Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

Facebook is forming new internal teams dedicated to studying its main social network and Instagram for racial bias, in particular for whether its algorithms trained using artificial intelligence adversely affect Black, Hispanic, and other underrepresented groups. The team will be tasked with ensuring fairness and equitable product development are present in everything we do, a Facebook spokesperson tells The Verge. We will continue to work closely with Facebooks Responsible AI team to ensure we are looking at potential biases across our respective platforms.

The new equity team as its called within Instagram (a similar team is being formed to study Facebooks main app and website) marks a departure for the company, which has historically resisted efforts within the company to study effects of racial bias. The news of Facebooks new research teams was first reported on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal.

The racial justice movement is a moment of real significance for our company. Any bias in our systems and policies runs counter to providing a platform for everyone to express themselves, Vishal Shah, the vice president of product for Instagram, said in a statement given to The Verge. While were always working to create a more equitable experience, we are setting up additional efforts to continue this progress from establishing the Instagram Equity Team to Facebooks Inclusive Product Council.

The companys decisions today arrive as protests against racism and policy brutality continue daily in American cities following George Floyds death in late May. Facebook is also enduring the final stages of a month-long advertising boycott under the #StopHateForProfit movement organized by the Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, the NAACP, and other civil rights groups. The boycott has included large spenders like Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Walmart, among dozens of others, although CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called disappointing and accused of offering shallow excuses when meeting with boycott organizers earlier this month.

Last month, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri pledged to overhaul how the company tries to solve problems that Black and other underrepresented groups face on the platform. It starts with accounting for the experiences and challenges that underrepresented groups, such as our Black community, face when they use Instagram, Mosseri wrote. Weve done a lot of work to better understand the impact our platform has on different groups, and thats helped us get to where we are today. But I think theres more to do across some key areas, which fit into our broader company commitments. Mosseri specifically called out harassment, account verification, distribution, and algorithmic bias as areas he thinks Instagram needs to improve on to better serve Black users.

Facebook has a rocky history with racial bias. The company was found to have been allowing advertisers to exclude certain minority groups when advertising within federally regulated markets like housing and jobs. Facebook often sidestepped the concerns using technicalities, such as classifying users not by race but by so-called ethnic or multicultural affinities, or self-selecting identity groups consistent with what a majority of Black, Hispanic, or other minorities might statistically like on the platform. Only after rigorous coverage from media outlets, most prominently ProPublica, did Facebook eventually disable ad targeting options for housing, job, and credit ads as part of a legal settlement with civil rights groups.

The company is also comprised of less than 4 percent Black employees, and last year company officials barred employees from studying the racial effects of its platform without approval from the most senior leaders, according to the WSJ. As a result, Facebook software that automates moderation like account suspensions on Instagram has been found to disproportionately affect users the platform suspects are Black, the WSJ reports.

Facebook has pledged to donate $200 million to support black-owned businesses in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests around the country. The company also said last month it plans to boost the percentage of Black and other underrepresented minorities composing ts leadership team by 30 percent over the next five years, as well as trying to double the number of Black and Hispanic employees by 2023.

An 89-page civil rights audit conducted bylaw firm Relman Colfax over the course of two years and released on July 8th called for Facebook to study and eliminate racial bias in its AI-trained software and systems, although those conducting the audit were not permitted to study internal company research and AI models.

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Facebook will study whether its algorithms are racially biased - The Verge

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

As TikTok is pulled into politics and faces bans by countries over privacy issues, it is in an unusual situation whereby it could have its meteoric rise stunted, for different reasons than any other platform before it.

There was a time when trouble for social networks simply meant not gaining sufficient user engagement, as the likes of Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, Google+ can attest. However, as a Chinese-owned social network, TikTok's future has been thrown into doubt by an altogether more modern problem geopolitical privacy concerns.

Indias Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has placed a blanket ban on 59 mobile apps from Chinese companies that it said were engaged in activities prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, the security of the state and public order.

In the United States, Donald Trumps government is threatening to ban TikTok after accusing the platform of sharing information with the Chinese government. Then, following Chinas establishment of a sweeping new national security law for Hong Kong, the platform announced it would exit the Hong Kong market within days.

Banning digital things in an analog way does one thing makes the digital thing bigger," David Mayo, the chief operating officer at ADNA Global tells The Drum. "TikTok may face some immediate fall off purely due to access, but over time it will continue to rise, at least until the next thing arrives.

It would take more than people to see it as a Chinese thing for it to fail in the short-term to its users; it doesnt matter the nationality of the brand. In fact I would call TikTok a global brand from China. To its users, they do not like the people who are doubling down on TikTok."

Trevor Long, the editor of EFTM.com and a technology commentator, notes app developers like TikTok can do little to control how governments react to its usage or availability in any country, other than to attempt to influence the thinking of governments about the relative privacy and security of the app.

But, very few governments in the world exercise restrictions on their constituents relating to what apps they can and cannot use," he adds. "As such, TikTok's users won't change what they are doing, [its] staggering growth won't likely slow at all."

Not everyone is convinced. Jasper Hamill, a senior account manager at Grammatik Agency, recalls that when he first encountered TikTok he used to joke that it was a Chinese psyop designed to rot the minds of western kids.

