Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 19, 2017

Denouncing anti-Semitism, Apple's CEO donates $1 million to ADL.

JTA, Arutz Sheva Staff, 19/08/17 21:14

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Apples CEO Tim Cook pledged that his company will donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and $1 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Apple will also match employee donations to these and other groups two-for-one through September, according to a memo Cook wrote Wednesday night and obtained by Buzzfeed News.

Hate is a cancer, Cook wrote. This is not about the left or the right, conservative or liberal. It is about human decency and morality.

Anti-Semitism was rampant at the Charlottesville rally, with both the white supremacist groups, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and Antifa all expressing anti-Semitic sentiments. Though it is little known, BLM supports the Hamas terror group and BDS.

In April, BLM leader Rachel Gilmer claimed that "many liberal Zionists believe that the problem with Israeli apartheid is simply a few bad policies, or [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu, or the wall, but the problem is with the ideological foundation of the state itself: Zionism. Zionism at its core is white supremacy."

In July, ADL delivered to the US State Department thousands of signatures on a petition calling on US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to fill the vacant office of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism as quickly as possible.

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Apple CEO to donate 1 million to Anti-Defamation League - Arutz Sheva

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Posted By simmons on August 19, 2017

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NEW YORK (JTA) The mayors of Americas largest cities are launching a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to combat hate and bigotry.

Nearly 200 mayors have joined the agreement, which was announced Friday, since it was first circulated Tuesday night among the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The mayors are agreeing to explicitly condemn racism, white supremacy and bigotry, and to implement educational and public safety programs to safeguard vulnerable populations and discourage discrimination.

Signers include the mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C, and Phoenix.

For decades, Americas mayors have taken a strong position in support of civil rights and in opposition to racism and discrimination of all kinds, the Mayors Compact reads. We are now seeing efforts in our states and at the highest levels of our government to weaken existing civil rights policies and reduce their enforcement. We have seen an increase in hate violence, xenophobic rhetoric, and discriminatory actions that target Muslims, Jews, and other minorities.

The compact sets out a 10-point program that includes publicly condemning bigotry; ensuring public safety while protecting free speech; training and funding law enforcement to enforce hate crime laws; working with community leaders to combat bigotry; and strengthening anti-bias education programs in schools.

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200 Big City Mayors And ADL Unveil Plan To Combat Hate - Forward

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Posted By admin on August 18, 2017

by Martin J. Raffel Special to NJJN

August 16, 2017

Some six years ago, while in Jerusalem, I found myself discussing with colleagues whether we should drop the term Zionism from our lexicon because it had become so toxic, especially on university campuses. I think of that experience as we approach the 120th anniversary of the first World Zionist Congress, which took place in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897.

To shun Zionism is to ignore an important chapter of modern Jewish history. Also, it is a gift to our adversaries, those who despite the repeal in 1991 of the infamous UN General Assemblys resolution equating Zionism with racism continue to delegitimize the Jewish peoples right of national self-determination.

Rabbi David Levy, the American Jewish Committees New Jersey regional director, agrees. Just as we would never consider finding a new word for Jewish in the face of anti-Semitism, we must not allow others to cause us to do so for the word Zionism, he said.

My favorite go-to person on Zionism is Professor Gil Troy who, in 2001, wrote the book Why I Am a Zionist.

I have learned from my African-American, feminist, and gay friends on campus to take back the night and not to let our enemies define us, label us, he told me. I refuse to retreat because it doesnt poll well. Rather, I embrace it more enthusiastically.

Troy will publish an update of Arthur Hertzbergs classic Zionist anthology, The Zionist Idea, in the spring, though he will be adding s to Idea to invite people both on the left and right of the political spectrum, religious and non-religious, to find their way into the conversation.

If the goal of the Zionist movement, as proclaimed in Basel 120 years ago, was to establish for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine, as we approach Israels 70th anniversary, what is the meaning of Zionism in 2017? Troy asserts, and I fully concur, that the current goal of Zionism is to perfect Israel, to make it fulfill its highest ideals.

So where do we find those highest ideals?

One source could be the 2004 New Jerusalem Platform, the official platform of the World Zionist Organization and current successor text of the 1897 Basel Program, which, according to the American Zionist Movements website, now relates more to the nature of the Jewish state as a growing and evolving society, as opposed to previous versions more focused on the establishment of the state. There are six clauses in the platform, one of which is strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist, and democratic state and shaping it as an exemplary society with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multifaceted Jewish people, rooted in the vision of the prophets, striving for peace, and contributing to the betterment of the world. Of all the clauses, this resonates the most with me because it blends Jewish particularism and universalism

Another source of Israels highest ideals is its declaration of Independence. This magnificent document asserts that the newly re-established, once-ancient sovereign Jewish nation will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel, and that Israel extends its hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness.

