invitations to webinars, national events, and opportunities to get involved in our work.

“It is our hope that you will continue to

collaborate with NCJW nationally in our changemaking efforts to improve the lives of women, children, and families at the local, national, and global level,” Gershon and Katz told Greater Hartford members.

Although the Greater Hartford Section is closing, they added, its work “will live on through the following three NCJW endowment and scholarship funds for students that will remain active through the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Hartford. Your donations will aid local students.”

These three endowment and scholarship funds include: – National Council of Jewish Women Endowment Fund: Merit-based scholarships for higher education-related expenses including tuition, room, board, books and incidental expenses.

– Celia Hillman Scholarship Fund: Merit-based scholarships for college, vocational and technical school expenses including tuition, room, board, books and incidental expenses.

– National Council of Jewish Women Greater Hartford Section Scholarship Fund for Reproductive Health Education: To support annual

B’NAI MITZVAH

scholarship(s)/stipends to high school and college-aged youth participating in 501(c)(3) compliant development programs focused on reproductive health education and reproductive rights at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England.

ANDREW WEISS, son of Danielle and Daniel Weiss, will celebrate his bar mitzvah on Saturday, May 29, at The Emanuel Synagogue in West Hartford.

For more information about NCJW, visit ncjw.org or call the organization’s national office at (202) 296-2588.

SCHOOL DAYS IN STAMFORD! Bi-Cultural First-Graders Receive Their First Siddurs First-graders at Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy in Stamford celebrated receiving they first siddurs at a special ceremony attended by their families on Friday, May 7. Traditionally, the Siddur celebration – aka Chag HaSiddur – is highlighted by a class performance of prayers and more. This year, however, COVID protocols brought the party outdoors, as parents parked in the school’s lot and watched as each student was called up to receive their Siddur. The ceremony was followed by singing and dancing led by the school’s music teacher, Sandy Shmueli.

Bi-Cultural first-graders Rebecca, left, and Eliza Ostroff show off their new Siddurs at the school’s Chag HaSiddur, as their proud parents, Allison and (Bi-Cultural alum) Jonathan Ostroff, and their babysitter, Julia Kryslak, look on.

Bi-Cultural Students Bring the Colonial Era to Life

HASSLE FREE LIVING There’s no place like

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 16

JEWISH LEDGER

| MAY 28, 2021

After learning all about our country’s colonies and Founding Fathers, fifth-graders at Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy in Stamford took a step back in time to celebrate Colonial Day. With the help of their teachers, the class brought to life that significant period in our nation’s history with a host of Colonial-themed activities, including quilting and crafting, poetry reading (on the town common, of course) and gardening. They also played Colonial games, listened to the music of the era and, under the guidance of a New Canaan Historical Society docent, engaged in wool carding.

Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy 5th-grader Eli Hoff practices writing with a quill pen during the class’s Colonial Day celebration. jewishledger.com

THE KOSHER CROSSWORD MAY 28, 2021 “Lofty Ambitions” By: Yoni Glatt Difficulty Level: Challenging

Vol. 93 No. 22 JHL Ledger LLC Publisher Henry M. Zachs Managing Partner

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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 MAY 21 CROSSWORD

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Across 1. Bar 4. Men who “Who Let the Dogs Out” 8. Aliyah makers 12. Disney monkey 13. Funnel-shaped 14. Treat unjustly 15. Pricer’s word 16. Kitchen feature 17. Some Israelis follow it 18. Major religious org. in America 19. “Zeh hayom ___ Hashem....”

20. Cone or Cat 21. Sideways 23. Hotel worker 25. The Maccabees made it

28. Goes quickly, old-school 29. Spell that creates funny messages, at times 30. UN workers’ rights agcy.

31. “I love you,” in Venice 33. Protective computer programs 35. Get ___ on the wrist 36. Letters inherited by family members 37. Whoopi’s breakout role in “The Color Purple” 38. Say again 40. Butcher shop buys 41. “Fer sure” 42. Where one can see the Menorah on an arch 43. Animal quarters

44. Old-time singer Sumac 45. Middle East Gulf 46. Go quickly 49. Ararat and Hermon: Abbr.

50. What’s said before one starts reading Torah 52. Roe 53. Pork, to many Jews 56. Moronic 57. Jews stereotypically have it 58. Body or Under 59. Lior Raz or Michael Aloni, e.g.