But now, he points out serious issues have emerged around this wildly popular app as critics claim it invades users' privacy in various concerning ways and everyone from parents to politicians have been asking if it is linked to China's surveillance state.

I don't think it faces a bright future due to the growing geopolitical tensions between China and countries which are key TikTok markets," Hamill says. "It's already banned in India which is a huge market and looks set to be banned in the US too."

With the rise of nationalistic sentiments, countries are taking a closer look at potential national security threats posed by data leaks, and are subjecting foreign tech companies like Facebook and TikTok to comply with stricter checks, norms and policies.

Concerns about national security and privacy issues with TikTok should be taken seriously, believes Paul Spain, the chief operating officer at Gorilla Technology, because Chinese companies are legally required to share information with the government when requested. This makes any app that collects a lot of personal data a security risk.

Add to that concerns about the amount of data TikTok is collecting and storing and it makes sense countries would choose to ban TikTok in much the same way Huawei has been hit with bans," he continues. "This doesnt mean TikTok will disappear immediately or at all, however it is possible that bans would ultimately lead to the death of TikTok."

If proven, Long says any link to national security issues should certainly result in governments and large businesses banning the use of TikTok on government or corporate devices.

However, there has been no direct link between the claims of Chinese Government interaction with user data and proof of this happening. The company claims they do not hand over data to governments anywhere in the world - who do we believe?

TikTok has denied inappropriate data collection on several occasions previously. The Drum reached out to the platform for further comment for this story but at the time of writing, it had no further statement to add.

Mayo argues there are numbers to support the growth of TikTok on other platforms. As well as the content itself, it has become very cool for people to share TikTok in intimate spaces such as WhatsApp.

TikTok is still new enough to be a novelty and trying to stop a growth trajectory like this is virtually impossible without just turning the app itself off, he adds.

For Facebook, it is facing a boycott campaign globally, with 1,032 brands joining the #StopHateForProfit, which first launched on 17 June, backed by civil rights groups including the NAACP, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.

The coalition has been calling on major corporations to put a pause on advertising on Facebook, citing the company's "repeated failure to meaningfully address the vast proliferation of hate on its platforms". Global brands like Starbucks, Diageo, Verizon, The North Face and Ben & Jerrys have heeded the call.

The initiative launched in the wake of Facebook's decision not to take action on incendiary posts from President Trump and amid widespread protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody in the US. It also comes ahead of the 2020 elections in the US.

In the recent Singapore general elections, Facebook has been keen to demonstrate it wants to prevent "inauthentic behaviour" on its platform in the interest of elections integrity by removing pages like Fabrications About The Peoples Action Party (PAP is the ruling party of Singapore), Critical Spectator and Factually Singapore, for violating its policies, because the administrators of these pages misrepresent themselves, used fake accounts, or engage in behaviour designed to enable other violations of its community standards.

We have taken action on several accounts and Pages in Singapore for violating our policies. This is based on the violating behaviour of these accounts and Pages and not based on the content they posted, a Facebook spokesperson tells The Drum.

Facebook also has to legally abide by the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation (POFMA) Act in Singapore, which the government claims will help it fight fake news to incite racial and religious disharmony, and act swiftly to halt the viral spread of falsehoods. It has been ordered to block access to pages and issue correction notices on multiple occasions.

While there is some resistance to Indias ban of TikTok and to the USs proposal of a ban, with Vice describing it as a 'human rights issue', Hamill believes we are unlikely to see protests about the bans in the streets.

He says millennials and members of Generation Z will probably "huff and puff a little" about any ban, but then move to rival platforms like Snapchat, Byte and Dubsmash. After all, he notes it is the content, not necessarily the platform itself, which really got people hooked on TikTok.

"I think it's highly likely that TikTok will be banned in democracies across the world. If that happens, it's worth asking ourselves if we're comfortable letting any social media platform snoop on our private lives. Because let's face it, TikTok's US competitors aren't exactly famed for protecting their users' privacy, he says.

On the other hand, Long predicts users will keep creating accounts, will keep making videos, and will keep spending hours and hours on the app watching videos.

As we've seen with the Cambridge Analytica controversy that rocked Facebook, people are outraged, but rarely follow through with the idea of deleting their accounts and walking away from the platform. The same applies to TikTok, he adds.

Agreeing, Mayo believes if anything, the bans will fuel the growth. He says it is "a superb story of David vs Goliath" or "brand vs the world" and for now, in a world where the leadership is so divorced from the people that TikTok is designed for, it gives a mouthpiece for Gen Z and millennials.

Following this target, the app hopes to grow with them as they grow. If TikTok can hold on to them, work and grow with them, there is no holding it back, he adds.

It is hard to predict exactly what will happen with TikTok until we gain clarity on further countries banning the app. If there are further bans, then TikToks future will be much dimmer than previously anticipated. The upcoming Instagram Reels along with competing apps such as Snapchat, Byte and Dubsmash are likely to benefit if TikToks woes continue.

