Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

JERUSALEM (VINnews) BDE: Some 1500 people attended the levaya of Rebbetzin Leah Althaus, the wife of the Chabad emissary to Dnieper in Ukraine, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 29 from a rare complication in pregnancy.

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Rebbetzin Althaus is the daughter of Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi, who has served as Rabbi of Kfar Chabad since the 2015 passing of his father Rabbi Mordechai Ashkenazi.

Rebbetzin Althaus ah

Rebbetzin Althaus AH and her family

She had started her shlichus [Jewish community service] in Dnieper together with her husband Rabbi Zelig who serves as one of the rabbis at the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva in Dnieper. The couple have four children.

In the wake of the rare complication, Rebbetzin Leah was flown to Israel last week in a complex operation which involved the assistance of the Ukrainian army. Despite all the medical efforts, she passed away at Tel Hashomer hospital and was laid to rest in Kfar Chabad.

Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzki, the rabbi of Dniepro and Chabad emissary, said that Everyone here is in shock. The rebbetzin was a dominant figure and had an important role in running the Jewish studies programs, festivals, informal education, adult education and other school activities.

He added that She was a living example to parents of how Jews can combine the physical with spirituality. She always had plans on how to progress further, influence and break barriers. Even though she invested all of her energies in the school at their request, we wanted them to establish another community in a different part of the city where many Jews live.

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Rebbetzin Leah Althaus, Daughter Of Kfar Chabad's Rabbi, Dies Of Pregnancy Complications At 29 - VINNews

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama alongside Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. William Lovelace/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama alongside Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Close your eyes and you might be able to conjure the iconic image of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, with a white bushy beard, as he marches alongside Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It's 1965 and they're at the front of the delegation from Selma to Mongtomery, Alabama. Everyone wears big Hawaiian leis given as a symbol of support and solidarity by Reverend Abraham Akaka.

Scholars say this moment enshrines the so-called Grand Alliance, in which Black and Jewish leaders worked together in support of civil rights and voting rights.

After marching that day, Heschel said, "I felt my legs were praying."

And from the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, King said, "The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man."

Just a few months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So was this a major moment in the ongoing partnership between Black and Jewish leaders or simply the high-water mark in a relationship that has long since receded?

"Today's Black Jewish relationship is encased in amber from the civil rights era, and I don't think it's properly understood," Jacques Berlinerblau, Professor of Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University, told NPR's Morning Edition. "And until we properly understand it, we might not be able to make sense of current political developments."

Berlinerblau has long studied the relationship between these two communities. He co-authored the book Blacks and Jews: an Invitation to Dialogue with Terrence Johnson, Professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School.

Civil rights demonstrators pass by federal guards as they make their way from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, on the third leg of their famous march. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Civil rights demonstrators pass by federal guards as they make their way from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, on the third leg of their famous march.

In speaking with NPR, Johnson defined the Grand Alliance as a group of elite African-American leaders working across racial religious lines to advocate for the masses in terms of voting rights and desegregation. And this sort of leadership went on to work with Jewish leaders with the founding of the NAACP in 1909 and the Urban League a year later."

"In some respects," Johnson continued, "those organizations represented the dream team of black and Jewish leaders, mostly men, unfortunately, but leaders nonetheless, who wanted to in many ways address the lingering problems of racial inequality and religious discrimination."

Johnson and Berlinerblau's book originated from a Georgetown University course they taught for years, engaging students in dialogue about the myriad ways that Black and Jewish Americans related to one another.

"It's an historic alliance because both groups have been demonized by what they can't controla narrative of otherness," Johnson said. "And remember who was considered human in this country: Anglo-Americans. Jews were corrupted because of their blood and blacks were inferior because we didn't have a soul. And those fundamental issues are what we are haunted by nowwhat we hear with Black Lives Matter protests and related outcries around anti-Black racism and anti-Semitism."

And this relationship still looms large in the imagination of contemporary movement leaders. "There's no alliance more historic, nor more important, than the alliance between Black Americans and Jewish Americans," said Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League in 2020.

A TROUBLED GRAND ALLIANCE: THEN & NOW

In a recent NY Times piece, Morial said the Grand Alliance is "being tested" by the Israel-Hamas war, with each group holding diverging views.

Recently, a group of more than 1,000 Black pastors issued a demand that the Biden Administration push Israel to curb its military campaign. In a pressure campaign, the Black pastors say the support of their parishioners, key to Biden's reelection, could be on the line. And with Jewish Americans and Black Americans providing two key constituencies for Biden's reelection bid, this could be a tough needle to thread.

Reverend Leah Daughtry leads the House of the Lord Churches, a network of churches throughout the U.S. She was also CEO of the 2008 and 2016 Democratic National Convention committees. She recently told NPR that "we as faith leaders have to be concerned about the moral toll of this war and what our authority is. And what our responsibility is in ensuring that all people are safe, are able to live their lives in freedom and security, and that all children are able to grow and to live a thriving life."

Going even further, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a well-known Black institution, recently called for the U.S. to "immediately withdraw all funding and other support from Israel." It goes on to allege that "the United States is supporting this mass genocide."

The Israel-Hamas War clearly represents a pivotal moment but Johnson and Berlinerblau say diverging interests and perspectives have tested the Grand Alliance from the very beginning.

"The Grand Alliance was more fraught on the ground than is commonly understood," Berlinerblau said. "And it was probably a lot more wobbly than we would generally assume."

For example, their book examines persistent accusations made by some African Americans against Jewish Americans for their alleged involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. They cite historian Seymour Drescher, a noted expert on slavery and anti-slavery movements. In his essay entitled "Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade," Drescher found that "at no point along the continuum of the slave trade were Jews numerous enough, rich enough and powerful enough to affect significantly the structure and flow of the slave trade or to diminish the suffering of its African victims."

Nonetheless, such claims continue to resonate and reverberate, canonized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in his 1991 book The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews.

"Indeed, the Nation of Islam's worldview has pervaded Blacks and Jews for decades," Johnson and Berlinerblau write.

In fact, distrust between Black Americans and Jewish Americans created a sizable rift just a few years after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched together for racial equality and civil rights.

According to Terrence Johnson, the shockwaves of 1967 can be felt even today.

That's the year of the Six-Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab States. Many Black leaders began embracing the Palestinian and Arab cause, especially with Israel expanding its ties to the Apartheid government of South Africa.

Subsequent conflicts included the purging of white and Jewish members from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War; a teacher strike in New York City and the Crown Heights Riots in Brooklyn, both pitting Black and Jewish residents against one anotheras well as ongoing disputes over affirmative action.