60. Terminal monitor abbr.

61. Slide in sleet 62. Have plenty of 63. Made like the Syrian army at the Valley of Tears Battle

Down 1. Easternmost province of Indonesia 2. Some ways to get around 3. Israelis could finally visit it for the first time last year 4. Speaks immodestly 5. Common female name with only two letters 6. Work for a Kohen Gadol... or 13 & 14-Down?

7. Staff stud 8. Guess qualifier 9. Possible meme response 10. Words before pickle or jam

11. Casino that competes with DraftKings 13. Lofty ambition for one with acrophobia 14. Lofty ambition for one with acrophobia 20. Construction locale 22. Direct toward 24. Distinctive glows 25. One can spot Chicago’s Loop Synagogue (and others) from it 26. Leaving nothing behind 27. Eugene and Daniel Levy play them 31. Delinquent

32. “___ to recall...”

33. Incriminate falsely 34. Ages and ages (Var.) 39. Some engine parts 43. Emerging 7-Down 47. “Buenos Aires” musical 48. First name of a famous refusenik 49. State 51. Check follower 53. Prof’s aides, briefly 54. Ancient animal house?

55. Dieter’s stat.

56. “Am ___ fault here?”

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Coming soon: An Orthodox Jewish survivalist camp – for the unvaccinated only

BY SHIRA HANAU

(JTA) – With summer coming and COVID19 vaccines being deemed safe for children as young as 12, some camps are talking about the possibility of a mask-free summer for vaccinated campers. But one Jewish camp being planned for the summer is taking a different approach: barring any vaccinated camper or staff from attending at all.

Advertisements for Camp Hikon, planned for upstate New York, have recently appeared on email listservs popular in the Orthodox Jewish community. The camp’s announcement also comes as posters encouraging people not to get the COVID-19 vaccines appeared in Midwood, Brooklyn, where one member of the founding team runs a natural foods store.

The developments suggest that anti-vaccination sentiment and COVID misinformation are taking new forms in Jewish communities where non-compliance with public health regulations has been relatively high.

Camp Hikon is aiming to prepare yeshiva boys and girls for what it calls the “political, environmental and economic” changes to come. Despite its stated interest in preparing campers for “natural disasters,” it will not allow any vaccinated campers or staff to attend. Naftali Schwartz, the Brooklyn-based self-described “health coach” with no formal training in medicine or public health, is launching the camp.

Drawing on a debunked theory spread by the anti-vaccination movement, the camp’s website cites the “experimental nature” of the COVID-19 vaccines.

According to the false theory, living in close quarters with vaccinated people could “enhance” the spread of the coronavirus.

The website refers readers to a site called NutriTruth, which claims vaccines are a “biological weapon,” and to a livestreamed discussion between several notable antivaxxers.

“We regret that we will be unable to accept campers or counselors who have already received any of these injections,” according to the website.

Schwartz said he made the rule because of “suspicious symptoms that occur to unvaccinated people who have spent a lot of time in the company of vaccinated people.”

However, the idea that unvaccinated people can be harmed by spending time with people who have received the COVID vaccines is not true. Other debunked 18

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theories were listed on posters that appeared this week in Midwood, a heavily Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn. The unsigned posters discouraged Orthodox Jews from being vaccinated due to potential risks to fertility (another debunked theory), among other reasons.

“Many, many Rabbonim who have thoroughly researched the COVID vaccine are urgently saying NOT to take it,” one flyer read, using the Yiddish word for rabbis.

The flyer included a link to an online pamphlet with the names of rabbis who have allegedly come out against the coronavirus vaccines. It also promoted medications for the treatment of COVID such as hydroxychloroquine that studies have shown to be ineffective. The pamphlet claimed that people did not die because of the coronavirus, but rather from “lack of proper treatment of corona, or from other neglect or improper treatment at the hospital.”

Anti-vaccine sentiment is persistent in pockets of the Orthodox Jewish community, which suffered from an outbreak of measles in 2019 after a child who had traveled to Israel spread the disease among other unvaccinated children in Brooklyn and upstate New York. The outbreak was brought under control after New York City’s health department imposed fines on parents who refused to vaccinate their children and threatened to close yeshivas that allowed unvaccinated children to attend. New York State ended nonmedical exemptions to vaccination requirements in schools,.