The democratically elected government of Israel will make the war and peace decisions that directly affect the security of the countrys citizens. Yet, I believe we, as American Jews, have a right and a responsibility to encourage Israel to actively, courageously, and demonstrably pursue peaceful relations with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. It is not for us to get into the nitty gritty of permanent borders, security arrangements, etc. These issues demand judgments that appropriately can be made only by Israels political and military leadership. At the same time, there is a clear-cut organizational American Jewish consensus favoring the two-state vision of Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace. It is the arrangement that, in the long run, will best enable Israel to remain largely Jewish, democratic, and secure. Thus, it is incumbent on us to express support for Israeli policies that extend a hand in peace by preserving the viability of a future two-state arrangement hopefully soon when the political stars are sufficiently aligned to achieve it.

The Declaration of Independence also asserts that Israel will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all. It will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. After two millennia of living as a minority within Christian and Muslim societies, often persecuted and accorded second-class status, Israel has an opportunity to show how they will treat a minority within the Jewish state.

While Israels Arab citizens fully participate in the countrys political process, there is a large gap between Jewish and Arab Israelis in terms of education, government services, and economic development. Commendably, the current Israeli government has started taking important steps to narrow this gap, which require full and expeditious implementation.

In a related development, the Knesset currently is considering a bill that would enshrine as a basic law one of the laws intended to become part of a future Israeli constitution Israels identity as the nation state of the Jewish people. In principle, this is not a bad idea, especially considering the vicious international campaign underway to demonize Israel. However, the law should also express a fundamental commitment to democracy, to complete equality, and to equal citizenship, as stipulated in the Declaration of Independence.

The document calls for freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture. In my mind, one of the meanings of this phrase is that all Jews with no regard for whether they are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, or without any religious affiliation should feel respected and accepted by the State of Israel. In my previous column, I explained that Israels electoral system has produced a legal structure that denies non-Orthodox Jews equal status in family and personal status matters. It wont be easy, and it will take time, but we must summon the political will to vigorously and consistently seek to change that status quo.

The Declaration of Independence asserts that Israel will seek to advance justice as envisaged by the prophets. It can provide moral leadership to the family of nations by addressing the needs of the most vulnerable segments of Israeli society; maintaining a high level of respect for human rights and civil liberties in the face of daunting security challenges; exercising responsible stewardship of the environment; and responding to crisis situations and suffering occurring in other parts of the world. These and other endeavors all will determine whether the Jewish State is up to the task.

The Jewish people have come a long way since the first World Zionist Congress. While we certainly are entitled to take great pride in the State of Israel, there is much more to be accomplished. Zionism in the 21st century means fulfilling the explicit and implicit ideals articulated in Israels Declaration of Independence and serving as an Or laGoyim, a light unto the nations. We must never allow Zionism to be dropped from our lexicon, or from our mission.

Martin J. Raffel of Long Branch is former senior vice president at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

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The strength of modern Zionism 120 years after first WZC - New Jersey Jewish News

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Posted By simmons on August 18, 2017

TEL AVIV (JTA) White nationalist leader Richard Spencer told Israelis during an evening TV interview that they should respect him because he is essentially a white Zionist.

Spencer made the comment Wednesday on Channel 2 in response to a question about how he should feel about the anti-Semitism on display over the weekend at the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

As an Israeli citizen, someone who understands your identify, who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me who has analogous feelings about whites, Spencer told anchor Dany Cushmaro. I mean, you could say that Im a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland that for us and ourselves just like you want a secure homeland in Israel.

Cushmaro did not follow up on Spencers comparison, which is not uncommon in far-right circles, though it is widely rejected by Israelis and Israel supporters.

Earlier in the interview, Cushmaro pressed Spencer to explain why the far-right protestors chants of Jews will not replace us and other anti-Jewish slogans were not anti-Semitism. Spencer, a leader of the racist and anti-Semitic alt-right movement, justified the rhetoric, citing Americans right to free speech and Jews outsize role in left-wing American politics.

The fact is, Jews, lets be honest, Jews have been vastly overrepresented in the historical left. Jews are vastly overrepresented in the left right now. Theyre vastly overrepresented in what you could call the establishment, that is, Ivy League-educated people who really determine policy, and white people are being disposed from this country, he said. So some in the crowd were making a statement. This is a free country. People are allowed to speak their mind.

Asked how he would like to see President Donald Trump respond to Charlottesville, Spencer said he should investigate why the citys mayor, Michael Signer, who is Jewish, and Virginia Gov.Terry McAuliffe allowed chaos to reign. He claimed that he and the other protesters were peaceful.