Many scholars say the partnership between Georgia Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock hearkens back to the Grand Alliance of the 1960s. Win McNamee/Getty Inages hide caption

Many scholars say the partnership between Georgia Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock hearkens back to the Grand Alliance of the 1960s.

With ups and downs between the Black and Jewish communities over the years, and many misconceptions, Johnson and Berlinerblau say they wanted to emphasize discussion and mutual understanding in their teaching and writing.

They set out to co-write their book in part to update the 1995 text by Cornel West and Rabbi Michael Lerner called Jews and Blacks: A dialogue on Race, Religion, and Culture in America.

While assembling their own book, they both saw the rising support for Palestinian rights via the Black Lives Matter movement. They also witnessed a partnership hearkening back to the Grand Alliance the 2020 victories of Georgia Senators Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossof which demonstrated a partnership between prominent Black and Jewish leaders.

Johnson and Berlinerblau write that this could be seen as "another turning point in the Black-Jewish civil rights coalition." But since they, along with other authors, argue that the Grand Alliance of the 1960s is romanticized and oversimplified, they instead call for new ways to seek mutual understanding and collaboration.

BRIDGING THE BLACK-JEWISH DIVIDE: ART & COLLABORATION

Many scholars and movement leaders find inspiration in the indelible artistic and cultural ties between the Black and Jewish communities.

"So one reason to hope that the relationship finds a new footing or moves forward in some dynamic way," Berlinerblau told NPR, "is the sheer awesome political, artistic, cultural intelligence of these two communities working in concert."

He cites such artistic examples as: Cannonball Adderley's jazz cover of "Fiddler on the Roof," Grace Paley's short story "Zagrowsky Tells," Anna Deavere Smith's performance piece "Fires in the Mirror," Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, and the Safdie brothers' film, Uncut Gems.

Johnson adds that a shared Old Testament notion of Zion appears frequently in hip hop music, epitomized by Lauryn Hill's song, "To Zion."

This famous Hebrew Bible story involving Moses leading the Israelites from bondage toward freedom shows the Harvard Divinity School professor a possible path forward for reunifying the Black and Jewish communities.

"Exodus and Zion keep recurring in hip hop, so there's something about the use of these stories that are so powerful and so beyond life that captures imagination and it becomes an entry point," Johnson told NPR.

The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights in 1965 featured Black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., joined by allies including Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights in 1965 featured Black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., joined by allies including Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

"I was thinking of Abraham Heschel, who described this idea in 1963 of the Exodus is ongoing. And he said it was easier for the children of Israelites to cross the Red Sea than for a Black or Negro to cross the line at a university in the U.S.," Johnson said. "And there's something about this story that allows us to kind of peek into history and then figure out what's missing and whose voices are not there, even though they're very visible...and my sense is that the narratives will in some ways revive a moment that's much bigger than what we can imagine."

Berlinerblau and Johnson say that cultural and legal forces such as redlining and gentrification created physical distance between the Black and Jewish communities that were once more proximate.

"It doesn't mean they loved one another all the time," Berlinerblau said. "But they had a very, very organic, almost daily relationship with one another. And what Terence and I are increasingly seeing is that proximity, that physical proximity between African-Americans and Jewish Americans is kind of missing."

Some organizations doing this work of reconnection include: Rekindle, the Black/Jewish Justice Alliance, the Black Jewish Entertainment Alliance, and the Black and Jewish Leaders of Tomorrow. In many cases, art continues to reemerge as the bridge.

"The (Jewish) Federation in Baltimore recently had a yearlong exhibition around trauma in black and Jewish communities and used art as a way to invite people in to have these conversations," Johnson added. "So I think there are a lot of things happening on the ground. The issue becomes how did that get translated into a kind of political vocabulary that we can actually see structural change?"

Besides organizations and politicians with shared intentions, Johnson and Berlinerblau argue that reimagining Black-Jewish relations could best be accomplished by those who identify as both Black and Jewish.

Certainly, we can think of prominent celebrities such as Drake, Rashida Jones, Daveed Diggs, and Tiffany Haddish. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. In their book, the authors mention famous converts such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Nell Carter.

"We were extremely intrigued by the position of Afro Jews, Jews of color in the United States, of which we believe there may be more than half a million, if not more than that, in the country," Berlinerblau said. "But perhaps one way forward is to let this community, which physically or theologically or spiritually embodies a lot from both communities, maybe to let them lead...and to tell us where we all might move forward together."

Leah Donnella, who is Black and Jewish, is senior editor of NPR's Code Switch. And in a recent conversation, she reflected on her own upbringing. "My parents were very intentional about talking about those identities as being intertwined and relatedand they did that very much through the lens of justice," Donnella said. "Fighting for justice has always been a tradition for both Black communities and Jewish communities. That's a lot of how both of my parents understood their faiths and their identities."

Outside of her own home, Donnella witnessed a major contrast. "Black people and Jewish people were not in the same spaces. There was not a lot of that overlap," Donnella said. "So that feeling of this identity being very integrated and very cohesive was not the demographic reality in the outside world."

Autumn Rowe, a songwriter and Executive Committee Member of the Black Jewish Entertainment Alliance, bridges the two backgrounds the organization seeks to unite. Black Jewish Entertainment Alliance hide caption

Autumn Rowe, a songwriter and Executive Committee Member of the Black Jewish Entertainment Alliance, bridges the two backgrounds the organization seeks to unite.

While spending time in Jewish spaces, Donnella finds herself being asked to speak on behalf of Black people. And with inflamed passions on all sides since the October 7th attacks by Hamas, and the subsequent Israel-Hamas War, she says the divides aren't necessarily deepening; they're revealing what was already there.

"I think none of the reactions that different communities are having are that surprising to me," Donnella said. "But I think it's easy to feel surprised about some of the different reactions and takes if you are not interacting with a really diverse community of different people, both racially, demographically, and just on the political spectrum."

In terms of the legacy of the Grand Alliance, and the snapshots of Heschel and King, Donnella said it's not about connecting via racial or religious identitybut about shared beliefs, and how they're being pursued.

"For me, it comes back to that childhood thing of justice," Donnella said. "A lot of it is very central to the Jewish identity I was raised with, to be focused on the idea of Tikkun Olam, healing the world. And that's also really central to Black American identity."

But in terms of putting values into action, Donnella said the details are paramount. "It obviously gets tricky when you get really real about what justice means to you," she told NPR. "What does justice look like for everyone? And how do I help make that happen? And then you go from thereand then I think the connections happen organically, because people are after the same thing."

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

VINNEWS- Tiberias, Israel

Every so often there is good news that comes out of the Israeli Court System.