According to COVID vaccination data from the New York City Department of Health, only 18% of residents in Borough Park are fully vaccinated with 28% partially vaccinated. In Midwood, 22% of residents are fully vaccinated and 30% partially vaccinated.

Whether Camp Hikon actually gets off the ground remains to be seen. So far, no children are signed up and Schwartz has yet to obtain a permit to operate the camp.

But he has a clear vision of what will happen there. Masks will not be encouraged at the camp; as to how the camp would fight the spread of COVID-19, campers would be treated “with an abundance of vitamin D and other prophylaxis,” according to the website.

The camp appears to combine survivalist training with Torah study. The primary goal of the camp, Schwartz said, is to prepare campers for a future in which political instability, economic instability and unusual weather events could create supply chain issues that would interfere with everyday life. Campers will build their own shelters, according to the website, and the camp plans to provide special footwear intended for survival settings.

“We’re catering to a demographic of families that are awake, who understand that the years in the future will not be similar to years in the past,” Schwartz said.

| MAY 28, 2021

TORAHPortion Behalotcha

T

BY SHLOMO RISKIN

he Jewish people seemed poised for entry into the Promised Land when suddenly; The nation became a group of ‘kvetchers,’ “complaining evilly in the ears of the Lord…. saying ‘who will feed us meat? Remember the fish which we ate in Egypt for free, the cucumbers, the watermelons, the onions and the garlic’” (Numbers 11:1,4, 5) Moses then cries out to God that he has no meat to give the nation and that he can no longer bear the burden of leading them. The Divine response is to tell Moses to gather 70 men from among the elders of Israel who will help bear the burden and upon whom the spirit of the Lord will rest (11:16,17).

Why are the Jews so vexed and how does God’s response alleviate their feelings? They want meat and God tells Moses to give them 70 rabbis? After all of the miracles of the Exodus, it’s difficult to understand the disillusionment of the Israelites and even more difficult to understand the solution offered by God. The subtext of this trialogue between the Israelites, Moses and God is that Moses is now being confronted by a new generation, by the youth who left Egypt and are now maturing into adulthood.

This new generation has different needs and expectations than their parents. Each generation requires its own teachers; each generation has its own dreams, needs and vision. The adults who left Egypt with Moses required a Rav; their children who were now growing to maturity required a Rebbe.

It has been said that the difference between a Rav and a Rebbe is that when a Rav chastises, everyone thinks he is speaking to their neighbor, whereas when a Rebbe chastises everyone feels that he is speaking personally to them. But there is another difference. A Rav speaks with the voice of tradition and conveys the words of God to the entire nation, giving a message which expresses the vision of our eternal Torah for all generations. A Rebbe speaks personally to every individual, taking the eternal message of God and making it relevant to their needs. The Rav speaks to the generation; the Rebbe speaks to the individual in each generation.

Moses was an exalted prophet who came to the Israelites from the faraway palace of Pharaoh. He continued to lead them from the Tent of the Divine Meeting to about 10.5 miles from the encampment of the Israelites. Moses did not speak to the Israelites with his own voice since “he was heavy of speech and of uncircumcised

tongue.” He thundered with the voice of God, presenting the Divine message of freedom and responsibility. His power which emanated from the Divine enabled him to unite the nation and imbue them with the confidence to follow him and God into the barren desert. Moses came from the distance and looked out into the distance. He was a ro’eh (with an aleph); a lofty and majestic seer.

Now, that the Jews had left the land of oppression and were about to begin a new life in the Promised Land, they had to put the elusive notion of national freedom into personal perspective. Each individual had to understand how to utilize the gift of freedom to find his/her individual purpose and his/her individual expression within the context of God’s land and God’s Torah.

For this, they required an individual pastor (ro’eh, with an ayen). They could not articulate this need because they didn’t quite understand it. They thought their discomfort stemmed from boredom with the daily manna. That’s why they were not even sure which food they wanted; meat, watermelon, leeks or garlic. They really needed individual nourishment for their souls. At first, Moses too did not understand what they needed and so, when he sent out the scouts to tour the land and inspire the people with its bounty, he told them “strengthen yourselves and take the fruit of the land” and bring back luscious grapes.”

