Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on August 16, 2017

The mix of fiction and documentary that takes us inside a Hasidic community in Brooklyn in Menashe turns out to be something of a double-edged sword.

Director Joshua Z. Weinstein (a documentarian making his first drama) has said some of the footage was shot secretly, which raises issues of cultural appropriation the movie never really addresses, even as it moves us closer to the culture in question (the movie is almost entirely in Yiddish, with subtitles).

It stars Menashe Lustig, a Hasidic comedian and widower who no longer has custody of his son because the law and custom forbid children to be raised in a home without a mother a situation that forms the spine of the story here.

Menashe loves his son (Ruben Niborski) and wants to raise him, but his refusal to seriously pursue a new wife and his failures as a breadwinner put that at risk. Menashe is a likable blunderer, but a blunderer nonetheless he can barely hold down the cashier delivery job at the local convenience store, a job he owes to his brother-in-law.

His rabbi gives him two weeks to shape up, find a wife, or lose supervision of the boy.Decision day is to occur on the anniversary of his wifes death, when Menashe is to host a ceremony in her honor.

The burly Lustig has a melancholy quality he plays himself as a fellow with a good heart, but one whos become a little too comfortable with failure. He is devoted to his son but lacks the discipline to make the choices that will allow him to be a better father.

For every loving gesture (using his last savings to buy his son a baby chick), there is a screw-up leaving the back door open on his delivery truck, for instance, sending the days delivery out into the streets. Our hopes that Menashe will ace the memorial ceremony (and the bachelor-proof kugel recipe) are not high.

The movie was (apparently) shot guerrilla style by director Weinstein, though the filmmakers have been coy as to which scenes were captured stealthily and which are dramatized. This leads to questions about tact and voyeurism that go unanswered and frankly made me a little queasy.

And while the approach gives us rare insight into a closed-off community, it also appears to have limited Weinsteins visual choices. If hes not using a hidden camera, hes imitating one, and the movies shaky/sneaky peering eye grows stale, even at 82 minutes.

This leads to an emotional distance as well for all its insight into Hasidic life (the more you know, the more youll get out of the rituals and practices on view), it was the movies one non-Yiddish scene that hits home: Menashe in the storeroom at work, drinking 40-ounce beers with his Latino pals, a situation that somehow extracts from him a candor missing from his guarded interaction with Hasidic friends and relatives.

Thats part of Weinsteins point. Menashe wants to be a good father and a devout man, but the world he values wont let him be both.

Directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein. With Menashe Lustig, Ruben Niborski, andYoel Weisshaus. Distributed by A24 Films.

Published: August 16, 2017 3:01 AM EDT | Updated: August 16, 2017 2:20 PM EDT

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'Menashe' gives us rare insight into Brooklyn's Hasidic culture - Philly.com

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Posted By admin on August 16, 2017

Raise a shout together, O ruins of Yerushalayim! For Hashem will comfort His people, Will redeem Yerushalayim. Isaiah 52:9 (The Israel Bible)

The Hurva Synagogue in the Old Citys Jewish Quarter, Jerusalem. Inset: After its destruction in 1967. (Shutterstock/Wikimedia Commons)

By: Aliza Abrahamovitz

In the center of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem stands a magnificent and breathtaking building. The tallest building in the area, its domed roof, stained glass windows and high balcony leave a powerful impression on passersby, but the story of the Hurva Synagogue, with a message for the Jewish people, is even more inspiring than the structure itself.

In 1700, Yehudah Ha-Hasid immigrated to Israel with a group of 500 European Ashkenazi Jews. After only a few days in the holy city of Jerusalem, the groups leader died, leaving his followers despondent.

The group began to build a life for themselves in Jerusalem with some homes and a small synagogue. Eventually, they started construction on a more magnificent house of worship, but the venture proved to be too expensive to continue. They could not repay the loans necessary, and in 1720 the Arab lenders set the synagogue on fire.

The Jewish leaders were imprisoned and the immigrants were expelled from Jerusalem. The pile of rubble that was once the communitys synagogue became known as the Ruin (Hurva) of Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Hasid.

