Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

(JTA) Yakira Galler, a first-year student at Barnard College, has had trouble sleeping.

Galler has an apartment that looks out onto Broadway, which divides Columbia Universitys campus from Barnard, its womens college. Each night this week, she has heard crowds of protesters banging pots and pans, chanting Intifada, revolution and calling for the Ivy League university to divest from Israel.

The street protests accompanied a much larger on-campus demonstration that devolved into unrest on Thursday, when the university asked police to dismantle an encampment pro-Palestinian students had set up; more than 100 people were arrested. The scenes from Thursday drew global attention, a statement from the mayor and passionate debate over the limits of campus civil disobedience.

For Galler, though, seeing hundreds of students including some she knows protesting Israel brought her back to a different time of trauma, not long ago: The days after Hamas attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and launching the war in Gaza.

Wednesday at Hillel felt like October, she said. I remember speaking to one of the Hillel professionals, just telling her that all I feel is anger and I feel like Im being radicalized and I dont want to be.

She added, I just want to be able to think clearly and in a nuanced way and rationally but I am so overcome with these emotions.

In the months since Oct. 7, Columbia has at times felt like a battleground as pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students have faced off against each other and, often, the university administration. Thursdays protest represented an escalation of those tensions, with police entering campus and loading students into NYPD vans.

Reflecting on Thursdays unrest, Jewish students, most of them in and around the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, where Hillel is housed, told JTA that they felt uncomfortable and unheard on campus. Some said theyre glad the school year is almost over.

Daniel Barth, who graduated last semester and will be participating in commencement ceremonies next month, said he appreciated his time at Columbia and the vibrant political debates on campus. But Barth, who wears a kippah and a Star of David necklace, says that practice has been tested recently, including when someone spit near him.

Im ready to leave this campus, he said. I thought it would be a lot more bittersweet, but I think its just a sense of relief. Im not necessarily attached to being here anymore.

Ezra Dayanim, also a senior, is enrolled in Columbias joint undergraduate program with the Jewish Theological Seminary. He happened to be in a class on political protest when he learned about the arrests on Thursday and said they drove home for him that constructive debate feels impossible at his school.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been far larger and louder than pro-Israel ones, he said. And he feels discussion has been difficult because pro-Palestinian groups have a policy of not engaging with Zionist groups. (The school suspended its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist group, last semester a core grievance among pro-Palestinian protesters.)

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I know that we stand in different places, and its unfortunate, but neither one of us is going to apologize for what we believe in, Dayanim said. So we have to find a way to coexist.

Dayanim also feels isolated by the response of the schools student leadership. On Thursday evening, student government officers sent an email to the students condemning the arrests and the universitys calling police to campus. Dayanim responded to the committee and copied multiple deans and the provost, expressing his disappointment in the message.

Were members of the student body as well and we want to be represented and seen and heard and were not, he said.

Henry Sears, the co-president of Columbias chapter of J Street U, the student arm of the liberal Israel lobby, was sitting in the middle of the Columbia campus when the arrests began. He heard chants of, NYPD, KKK the IOF, theyre all the same, the latter a reference to the Israeli military that refers to Israel as an occupying force.

Other chants he heard, including From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab, and videos of flares that he saw later that night, made him feel very uncomfortable and unsafe in my neighborhood, he said. He emphasized that he supports Palestinian statehood alongside Israel.

I am really involved in this area on campus, he said. There are definitely a good amount of people who they know who I am and they know my political views. Even though Im part of J Street, so my political views include a separate state of Israel alongside a separate state of Palestine, but thats not what they want.

Some students expressed misgivings about the police crackdown on the protests, even as they said the messages made them uncomfortable.

I recognize the consequences that come with the the NYPD entering campus, especially with students of color, Galler said, speaking by phone because she was taking a break from being on campus.

I dont think that should be the first decision, she said. That being said, from what I saw, the NYPD did not act with violence, and I think they dealt with the situation as it needs to be dealt with. [When it] got to a point where you had people outside breaking NYC laws, then I can understand why the university felt that they needed to bring in force.