On Shushan Purim, another complete victory for the Holy Torah against former mayor of Tiberias, Ron Kobi.

The judge ruled that Ron Kobi is obligated to delete the name of the holy tzaddik Rabbi Dov Kook from the lawsuit and pay a fine to cover the court costs.

Yesterday, on the day of Purim Damokifin, a hearing was held in the district court in Nazareth regarding the lawsuit of Ron Kobi, the former mayor of Tiberias who continuously harassed the religious and ultra-Orthodox community. He ran in the last mayoral elections and failed miserably against the favored candidate of the tzaddik Rabbi Dov Kook Yossi Nevea who won by a huge margin.

Ron Kobi filed a personal lawsuit against the holy tzaddik Rabbi Dov Kook of Israel on the grounds that he rigged the elections by allegedly writing amulets and bewitching the public to vote for Yossi Neve and not for him.

The district court ruled against Ron Kobi in a very firm ruling. The court ordered to delete the name of the holy tzaddik Rabbi Dov Kook from the lawsuit, stating that he is not related to the elections in any legal way since he is not a candidate for either the mayorship nor the council.

The court ordered Ron Kobi to pay a fine of NIS 3000 in court costs to vindicate Rabbi Dov Kook. Kobi must transfer the funds within one month. Ron Kobi lost in every way and his plot against the tzaddik was discarded completely.

Many of the citys residents saw the fact that the court hearings taking place on Purim Day as a great sign of victory for the Torah and holiness of the city of Tiberias. Upon hearing the good news, the students alluded to the fall of Ron Kobi on this day in the words of the megilla . The Torah will always emerge victorious.

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Torah Victory: Ron Kobi's lawsuit against the tzaddik Rabbi Dov Kook Shlita is Overthrown* - VINNews

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

In July 2002, an Israeli jet took out Salah Shehade, the commander of Hamass military wing, who had been involved in attacks responsible for the deaths of474 people. While an assistant of his was also killedin the strike, so were13 civilians including Shehades wife and daughter. International condemnation was swift and strong.

A few months later, Israeli intelligence learned that Hamass top brass were due to meet. But mindful of the reaction to the earlier assassination, Israeli leaders chose not to use a bomb to demolish the building;instead, a smaller missile was used and the leaders of Hamas escaped.

For Shlomo M Brody, author of the recently published Ethics of Our Fighters, the decision not to deploy heavier weapons was a moral error that cost Israel dearly. To avoid repetition of such a mistake, Israel and other Western countries need to learn anew why inevitable collateral damage is justified in warfare.

Although the book was written before October 7, it is not difficult to deduce what his position would be on Israels current campaign in Gaza.

While humanitarian demands were previously weighed against military necessity, many philosophers, he contends, have tipped the balance in favour of the former as a result of the 1977 protocol added to the Geneva Conventions,which covers protection of civilians. Neither Israel nor the USA has ratified the protocol.

He points out that civilian facilities such as hospitals that are used for military purposes lose their immunity and when guerrilla groups use non-combatants as human shields, they bear responsibility for making them targets. Armies owe a higher duty of care to their soldiers than enemy non-combatants in that they should not be expected to incur undue risk in orderto avoid civilian casualties.

He is critical of what he regards as common misuse of the concept of proportionality when applied to military operations, arguing that extensive casualties do not necessarily amount to excessive. Instead, thoughtful questions about proportionality and responsibility get overshadowed by knee-jerk reactions.

Simply reacting to distressing images on TV screens is no way to arrive at an ethical judgment. Media spectacles are not moral barometers, he says. The medium lends itself to replacing hardheaded analysis with sheer emotion.

Rabbi Brody is a Harvard-educated scholar with a doctorate in law from Bar-Ilan University, who has taught at yeshivah and other Jewish institutes. He currently heads Ematai, an organisation offering a Jewish approach to health issues such as end-of- life treatment and organ donation.

Ethics of Our Fighters is aimed at general readers rather than legal academics or halachic specialists. Writing with clarity and cogency, he covers a lot of ground, drawing on both Jewish and secular codes and analysing episodes from the rape of Dinah in the Bible to the bombing of Dresden in World War Twoto examine the ethical issues.

Underlying the book is the question how much Judaism has to say aboutsuch a fraught area. OneIsraeli rabbi, Shai Yisraeli (1909-1995), controversially suggested that there was no unique Jewish teaching and international conventions set the standards for soldiers to follow.

Brody looks at the classical rabbinic distinction between a milchemet mitzvah, an obligatory war, and a milchemet reshut, discretionary war. In antiquity, a king would be permitted to launch the latter to expand his territory but the rabbis hedged it withconditions by insisting on the need first to consult the court of the Sanhedrin. The for us, difficult commandment to wipe out the Amalekites, which we read about in synagogue only last week, was effectively rendered inoperable in practice by the sages.

The bloody revenge of Jacobs sons Shimon and Levi on the men of Shechem after the rape of their sister Dinah was cited by one rabbi to justify reprisals on Arab civilians by the Irgun after the death of Jews in terrorist attacks in the 1930s,but other rabbis pointedly noted Jacobs deathbed condemnation of the violence of his sons.

The same biblical incident is wielded as a precedent in the notorious tract Torat Hamelech, Law of the King, penned by more militant rabbis.Brody comments that thisdisgracefully allows for indiscriminate killing of an enemy population.

He discussestherequirement stipulated by Maimonides to keep the fourth side open, that is for anarmy to ensure there is a route for people to flee acity under siege. In 1982, when the Israeli army had surrounded Beirut where the PLO had set up headquarters, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren ruled that this provision should be respected.

Brody contrasts the outlook of the influential Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook, the inspiration behind the religious settler movement, who believed the conquest of the Holy Land requireda mandatory war, with that of Rabbi Yehuda Amital, the doveish founder of a religious party advocating land for peace. Another rabbinic figure,who appears earlyin the book, is Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares from Poland who, repelled by the bloodletting of the First World War, was unusual in espousing a philosophy of pacifism.

What Brody himself offers is what he calls a Jewish Multivalue Framework for Military Ethics, a nine-point guide to discussing the topic. These values vary from the belief in the dignity of all human beings who are created in the divine image to the understanding that it can be just to resort to arms. In any given circumstance, some values may take precedence over others, but it depends on a case-by-case basis.

As he writes, The moral life is too complex to be resolved by one overriding principle. The complexity of the dilemmas forces us to consider a variety of legitimate moral factors

Whether or not you agree with all his opinions, Brody has produced an informativesourcebook that can help frame debatearounda subject in which it is all too easy to rush to judgment.

Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish View of War and Morality, Shlomo M. Brody, is available from Maggid, 25.73

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Is there a Jewish way to fight a war? - The Jewish Chronicle

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Rabbi Sheldon Rudoff

Click herefor a PDF version of this edition of Heres My Story, or visit theMy Encounter Blog.

The story I am about to tell happened in the early 1950s, not long after the Rebbe took over the leadership of Chabad Lubavitch. At the time, I was in high school and living in Crown Heights on Carroll Street, which is around the corner from President Street where the Rebbe lived.

I used to see him on Shabbat mornings, walking from his home to Chabad Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. He was not yet as well known then, and he was very approachable, as he walked alone without an entourage.

Hed greet me with Gut Shabbos, and wed walk together, while he inquired about my Torah learning and about my teachers. We would part ways when we reached Eastern Parkway hed go right to Chabad, and Id go left to Young Israel, where I served as a youth group leader.

We were just two people walking to their synagogues a teenager and the Rebbe. Being so young, I did not realize the import of these encounters. I only learned to appreciate them later.

Then there came a time when my Young Israel youth group was invited for a private audience with the Rebbe. We were all Torah observant boys, studying at such storied Orthodox institutions as the Brooklyn Talmudical Academy, Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, and the Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva, which had a branch in Brooklyn back then.

From our Modern Orthodox perspective, Chabad was an anomaly, because the other chasidic sects that we were familiar with were very insular, but Chabad was open and doing a great deal of Jewish outreach. For instance, on Sukkot, Chabad chasidim would stand outside the subway stations offering the lulav to Jews, so they could fulfill that commandment. This was strange to us, and yet it also made an impact on us. And I do recall that some of the kids became enraptured by Chabad as a result.

So, knowing all that, we were excited to have a chance to talk with the Rebbe, and about a dozen of us went to the meeting, which took place at 770, and lasted for at least a half hour. We were invited to sit at a table, and the Rebbe greeted us warmly. He asked us one by one to tell him about ourselves, and then he encouraged us to pose questions.

As I recall, we got into a discussion about the State of Israel, which was still in its infancy, having been founded in 1948. Because it was a secular state, the opinion within the Orthodox community was very divided people were either for it, against it, or neutral. Many chasidic Rebbes refused to recognize it, so my group wanted to know where the Lubavitcher Rebbe stood. And somebody had the courage to ask him outright.

In response, the Rebbe said that his view of the State of Israel was similar to his view regarding any Jewish enterprise. For example, if Jewish people were to form an insurance company, he would want that company to function legally and ethically, and in accordance with the precepts of the Torah. As for the State of Israel, he had similar view that it should be a place where Torah would flourish and Jewish law was respected.

He did not specify if he recognized the State. Neither did he say that he didnt. He did not take a political position. And I thought that his was a fine answer. That was how he explained his position early on, and as the years went on, he promoted this view more intensely.

The other vivid recollection that I have of the Rebbe took place one Rosh Hashanah. As is customary, Jews walk on that day to a body of water to symbolically cast off their sins, while reciting the Tashlich prayer. In the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, there is a lovely pond which is a perfect place for Tashlich.

I remember seeing the Rebbe walking down the street toward the Botanic Garden. He was walking alone, but about a quarter of a block behind him a huge phalanx of chasidim followed. Everyone marched together, accompanied by two policemen on horseback who were escorting the Rebbe and this Tashlich procession.

It was another Chabad anomaly another very public mitzvah. And that was typical of the Rebbe.

He came to America in 1941 with a college degree, and for a while he worked as an engineer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. One could not have predicted then what course his life would take. But when he became the Rebbe, he showed himself to be a great spiritual leader, and he put Chabad on the map literally.

Today, wherever you go there is a Chabad House, which is a haven for Jewish travelers. What the Rebbe did to inspire this flowering of the Chabad Movement is nothing short of historic, and I only hope it is appreciated by the Jewish public as it should be.

Rabbi Sheldon Rudoff (1933-2011) was an attorney who held leadership positions in a number of Jewish organizations including the OU, UJA-Federation, Yeshiva University and others. He was interviewed in January, 2010.

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Heres My Story: The Walking Partner - CrownHeights.info

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

As Sam Cooke first sang in 1964, A change is gonna come.

Change indeed is approaching for the two Reform communities Rodef Shalom Congregation and Temple Sinai in Pittsburghs eastern neighborhoods.

Rabbi Sharyn Henry announced plans earlier this month to retire on June 30, 2025, after 26 years of service at Rodef Shalom.

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In an emailed statement to the community, Henry said she is curious about what the future holds for me, and yet, it will surely involve my family, yarn, books and Torah. (And, of course, my dog.)

Henry told the Chronicle that the timing of her retirement was based on the continuing conversations about a possible partnership between Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai, which began in December.

I sent the letter when I sent it so people would understand how my retirement fits into the whole conversation between Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai, she said. I feel like in a year from June, things will be moving in a particular direction. Theyll know what they need to do about clergy leadership.

Bill Battistone, president of Rodef Shaloms board of trustees, said that when Henry informed the board of her vision it lined up pretty well with what were envisioning for the next two years, as we continue down this path with Temple Sinai.

For the short-term, he said, the congregation is well positioned to handle the communitys lifecycle events and pastoral care needs with both Henry and Cantor Toby Glaser.

In the long-term, in another year or so, or even as we come to the fall and the High Holy Days in 2024, we might have a better sense of where were going with Temple Sinai and can make some decisions, he said.

Battistone said that for now, the board didnt think it was necessary to rush and find another rabbi.

We want to make sure were making financially responsible actions, he said.

Battistone said that Henry has had a wonderful and illustrious career, but that shes ready for the next chapter.

Henrys announcement isnt the only change coming to Rodef Shalom.

The congregation is also searching for a new executive director. Barb Feige, who initially filled the position in March 2022 on an interim basis, is retiring this spring.

Feige, Battistone said, has provided a wonderful service for the congregation, stepping in at a time when it needed help. In June 2022, after months of congregational conflict, Rabbi Aaron Bisno, who served as Rodef Shaloms senior rabbi for 18 years, transitioned out of that role and became the Frances F. and David R. Levin Rabbinic Scholar.

Weve been very open, Battistone said. Were looking for someone for the next two years, at a minimum but then, what that position looks like moving forward, were not sure.

One change that wont be happening is anything related to the congregations cantor.

Hes [Glaser] done a great job in our community already, Battistone said. Its crazy hes only been with us for nine months but hes found a niche here and really enjoys it. Were excited about continuing to work with him.

As for the initiative announced in December to explore a collaborative future for Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai, plans are proceeding.