In the 1800s, a second group of Ashkenazi Jews, disciples of the Gaon of Vilna, came to build a new synagogue in the destroyed Ashkenazi courtyard. With financial backing, mainly from the Rothschild family and Sir Moses Montefiore, 1864 saw the inauguration of a magnificent Ashkenazi synagogue in the Old City. Nothing of such grandeur had been built by the Jews of Jerusalem since the Second Temple. Its domed roof towered high above the surrounding buildings, and its interior was intricately decorated. Visiting rabbis and dignitaries would make a point to stop and worship there.

In May of 1948, Jordanian forces entered the Old City of Jerusalem. They detonated a barrel filled with explosives against the exterior wall of the Hurva Synagogue, creating a gaping hole to allow them to enter. The Jordanians succeed in flying their flag from the roof of the synagogue and announced victory over the Old City. Then they blew up the magnificent structure, reducing it once again to a pile of rubble.

For the next 19 years, the Old City was inaccessible to Jewish visitors. Even prayers at Judaisms holiest sites, such as the Western Wall, were prohibited to Jews. But in June of 1967, during the miraculous victory of the Six-Day War, Israel regained sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, including the Old City. For the first time in 2,000 years, Jews were in control of the holy city.

There was immediately disagreement as to what to rebuild at the site of the destroyed Hurva synagogue. Some wanted a new synagogue built in a contemporary style, while others felt it would be meaningful to rebuild the synagogue in its original form, paying homage to the once grand building. Some groups wanted the new building to become a museum telling the history of the Jewish struggle for the Old City, but most felt it was only right for the new building to serve once again as a house of worship and study hall.

While no decision was made, a commemorative arch, a recreation of one of the original supportive arches of the synagogue, was built in 1977 as a statement that the synagogue would be rebuilt. But it was not until the year 2000, 33 years after the Old City was reclaimed and 62 years after the buildings destruction, that government officials decided to rebuild the synagogue in its original Ottoman style. In March of 2010, the official opening of the Hurva Synagogue took place.

Today, the synagogue is an active house of worship, hosting daily prayers, bar mitzvah and circumcision ceremonies. It is also a must-see landmark site in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Visitors can take a tour of this grand structure, highlighted by a breathtaking 360-degree view of the Old City from the balcony surrounding the synagogues great dome.

It stands as a living symbol of the Jewish struggle to rebuild its land, a place where Jewish life is celebrated where once it was destroyed.

The story of the Hurva Synagogue appears in Then & Now: 16-Month Jewish Calendar and Holiday Guide 2017/2018 by Israel365. Click here to learn more and purchase.

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A Living Symbol of Israel's Return to Jerusalem, Hurva Synagogue Stands Proud in Old City - Breaking Israel News

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Posted By simmons on August 16, 2017

By Danya Ruttenberg By Danya Ruttenberg August 16 at 6:00 AM

White nationalists staged a torchlit march on the campus of the University of Virginia on Aug.11, ahead of a planned far-right rally. (Instagram/anonymous via Storyful)

Anti-Semitism is again back in the news.

Some of the posters atthe Charlottesville white supremacist demonstrations this weekend featured a man taking a hammer to a Star of David the biggest threat, the thing that needs to be destroyed. Marchers chanted Jews will not replace us and Blood and soil!, a direct translation of the Nazi slogan blut und boden, which plays on the notion of Jews as powerful, dangerous interlopers.

This comes toward the end of a summer that included the Chicago Dyke Marchejectingparticipants with a Star of David on a gay pride flag on the misguided-at-best grounds that it went against the marchs anti-racist core values and heated debates about whether Gal Gadot, an Ashkenazi Israeli, isa person of color. Particularly in recent years, there has rightfully beenincreased talk about the ways in which many Ashkenazi Jews in America do have white privilege.

So are we oppressed? Or what? The reasons that question may feel complicated go back around a thousand years. Since the dawn of modern anti-Semitism, hatred toward Jews has been deeply intertwined with the idea of Jews having unique sorts of advantages.

[Why Jews have a special obligation to resist Trump]

In the Middle Ages, Jews were barred from many trades and professions, and it was sometimes illegal for Jews to own land. It was convenient forlocal authorities to permit Jews to work in trades that were repugnant to Christians most notably moneylending, which was associated in the Christian world with depravity and sin.