Spencer also said both the alt-right and Trump are symptoms of a greater cause, and that is the demographic dispossession of white people in the United States and around the world.

Far-right protesters converged onCharlottesville in defense of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and brawled with counterprotesters. Some of the protesters carried Nazi and Confederate flags, gave Nazi salutes and expressed anti-Semitic and racists views.

After police broke up the the rally, a white supremacist, James Fields, rammed his car into a crowd of the counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring at least 19. Two police officers also died when their helicopter crashed while monitoring the rally.

Spencer said it was not yet clear whether Fields had committed murder, but that he would absolutely reject his actions if they were proved to be malicious after a fair trial.

Trump said at a news conference Tuesday that not all the participants in the rally were white supremacists. Confronted about whether he was putting white supremacists and neo-Nazis on the same moral plane as the liberal and leftist counterprotestors, he said,Im not putting anybody on a moral plane. Trump seemed to backtrack from his statement a day earlier condemning neo-Nazis and white supremacists for the violence.

Trumps statements were widely criticized, including by Jewish and Israeli leaders and Republicans, but Spencer quickly tweeted praise, calling them fair and down to earth.

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Richard Spencer compares his white supremacy to Zionism - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By richards on August 18, 2017

For a long time, liberalism and Zionism have gotten along fine in America just look at the Democratic Party and its love for Israel. But Charlottesville represents a crisis for liberal Zionists. When they condemn white nationalism in the U.S. and celebrate Jewish nationalism in Israel, the contradiction is obvious to all.

Just consider three prominent voices. Wolf Blitzer of CNN, the liberal Zionist group J Street, and blogger and Democratic Party thinker Josh Marshall.

Wolf Blitzer has condemned the racism and hatred of Charlottesville and his show has served that good cause.

But Blitzer once published a book in which he promoted one piece of Zionist propaganda after another and denounced Palestinian views of the conflict as spurious myths. It is a myth that Arab civilians were massacred at Deir Yassin, a myth that Palestinian refugees were the major victims of the 1948 war, and a myth that Jewish atrocities caused the Palestinians to flee. From Blitzers book on the refugees:

The startled Jewish community declared: We did not dispossess them; they themselves chose this course.

Wolf Blitzer book of Zionist propaganda written for AIPAC denying there was a massacre at Deir Yassin.

These are all grotesque falsehoods or distortions of the truth to deny war crimes, typical of AIPAC, the lobby group Blitzer was working for when he put the book out. (Deir Yassin was an Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem that Israeli militias cleared in April 48 for strategic and nationalist purposes, killing over 100 Palestinian civilians; the outrage caused terror throughout Jerusalem.)

To this day, Blitzer frequently airs Israels defenders, rarely puts on its critics; and he attacked Jimmy Carter when he dared to say Israel was practicing apartheid.

The liberal Zionist group J Street has taken a prominent role in condemning white nationalists.

Meanwhile, its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, brags about his fathers service in the Irgun establishing the state of Israel without noting that the Irgun was a terrorist Jewish militia, linked to the massacre of Palestinians in Deir Yassin and other ethnic cleansing operations.

Josh Marshall of TPM has been a tribune of warnings about the real-and-present dangers of Trumpism: a President driven by white racial grievance has detonated a bomb of white supremacist violence hatred that will keep bursting.

Marshall is married to an Israeli and proudly named his son in 2006 after an Israeli general:

His full name is Samuel Allon Marshall. The name means Oak in Hebrew. And it was also the name of Yigal Allon, after whom he is also named, who was one of the founders of and later the commander of the Palmach, the elite commando unit of the Haganah, the predecessor of the IDF.

Yigal Allon was the general who carried out David Ben-Gurions more-or-less explicit orders to expel Palestinians from the incipient state of Israel in 1948. Famously he emptied Lydda and other areas near the Israeli airport of Palestinians. IDF commander Yigal Allon asked Ben Gurion what shall we do with the Arabs? Ben-Gurion made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, Expel them. [John Pilger,and Ari Shavit too.]

Josh Marshall is wired inside the Democratic Party and tries to maintain order over Israel inside the party. He does so by avoiding the issue as much as he can lest it divide the base, by pointing out Israeli atrocities only when theyre glaring, and when push comes to shove, characterizing anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism.

Marshalls view is, We cant divide over Israel because there are anti-Semites at the gate. He wrote during the Keith Ellison fight:

[T]ruly the last thing the Democratic Party needs right now is a toxic internecine fight over Israel. And equally important, we are in an era whenreal anti-Semitismhas been rearing its head in the United States in a way it has not done in [many years].