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Facing geopolitical conflicts and bans, does TikTok still have a future? - The Drum

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

FORT LEE, N.J., July 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --GoodEarth Products, Inc., a leading manufacturer and distributor of high-quality, products for cleaning and maintaining facilities, is proud to announce the appointment of veteran sales and marketing executive Rick Albuck to the position of Vice President of Sales & Marketing. Reporting directly to GoodEarth CEO Steward Mandler, Rick will be responsible for all direct and channel sales efforts with a focus on expanding adoption of GoodEarth's products, as well as overseeing all of GoodEarth's marketing operations, facilitating and initiating the company's core strategic goals across all product areas.

Rick is a proven visionary and strategic thinker with a long record of success in strategic marketing, sales and development. He served in a wide variety of executive positions at NAPCO Media from 1994 to 2014, beginning as Sales Development Manager for Dealerscope Magazine and eventually rising to the position of Senior Vice President. At NAPCO, Rick demonstrated exceptional ability to conceive and develop creative sales and marketing strategies and implement a customer-focused culture through critical training and customer support initiatives. In 2014 he joined Fort Worth, TX-based 2020 Companies as Vice President of Business Development, where he provided strategic leadership and orchestrated all bottom-line factors which include new business development and executing strategic business plans. At 2020 Companies, Rick conducted business analysis, managed day-to-day operations, and led project teams to ensure all organizational objectives were met in the market and to the highest satisfaction of the company's Fortune 500 clients.

"Rick is a seasoned leader with significant experience accelerating sales in public markets, providing strategic leadership and operating efficiently at scale. He will quickly create momentum for GoodEarth as well as deliver value for our customers," notes Stewart Mandler, Founder and CEO, GoodEarth.

"Rick joins GoodEarth at an ideal time because he can quickly build deeper relationships with our customers and distributors. He is a strong leader who can accelerate our Company objectives and realize GoodEarth and our partners' sales goals," adds Artin Ghazarian, COO, GoodEarth.

A graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, Rick is a Professional Associations Executive Board Member, as well as a longstanding member of the Anti-Defamation League Consumer Technology Division. He is the recipient of the S. David Feir Humanitarian Award, Anti-Defamation League, a prestigious award that honors leaders in the business and professional world who have attached the pinnacle of success in their chosen field of endeavor.

About GoodEarth Products GoodEarth Products, founded in 1996, manufactures and distributes products used to clean, maintain, and operate facilities. GoodEarth is a fast-growing manufacturer of cleaning supplies, Maintenance, Repair & Operations products (MRO), Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) products & personal care amenities. http://www.goodearthproducts.com

Media Contact:Sara Trujillo[emailprotected]917-295-5491

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Rick Albuck Joins the GoodEarth Products Executive Team as Vice President of Sales & Marketing - PRNewswire

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

The formal Facebook advertising boycott didnt kick off until the beginning of July but advertisers in the United States were already starting to pull back in June.

Ad spend decreased by 31.6% across North America during the last two weeks of June, according to data released Tuesday by social media metrics company Socialbakers.

That means that Facebooks Q2 earnings, set to be announced next week on Wednesday, July 29, will already reflect the beginnings of the widespread advertiser pullback. Although far from a perfect comp considering the ongoing pandemic, Facebooks total ad revenue in Q2 2019 was $16.6 billion.

The aim of the boycott, spearheaded by civil rights groups such as Color of Change, the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, is to force Facebook to address hate speech and divisiveness on its platform.

Facebook has tightened a few of its policies on hate speech in recent weeks, including instituting a ban on ads that promote discrimination against people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or immigration status.

Facebook is also considering blocking political advertising in the lead-up to the 2020 US presidential election, which would be a major about-face for Mark Zuckerberg, whos been doggedly defending Facebooks decision to allow politicians to include falsehoods in their ads as a free speech issue.

But neither move has been or will likely be enough to satisfy the boycotts organizers, who are looking for systemic changes to deal with what they see as a systemic problem. Policy tweaks here and there wont cut it.

As of Tuesday, 435 companies have pledged to pull their spending on Facebook for at least the month of July. But numerous big brands, including Unilever, Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Bayer, are pausing spend without signing their name to the official list of boycotters.

Disney, which dropped around $210 million on Facebook over the past six months to promote Disney Plus subscriptions, is the latest major advertiser to cut Facebook ad spend over concerns about hate speech on the platform, but without joining the official boycott.

Although ad demand and ad prices on Facebook were down significantly in Q1, representative of the early economic effects of the coronavirus in March, ad revenue still grew 17% year over year in the quarter, which was better than expected.

At the time, Facebook also reported that ad revenue was approximately flat YoY, which investors took as a good sign of coming stability despite the pandemic. And by the end of May, CPMs on Facebook were starting to shoot back up.

But that was before the boycott, which could run beyond July. The efforts organizers are also pushing participating brands to pause their spending globally, rather than just in North America.

Facebooks third quarter results, which wont come until late October, will tell the full story of the boycotts impact.

As of the third week of July, brands shared 72.05% fewer new ads on Facebook and Instagram compared with this time last year, according to social analytics company ListenFirst.

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Ad Spend On Facebook Down More Than 31% In Late June Due To The Boycott - AdExchanger

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

Tech Analyst Shana Glenzer discusses how Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are handling the ad boycott which could have potentially large economic impact.