From a Jewish perspective, moneylending was a useful line of work for two reasons. First, it was somewhat portable, and when times were lucky it enabled our ancestors to have liquid assets both of which were practical during an era when expulsions of Jews from villages and even whole countries were not uncommon. It was also profitable. Most late medieval and early modern European polities taxed Jews at jaw-droppingly high rates, so loaning out money was essential for communities survival. A very small subset of Jews began handling money because it was a viable option and a practical necessity. And then they were resented for it and identified with the work in a way that Christian bankers never were. Evenas early as 1233, anti-Semitic drawings depicted the usuriousJew, using many of the same themes one might find in a quick Google search.

Most Jews throughout history lived a fairly precarious existence, economically and otherwise. Many times in history we have been tolerated, and even embraced, by the rulers and locals of our host country. But we have also been subject to expulsions, pogroms, Inquisitions and genocide many times over often, indeed, fueled by the trope of the greedy, crooked Jew serving as the scapegoat for other stresses and complexities in society. Often, the shift from living in peace to the bottom dropping out happened very quickly.

So heres the paradox: Anti-Semitism and Jewish privilege are, and have long been, two sides of the same coin. Even now, I feel it keenly.

On the one hand, Jews as a category are thus far shielded from the state violence that a lot of other groups are experiencing. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not seeking us out as a group; we are not being barred from the military or being singled out in a travel ban. Although of course there are Jews of all levels of economic security in this country, American Jews as a collective do have a lot more social and cultural capital than many other groups, and we are not as vulnerable as other communities under attack. The reasons are various; a big one, though, is that many American Jews families have been established here for a century or more and, over that time, Ashkenazi Jews were able to assimilate into the broader culture and become white.

[Jews struggled for decades to become white. Now we must give up white privilege to fight racism.]

Yet at the same time, anti-Semitism is functioning as it has for centuries. Trumps attacks on Soros globalists, White House adviser Stephen Millers claim that a reporter had cosmopolitan bias (a phrase that has longtime anti-Semitic connotations despite Millers own Jewish origins), the Star of David superimposed on money in the infamous Trump tweet last year, the dog whistles in the Trumps final campaign ad and the posters and chants in Charlottesville all depend on a centuries-old, manufactured narrative of Jews as wealthy, powerful and in control. As this rhetoric gets louder, were seeing more targeted hate: Jewish graveyards have been vandalized at least five times this year, and the Holocaust Memorial in Boston was smashed for the second time this summer on Monday.

That shift from relative peace to something else can happen so quickly in the blink of an eye. Some members of the Jewish community are feeling our centuries-deep intergenerational trauma keenly, experiencing this era as nothing short of terrifying, with memories of pogrom torches and swastika flags looming large.

But this isnt the time to hunker down. Its the time to stand up. I, for one, have advantages that my ancestors in Europe never dreamed of, and this includes the social capital to fight bigotry with full force and power. We as a community have an obligation to stand up for those who are more vulnerable to both institutional and random attacks, as well as to embody the full bad-assery of an elderly woman photographed on Sunday in New York holding a sign that said, I escaped the Nazis once. You will not defeat me now.

Our work right now is to fight every kind of bigotry and hate head on.

Read more:

Trumps conspiracy theories sound anti-Semitic. Does he even realize it?

Im a rabbi who was arrested protesting Trumps travel ban. It was a holy act.

Donald Trump is wicked. As a rabbi, I had to protest his AIPAC speech.

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Why do white supremacists hate Jews? Because we Jews can fight them. - Washington Post

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Posted By admin on August 16, 2017

By Ben Sales JTA news service

Touro Synagogue, nestled in historic Newport, R.I., is the oldest synagogue still in existence in the United States. John Nordell/The Christian Science Monitor via Getty Images NEW YORK The story of Americas oldest synagogue, as told by retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, is the story of American Jewish history.

Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, Souter wrote, was built in the 1700s by Sephardic merchants whose community then declined. In the late 1800s, Eastern European Jews arrived in the area, occupied the building and have used it to this day.

Since then, heirs of the older Sephardic community have tried to maintain a foothold in the historic synagogue that they consider theirs.

On Wednesday, Aug. 2, Souter awarded a victory to the Sephardim.