Second-year law student Hannah Wander also drew a distinction between student and non-student protesters. The students have more boundaries, she said, adding that they wouldnt directly attack people. As she spoke, a testament to public Jewish life at the school was unfolding next to her: Male Jewish students were wrapping tefillin with the Chabad rabbi, Yuda Drizin.

The chants are bad, but you dont tend to get people saying, We want more October 7th or explicitly pro-Hamas, she said.

Daniella Coen, an Israeli citizen and a senior in the first class of Columbias dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University, said the chants were no small matter. She told JTA she could hear chants of intifada on Thursday from where she was studying inside Butler library.

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I have family members who survived the Holocaust and people who died in the intifada, in the Sbarro pizza shop, she said, referring to a large terror attack in Jerusalem in 2001 near the beginning of the second intifada, a years-long campaign of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel. The entire family, multiple children, everybody.

Asked whether the events of the past week have changed her view on Columbia, Coen said, Ive had a good education on the campus. She added that she 100% believes in the right to protest. But she worries that, following Thursday, she no longer identifies with the image Columbia projects to the world.

In terms of what the school purports to stand for, she said, Im having difficulty with that.

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'I'm ready to leave this campus': Jewish students at Columbia feel discomfort and isolation following Thursday's unrest - JTA News - Jewish...

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

Maurice El Medioni, an Algerian-born pianist who fused Jewish and Arab musical traditions into a singular style he called Pianoriental, died on March 25 in Herzliya, on Israels central coast. He was 95.

His death, at a nursing home, was confirmed by his manager, Yvonne Kahan.

Mr. Medioni was one of the last representatives of a once vibrant Jewish-Arab musical culture that flourished in North Africa before and after World War II and proudly drew from both heritages.

In Oran, the Algerian port where he was born, he was sought after by Arabs and Jews alike to play at weddings and at banquets in the years between the war and 1961, when the threat of violence and Algerias new independence from France drove Mr. Medioni and thousands of other Jews to flee.

With his bounding octaves, his quasi-microtonal shifts in the style of traditional Arab music, his cheeky rumba rhythms learned from American G.I.s after the 1942 Allied invasion, and his roots in the Jewish-Arab musical heritage called andalous, Mr. Medioni had honed a distinctive piano style by his early 20s.

The singers he accompanied often alternated phrases in French and Arabic in a style known as Franarabe. His uncle Messaoud El Medioni was a famous musician known as Saoud LOranais, a leading practitioner of andalous, who was deported by the Germans to the Sobibor death camp in 1943 and killed there.

The Medioni style remained buried and nearly forgotten for four decades as Mr. Medioni pursued his trade as a mens tailor. He kept it alive in private, performing at weddings and bar mitzvahs after he was forced to flee to France. Then, in 1996, when he was 68, he released a breakthrough album, Caf Oran. Its success led to a belated second life as a star of so-called world music concert tours in Europe, appearances in documentary films and a major role as mentor to a new generation of Israeli musicians anxious to recover the musical heritage of their Sephardic heritage.

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

WASHINGTON (JTA) Shortly after Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the leadership of the South African Jewish community requested a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa to discuss rising antisemitism.

The meeting took place in December, and the course it took surprised the South African Jewish Board of Deputies: Instead of discussing the safety concerns of his Jewish constituents, the boards leader said, Ramaphosa spent most of the meeting attacking Israel, which he accused of committing genocide. He later cited the meeting when South Africa charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice.

It was a complete betrayal of the community, Wendy Kahn, the Board of Deputies director, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview this week.

Ramaphosa had scheduled the meeting for Dec. 13, after the launch of the countrys summer holidays, so a number of the seven Jewish officials who attended had to cut into summer travel plans to make the meeting in the capital city of Pretoria.

The inconvenience seemed worth it, Kahn said. Antisemitism had spiked in South Africa and the parliaments overwhelming vote to cut diplomatic ties to Israel and shutter its embassy was creating problems for the South Africans with family in Israel.

Yet instead of focusing on those issues, according to Ramaphosas office, the South African president used the meeting to accuse Israel of genocide. His statement following the meeting does mention his governments denunciation of anti-Semitic behavior towards Jewish people in South Africa, including the boycott of Jewish owned businesses, and Islamophobia.