Hundreds of advertisers, non-profit organizations and people began boycotting Facebook for not doing enough to stop hate speech on the social media platform startingon July 1.

A campaign backed by the NAACP, Anti-Defamation League,Sleeping Giants and other activist organizations, called Stop Hate for Profit, called on businesses to stop advertising on the site in June after the death of George Floyd.

"We know what Facebook did," the campaign's website reads. "Theyallowed incitement to violence against protesters fighting for racial justice in America in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, TonyMcDade,AhmaudArbery, RashardBrooks and so many others."

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Facebook users won't see any ads from these big brands on the platform any time soon:

A full list of brands can be viewed on the campaign's website.

FACEBOOK IS CONSIDERING A BAN ON POLITICAL ADS: REPORT

Major nonprofit organizationsthat stopped advertising on Facebook include Black Lives Matter, Boston Children's Hospital, DoSomething.org, Main Street Alliance, The Catholic University of America and others.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told employees during a town hall that his "guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough," according to a transcript obtained by The Information.

HOW FACEBOOK FACT CHECKS WORK

A Facebook spokesperson previously told FOX Business that the company only makes "policy changes based on principles, not revenue pressures."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Paley Center in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

"We take these matters very seriously and respect the feedback from our partners. Were making real progress keeping hate speech off our platform, and we don't benefit from this kind of content," the spokesperson said. "But as we've said, we make policy changes based on principles, not revenue pressures."

Civil rights auditors hired by Facebook to analyze the company's efforts to make the platform safe and remove hate speech criticized the platform for not taking down President Trump's posts about mail-in ballot fraud. Twitter labeled the same posts from Trump posted to its platform with fact-check information.

FACEBOOK PUTS DISCLAIMER ON TRUMP POST ON MAIL-IN VOTING

"Facebook's failure to remove the Trump voting-related posts and close enforcement gaps seems to reflect a statement of values that protecting free expression is more important than other stated company values," the auditors wrote.

Facebookpreviously had a policy that said the website would not fact-check politicians in an effort to give users the opportunity to make their own conclusions about a politician's posts. The platform has updated those policies so that it will start labelingcontent it previously would not have flagged if they were deemed "newsworthy," including posts from politicians.

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Brands that pulled Facebook ads with #StopHateForProfit campaign - Fox Business

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

Last month, USC President Carol Folt announced that the school would remove former university President Rufus von KleinSmids name from a campus building, citing his leadership role in the racist eugenics movement and his refusal to admit Japanese American students to the university after World War II. In explaining the decision, Folt cited Von KleinSmids actions as being at direct odds with USCs multicultural community and our mission of diversity and inclusion. What Folt did not mention was Von KleinSmids ties to Nazism and anti-Semites.

Von KleinSmid led the university from 1921 until 1947, but it was during the 1930s and early 1940s that his tolerance of anti-Semitism was most evident. We know this in part through reports sent to Leon Lewis between 1933 and 1941 from a network of spies he recruited. Beginning in August 1933, Lewis, founding executive secretary of the Anti-Defamation League, coordinated a group of men and women who went undercover and joined every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to positions of leadership, they detailed the activities of local Nazis and their supporters, including faculty and students at USC.

According to their reports, Von KleinSmid tolerated and supported pro-Nazi faculty such as Erwin Mohme, the chairman of USCs German department. Mohme, was a frequent speaker at Nazi rallies in Hindenburg Park in La Crescenta, north of Los Angeles, according to Lewis spies. He worked closely with the Friends of New Germany (predecessor of the German American Bund) and was awarded the Order of the Eagle from Los Angeles German Consul Georg Gyssling in 1938, the only Southern Californian to receive such an honor. Yet Von KleinSmid kept him in his position as head of a department.

In the summer of 1933, Von KleinSmid was part of a delegation of American university presidents who visited Germany. According to documents I obtained from Germany while researching my book Hitler in Los Angeles, the German Foreign Office was ordered to extend a warm welcome to USCs head, who had requested a personal meeting with Joseph Goebbels. The Germans believed Von KleinSmid was sympathetic to their cause even if he could not say so in public. Upon his return to the U.S. in September 1933, Von KleinSmid denounced German anti-Semitism; but he took no steps to stamp it out at USC.

The USC president also appeared on podiums with his fellow eugenics enthusiast Baron Ernst Ulrich von Buelow, who was, as I documented in my book, head of Nazi spy operations in Southern California. Von KleinSmid also, according to Lewis spies, lent a hand to Von Buelows protege, Kurt Bernhard, Prince Zur Lippe, a German undergraduate who enrolled at USC in 1933 claiming he wanted to learn more about the United States. In fact, Bernhard was a secret German agent who recruited Nazi supporters at USC. According to Lewis spies, Bernhard bragged about his good relationship with Von KleinSmid, and while on campus founded a Nazi-sympathizing fraternity and wrote for an anti-Semitic student newspaper, the Owl. He also boasted of his ability to pass out Nazi propaganda with no blowback from university administrators. In 1938, Bernhard was finally forced to register with the U.S. government as a German foreign agent.