Writing an appeals court ruling on a lawsuit over who owns Touro Synagogue, Souter who has regularly sat on the court following his 2009 retirement wrote that the building and its centuries-old ritual objects all belong to Congregation Shearith Israel, a historic Sephardic congregation on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter issued an appeals court ruling on the dispute over who owns the Touro synagogue in Newport, RI. The decision reversed an earlier district court decision that gave ownership of the building and the multimillion-dollar artifacts to the group that worships there: the Ashkenazi Congregation Jeshuat Israel.

Its an odd and oddly enduring dispute being played out in an American courtroom. Souters ruling is a primer on nearly 400 years of American Jewish history, and a dispute that touches on historical tensions between Sephardic Jews with roots in Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East, and Ashkenazi Jews with roots in Eastern Europe.

Touro, built in 1763, has loomed large in American Jewish history. Along with its claim to being the first Jewish building in the country, it also received George Washingtons 1790 letter guaranteeing that the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

Shearith Israel, hundreds of miles away, has held title to Touro since the early 1800s, when the shrinking Newport community asked the New York City shul to steward the building and its ritual objects.

Its a fitting relationship: Shearith Israel also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue has a sense of its history as well. Founded in 1654, it bills itself as Americas First Jewish Congregation. (Its current building is its fifth home.) Old-time members still wear top hats, and it still worships in the distinctive Sephardic style passed down from its founders, complete with a cantor in robes and choir. Some Shearith Israel members are descended from the original families that started the congregation four centuries ago.

Jeshuat Israel, founded in 1881 as Ashkenazi immigrants began flooding America from Eastern Europe, has worshipped at Touro for more than a century. For a time, according to Souters ruling, its members occupied the synagogue illegally, praying there even as Shearith Israel sought to keep it closed.

Only in 1903, following a court battle, did the two groups sign a contract establishing Shearith Israel as the owner and giving Jeshuat Israel a lease on the building. According to the terms of the contract, Jeshuat Israel must pray in the Sephardic style its own identity be damned.

Seeking to form an endowment, Jeshuat Israel arranged in 2011 to sell a pair of handcrafted, 18th-century silver bulbs, which are used to adorn Torah scrolls, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where they were on loan.

Shearith Israel objected to the $7 million sale, both because Shearith Israel said it owned the ornaments and claimed the sale violated Jewish law. Jeshuat Israel then sued Shearith Israel, and Shearith Israel countersued both of them seeking legal ownership of the bulbs.

Because the bulbs are meant to rest upon a Torah scroll, Shearith Israel asserted, selling them to a secular institution constitutes an unacceptable decline in holiness.

The district court had ruled in Jeshuat Israels favor on the grounds it occupies the building and that Shearith Israel had failed in its trustee obligations. But Souter reversed the ruling, partially based on the 1903 contract, writing that Shearith Israel is fee owner of the Touro Synagogue building, appurtenances, fixtures, and associated land.

Now, says Gary Naftalis, Jeshuat Israels lawyer, the congregation is reviewing our legal options going forward. Jeshuat Israel could ask the appeals courts full panel of judges to review the ruling, and may petition to have the case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Late last week, Jeshuat asked for a rehearing.

Shearith Israel President Louis Solomon said in a statement that the congregation is gratified by the courts decision and, as a result, has been restored to the position it has held for centuries.

The statement added that the congregation hopes to move forward from the court ruling, which enables two great Jewish congregations to regain the harmony that existed between them before this unfortunate episode began five years ago.

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Who owns America's oldest synagogue? It's an argument 350 years in the making - jewishpresstampa

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Posted By richards on August 16, 2017

Regina Spektor to play in concert on August 19 in Raanana Amphipark. (photo credit:Wikimedia Commons)

Life would be a little more dreary without Regina Spektor. A true original in a sea of pop conventionalists, Spektor brings vivid tints to her music that jolt listeners with the same effect of emerging from the black-and-white tornado-driven house in Kansas to Technicolor Oz.

Over the course of 15 years and seven sparkling albums, the 40-year-old Spektor has emerged as one of the most unusual and imaginative singer/songwriters of the young century. Using a palette that spans piano ballads, punk, jazz, pop and beatboxing, Spektor creates a rich world of characters, melodies and theatrics described by music site Pitchfork as unabashed earnestness that has cemented her status as an eccentric cult hero.