Ultimately, Moses understands this new generation requires a personalized Rebbe rather than a God – imbued Rav. This was a trait which one Moses did not have the time or patience to develop. His closeness to God and Eternity conflicted with the immediate individual needs of 600,00 Jews! Moses recognizes that this new generation requires a new leader: “Let the Lord God of the differing spirits of the various flesh and blood human beings appoint a leader over the congregation, one who will take them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the Lord not be like sheep without a shepherd.” (Numbers 27:16).

Joshua was a very different type of leader than Moses, a great scholar and prophet, but also a man of the people. This made him the right person to bring this generation into the Promised Land. They had cried out for meat but what they really needed were rabbis: leaders, who would prophesy from within the encampment rather than from the distant Tent of Meeting where God resided. They needed a Rebbe!

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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.

THRU TUESDAY, JUNE 1 Art in Action: Young Artists’ Vision of 2020 The Mandell Jewish Community Center, in collaboration with the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, will showcase “Art in Action: Young Artists’ Vision of 2020,” a collection of creative work that captured the thoughts and emotions of teens from across the Greater Hartford region during the Covid-19 crisis. During the fall of 2020, more than three dozen Greater Hartford artists, ages 13-19, submitted to the Hartford Foundation a variety of creative projects which reflected their energy and emotions during the pandemic. The artwork – in an array of art forms, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, poems and music – were subsequently featured at the Foundation’s annual stakeholder event and in a virtual gallery on the organization[’s website. The works will be on display at the Mandell JCC May 5–June 11. For more information, visit mandelljcc.org.

TUESDAY, MAY 25 “Hineni: Here for Each Other” virtual community celebration The Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford presents “Hineni: Here for Each Other” on May 25, 7 - 8:15 p.m. The evening will feature a virtual interview with Lior Raz, star and co-creator of the hit Israeli Netflix series “Fauda, on May 25, 7 - 8:15 p.m.

Attendees will receive a “celebration box” filled with kosher treats delivered to their door. Tickets are $36 per household. Paid reservations are required by May 11 to receive celebration box. Attendees are also asked to make a gift to the Federation’s 2021 Annual Campaign, payable by Dec. 331, 2021. For more information or to register: http://bit.ly/Hineni2021RSVP.

WEDNESDAY, May 26 Understanding the BDS Movement: Winning the Campus Fight for Israel The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement fights to delegitimize Israel on today’s college campuses. Learn about the history of BDS and the tactics and practical jewishledger.com

tools that can be used to counter them at this seminar open to parents and the community to be held on May 26 at 7 p.m. on Zoom. Guest speaker: Elisa Allout. As senior campus strategist with StandWithUs, Allout supports students with strategies and resources to fight BDS, anti-Zionism and antisemitism on campus. Hosted by UJF of Greater Stamford, New Canaan and Darien, Bi-Cultural Hebrew Academy, Congregation Agudath Shalom, StandWithUs, and NCSY. Register at: https://us02web.zoom.us/ meeting/register/tZ0pfumgqzouH9TFP5AknVaAZzKQZfMoWQ8.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2

JUNE 1 – JUNE 27 Rogers Park Band on June 6, 3 pm, in the parking lot of West Hartford Town Hall.

Outdoor socially distanced seating or stayin-car options available.Celebrate bar/bat mitzvah milestones that occurred during the past pandemic year, and applaud the children, teens and young adults living with and without disabilities whose friendships endured through these challenging times.

Limited space; reservations required. $36/adults; $18/children. Register at friendshipcirclect.com.

THURSDAY, JUNE 10 THRU SUNDAY, JUNE 13

Spring Dinner with Jean Chatzky

27th Annual Jewish FilmFest of Eastern CT

United Jewish Federation Women’s Philanthropy will host its Spring Dinner featuring guest speaker Jean Chatzky, CEO of HerMoney.com and host of the podcast HerMoney with Jean Chatzky, on June 2 at Stamford Museum and Nature. Centere, 151 Scofieldtown Rd. (rain date, June 3), Zoom participation welcome. Live music

by Arielle Eden. Masks required and all safety precautions and social distancing protocols will be observed. Pre-packaged dinner with wine tasting, crafts, Tricky Tray and silent auction at 6:30 p.m.; followed by the program at 7:30 p.m. $95/per person before May 21; $125/after May 21. For Tricky Tray/auction ticket information, visit ujf.org.