I could go on to Jeffrey Goldberg, Brian Lehrer, Jonathan Chait, and Terry Gross (who disciplined Jimmy Carter for daring to say apartheid); to Time Warner (CNN) executive Gary Ginsberg who wrote speeches for Netanyahu, or Comcast (NBC) executive David Cohen who raised money for the Israeli army; to the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and People for the American Way.

I admire what these people are doing for our country during the rise of intolerance. But white nationalists have themselves pointed out that American Zionists in powerful positions have a reservation on liberalism when it comes to Israel. We only want what they want, a nation for ourselves, say those white nationalists. I am a white Zionist, Richard Spencer said on Israeli television yesterday. JVPs Naomi Dann writes in the Forward today: Richard Spencer Might Be the Worst Person in America. But Hes Right About Israel.

American Jews need to get clear on the nationalism question. Are they for an ethnic state that seeks to shelter one ethnicity, even if that means driving out the minority and discriminating against that minority on an ongoing basis and having government coalitions composed of parties representing one religious belief? Or are they against that kind of arrangement? If theyre against it here, they should be against it there, in what Cory Bookers largest donor calls the Jewish Homeland the country of Greater Israel, which is half Jewish and half Palestinian, with most of those Palestinians lacking all rights.

Charlottesville makes this conversation urgent because the hypocrisy of the Democratic leadership hurts resistance to intolerance. You cant be righteously anti-nationalist in the U.S. and evangelists for Jewish nationalism over there.

This is not just good liberal philosophy. Its the best policy to fight anti-Semitism. Israels status as a human-rights abuser is now its global reputation; and Jews and Jewish organizations who blindly defend it are hurting the reputation of Jews.Tony Klug explained this at J Street a few months ago. The Palestinian conflict is now defining the Jewish reputation around the world and making Jewish life in other countries precarious.

if Israel does not end the occupation sharply, and if organized Jewish opinion in other countries appears openly to back it, there will indeed almost certainly be a further surge in anti-Jewish sentiment, potentially unleashing more sinister impulses.

To stem those sinister forces, Klug said American Jews must pressure Israel to end the occupation or give Palestinians equal rights. Pretty much what happened in the South, a long time ago.

Liberalism and Zionism (as it has worked out anyway) are incompatible. That is why weve seen many liberal Zionists turn quietly into non-Zionists in recent years. We see this in the surging membership of Jewish Voice for Peace.Tom Friedman and Ayelet Waldman both seem to be on the road away from Zionism. Jeffrey Goldberg is in the halfway house. Deep in their hearts, they know that we are in a different age from the mid-20th century, and that Zionism is an untenable ideology in an era in which the country is seeking to solidify minority rights and other progressive achievements. They need to say so out loud.

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Charlottesville is moment of truth for empowered US Zionists (who name their children after Israeli generals) - Mondoweiss

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Posted By admin on August 18, 2017

Newsweekpublished this story under the headline of Again, Anti-Semitism on February 16, 1981. In light of the recent neo-Nazi, white power and alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Newsweekis republishing the story.

Charles Benjamin, a leader of the Jewish community in his quiet, suburban New Jersey town, came home to find bright red swastikas painted on his back door. The outdoor furniture had been dumped into the pool. The mailbox had been looted. "My knees buckled," Benjamin later told a television interviewer. "I sat down on the ground, not believing that this could happen in... my little patch in the United States. "Anti-Semitism is an ancient story that is suddenly making news across the United States. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith reported 377 anti-Semitic "episodes" in 1980, a nearly threefold increase in one year. Most of these sporadic incidents involved little more than scrawled graffiti or vandalism, but there were also 10cases of arson, four fire-bombings and several death threats. No one has been killed or seriously injured, and no evidence suggests a campaign of any scale; most of the incidents have been juvenile pranks. Yet many American Jews are worried. "Hitler started with a handful of people and paint brushes," says Jeffrey Maas of the ADL in New Jersey. And many government officials agree that the incidents cannot be shrugged off. "There is a tendency... to treat incidents of anti-Semitic or racial vandalism as isolated acts of mischief," warns New Jersey Attorney General John J. Degnan. "Unfortunately ... these acts may represent deep-seated racial and religious hatred."

To combat the flurry of anti-Semitic incidents, Degnan and other law-enforcement officials around the country have stepped up their investigations, often forming special police and prosecution units. Many Jewish leaders have begun holding seminars on bigotry and rallies against anti-Semitism, such as one that drew 3,000 people in California's San Fernando Valley a fortnight ago. Not satisfied with these steps, Jewish militants have redoubled their own controversial efforts at self-defensepatrolling Jewish neighborhoods and training Jews in the use of high-powered rifles and pistols.