The Guardian, which reviewed her show on August 1 in Cambridge, England, wrote: Where most songwriters inhabit their songs, Spektor has a set of fictional characters inhabiting most of hers, and she acts out their stories Tonight she enforces the rule that theres no such thing as too much theatricality, rolling her Rs with relish during the Russian language verses of Aprs Moi and adding helium-squeak high notes to the choruses of Bleeding Heart, referring to two of her most enduring songs.

Her latest release, 2016s Remember Us to Life, was praised by Rolling Stone for its storytelling compression and brilliant songcraft. Not bad for a Soviet-born Jew who moved with her family to the US in the late 1980s when she was eight.

Spektors father, Ilya, an amateur violinist, and her mother, Bella, a music professor, provided her with a love of music. She grew up playing piano and listening to everything from famous Russian bards like Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava to smuggled-in Western rock n roll like The Beatles and Queen. Almost deciding to remain in the Soviet Union so Spektor wouldnt have to leave her piano behind, the family eventually left. With the assistance of HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), they settled in the Bronx. As a teen, Spektor attended a seminary in Paramus, New Jersey, before transferring to a public school in nearby Fair Lawn. She kept to her classical studies in the US, practicing piano in the basement of her New York synagogue. But she was also exposed to the New York City pastiche of hip hop, punk and rock. Spektor didnt try her hand at songwriting, though, until a summer trip Israel with the Nesiya Institute found her making up songs on long hikes. Bonding with the works of like-minded female singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Ani DiFranco resulted in her finding the courage to begin performing. After completing a studio composition program at the Conservatory of Music at Purchas College, she began gaining notoriety in New Yorks anti-folk scene. A contract with Sire Records soon followed, along with an opening act slot for punky New York faves the Strokes, and Spektor was a well-kept secret no more.

Spektor courted mainstream success when her tune Youve Got Time was chosen as the theme song for the blockbuster TV series Orange Is the New Black. That song receives a bigger reaction when she performs, but theres no need to worry that Spektor will ever be in danger of becoming popular, in the Taylor Swift, or even Lorde, definition of the word.

Spektor first appeared in Israel in 2007 for two performances at the Barby Club, and she returned in 2013 as a star, selling out the Caesarea Amphitheater. On August 19, she returns to perform at the Raanana Amphitheater.

Spektors connection to Israel and her Jewish roots remain strong and are often expressed publicly. In 2008, she performed on the National Mall in Washington, DC, as part of celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Israel. Two years later, she appeared at a White House reception before the Obamas to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month. She has blown a shofar onstage and performed Hannah Seneshs Eli, Eli in Hebrew. On the cover of her Begin to Hope album, she is wearing a Star of David pendant.

In 2009, in the midst of Israels Operation Cast Lead, Spektor penned a post on her MySpace page defending Israel and criticizing what she regarded as unfair media coverage of its actions.

But mainly, she has concentrated on music. And her penchant for looking at the world through a different set of lenses has continued unabated. Pitchfork, in its review of the somber minor key Remember Us to Life, wrote: The biggest buy-in with Spektors music has been that earnestness, its requiring you to be OK with songs that talk about rowboats feeling trapped in paintings, or laughing at God as one of us, or ditching your corporate job to take off your shoes and splash around in puddles.For Spektors devoted following, accepting that suspension of belief and joining her vibrant world is the path to temporary nirvana. Regina Spektor performs tomorrow at Raanana Amphi-Park. Doors open at 9 p.m., concert starts at 10 p.m.

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Remembering us to life: Regina Spektor performs in Ra'anana - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on August 16, 2017

Mr. Trump borrowed conservatives lingo on Tuesday, saying the alt-left bore responsibility, using a phrase popular with commentators like Foxs Sean Hannity.

They think there were 300 or so racists who showed up to a rally, and who got exactly what they wanted: Violence, and violence in a way that inspires the nations elite to double down on iconoclasm in a way they hope grows their movement, said Ben Domenech, the publisher of The Federalist, an online magazine.

A headline on The Federalist on Monday summed up that sentiment: White Supremacists Were Not the Only Thugs Tearing Up Charlottesville.

A site called The Patriot Post created a meme called They Lie using two juxtaposed photographs. The first was a man looking at Mr. Trump waving to a sea of cheering fans; the second was a picture of that same man wearing glasses covered in the CNN logo, but seeing instead a group of Hitler Youth saluting their leader.

Townhall.com offered another provocative take: How the Liberal Media Created Charlottesville.