Shortly after Henrys announcement, Battistone and Temple Sinai President Stephen Jurman sent out a joint statement saying that a steering committee to examine a possible partnership had been formed. The committee includes the congregations respective presidents, a vice president from each congregation and former past presidents.

The congregations also hired an administrative assistant who will help streamline activities like the research, coordination and maintenance of files for Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai.

The next step will be identifying potential professional consultants to assist with the process. The individual or team hired will have no ties to either congregation. While everybody on our steering committee is very talented, I dont think any of us have ever done this before, Jurman said. Its important we have someone who is neutral, who doesnt have any skin in the game.

The committee will study such things as the buildings of both congregation, their cemeteries, their finances and administrative practices, clergy and worship practices, including how services are run, he said.

The most important thing and probably the hardest part, Jurman continued, is finding out from both sides, our congregants, what they need and what they want in a synagogue, in their worship life and how they feel about things, seeing if we can put together a structure that works for everybody.

As for Henrys announcement, Jurman said that Temple Sinai was aware of her decision and that it will be taken into consideration as part of the process that now affects both congregations.

Weve been factoring that into our discussions, he said. PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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Changes coming to Rodef Shalom as talks with Temple Sinai continue - thejewishchronicle.net

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

I may be biased because we have the same first name, but I think Lior Ashkenazi is one of the finest male Israeli actors alive.

Its in his dashing good looks, sure (I think we can call Ashkenazi a silver fox, at this point), but more than anything, its in the way he absolutely embodies his roles. I experienced serious whiplash as I watched his latest U.S.-released film Karaoke, in which he plays a seductive, egocentric playboy, in proximity to the Holocaust series We Were the Lucky Ones, where he plays Sol, the Kurc family patriarch, a caring father who would do anything to ensure his familys survival.

Ashkenazis talent and versatility are pretty awe-inspiring. Since his breakout role in the 2001 Late Marriage as Georgian Israeli bachelor Zaza, the three-time Ophir prize winner has been in dozens of Israeli TV shows and plays. Hes also starred in critically acclaimed films local like Walking on Water, Footnote and the controversial Foxtrot. Hes charmed moviegoers in fancy historical Hollywood projects like Golda. And hes appeared in countless episodes of Israeli satire shows, most recently singing a parody of Im Just Ken as Israeli politician Benny Gantz in the satire show Eretz Nehederet.

Fans of Israeli TV may remember Ashkenazi from HBOs The Boys and The Valley of Tears, or maybe even from Netflixs Hit & Run, the short-lived project from Fauda creator Lior Raz.

But We Were the Lucky Ones is by far his biggest international TV project yet, a chance for American TV viewers to finally get the treat of sitting with the grandeur of Lior Ashkenazi as he brings both his dramatic range and his warm humor to a deeply relatable family patriarch.

I too got the treat of sitting with Lior Ashkenazi, not literally but in a Zoom interview about the new Hulu series earlier this month. I found him wonderfully menschy and funny and Im feeling prouder than ever to share my name with him.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What drew you to the character of Sol?

Well, first of all, the book. It started there. I read the book first to know what Im going for but in the show they were doing much more than the book with this character. Its more his wife and his daughters that are running things [in the book]. But in the show, Erica [Lipez, the showrunner], Tommy [Kail, the director] and Georgia [Hunter, the author and producer] developed Sols character much more.

The thing is, at first I thought he was very old, but hes 50! My age! And he already had a granddaughter. I guess people then were kind of old in those times.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents generations, they all had babies so young.

Its so strange! I saw a lot of pictures of him, and you can see you can really understand this man, his inner life.

He is a family leader, in a lot of ways. Hes the leader of the seder, of Jewish ritual. Did you connect to that at all?

Well, I can connect to the patriarch thing, but you know, who really runs the family is Nechuma, his wife. She always gives him [direction] like, Yeah, you can say the last world, but it should be that word.

Theres a point later in the show, which I wont spoil, when Nechuma tries to comfort Sol with his own words. After feeling helpless, she tries to bring him back to himself with something that he said to her when she was worried about having more children about how having kids makes you more scared, but also, more strong.

Its questions you ask yourself during those times. You ask yourself, why did you bring kids into this awful world? And to be honest, after October 7, I had the same thoughts in Israel. Theres a reflection to this time.

Because your children are old enough to really be witnessing this moment.

I have an older daughter. Shes 24. Shes already done her [army] service. And my youngest is 11. I used to say to my older one when she was younger:,When you grow up, there wont be any army so everything will be OK. But I cant say that to my youngest now. Thats not a promise that I can make.

Did you also connect with this idea that children make us more scared, and yet stronger?

I guess every parent does. In every parents mind, you put your children in front of everything. Nothing is more important. Nothing goes before them.

Its funny to me that you talked about Sol being so old because we really do see the characters of this show getting visibly older at a fast pace.

I remember a survivor in Israel telling a story about her father. After a night when the Gestapo, the Nazis, humiliated him and tortured him, he came back home in the morning with gray hair. Like overnight, his hair become became gray, white. Its about trauma; they just get older faster.

Can you talk a little bit about the prayers in the show theyre so beautiful and I know you had a consultant on set to make sure the Jewish ritual was right.

Thats right. Im Sephardi, so I know the Sephardi version of the prayers. I know Ladino, its my first language actually, because my parents were Olim Chadashim [immigrants to Israel]. I dont know Yiddish at all.

But I fell in love with this music [of the Ashkenazi prayers]. One day, I was rehearsing by myself and I didnt notice that Erica Lipez was sitting behind me. I looked back and she was crying.

It transported her.

Yeah, it threw her to her fathers house, or her grandfathers house. It was challenging, but I really fell in love with it.

What was Passover like in your house growing up? And what was it like filming the seder scene for the show?

I think in Israel, we celebrate differently. I know that because my wife is from France, and its a totally different thing. My parents are very traditional Jews, but I mean you aim towards the food. So you run through the haggadah. I remember it as a kid we would just read because everybody was hungry. We were doing things just to do it. Not in the traditional way of, lets take our time and now, Ill sing Dayenu, Dayenu! and now, well do that, and now well do that No, it wasnt like that.

We were doing the seder [scene] and the cameras were all around. And Tommy just let us improvise. So we were improvising everything. Though not all of the actors knew how to read Hebrew.

You were lucky in that regard

It was funny because I said, OK, Genek, now its your turn. The wicked son. Come on! Start! And [Henry Lloyd-Hughes] doesnt know how to! So he says, I dont want to be the wicked guy! We improvised a lot. You know, everything you see on episode one in the seder is improvised. Its not scripted. Just the prayers were.