USCs Nomenclature Task Force is currently looking at Cromwell Field, which bears the name of former USC coach and assistant Olympic track coach Dean Cromwell. During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Cromwell prevented two Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, from competing, something Glickman and many others believed was done in order not to embarrass Hitler by having Jews on the winners podium. After the Olympics, Cromwell spoke at a Nazi-organized German Day celebration at La Crescentas Hindenburg Park, which was filled with swastika flags and storm troopers, according to a report in the American Jewish World. Anti-Nazi groups were outraged by his speech, in which he talked about how few U.S.-born people lived in New York and quipped, Oh boy, if I could only be that handsome boy Adolf [Hitler] in New York for an hour.

Cromwell also marveled that while in Berlin he did not see a single colored man, woman or children. They have all chosen to leave for some reason or other, and I for one certainly dont object to that. Following the speech, the audience gave three shouted Heil Hitlers, the Nazi salute, and a singing of the Horst Wessel song.

When newspaper reporters queried Von KleinSmid about the incident, noting how much it had disturbed the citys Jewish community, USCs leader dismissed reports of Cromwells anti-Semitism and racism as a tempest in a teapot. Cromwells remarks, he insisted, were only facetious. An unrepentant Cromwell responded that the criticism comes from a group of people [New York Jews] that raised a big slush fund to keep our team out of the Olympics.

The USC faculty were silent, but not the Los Angeles community. On September 15, 1936, 1,500 people met at the Knickerbocker Hotel to demand that USC fire Cromwell for his anti-Semitic and anti-Negro remarks. More than 100 telegrams were sent to Von KleinSmid. No action was taken.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Von KleinSmid strongly supported the American war effort to defeat Germany. He built barracks for U.S. troops on campus, and in his 1942 commencement address he asked students to dedicate themselves toward all that we are and must be after victory to the end that righteousness may again reign in the world. But it was too little and too late to undo the anti-Semitic damage he had allowed to happen at USC.

I first began hearing about Von KleinSmid when I left New York to take a job at USC in January 1979. I was told by older Angelenos that Jews didnt go to USC, they went to UCLA. I asked why, and was told about the legacy of Von KleinSmid and a belief that USC was not friendly to Jews. Things have changed dramatically since then, and now President Folt has taken steps to renounce the mistakes of the past. This moment is our Call to Action, Folt wrote, a call to confront anti-Blackness and systemic racism, and unite as a diverse, equal, and inclusive university. You have asked for actions, not rhetoric, and actions, now.

A name change is a step in the right direction, but what happens after those names are changed? What happens to that ugly history? This is a rare moment of reckoning at USC and across the nation to fully air all kinds of past prejudice, including anti-Semitism, and to excise the demons of our collective past. As we have learned from history, silence is never the answer.

Steven J. Ross is a professor of history at USC and author of Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America.

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Op-Ed: USC's reckoning with its past needs to include how anti-Semitism was allowed to flourish there - Los Angeles Times

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

Conservative

AGUDATH BNAI ISRAEL: Meister Road at Pole Ave., Lorain. Mark Jaffee, Ritual Director. 440-282-3307. abitemplelorain.com

BETH EL CONGREGATION: 750 White Pond Dr., Akron. Rabbi Elyssa Austerklein, Hazzan Matthew Austerklein. 330-864-2105. bethelakron.com.

BNAI JESHURUN-Temple on the Heights: 27501 Fairmount Blvd., Pepper Pike. Rabbis Stephen Weiss and Hal Rudin-Luria; Stanley J. Schachter, Rabbi Emeritus; Cantor Aaron Shifman. Services can be streamed online at bnaijeshurun.org/streaming. 216-831-6555. bnaijeshurun.org.

PARK SYNAGOGUE-Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo Cong.: Park MAIN 3300 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights; Park EAST 27500 Shaker Blvd., Pepper Pike. Rabbi Joshua Hoffer Skoff, Rabbi Sharon Y. Marcus, Milton B. Rube, Rabbi-in-Residence, Cantor Misha Pisman. 216-371-2244; TDD# 216-371-8579. parksynagogue.org.

SHAAREY TIKVAH: 26811 Fairmount Blvd., Beachwood. Rabbi Scott B. Roland; Gary Paller, Cantor Emeritus. 216-765-8300. shaareytikvah.org.

BETH EL-The Heights Synagogue, an Independent Minyan: 3246 Desota Ave., Cleveland Heights. Rabbi Michael Ungar; Rabbi Moshe Adler, Rabbi Emeritus. 216-320-9667. bethelheights.org.

MONTEFIORE: One David N. Myers Parkway., Beachwood. Services in Montefiore Maltz Chapel. Rabbi Akiva Feinstein; Cantor Gary Paller. 216-360-9080.

THE SHUL-An Innovative Center for Jewish Outreach: 30799 Pinetree Road, #401, Pepper Pike. Rabbi Eddie Sukol. See website or call for Shabbat and holiday service dates, times and details. 216-509-9969. rabbieddie@theshul.us. theshul.us.

AHAVAS YISROEL: 1700 S. Taylor Road, Cleveland Heights. Rabbi Boruch Hirschfeld. 216-932-6064.

BEACHWOOD KEHILLA: 25400 Fairmount Blvd., Beachwood. Rabbi Ari Spiegler, Rabbi Emeritus David S. Zlatin. 216-556-0010.