Mr. Trump and conservatives have pointed to several recent episodes as evidence of the left gone mad. They include the comedian Kathy Griffins posing for a picture with a fake severed Trump head, and a production of Shakespeares Julius Caesar that featured a Trump-like actor as the emperor who is fatally stabbed onstage.

Some seized on the shooting that seriously injured Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, at a congressional baseball team practice in June as further proof. One recent web video from the National Rifle Association accused liberals of attempting to bully and terrorize the law abiding as it implored Americans to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.

But the tragedy in Charlottesville specifically, the death of a young woman at the hands of a Nazi sympathizer who the authorities said ran her down with his car undercut the notion that the black-masked radical leftists who smash windows and hurl firebombs are an equal menace.

Nor is it backed up by data on political violence. Of at least 372 murders that were committed by domestic extremists between 2007 and 2016, according to a study by the Anti-Defamation League, 74 percent were committed by right-wing extremists. Muslim extremists were responsible for 24 percent of those killings, and the small remainder were committed by left-wing extremists, the study concluded.

Noah Rothman, an editor for Commentary Magazine, a conservative opinion journal, said the emphasis for many conservatives is not on statistics that indicate who is the more violent offender. Rather, he said, the point is about the general tenor of political debate, which people like him believe is weighted against them.

You dont have a ton of reporters banging on the doors of Democrats asking them to denounce Antifa, he said, referring to the militant Marxist-inspired group that rioted at Mr. Trumps inauguration and often shows up looking for confrontation at sites where conservative writers like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos are scheduled to speak.

Were comparing a body count, and that to me seems like its the wrong place to start, Mr. Rothman added. The place to start is when we have violence in the streets. We need to have a conversation about where we are as a country.

Mr. Trump is no mere bit player in the discussion of political violence. At various times, he has offered to pay the legal bills of supporters who get in brawls at his events and stated, without offering any proof, that paid agitators were responsible for protests against him.

Mr. Trumps sympathizers generally amplify these claims, including some who did after Charlottesville. Alex Jones, the right-wing provocateur and Sandy Hook massacre denier whom Mr. Trump once personally called to thank for his support, said people who protested the white supremacists over the weekend were probably actors.

In an internet broadcast on Saturday, Mr. Jones played down the significance of the violence, saying it was likely staged by Democratic Party activists who are looking to overdemonize whites and put chips on the shoulders of the so-called minorities.

Demographically, blacks are 12 times more likely to attack whites for no reason, Mr. Jones went on, providing no evidence for his claim. Its a fact.

He then recounted his own experience watching a Nazi rally he said was attended by Jews posing as Nazis, evident by their curly hair, and you know, dark eyes.

Mike Cernovich, a conspiracy theory peddler, was gleeful as he posted on Twitter about the violence on Saturday. Civil War is here! he wrote.

Like others on the far right, he said the rhetoric on the left was to blame: The left has preached hatred for decades. Those they hated began to hate them back. How is anyone surprised by this?

Mr. Cernovich headlined a Rally for Peace in Washington after the Scalise shooting, a rally that quickly turned into a referendum on the lefts culpability in the crime. He also played a central role in the Pizzagate hoax that attempted to link Hillary Clinton to a child sex ring and has been praised by Mr. Trumps son Donald Trump Jr. as being worthy of a Pulitzer Prize.

There is also a new political term to describe the circular firing squad in which right and left have blamed the other for the countrys degenerating political debate whataboutism.

Guy Benson, a conservative writer and an author of the book End of Discussion, which argues that the left has tried to shut down political debate by declaring certain topics off the table, said he sees a whataboutism overreach among some conservatives.

But on the other hand, he said, Are we allowed to point out that left-wing violence is a problem and did probably contribute to what happened in Charlottesville and not be compared to Hitler?

He said that conservatives would be better served by finding other ways to make points of media bias and political double standards.

Round and round we go with this one-upsmanship of whos worse, Mr. Benson added, and thats a really terrible way to argue.

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the Morning Briefing newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on August 16, 2017, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Behind Many Sides Remark, a Dark View of the Political Left.

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One Theory Over Meaning of Trump's 'Many Sides' Remark - New York Times

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Posted By richards on August 16, 2017

(JTA) The Anti-Defamation League joined critics of President Donald Trump in condemning his assertion that there was blameon both sidesin Charlottesville, where neo-Nazis faced off protesters.