And it feels like Passover! Chaos! family!

Yeah, exactly. Kids running all around!

Lior Zaltzman is the deputy managing editor of Kveller.

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Hulu's 'We Were the Lucky Ones' Introduces American Viewers to Israeli Legend Lior Ashkenazi Kveller - Kveller.com

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

It was Passover 1938, and the Kurc family gathered around the Seder table in Radom, Poland, to celebrate.

By the next year, with the onset of World War II, the family found itself scattered far and wide, trying desperately to survive the Holocaust with almost no knowledge of the fate of their loved ones.

The Kurc familys story is at the center of We Were the Lucky Ones, a new eight-part Hulu miniseries that covers close to a decade of their harrowing journeys. The series follows the family members everywhere from Siberia to Warsaw, Paris, Casablanca, Rio de Janeiro and even a brief stint in wartime Palestine.

Based on a book of the same name by author Georgia Hunter, the tale is a lightly fictionalized version of the true story of Hunters own family, which she discovered only as a teenager following her grandfathers death, and researched diligently for nine years.

The first three episodes will premiere on Hulu on March 28, with the remaining five released weekly. It will be distributed internationally by Disney+ later this year.

Speaking to The Times of Israel via Zoom from Los Angeles, Hunter said that she hopes even those viewers familiar with the Holocaust are maybe surprised by the breadth of the story, and then inspired by the moments in between the darkness, of hope and happiness, courage, perseverance those are the things that kind of got me through my research.

Headlined by Jewish stars Joey King (The Kissing Booth) as Halina Kurc and Logan Lerman (Hunters) as her brother, Addy Kurc, the shows ensemble cast includes a number of prominent Israeli actors, including Lior Ashkenazi as family patriarch Sol, Amit Rahav (Unorthodox) and Hadas Yaron (Shtisel) as siblings Jakob and Mila Kurc, Moran Rosenblatt (Fauda) as daughter-in-law Herta, and Michael Aloni (Shtisel) as son-in-law Selim reuniting in matrimony with his Shtisel wife Yaron.

Hunter told The Times of Israel that it was a very conscious decision to cast so many Jewish actors in the main roles.

That was a choice we made early on in the casting, she said. This is a story about a Jewish family, and it was important to us to cast a Jewish cast, and Im so glad we did People came at it with many different experiences of what it meant to be Jewish, and they all brought a little piece of either their own family histories or their own traditions.

For Yaron, whose character, Mila, is a young mother separated from her husband and trying desperately to keep her young daughter safe, the story felt uniquely personal, as the granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors.

Even though we were telling Georgias family story, it did feel like I was also, in a way, telling my familys story, so that was definitely meaningful, she said via Zoom. I know so much about [the Holocaust] and its basically in my DNA.

Ahead of her interviews with the press, she said, My mom was like, [remember] youre the granddaughter of Masha and Gustav the fact that its so personal is really meaningful.

Hadas Yaron as Mila (left) and Robin Weigert as Nechuma in the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

The story of the Kurc family is so statistically unlikely as to seem impossible if it were not based on a true story. While the shows very title hints at the unlikeliness of their survival, it is still hard to fathom the unthinkable twists of fate that guided them along the way.

When Germany invades, some family members escape to Lvov, which is initially Soviet-occupied. One brother is sent to Siberia, others bounce between Radom, Warsaw and Lvov, confined in ghettos, prisons and hiding out, some fighting for the resistance. Addy, who was in Paris at the wars start, ends up on the infamous Alsina ship, which was bound for Brazil but gets caught up in a 10-month web of bureaucracy and repeatedly denied entries.

We have scenes shot in whats meant to be Dakar and Casablanca and in the mountains of Italy and in Siberia and, of course, in Poland and Brazil, noted Hunter. Were offering this very global perspective, yet told through a really personal lens that I hope will feel a little bit new and different to audiences.

Ashkenazi, who played family patriarch Sol, said the experience taught him many things about the Holocaust era that he was not previously familiar with.

You think you know everything because we grew up in Israel its like in your blood, he said. But it was new, I didnt know about all those things, I didnt know that the Jews, [many] of the men ran away from the country and got into the Soviet Army or the Polish resistance so I was pretty amazed by that.

Jakob played by Amit Rahav and Bella played by Eva Feiler in a scene from the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

Close to 90 percent of Polish Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. According to Yad Vashem, 30,000 Jews were living in Radom in 1939; only around 300 are believed to have survived the war. Every Jew in Poland who lived did so only by virtue of a series of miracles. The same could be said about every Jew in much of Europe who managed to survive.

As Alonis character asks in one episode, while they contemplate the fate of their estranged loved ones: How many miracles can we get? How many can we hope for?

In a way, it makes sense for these to be the stories that are told. After all, the entire families who were wiped out by the Nazis parents and children, aunts, uncles, cousins have no descendants to research their lives and tell their stories.

And yet We Were the Lucky Ones is not easy viewing. There are scenes of violence, despair, unthinkable cruelty, and the horrors that typified the Holocaust, even when hinted at, are harrowing to witness.

Herta, played by Moran Rosenblatt, and Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), are sent on a grueling train ride in an episode of the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

Ashkenazi said there were moments on set that were jarring even or perhaps especially for someone steeped in the history of the era.

I remember the first scene I had, in a shop, and then the Nazis are coming and putting these [arm]bands on [the Jews], with the Star of David, and I froze, I couldnt move, he recounted. There were extras dressed as Nazis, and I was so afraid.

In one particularly chilling scene, Yarons character is rounded up by the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi death squads who drove masses of Jews into the forests, forced them to dig their own graves and shot them dead.

This story is actually kind of crazy because my great grandfather actually was murdered this way, said Yaron. So when I was there, I was just like, I cant believe that this was actually something that happened and somehow, 70, 80 years later, the fact that his daughter survived and escaped and her granddaughter is here telling [this] story life is surreal and crazy.

Hunter said it was moving to see her family and their history come to life on screen, watching the cast embody my relatives.

Its set during World War II and the Holocaust, but they brought these characters to life in such a modern, kind of youthful way that, to me, feels so relatable, she said. Really, at its core, its a family story, its a family that wants to come together again around a dinner table.

Michael Aloni as Selim pictured with baby Felicia in a scene from the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

Felicia, the baby born to Mila and Selim in late 1938, was still alive when Hunter began researching her familys history, and was able to recount some of her wartime memories. She died not long before the miniseries was completed.