Some Jewish organizations are reluctant to read too much into the new statistics of anti-Semitism, noting that vandalism and violent crime are on the rise generally. "It will take another year of monitoring to find out what the numbers actually mean," says a spokesman for the American Jewish Committee in New York. Other Jews see the low-level violence and harassment as part of a larger pattern. With mounting alarm, they note the renewed organizing efforts of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party, the tone of some of the criticism of Israel in the United Nations and above all the bloody attacks on Jews in several European cities last year. "There is a feeling," says Murray Wood, an executive of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, "that all roads somehow lead to Auschwitz."

Anti-Semitism in the United States today hardly compares in virulence with the anti-Jewish attitudes and actions in the 1920s and 1930s. Then, Henry Ford's Dearborn Independent (circulation: 700,000) ran anti-Semitic diatribes with headlines such as JEWISH GAMBLERS CORRUPT AMERICAN BASEBALL. More damaging, unstated quotas and restrictions kept Jews out of schools, jobs, neighborhoods and hotels. Today, most such barriers have fallen, and many public-opinion polls show a continuing decline in prejudice against Jews. In one survey last year, for example, only 8 percent of those questioned thought Jews had "too much political influence."

But other polls indicate a persistent suspicion and distaste for Jews as "pushy, clannish, unethical." In Anti-Semitism in America, published two years ago, authors Charles Y. Glock and Harold E. Quinley reported that a third of Americans share such negative attitudesabout the same number, according to a more recent poll, that suspect Jews of being more loyal to Israel than to the United States.

Alan Sandler and his bride, Zipporah, had just returned from their honeymoon in New York City. The mailbox of their Cranston, R.I. home was brimming with congratulatory cards. One was decorated with two lovebirds on the front. But inside was a swastika and the words. "We are back. " Many experts blame the nation's economic problems for the new signs of anti-Semitism. "Times of distress, social unrest and economic depression [are] often preliminary to outbreaks of anti-Semitism," explains the Rev. Edward H. Flannery, author of another book on the subject, Anguish of the Jews. In hard times people find it comforting to have a scape-goat, Flannery says, "And they always look in the direction of the Jews." In the spotlight of full media coverage, one episode often leads to others. Says New York City police official Patrick J. Murphy: "The incidents feed off each other. The kids read about themselves...and any dope can see himself immortalized." In three days last month, officials at the University of Florida in Gainesville found thirteen examples of anti-Semitic graffiti on campus. After the wife of university President Robert Marston spoke out forcefully against such bigotry, her telephone rang. "This is the Florida-wide organization of Hitler," said the caller. "I am going to kill you." In fact few of the reported incidents seem directly connected with extremist groups. "If it were more organized," says Long Island ADL director Melvin Cooperman, "we could zero in and nail them." But both the Nazi Party and the Klan have run avowedly anti-Semitic candidates for public officewith disturbing success. Harold Covington, 27, chairman of the National Socialist Party of America in North Carolina, won more than 43 percent of the vote in the state's Republican primary for attorney general last year. The rise of racist groups also seems to create a climate favorable to individual extremists and a certain public tolerance for isolated incidents.

The dramatic growth of Christian fundamentalismand Moral Majority politicsmay also spur anti-Semitism. Just last week, the Rev. Dan C. Fore, Moral Majority leader in New York City, told a reporter: "Jews have a God-given ability to make money, almost a supernatural ability.... They control this city." Even without such stereotyping, the fundamentalist emphasis on "Christian politics" and efforts to convert Jews are threatening, says William Gralnick of the American Jewish Committee in Atlanta. "What it says is that the Jewish faith is not a valid path to salvation; it tends to separate us from grace." Last year in Macon, Georgia, says Gralnick, Protestant ministers refused to speak out when the head of the Southern Baptist Convention said, "God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew." It was shortly after 1 a. m. when two men drove up to the synagogue in Temple City, California.They pried open a window, poured gasoline over a wooden pew and set the synagogue ablaze. Seven stained-glass windows were shattered and other damage to Temple Beth David was estimated at $180, 000. The incident was followed" by nearly 30 more anti-Semitic outbursts in the Los Angeles area over the last eight weeks.

The randomness of anti-Semitic incidents, and the absence of links to organized groups in most cases, makes prosecution difficult. In the 377 cases reported by the ADL last year, only 20 arrests were made. Even when there are arrests, the charge is normally a misdemeanor State assemblymen in California and New Jersey have proposed legislation that would stiffen penalties for religiously motivated vandalism. "When a cross is burned or a swastika is smeared, the terror it generates is as intense as from a bomb threat," says New Jersey Assemblyman Byron Baer. But some judges prefer to sentence juvenile perpetrators to study Jewish history and the Nazi Holocaust. Said one such youth: "I am beginning to realize through these books the great deal of suffering I must have caused."