Trump said this during a speech Wednesday, four days after the slaying of a 32-year-old woman in the Virginian city by a White supremacist.

The victim was attending a protest rally by activists against racism against a gathering of far-right supporters there, which organizers said was the largest event of its kind in over two decades. Hundreds chanted slogans against Jews, Blacks and other minorities during marches and rallies.

ADL National Director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement he is profoundly disturbed by Trump, whom Greenblatt said went beyond the pale today in equating racist white supremacists in Charlottesville with counter protesters who were there to stand up against hate. For the second timein four days, Trump did the opposite of previous presidents who are remembered for standing up to bigotry and hate, Greenblatt added.

Trump on Sunday condemned the display of hatred and bigotry and violence on many sides, promoting claims that by not singling out the racists, he was drawing a moral equivalence between supporters of Fascism and their opponents.

On Monday, Trump did single out the far-right when he said during a statement: Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

But on Wednesday, during a press conference in New York about infrastructure, Trump appeared to revert to the view of shared blame.

Let me ask you this, Trump told a reporter who asked about the White Houses position of the far right. What about the fact that they came charging, that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs. Do they have any problem? I think they do.

He also said: I think theres blame on both sides.

Addressing the alleged actions of James Alex Fields Jr. a 20-year-old White supremacist accused of murdering Heather Heyer and wounding 20 others by driving a car into the crowd of protesters Trump called him a murderer. Fields did a horrible, horrible inexcusable thing, Trump added.

Trumps references to violence on both sides drew criticism also in Israel.

Former justice minister Tzipi Livni wrote on Twitter that In racism, anti-Semitism and Nazism, there are no two equal sides. Theres good and theres bad, period. Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid centrist party, also wrote: There are no two sides and that every leader must confront racism head on.

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ADL condemns Trump's talk of 'shared blame' for Charlottesville violence - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By simmons on August 16, 2017

Aired 8/16/17 on KPBS Midday Edition

Rise In White Supremacy Groups Demands Action, Says San Diego Jewish Leader

GUEST:

Tammy Gillies, regional director, Anti-Defamation League in San Diego

Transcript

The white supremacy groups that marched with torches, carrying Nazi and Confederate flags through the streets of Charlottesville was not an isolated incident, but rather a movement gaining momentum, including in San Diego, said Tammy Gillies, director of the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.

I liken it to somebody taking the lid off of the sewer, Gillies said. Its always been there, this hate, under the surface. But now that lid has been removed and its all bubbled up, and what do we as a country do with it now?

Gillies and other Jewish leaders condemned the violence on Tuesday night in front of a crowd of hundreds at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center in La Jolla. The public forum was a call to action to rally against the extremists groups and discuss ways to combat the festering hate.

RELATED: Report: California Hate Groups On The Rise

Speaking to KPBS News prior to the event, Gillies said the violence in Charlottesville was disheartening and tragic, but not surprising.

We were expecting it, Gillies said. We did do an analysis that this was going to be probably the largest rally that had occurred in the past decade, so we knew it was going to be happening but knowing it and actually seeing it happen its is a little bit heartbreaking.

Alt-Right groups are building momentum and feeling emboldened by divisive political rhetoric, Gillies said. ADL has documented a spike in the number of white supremacists recruiting on college campuses and holding rallies.

Last year we had a group, Identity Evropa was here at San Diego State recruiting, and were seeing it all over the country, Gillies said. Most people dont think of it as happening in Southern California.

Identity Evropa, formed in March 2016, is identified by ADL as a racist white supremacist organization that endorses segregation. It was one of the alt-right groups that participated in the violent "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville.

California tops the nation for the number of active hate groups, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Nearly 80 hate groups operate up and down the state, with most based in Southern California.

In the San Diego area, the report cited five active hate groups: Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, a Holocaust denial group; Nation of Islam, a black separatist group; Sicarii 1715, a black separatist group; As-Sabiqun, a general hate group; and Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge, a black separatist group.

San Diego has seen a 33 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, a fourfold increase compared to the same period last year, according to ADL.

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Posted By richards on August 16, 2017

Leaders of San Diego's Jewish community on Tuesday night condemned white supremacists and hatred in response to the deadly violence that broke out during a rally by neo-Nazis and other extremist groups in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.