FROMOVITZ CHABAD CENTER: 21625 Chagrin Blvd. #210, Beachwood. Rabbi Moshe Gancz. 216-647.4884, clevelandjewishlearning.com

GREEN ROAD SYNAGOGUE: 2437 S. Green Road, Beachwood. Rabbi Binyamin Blau; Melvin Granatstein, Rabbi Emeritus. 216-381-4757. GreenRoadSynagogue.org.

HEIGHTS JEWISH CENTER SYNAGOGUE: 14270 Cedar Road, University Heights. Rabbi Raphael Davidovich. 216-382-1958, hjcs.org.

KHAL YEREIM: 1771 S. Taylor Road, Cleveland Heights. Rabbi Yehuda Blum. 216-321-5855.

MENORAH PARK: 27100 Cedar Road, Beachwood. Rabbi Howard Kutner; Associate Rabbi Joseph Kirsch. 216-831-6500.

OHEB ZEDEK CEDAR SINAI SYNAGOGUE: 23749 Cedar Road, Lyndhurst. Rabbi Noah Leavitt. 216-382-6566. office@oz-cedarsinai.org. oz-cedarsinai.org.

SEMACH SEDEK: 2004 S. Green Road, South Euclid. Rabbi Yossi Marozov. 216-235-6498.

SOLON CHABAD: 5570 Harper Road, Solon. Rabbi Zushe Greenberg. 440-498-9533. office@solonchabad.com. solonchabad.com.

TAYLOR ROAD SYNAGOGUE: 1970 S. Taylor Road, Cleveland Heights. 216-321-4875.

WAXMAN CHABAD CENTER: 2479 S. Green Road, Beachwood. Rabbis Shalom Ber Chaikin and Shmuli Friedman. 216-282-0112. FRI. Minchah 7:10 p.m.; SAT. Shacharit 10 a.m., Minchah 8:45 p.m.; WEEKDAYS Shacharit 7 a.m., Minchah 8:45 p.m. info@ChabadofCleveland.com, wccrabbi@gmail.com.

YOUNG ISRAEL OF GREATER CLEVELAND: Hebrew Academy (HAC), 1860 S. Taylor Road; Beachwood (Stone), 2463 Green Road. Rabbis Naphtali Burnstein and Aharon Dovid Lebovics. 216-382-5740. office@yigc.org.

ZICHRON CHAIM: 2203 S. Green Road, Beachwood. Rabbi Moshe Garfunkel. 216-291-5000.

KOL HALEV (Clevelands Reconstructionist Community): The Ratner School. 27575 Shaker Blvd., Pepper Pike. Rabbi Steve Segar. 216-320-1498. kolhalev.net.

AM SHALOM of Lake County: 7599 Center St., Mentor. Spiritual Director Renee Blau; Assistant Spiritual Director Elise Aitken. 440-255-1544.

ANSHE CHESED FAIRMOUNT TEMPLE: 23737 Fairmount Blvd., Beachwood. Rabbis Robert Nosanchuk and Joshua Caruso; Cantor Vladimir Lapin; Cantor Laureate Sarah J. Sager; and Educational Directors Diane Lavin, Staci Cohen and Rabbi Elle Muhlbaum. FRI. Shabbat Evening Service via livestream only at fairmounttemple.org 6:15 p.m. 216-464-1330. fairmounttemple.org. FRI. Shabbat Evening Service via livestream ONLY at fairmounttemple.org 6:15 p.m. 216-464-1330. fairmounttemple.org.

BETH ISRAEL-The West Temple: 14308 Triskett Road, Cleveland. Rabbi Enid Lader. Alan Lettofsky, Rabbi Emeritus. 216-941-8882. thewesttemple.com.

BETH SHALOM: 50 Division St., Hudson. Rabbi Michael Ross. 330-656-1800. tbshudson.org

BNAI ABRAHAM-The Elyria Temple: 530 Gulf Road, Elyria. Rabbi Lauren Werber. 440-366-1171. tbaelyria.org

SUBURBAN TEMPLE-KOL AMI: 22401 Chagrin Blvd., Beachwood. Rabbi Allison Bergman Vann. 216-991-0700. suburbantemple.org.

TEMPLE EMANU EL: 4545 Brainard Road, Orange. Rabbi Steven L. Denker; Cantor David R. Malecki; Daniel A. Roberts, Rabbi Emeritus. 216-454-1300. teecleve.org.

TEMPLE ISRAEL: 91 Springside Drive, Akron. Rabbi Josh Brown. Cantor Kathy Fromson. 330-665-2000 templeisraelakron.org.

TEMPLE ISRAEL NER TAMID: 1732 Lander Road, Mayfield Heights. Rabbi Matthew J. Eisenberg, D.D.; Frederick A. Eisenberg, D.D., Founding Rabbi Emeritus; Cantorial Soloist Rachel Eisenberg. 440-473-5120. tintcleveland.org.

THE TEMPLE-TIFERETH ISRAEL: 26000 Shaker Blvd., Beachwood. Senior Rabbi Jonathan Cohen; Rabbis Yael Dadoun, Roger C. Klein and Stacy Schlein; Cantor Kathryn Wolfe Sebo. 216-831-3233. ttti.org.