Many Jewish organizations have escalated their own programs of public education. Last week the ADLworking with the Urban League and the U.S. Justice Departmentsponsored a conference in Providence, Rhode Island, on "extremist groups" and another in Boston on "religious and racial harassment." About 1,500 people attended an anti-Nazi rally last month at the Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Los Angeles, itself a target of three anti-Semitic attacks earlier this year. But education didn't seem to do much good at Great Neck North Senior High School in New York. Though the school has offered courses on the Holocaust for five years, vandals spray-painted the walls with "KKK" and "Hi'Hitler" last October, And police in many areas reported a flurry of similar anti-Semitic incidents after the "Holocaust" series on television.

Such incidents have only encouraged militant groups like the Jewish Defense League to expand their often provocative paramilitary operations. The JDL plans to offer 10-week courses in "warfare tactics" at secret sites in southern California, Michigan and upstate New York. Most mainstream Jewish organizations see these steps as an inflammatory overreaction. But equally dangerous, they agree, would be simply to ignore the current upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents. "There's no reason to panic; the country is not being overrun byanti-Semites," says Art Teitelbaum of the Anti-Defamation League in Miami. "But it is something to be vigilant about."

White nationalists carry torches on the grounds of the University of Virginia, on the eve of a planned Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12. Neo-Nazis were among those present. Alejandro Alvarez/News2Share via REUTERS

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Posted By simmons on August 18, 2017

This is the first installment in a new biweekly series, in which the First Things junior fellows share mini-essays on their current reading endeavors.

Ramona Tausz Junior Fellow

George Herbert, metaphysical poet of Easter Wings fame, penned only one prose work during his life: a short volume titled The Country Parson, His Character, and Rule of Holy Life. Although I first discovered it tucked into the back of my Everymans edition of Herberts The Temple some months ago, I only recently decided to give it a readand have found it a delightful little book.

Rector at the village parish of Bemerton, England, for the last three years of his life, Herberts The Country Parsonlater known as A Priest in his Templeis his compilation of advice for rural Anglican clergymen. His purpose is to set down the form and character of a true pastor, that I may have a mark to aim at, which also I will set as high as I can, since he shoots higher that threatens the moon, than he that aims at a tree. In the process, Herbert has also set down something of his own character, giving us a glimpse of the artist behind The Pulley and The Altar.

The man who considered prayer the Church's banquet and an engine against th'Almighty provides in these pages an example of how to pray unceasingly; intercession, praise, and thanksgiving are always on the parson's lips. He recommends turning to pray even while during the sermon, making many apostrophes to God, as Oh Lord, bless my people and teach them this point. And at Communion times, when the parson is in a tumultuous frame of mind while preparing not only to receive God, but to break and administer him, Herbert advises that the parson throw himself down at the throne of grace, saying,

Herberts pious advice makes for a refreshing read, but the chief charms of this volume are the insights it affords into Herberts art; by examining the priest at work in the temple, we better know The Temple itself. When I first read Herbert years ago, I found his poems to preach too much for my liking; Country Parson, however, gives me new appreciation for the blunt morals of his verses. They are, after all, aimed at the farmers and laborers of Bemerton, whom Herbert describes affectionately as thick and heavy and difficult to raise to the heights of zeal and fervency. Sermons, moreover, cannot help but slip into whatever Herbert writes, for the Country Parson preacheth constantly; the pulpit is his joy and his throne.

Country Parson offers us a more complete picture of Herbert the mana pastor who sees his poetic talents as inseparable from his priestly vocation. The little volume ends with a short devotion, called The Author's Prayer Before Sermon, that seems to drive this message home. In it, while preparing to preach, Herbert cries, Awake, therefore, my lute, and my viol! Awake all my powers to glorify thee! Its a line nearly identical to one Herbert writes in The Temple, while attempting to write a verse in praise of the Resurrection: Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part/with all thy art! For Herbert, it would seem, sermons and poetry are not all that different: both are a kind of song, the music-making of Herberts soul for the end of Christs glory.

Cole Aronson Summer Intern

This week Im reading the Talmud.

Well, let me rephrase. One doesnt read the Talmud, but rather studies it, or learns Talmud, or shteigs simpliciter. Reading for pleasure is soforgive megoyish. Furthermore, This week Im studying Talmud is true in about the way This week Francisco Franco is dead is true. So a lot of Talmud is the point you see, which is appropriate given its two-million word count, mostly in Babylonian Aramaic, a language that makes Hebrew seem downright periphrastic. This week I happen to be trying to figure out why, when a man consecrates a woman (a prerequisite to full marriage), he may, if he chooses to consecrate her monetarily (two other methods, by document and by intercourse, are available), use either hard currency or an article of equivalent value. Truly fascinating, I assure you.