Speaking in front of hundreds of people during a forum at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, local rabbis and others evoked the horrors of the Holocaust to underscore the importance of speaking out against hate.

I personally know what it is like to be discriminated against, Holocaust survivor Franny Lebovits told the crowd. But to remember is not enough, the 94-year-old Lebovits said.

She and other Holocaust survivors in attendance were welcomed with a standing ovation.

Were sad that theyre here under these circumstances, but were honored that theyre here with us, said Tammy Gillies, director of the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.

Rabbi Yael Ridberg of Congregation Dor Hadash said her message was one that was simultaneously ancient and urgent.

We must not be tolerant of intolerance," she said. "We cannot turn a blind eye to what is in plain sight. We, Jews, we remember the cost of silence.

Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, also addressed the crowd, echoing statements he made Sunday evening at a unity vigil in front of the County Administration Center.

The Greatest Generation did not fight Nazis so Nazis could walk around empowered, he said to applause. And yet, the violence in Charlottesville is a reminder that hatred exits and Americas democracy is under attack, Peters said.

"Don't lose heart, he told the crowd. "The struggle is not over, but were making progress, and were going to win.

Rabbi Nadav Caine of Ner Tamid Synagogue led a prayer in honor of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed when a car mowed down a group of counter protesters in Charlottesville on Saturday. The suspected driver, James Alex Fields, 20, has been charged with second-degree murder in Heyers death.

The event at the Jewish center in University City was organized by the Anti-Defamation League, the San Diego Rabbinic Association and the Leichtag Foundation, an Encinitas-based Jewish organization.

Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com

Phone: (619) 293-1876

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez

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San Diego Jewish community rallies against hate - The San Diego Union-Tribune

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Posted By admin on August 16, 2017

The process of the dehumanization of Zionists which in this context (and most contexts) is interchangeable with Jew has been a long one in our current culture. It has existed as an idea within the ranks of the KKK since its early days and continues today in various corners of the political spectrum. Its what happens when both Jews and Israelis are not viewed as human beings but political abstractions whose very existence is socially unacceptable and deserving of contempt. To counter such thinking, we have to not only be vocal in counter-protests but make sure that Zionism does not become socially taboo in our political and social discourses. To allow this is to be an enabler of the vile acts we witnessed this weekend. More importantly, when we talk about Israelis as with any human being our conversations must capture the fullness of their humanity; and to be human is to be at times vulnerable and insecure; imperfect and yet full of aspirations, ambitions, and the idiosyncrasies that make us the impossible, interesting creatures that we all are worthy of redemption.

The other day I was doing some close reading of Yossi Klein Halevis Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist. My job is to create spaces where deep Israel engagement through a greater understanding of Zionism as a philosophy can be cultivated. In my lectures, I aim for my audiences to understand Zionism within the greater context of the human condition, not just as a political movement. So I thought itd be interesting to draw lessons from a great writer and see what he had to teach me about the human experience through the lens of his own.

Halevis autobiography reads like a Hollywood movie script and has insightful things to say about the effects of bigotry and trauma on a community that are often overlooked. In everyday society we understand bigotry as a force that has animated dangerous political movements throughout history and which threaten to do so again. Yet this is an academic description not an explanation. Bigotry is what happens when one person (or people) begin to see another as inhuman.

This has been a regular theme of anti-Semitism. For example, Halevi writes about how the genocidal impulses of Nazi Germany required that the Nazis see the Jews as soulless as that would be the only justification of a genocide. It wasnt enough to destroy the Jews, he writes. First they had to be degraded, transformed into living exhibits of the absence of soul. Halevi went further to say that Jews were being transformed into freaks ghettoized and demonized.

Its been a month since Ive studied this book together but I bring it up in light of recent events in Charlotsville where Neo-Nazis draped in Confederate flags attempted once more to depict Jews as soulless.

The truth is, Klans member David Duke told a large crowd on Saturday, the American media, and the American political system, and the American Federal Reserve, is dominated by a tiny minority: the Jewish Zionist cause.

Most in polite society condemned these Neo-Nazi demonstrations. But its worth pointing out and then pointing out again that anti-Semitism occurs when groups seek to dehumanize Jews and, yes, by Jews, I do mean Zionists.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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