“Here We Are,” from Israel, in Hebrew with English subtitles, (2020, 92 minutes) will screen online on June 10 - 13 at 7:30 p.m.

The story of devoted father, Aharon, who has spent his life raising his son, Uri, who is autistic. Now a young adult, it might be time for Uri to live in a specialized home.

While on their way to the institution, Aharon decides to run away with his son and hits the road, knowing that Uri is not ready for this separation. Or is it, in fact, his father who is not ready? Movie link will be available to view from Thursday at 12:01 a.m. through Sundays at 11:59 p.m.

Admission if FREE (donations welcome).

Registration is required. For more information or to register, visit JFEC.com.

THURSDAY, JUNE 3 THRU SUNDAY JUNE 6

TUESDAY, JUNE 15

27th Annual Jewish FilmFest of Eastern CT

Brexit: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

“They Ain’t Ready for Me,” a feature-length documentary about Tamar Manasseh, the African American mother and rabbinical student who is leading the fight against senseless killings on the south side of Chicago, will screen online at the 27th Annual Jewish FilmFest of Eastern CT on June 3 - 6. Tamar, who is both authentically Jewish and authentically Black, brings an understanding of both communities, even as she struggles for acceptance in the Jewish world. Screening will followed by director Brad Rothschild and Tamar Manasseh on June 6, 7:30 p.m. Movie link will be available to view from Thursday at 12:01 a.m. through Sundays at 11:59 pm.

Admission if FREE (donations welcome).

Registration is required. For more information or to register, visit JFEC.com.

The JCC in Sherman’s Great Decisions 2021 series will discuss the topic of “Brexit: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead” on Zoom, June 15, 7 - 8:30 p.m. FREE. For more information: jccinsherman.org/ greatdecisions.

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.

THURSDAY, JUNE 17 THRU SUNDAY, JUNE 20 27th Annual Jewish FilmFest of Eastern CT “The Spy Behind Home Plate,” from the USA (2018, 80 minutes) will screen online on June 17 - 20 at 7:30 p.m. The first feature-length documentary to tell the real story of Morris “Moe” Berg, the enigmatic and brilliant Jewish baseball player turned spy. Berg caught and fielded in the major leagues during baseball’s Golden Age in the 1920s and 1930s. But very few people know that Berg also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), spying in Europe and playing a prominent role in America’s efforts to undermine the German atomic bomb program during WWII. Guest speaker: Producer/Director/Writer Aviva Kempner, Sunday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.

Movie link will be available to view from Thursday at 12:01 a.m. through Sundays at 11:59 p.m. Admission if FREE (donations welcome). Registration is required. For more information or to register, visit JFEC. com.

THURSDAY, JUNE 24 THRU SUNDAY, JUNE 27 27th Annual Jewish FilmFest of Eastern CT “Crescendo” (from Germany, with English subtitles, 2020, 106 minutes) will screen June 24 - 27 at 7:30 p.m. It tell the story of a renowned conductor who assembles an orchestra of Israeli and Palestinian youth, only to be drawn into a tempest of distrust and discord. For personal reasons, maestro Eduardo Sporck agrees to arrange a symbolic concert for a Middle East peace summit in Italy. But as auditions begin in Tel Aviv, conflict between the factions flares up, and it takes all the conductor’s skills to get his musicians in harmony. An impressive cast of Israeli and Palestinian non-actors, lends authenticity to this powerful drama, loosely inspired by Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Guest speaker: Screenwriter Stephen Glantz, Sunday, June 27, 7:30 pm. Movie link will be available to view from Thursday at 12:01 a.m. through Sundays at 11:59 p.m.

Admission if FREE (donations welcome).

Registration is required. For more information or to register, visit JFEC.com.

SUNDAY, JUNE 6 Friendship Circle Celebration The Friendship Circle of West Hartford will host a Covid-safe concert featuring the JEWISH LEDGER

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MAY 28, 2021

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OBITUARIES KIRSCHENBAUM Frances Engel Kirschenbaum of Orange, died May 14. She was the widow of Jack Martin Kirschenbaum. Raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., she was the daughter of Phillip and Mollie Engel. She was also predeceased by her siblings, Bernie and Nat Engel.

She is survived by her children, Lisa Kirschenbaum Kandrach and her husband John, and Peter Kirschenbaum and his wife Christine; and her grandchildren, Melissa Kandrach, Samuel Kirschenbaum and Andrew Kirschenbaum.