But imparting anything novel about itzogen a chidush, as they said in the old countryexceeds my poor knowledge. And maybe youre already thinking to yourself, How come the Jews are always fighting about a word here, a word there? Its like listening to the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, and Im not just saying that because he changed his name from Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Quite right. The Jews can be downright talmudic in their quarrels, which often last into the night. Id like to try and show, through a bit of schematic show-and-tell, why talmudic should be predicated of discussions not just weirdly picayune, but almost neurotically subtle and attentive.

The Talmud introduces some notion A, and there are three ways for it to work: UV, WX, and YZ. Ah, the Talmud asks itself, why did we have to say WX? W seems to add nothing. No, the Talmud replies, for you might have thought, had we not said W but only said X, that the second way this notion worked was identical to the third way some notion B over there worked. But its not soin fact, working X-wise is simply the genus, while W is a differentia.

On one level this is quite simple. The same word or term in two places calls for like analysis unless some sufficient reason can be found to suggest a material distinction. To foreclose the possibility of such an error, the Talmud added an extra term, calling our attention to a difference between two concepts.

There is a more profound point, for its very likely that X is found all over the Talmud. Which raises the questionwhy is it specifically (dafka) notion B that the Talmud wants us not to understand as parallel to notion A? Which aspect of notion B is so foreign to (which aspect of?) notion A that the two should be so far from one another? And why wasnt that obviouswhy, in other words, was great conceptual distance masked by superficial closeness?

Many centuries before Hegel, the rabbis of the Talmud mastered the determinate negation, the rejection of an idea that reveals an insight about both that idea and its relatives. The inquiry into what you might have thought is part of an analytic repertoire enabling millennia of Jews to find infinite riches in innumerable little rooms.

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The Parson and the Talmud - First Things

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Posted By richards on August 18, 2017

Photo: Courtesy Of Mel Waldorf

A window of Temple Israel of Alameda was boarded up after a vandal threw rocks at it Wednesday night.

A window of Temple Israel of Alameda was boarded up after a vandal threw rocks at it Wednesday night.

Alameda synagogue vandalized by rock-thrower

The windows of a childrens classroom at a Jewish temple in Alameda were broken when someone threw rocks at the synagogue, police said Friday.

Staffers at Temple Israel discovered the vandalism Thursday morning. The rocks apparently were thrown the night before, including at a window where young children had painted stars of David.

Sgt. Erik Klaus, who oversees the Alameda Police Department property crimes division, said officers are not investigating the incident as a hate crime

There was no graffiti, no notes, no previous threats, Klaus said.

But some in the Alameda Jewish community saw it as an act directed at the synagogue.

Mel Waldorf, a Temple Israel member, took his 14-year-old daughter with him to survey the damage after receiving an email sent to the congregation. Waldorf said it is important for his daughter to understand what happened in the aftermath of a series of anti-Semitic threats she faced at Alameda High School.

When they got to the synagogue, on Bay Farm Island, Waldorf said he saw an officer carrying a bag with a rock larger than a softball. It looked like the vandal had tried to smash the front door of the temple in addition to throwing the rocks, he said.

There was no question this was a Jewish institution, Waldorf said. Why did whoever did this smash the windows of the synagogue, not the church or preschool or community center 10 feet away? I can understand (the police) dont have enough information to definitively call it a hate crime, but its hard to imagine this wasnt targeted.

Klaus said no arrests have been made and that police have not identified a motive.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov

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Alameda synagogue vandalized by rock-thrower - SFGate

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Posted By simmons on August 18, 2017

Police blocking off the street after a car rammed into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12, 2017. (Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

(JTA) Local officials said police provided protection to a synagogue during a far-right rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia refuting a claim by a Jewish community leader that they had refused to do so.

On Friday, Charlottesville City Manager Maurice Jones said it is simply not the case thatCongregation Beth Israel was left unguarded during Saturdays event, when neo-Nazis and white supremacists gathered in the city. The synagogues senior rabbi also seemed to confirm the police statement.

Police stationed an officer on the corner of the block where the synagogue is located, plus another 32 officers about one block away in the other direction, Jones said in a statement to JTA. In addition, we had snipers on a rooftop in close proximity whose primary responsibility was to monitor a two-block radius which included Beth Israel.

We also had a group of Virginia State Police officers who were walking a four-block radius between two of our parks on a route that passed the synagogue on several occasions throughout the days events.

The synagogues president, Alan Zimmerman, had written in a blog post earlier this week that [t]hepolice department refused to provide us with an officer during morning services.