I wish so badly she could have seen the show, she was so proud of it, said Hunter, noting that nine of the 10 first cousins born to the Kurc children are still alive, and many of the family members are slated to attend an event tied to the show in Washington. The fact that theyre flying from Israel and France and Brazil and California and Miami and all over the world speaks to the support that Ive felt from them from day one.

Aloni, who played Selim, the husband of Yarons character Mila, said the cast all got to know each other well before filming began mostly in Romania and Spain before they largely split off into their own storylines.

Kind of like the same thing that happened to the characters in the story happened to the actors in the show we were together and we were separated, Aloni told The Times of Israel via Zoom. Each had to go through what hes going through, and then to be reunited together was very emotional and very happy.

The cast of the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones at a Passover Seder scene set in Radom, Poland. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

Filming wrapped up months before Hamass shocking October 7 onslaught against southern Israel, sparking the ongoing war in Gaza, and turning life upside down for many Israelis, as well as for Jews around the world facing spiking levels of antisemitism.

In the WhatsApp group for the cast, said Yaron, everybody reached out in the days following the attack, and were like, if you need a place to stay people were very, very supportive. I think its hard to explain whats going on in Israel to people that are not there.

Aloni said the timing of the shows premiere, amid the ongoing turmoil, feels particularly apt.

I think its a show that reminds everyone how the face of evil can be and look like and how easily it can rise and how antisemitism can rise its ugly head again, he said. And I think its a very important reminder for people who watch the show, that we were the lucky ones. There were so many people who werent.

The hatred and dehumanization of the Holocaust, he noted, is not so long ago I think its a great time and a great place for the series to come.

Yaron said she watched the first finished episode of the series a couple of months after October 7, which added a layer of complex emotions to the viewing experience.

It was triggering in a way I did not anticipate a year ago when we were filming it, she said.

Its really important to tell this story these days, for sure, added Yaron. Because a year ago, if you asked me if antisemitism existed, I was like, Its probably just a few crazy people, randomly across the world. Theres no way its a thing. Because we are in modern times. But apparently, it is a thing, which is very weird to understand that it actually exists.

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'How many miracles can we get?': Holocaust saga comes to life in new Hulu miniseries - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Mild spoilers for We Were the Lucky Ones ahead.

The opening episode of We Were the Lucky Ones, the first three installments of which are now streaming on Hulu, finds the sprawling Kurc family around a boisterous dinner table in Radom, Poland. Joey Kings Halina, entertaining a romance with family friend Adam (Sam Woolf), laughs alongside her brother Addy (Logan Lerman), who has returned home from Paris for Passover. Their parents, Sol (Lior Ashkenazi) and Nechuma (Robin Weigert), press eldest daughter Mila (Hadas Yaron) about the forthcoming arrival of her first child. Their son Jakob (Amit Rahav) relishes in bringing his girlfriend, Bella (Eva Feiler), home to spend the holiday with his family, as does his older brother, Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), who has begun dating Herta (Moran Rosenblatt). What the Kurcs dont know is that their hometown will soon be under Nazi controland this will be their last Passover together for the next decade.

As World War II begins, the Kurcs will be forced out of Radom and displaced across the globe from Siberia and France to West Africa and Brazil. During the Holocaust, each member of the family will faced various atrocities: Mila and her newborn daughter endure harsh factory conditions before she eventually stashes her child in a Warsaw convent. Genek and Herta are condemned to a Soviet labor camp. The series details the familys struggle to survive, and their harrowing attempts at reunification.

By the end of the Holocaust, 90% of Polands three million Jews were annihilated, the series reminds viewers at the outset. But as the shows title implies, all immediate members of the Kurc family are fortunate enough to live through the genocide and remain doggedly devoted to reuniting.

Created by Erica Lipez and directed by Thomas Kail, We Were the Lucky Ones is based on the bestselling 2017 novel by Georgia Hunter, who also serves as co-executive-producer on the project. Hunters debut book was inspired by the actual story of her family. There were over 20 survivors in all, including my grandfather and his siblings, parents, cousins and in-laws, she writes in a blog post on her website. Together, they accounted for nearly 7% of the total number of Jewish survivors in their hometown of Radom (the citys thriving prewar population of 30,000 Jews shrank to fewer than 300 after the Holocaust).

While her familys tale of survival is a staggering one, Hunter was not aware of their plightor even her Jewish heritageuntil age 15. A year after her grandfather Addy died of Parkinsons disease in 1993, Hunter was tasked with interviewing her grandmother for a school English project. I sat with my grandmother Caroline and I will never forget that hour I spent with her, sitting in her home and discovering that my grandfather was from this town called Radom, Poland, that he was one of five siblings, that he was raised in the Jewish faith, and that I came from a family of Holocaust survivors, the author previously told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Addy, a musician and engineer who later changed his name to Eddy, didnt mean to keep his past some big secret, Hunter recalled her grandmother saying, but rather a chapter of his life hed chosen to leave behind. She added that becoming an American, changing his name, and building a successful careerwere his ways of moving on, and of protecting his children.

Survivors guilt may have also factored into her grandfathers decision, said Hunter in another interview. Perhaps the fact that the entire family survived intactthere were 22 in allplayed a part in that, she explained. They were a statistical anomaly, which is unbelievably fortunate but not something theyd have boasted about. More than that, though, it simply wasnt in my grandfathers DNA to dwell on the past. He had this very positive, vibrant, forward-thinking outlook on life.

No matter Addys reasoning, Hunter has said that learning about her familys history at an older age catalyzed her desire to write about it. I wonder often how knowing about my Jewish ancestry as a child might have shaped me as a person, Hunter said. I believe, however, that the shock of making the discovery later in life sparked an intense curiosity, and an insatiable thirst for answers, which she sought to find over the course of a nine-year research process that began in 2008 and spanned seven countries.

Hunter, who grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, would interview Holocaust experts, visit museums and archives, and even go to her ancestors home in Radom, Poland, which gets recreated in the series. We visited the apartment building where my family lived, and I got chills running my fingers along a rusted mezuzah still adhered to the cement arched entranceway, she recounted in a 2017 interview.

In February 2008, Hunter traveled to Paris, where FeliciaMilas daughter, who was an infant at the start of WWII and six years old by V-E Daylived as one of the only remaining members of the Kurc family. To this day, Im still amazed at the lucidity with which Felicia was able to recall the details of her wartime experiences, Hunter writes on her website: the long coat her mother sewed as a part of a scheme to escape the ghettothe thunderous stomp of German boots patrolling just inches from her hiding spot at a uniform factory where her mother workedthe stench of peroxide the nuns at the Catholic convent used to bleach her auburn hair blond, so shed fit in with the other children.