LESHINE Arlene Francis Cohen Leshine, 89, of Northford, formerly of Brnford, died May 14. She was the widow of Zelman Leshine.

She was also predeceased by her brother William Cohen. Born in New Haven, she was the daughter of the late Abraham and Rose (Sall) Cohen. She is survived by her children, Paula and her husband Ira, Eric and his wife Deborah, and Martha; her grandchildren, Zoe, Hannah, Roxanne and Margo; and her loving companion, Carl Yohans.

RUBENSTEIN Theologian, author, and educator Richard Lowell Rubenstein, age 97, of Fairfield, Connecticut, passed away on May 16, 2021 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Dr. Rubenstein was known for his groundbreaking works on the meaning of Judaism, religious life, and contemporary civilization in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the rise of the state of Israel. His 1966 book, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism (1966;1992) was among the first to systematically probe the significance of Auschwitz for post-holocaust religious life and initiated debate which continues to this day. Rubenstein attended Townsend Harris High School and City College before studying for the rabbinate at the Hebrew Union College/University of Cincinnati. Unable to reconcile the horror of the Holocaust with the then current thinking of Reform Judaism, he followed his teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel to the Jewish Theological Seminary, receiving his ordination and M.H.L. degree in 1952.

In 1955 he earned his S.T.M. from the Harvard Divinity School and Ph.D. in the history of religion from the graduate school while serving as interim director of Hillel

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SLOAN Ernestine (Kirsch) Sloan, 94, of New Haven, died May 12. She was the widow of Leslie Sloan, died at CT. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., she was a daughter of the late Charles and Sarah (Rosenberg) Kirsch. She is survived by her children, David Sloan and his wife Connie Yang, Nancy Alchek and her husband Elliot; her daughter-in-law Susan; her grandchildren, Brett and Amy, Dana and Adam, Stefanie, Avery, Jake, Olivia, & Asher; her great-grandchildren, Charlie Baer and Bryson Baer. She was also predeceased by her son Richard Sloan, her brother Julian Krisch, and her sister Marie Levine.

WEINBERG Beverly Kahan Weinberg, 79, of Orange, died May 12. She was the wife of Manny Weinberg. Born in New Haven, she was the daughter of Abraham and Belle Kahan in New Haven. In addition to her husband, she is survived by her sons, Edward and his wife Amy, Ronald and his wife Bonnie, and Howard and his wife Jennifer; his grandchildren, Josh, Ben, Alexis, Jacob, Emily and Zachary; her sisters, Marilyn Press and Rhoda Liebowitz, and her brother Joel Kahan and his wife Susie.

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at Harvard. In 1958 Rubenstein became Hillel director and, later, Charles E. Merrill Professor of Humanities at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1971 he joined the religion department of Florida State University, becoming Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Religion and co-director of the Humanities Institute; Florida State University established the Richard L. Rubenstein Chair for Religious Studies in his honor. He ended his academic career as president of the University of Bridgeport from 1995-2000. Rubenstein’s vast bibliography of scholarly articles and books includes Morality and Eros (1970), The Religious Imagination (1971), My Brother Paul (1972), Power Struggle (1974), The Age of Triage (1983), The Cunning of History (Introduction by William Styron, 1987), Approaches to Auschwitz (with John K. Roth,1987; 2003) and Jihad and Genocide (2010). Dr. Rubenstein was predeceased by his beloved wife of 46 years, Betty Rogers Rubenstein, his first wife and mother of his children, Ellen Vanderveen, son Isaac Aaron Rubenstein, and daughterin-law Carol Bulloch Rubenstein. Surviving children are Hannah R. Rubenstein of West Simsbury, Conn. (Frederick C. Feibel), and Jeremy N. Rubenstein of Los Angeles, Calif.

(Linda Tang Rubenstein); stepchildren John H. Alschuler of Sag Harbor, N.Y. (Diana Diamond); Jean Reed of Knowlesville, NB, Canada, and Liora Alschuler of East Thetford, Vt.; and 10 adored grandchildren and step-grandchildren. Dr. Rubenstein lies in rest at Beth El Cemetery, Fairfield CT. Memorial contributions may be made to

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LOOK for these MAGAZINES in your INBOX!

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

MAY 28, 2021

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