However,Congregation Beth Israels senior rabbi seemed to confirm the police account of the incident in a statement Thursday.

Rabbi Tom Gutherz said he and Zimmerman had met with the police on Wednesday andofficials reviewed with us the security provisions they made for the safety of our congregation during the protests. Based on our discussion, we are now confident that the steps they took were carefully considered to protect us and were effective. We note that we had also met with and spoken to the department prior to the rallies as part of our preparation.

In his blog post, Zimmerman said the synagogue had hired security after police allegedly did not provide protection.

On Saturday morning, I stood outside our synagogue with the armed security guard we hired after the police department refused to provide us with an officer during morning services. (Even the police departments limited promise of an observer near our building was not kept and note, we did not ask for protection of our property, only our people as they worshipped), he wrote in the post on ReformJudaism.org, which was titled In Charlottesville, the Local Jewish Community Presses On.

The synagogue did hire security guards for the first time in its history ahead of the far-right event at Emancipation Park, a short block from the synagogue. Rally participants chanted racist and anti-Semitic slogans, and a counterprotester was killed when a car driven by a suspected white supremacist plowed into pedestrians.

Zimmerman, like other eyewitnesses, described intimidation by rally participants or supporters.

Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, Theres the synagogue! followed by chants of Seig Heil and other anti-Semitic language, he wrote. Some carried flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols.

In a separate interview,Rabbi Rachel Schmelkin, an educator at the synagogue, noted that members of antifa, the anti-fascist street movement, also defended clergy and houses of worship during the rally.

There was a group of antifa defending First United Methodist Church right outside in their parking lot, and at one point the white supremacists came by and antifa chased them off with sticks, she told Slate.

Other members of the clergy gave similar accounts to Slate, praising left-wing counterprotesters for protecting them from the far-rightists.

Based on what was happening all around, the looks on [the faces of the far-right marchers], the sheer number of them, and the weapons they were wielding, my hypothesis or theory is that had the antifa not stepped in, those of us standing on the steps [of Emancipation Park] would definitely have been injured, very likely gravely so,Brandy Daniels, a postdoctoral fellow in religion and public policy at the University of Virginia, told Slate.

President Donald Trump blamed the violence at the rally on many sides.

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Charlottesville says it provided protection to synagogue, refuting initial account - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on August 18, 2017

Volunteers, students and archaeologists excavate two recently uncovered mikves once belonging to the Great Synagogue of Vilna.. (photo credit:DR. JOHNATHAN SELIGMAN)

In 2015, a radar survey discovered ruins near a school in Vilnius, Lithuania. The ruins were of the Great Synagogue, and since their discovery they have provided substantial new insights into the life the Jewish community living there before the Holocaust.

In the past three years, archaeologists have uncovered ruins of mikves and bathhouses that have been underground for over 70 years. Doctor John Seligman, the head of the dig sight, says these findings give us critical information about the history of the Jewish people in Lithuania.

The archeologists of the Israel Antiquities Authority have discovered many clues as to how the Jewish community lived and thrived in Vilnius before the Holocaust. Such conclusions are drawn from the architecture and the structure of the mikve by exposing aspects such as Halachtic traditions, and methods of water transportation and sewage systems. The team also searched for answers in a nearby dig site in Punary, the site of a great Nazi massacre.

After the devastation and expulsion of the Jewish community in Vilnius, the Nazis burned the building to the ground, and during the Soviet rule, a school was built were the synagogue once stood. In 2015, a survey team was sent by the Israeli Antiquities Authority in hopes of finding ruins underground.

The researchers rejoiced when their radar picked up remains of the synagogue, and now hope to find more information about the community that once was and we can create a memorial site in their honor. The Antiquities Authority has to enlisted a variety researchers, students and volunteers from Israel, Lithuania, and the United States - Jews from all over the world - and aspire to create an environment of cooperation.

The Great Synagogue, built in the 17th century, was the largest and most extravagant synagogue in Lithuania. It was the heart of the Jewish community of the whole country. Jews would frequent the center on a daily basis. The building was of Renaissance-Baroque architecture and included 12 Beit Midrash (one of which belonged to Rav Eliyahu, the Gaon from Vilnius), mikves, a communal gathering house, kosher meat stands, and the famous Shtrashon library. Of these facilities, two mikves have been uncovered during the excavations.

Doctor Seligman says, until this point, we have had fragments of information about the life of the Jewish community in Vilnius. The goal of this mission is to turn the legacy of the Jewish community of Vilnius as an inseparable part of the entire Jewish Lithuanian legacy and to preserve the site for future visitors.

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Discovery in Lithuania: archeologists find ruins of Great Synagogue ... - The Jerusalem Post

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