JEWISH SECULAR COMMUNITY: Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cleveland, 21600 Shaker Blvd., Shaker Heights. jewishsecularcommunity.org.

THE CHARLOTTE GOLDBERG COMMUNITY MIKVAH: Park Synagogue, 3300 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights. By appointment only: 216-371-2244, ext. 135.

THE STANLEY AND ESTHER WAXMAN COMMUNITY MIKVAH: Waxman Chabad House, 2479 South Green Road, Beachwood. 216-381-3170.

This is a paid listing with information provided by congregations.

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Synagogue service times: Week of July 24 | Synagogues - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

PALMER SQUARE A building that for a century served Palmer Square neighbors, either through religious services or after-school programming, has been transformed into more than a dozen high-end apartments.

And the apartments, most of which are renting for $2,650-$2,795, are going fast.

Despite the challenges facing Chicagos real estate market amid the pandemic, its only taken the development team about four months to rent all but one of the apartments at The Grand Palmer Lodge, 3228 W. Palmer St.

Now the developers are selling the building for $6 million.

When you have a new unique property, it tends to get a lot of interest, said Jordan Gottlieb, principal of Essex Realty, the brokerage firm selling the building. Theres not many of these around.

The apartments hit the market this spring after a 10-month renovation.

Built in the 1920s, the main building was originally home to Temple-Beth Els community space. The Boys & Girls Club took over the building in 1955 and went on to offer after-school programming and services for local kids and their families at the location for 60 years.

In 2018, the Logan Square Boys & Girls Club announced it would be leaving the building, putting the future of the historic building in doubt. Preservationists worried the structure would be torn down.

But New Era Chicago and development partners, Campbell Coyle Real Estate and Ranquist Development Group, stepped in and pitched an adaptive reuse project, assuaging fears.

The developers took over the old building last year.

As part of the renovation, the developers removed the 1950s annex on the site and built a parking lot in its place. They also established a pocket park and a community garden next to the building.

The park will be open to the public after the developers transfer ownership to a local nonprofit, according to New Eras founders.

The development team didnt find any old artifacts during the renovation, but they did uncover the words Temple Beth-El etched at the top of the limestone building and brought in a professional to spruce it up.

The 14 apartments, a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units, blend the old and the new with original exposed brick, large picture windows and tall ceilings, as well as modern finishes and appliances.

Mike Hagenson, co-founder of New Era, said the project is the perfect example of developers collaborating with neighbors to reach a better outcome.

The neighborhood group Logan Square Preservation pushed the developers to establish a pocket park during last years community review process. The project did not require a zoning change, but the developers and Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) held community meetings anyway.

Andrew Schneider, president of Logan Square Preservation, said he agreed the spirit of collaboration was strong.

We really partnered with the community to develop this thing, Hagenson said. Were lucky that everyones aligned and we were able to preserve this building in a way that keeps it active and avoided a teardown that someone else mightve done.

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Century-Old Logan Square Synagogue Converted Into High-End Apartments: Here's A Look Inside - Block Club Chicago

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

(JTA) For the rabbis and cantor of Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, Illinois, the to-do list to prepare for the unprecedented online-only High Holidays season was long.

In addition to transforming their usual services for over 3,000 people into an experience that congregants will find meaningful online, they needed to figure out how to create a service for families that would be engaging for young children through a screen.

So when Cantor Steven Stoehr heard about Shirat Haruach, a program of video services for families recorded by some of the most popular Jewish childrens song leaders, he jumped at the opportunity.

We could have gotten it done, Stoehr said. We just didnt think we could do it any better.

The hazzans calculus reflects a new dynamic this year as most non-Orthodox congregations choose to forgo risky in-person gatherings in favor of virtual services. No longer constrained to the people in the room or whichever visiting cantor they can fly in, communities are turning to outside talent over livestreams or video to improve their High Holidays offerings.

For some synagogues, the shift to virtual services has opened up new opportunities for how they run their services that could outlast this High Holidays season.

Its a new model for most congregations generally they rely on their own rabbis or cantors to plan and lead services but could be a glimpse into a future in which services traditionally offered by synagogues are transformed by technology or take place elsewhere. As the realization that the pandemic isnt ending anytime soon sets in, these services may be on the forefront of an upheaval in how synagogues operate and whether American Jews will look to synagogues as the primary purveyors of Shabbat and Jewish holiday programming.

The very idea has some worried.

If our goals as congregations were to have the best production value and to provide the highest-quality content, I think that has the potential to destroy what the individual community has to offer, said Hazzan Jeremy Lipton, director of placement and human resources at the Cantors Assembly. Otherwise, he said, referring to some of the countrys largest and most popular synagogues, everyone would be tuning into Park Avenue Synagogue, or Hadar, or Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.

Stoehr acknowledged as much and said he would have to think hard about whether to continue to offer something like the Shirat Haruach program beyond the High Holidays this year or after the pandemic ends.

Its dangerous in a way, he said.

To the creators of Shirat Haruach, the program isnt intended to pose a threat to synagogues. If anything, its meant to support synagogues in pivoting to virtual services, according to Rick Recht, a popular performer of Jewish music in the Reform movement and one of three performers behind Shirat Haruach.