Felicias estrangement from her mother plays out in both Hunters novel and the new Hulu series. Later episodes show Addys brief engagement to a fellow passenger while aboard a ship of European refugees fleeing Europe for South America, and the time Adam, who was living in Warsaw with Halina under false papers, devised a way to shield the fact that he was circumcised from a landlord who accused him of being Jewish.

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'We Were the Lucky Ones': The Real Kurc Family's Holocaust Survival Story - Vanity Fair

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Helma Goldmark, an Austrian-born Jew, turned 12 in 1938, the year it became evident that she was no longer safe in her homeland.

In March, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in an event known as the Anschluss. In November, during the antisemitic rampaging of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, SS officers abducted her father from his bed at their home in Graz. They took him to the local Jewish cemetery and beat him, knocking all the teeth from his mouth, breaking both his legs and leaving him facedown in a creek, the imprint of their boots still visible on his body. He lay there in agony until a passing milkman carried him home on a horse-drawn cart.

Mrs. Goldmark had lost her mother to cancer before the Anschluss, and her only sibling, a sister 19 years her senior, lived in Italy. With her father and then alone, after he was taken to a concentration camp and murdered she set out on a perilous journey that took her to fascist Croatia and Nazi-occupied Rome. As a teenager on her own in the Italian capital, she joined a resistance cell that aided Jews by furnishing them with false documents and ration cards.

Mrs. Goldmark, who moved after World War II to the United States, where she used her prodigious language skills to assist fellow immigrants as a paralegal, died March 15 at an assisted-living center in Bethesda, Md. She was 98. The cause was cerebrovascular disease, said her daughter, Susan Goldmark.

Mrs. Goldmarks Holocaust survival story was documented in the 2010 book Crossing Mandelbaum Gate, a memoir by her son-in-law, Kai Bird, who is also the co-author of American Prometheus (2005), the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

She was born Helma Blhweis in Graz, the second-largest city in Austria, on Feb. 8, 1926. Her father, Alois, who was Jewish, ran a tannery, leather factory and leather store. Her mother, the former Hermine Jassniger, a Catholic who converted to Judaism, was an accomplished pianist.

Helma and her parents lived in an elegant apartment above her fathers store and enjoyed the services of a cook, a housekeeper, a nanny and a chauffeur. They attended religious services only on the High Holy Days and felt entirely integrated into Austrian society, Mrs. Goldmark recalled.

But immediately after the Anschluss, her teacher instructed students that instead of saying good morning at the start of class, they would raise their right hand and make the Heil Hitler salute.

She then turned to me and said that I was not allowed to say Heil Hitler and would be barred from attending school starting immediately, Mrs. Goldmark wrote in an account provided to the Austrian Heritage Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. That was the last day I attended regular school in Graz.

Later that year, a member of the Nazi Party claimed ownership of her fathers business, as well as the family home, but permitted Helma and her father to sleep in the kitchen pantry.

Her father resolved to leave Austria but, having been stripped of his livelihood, lacked the funds to cover the exit fee charged by the Nazi regime. He went to the man who had confiscated his home and business and, at gunpoint, signed away all his property in exchange for enough money to cover the cost of leaving, Bird wrote.

In January 1939, Helma and her father left Austria for Yugoslavia, where his brother was publisher of a newspaper in the Croatian city of Zagreb. They made part of the journey by train and part by foot, with Helmas father, still suffering from the injuries he sustained on Kristallnacht, hobbling on crutches over a snowy no mans land at the border.

They enjoyed relative safety until April 1941, when the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia and a Nazi puppet government was established in Croatia under Ante Pavelic, leader of the fascist Ustasha regime.

As conditions deteriorated for Jews, Mrs. Goldmarks father began making plans to flee to Italy and then send for his daughter.

To celebrate her 16th birthday on Feb. 8, 1942, he delayed his departure until the following morning. Two hours before the train left, Bird wrote, the Ustasha arrested him. He was taken to the Jasenovac concentration camp south of Zagreb, where, a survivor later told Mrs. Goldmark, he was bludgeoned to death by Ustasha guards.

Mrs. Goldmark soon left for Italy, where she lived for a period in Bressanone, a town in the German-speaking north, with her sister and brother-in-law, an Italian agricultural inspector who belonged to the fascist party.

Made to feel that her presence was a burden, Bird wrote, and warned by her sister that she was in danger of deportation, she left in August 1943. She began traveling south, at times walking alone through the Italian countryside, and arrived in Rome days before the Germans occupied the city that September.

Finding shelter in Catholic convents and with fellow Jewish refugees, she managed to avoid arrest, even amid the infamous roundup of Roman Jews that took place Oct. 16, 1943.

In early 1944, she met a Jewish man who introduced himself as Giuseppe Levi. Noting her blond hair and blue eyes features that might allow her to pass as an Aryan he recruited her to a resistance operation led by Pierre-Marie Benoit, a French priest who had overseen the printing of thousands of false papers for Jews in France before undertaking similar work in Rome.

I was stupid enough to say yes, Mrs. Goldmark told Bird. I just thought it was an adventure.

Under the alias Elena Bianchi, Mrs. Goldmark, then 17, obtained a job as a clerical worker at a Luftwaffe command post. When a German lieutenant confided in her that he wished to desert, she carried out a trade: civilian clothes and a safe apartment for him in exchange for German letterhead, stamps and seals for the forgery operation.

As the Allies advanced from Southern Italy, she feigned a broken leg to avoid moving north with her Luftwaffe office and remained in Rome until the city was liberated in June 1944.

We couldnt believe that this was the end, Bird quoted her as saying. That evening was the first and last time that I got drunk. We feasted on a bottle of wine.

In 1966, Benoit was recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel, as Righteous Among the Nations, an honor bestowed on Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis.

After the liberation of Rome, Mrs. Goldmark worked for the American military government as a translator and later for the American Joint Distribution Committee.

She immigrated in 1947 to the United States, where she changed her maiden name to Bliss, and where she married Victor Willy Goldmark, a Viennese Holocaust survivor she had met in Rome. Their marriage ended in divorce.

Besides her daughter, of Washington, Manhattan and Miami Beach, survivors include a grandson.

Mrs. Goldmark lived for decades in New York before moving in 1991 to the Washington area. Until late in her life, she worked in legal offices translating documents from German, Serbo-Croatian, Italian, French and Spanish.

Long after she came to the United States, she kept in her closet a suitcase whether packed or simply ready to be packed in the event that she would need to flee. It was, her son-in-law observed, a symbol of her trauma.

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Helma Goldmark, Holocaust refugee who joined resistance, dies at 98 - The Washington Post

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