With two other song leaders, Shira Kline and Rabbi Josh Warshawsky, Recht is developing a customizable package of services featuring different options for families and intergenerational audiences, along with the opportunity for synagogue clergy to add their own videos. The services, which east cost $1,175 to $1,375, are being offered exclusively to synagogues, not directly to families.

Recht sees the program opening up high-quality song leaders and technical production to communities that otherwise would not be able to afford to bring them in.

Thats not competition, thats good hiring, Recht said.

He sees the Shirat Haruach service as something that could outlast this years High Holidays. In fact, Recht, Kline and Warshawsky have already begun creating a package of services aimed at synagogue religious schools for this year to incorporate prerecorded prayer services and concerts into virtual religious school curricula.

I think its important for us to realize that whats happening because of the pandemic is an extension of what was happening over the last couple of decades, Recht said. I feel that were heading toward a new paradigm of a hybrid, virtual and physical.

Not everyone offering online holiday and education experiences is working through existing institutions. Eliana Light, a popular childrens song leader and performer, is offering streamed family services to both synagogues and individual families for a fee.

Light has seen an interest in virtual services from people who are not members of synagogues at World Synagogue Sing, a Sunday morning program she and several other Jewish musicians have run via livestream since the start of the pandemic.

Theres plenty of people who come who arent affiliated with synagogues, she said.

Others see an opportunity to more comprehensively reimagine what synagogue services could look like if technology is incorporated in creative ways.

I love the idea of yeah, lets find really talented people and lets have them create something online for our members to experience and for others to experience, said Lex Rofeberg, a digital educator who has advocated for the use of digital media in building Jewish community.

Rofeberg himself is leading High Holidays services via Zoom from his home in Providence, Rhode Island, for a synagogue in Arkansas. He would have been there in person if not for the pandemic, as he has been for the past five years, but he wonders whether the virtual services being offered now could continue even after congregations can return to gathering in a sanctuary.

For smaller congregations, streaming services could be a more affordable option than hiring a rabbi, he said, or simply a better option than rotating among a small group of members who know how to read from the Torah. Steaming services in a sanctuary when congregants can gather again could combine the best of both worlds high-quality content streamed from outside the synagogue with the community feeling that comes from gathering together.

Theres no reason we couldnt come together in an on-the-ground space and stream in somebody our congregation has decided they love, Rofeberg said.

Online services do not represent the first challenge to the primacy of synagogues at the High Holidays. In recent years, independent rabbis and prayer leaders have offered pop-up services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at little or no cost in places like bars or hotel ballrooms. The services often attract young people and those who do not affiliate with a synagogue.

Virtual services offered in nontraditional ways during the pandemic build on the trend, said Jack Wertheimer, professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He said he doesnt anticipate the new breed of services sticking around after the pandemic to the point that synagogues would fall out of fashion.

Im skeptical that when it is possible for people to come back into synagogues that they will prefer to watch services online, Wertheimer said. If anything, this COVID period of time may at least in the short run direct people to return to synagogues more frequently because they miss that social contact.

But the longer synagogues are closed, and the more robust the alternatives become, the more people may become comfortable with experiencing Jewish community online. For young people who are used to connecting through digital platforms, the lower barrier to entry may be appealing.

In-person gathering isnt going away, said Rachel Gross, a professor of Jewish studies at San Francisco State University, but certainly younger people understand real community is happening online.

Gross sees virtual services building on initiatives like PJ Library, a program that distributes Jewish childrens books, or organizations that bring people together for Shabbat meals to encourage Jewish engagement outside of Jewish institutions.

I dont think that the synagogue membership model is going to disappear, she said. But I think the pandemic is probably exacerbating trends that allow people to have more obvious choices about the organizations theyre picking and choosing from.

For now, she said, theres little noticeable difference between online services offered by an individual cantor or song leader and those offered by a synagogue, meaning that the ramifications of this moment may not become clear until in-person services take place again.

A lot of our distinctions of categories get blurred on the internet, Gross said. If youre sitting at home on Zoom, are you going to care if its from a synagogue or a cantor?"

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Some synagogues opt for high quality over homegrown when it comes to online services. Is that a good thing? - St. Louis Jewish Light

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Posted By admin on July 23, 2020

JTA A Wisconsin man pleaded guilty to federal charges that he vandalized a synagogue as part of his involvement in a white supremacist and neo-Nazi group.

Yousef Barasneh was 22 when he was arrested in January as part of a nationwide investigation into The Base, which planned to carry out coordinated vandalism of synagogues across the country in an effort the hate group called Operation Kristallnacht, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.

Six other men involved in the group were arrested at the same time.

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Barasneh spray-painted a swastika and other Nazi imagery, as well as the word Jude, German for Jew, on the building of the Beth Israel Sinai Congregation in Racine in September. Racine is about 12 miles from his suburban Milwaukee home.

According to the plea agreement approved Friday, Barasneh admitted that he had online conversations with other members of The Base about acts of violence against Jewish Americans and non-white Americans, Base military training camps, and ways to make improvised explosive devices, the Journal-Sentinel reported.

He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

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Neo-Nazi group member pleads guilty to vandalizing Wisconsin synagogue - The Times of Israel

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