But most of the statement concerns South Africas criticism of Israels military campaign in Gaza. It says Ramaphosa explained that his government condemns the genocide that is being inflicted against the people of Palestine, including women and children, through collective punishment and ongoing bombardment of Gaza.

Kahn said the Jewish leaders were taken aback by the turn the meeting took.

We told him about antisemitism, we told him about the boycotts, she said. But in the presidents response, Kahn recalled, He suddenly comes up with all this information about genocide, the genocide that Israel is committing, because, you know, he had to tell us that there was this genocide.

Why Ramaphosa felt the need to bring up the genocide accusation wasnt clear to Kahns organization until weeks later, when South Africa submitted its complaint to the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide.

In the documents 13th section where South Africa was asked to show that Israel has been made fully aware of the grave concerns expressed by the international community and by South Africa in particular, it listed the meeting with the Jewish Board of Deputies as evidence.

The community interpreted that to mean that Ramaphosa effectively considered them agents of Israel, Kahn said.

A meeting that was called to discuss antisemitism became actually a meeting where antisemitism was committed, she said this week. We were absolutely shattered to see that the South African Jewish Board of Deputies was included, was cited in the case at the ICJ.

Ramaphosas office did not return a request for comment or an answer to the question whether he views South Africas Jews as Israeli agents. Some South African politicians have explicitly argued that case, such as a Cape Town lawmaker who unsuccessfully called for a Jewish high school to be penalized last year because one in five graduates joins the Israeli army.

The SAJBD made it clear that we are not the representatives of the state of Israel nor go-betweens of the two countries, the Board of Deputies said when it realized the meeting was being instrumentalized as part of the genocide charge. We are South African citizens like any other, with valid concerns about our human rights as citizens of this country.

The encounter was of a piece with the hostility that the community has endured from sectors of the South African political establishment, Kahn said. She noted how Justice Minister Ronald Lamola, appearing at The Hague in January during the genocide hearings, was asked about antisemitism in his country.

In South Africa, we have got a number of Jewish people doing business, living with us, and they also attend their churches in peace, Lamola said.

The Board of Deputies had given the ministry a report on antisemitism, Kahn said.

Youre the one who should be protecting South African Jews against hate, she said of Lamola. And youre saying theres no theres no antisemitism. You havent even bothered to find out what the actual actual information is. There have been at least eight cases involving antisemitic hate allegations brought to South African courts since Oct. 7, she said.

South Africa has long been critical of Israel, and in January, the Jewish captain of its under-19 cricket team was removed from his post due to anti-Israel protests against him. A 2019 report by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that of the countrys approximately 52,000 Jews, more than 40% say that they have considered leaving South Africa permanently in the past year.

A woman prays over a missing poster for a hostage abducted by Hamas terrorists, on the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Johannesburg, Oct. 27, 2023. (South African Jewish Board of Deputies/YouTube)

Kahn, who was in Washington this week on a trip organized by the World Jewish Congress, emphasized that antisemitism was not pervasive in the country. She said the community has friendly ties to parties in opposition to Ramaphosas African National Congress, as well as with Christian churches with memberships numbering in the tens of millions. It also has a good relationship with law enforcement.

She has heard that the number of Jews seeking to leave the country has increased but said that has more to do with political and economic instability. The reports of increased antisemitism may be a factor, but not the only one, in a desire to leave, she added.

She also said Jews are not hiding visible symbols of their identity.

Weve got a jeweler in our community, hes got a jewelry shop in one of the big shopping malls near the Jewish community in Johannesburg, she said. And he tells the story that he cannot keep up with the demand for Magen Davids. They are really flying out of the shop.

The most poignant representation of grassroots sympathy for Israel, she said, came on Oct. 27. The community, without first seeking police permission, taped posters of hostages taken by Hamas along the ramparts of the Nelson Mandela Bridge. They also placed 221 red balloons along the bridge, one for each of the people known at the time to be held captive.

Kahn said the community intended to keep the posters in place for an hour, wanting to avoid confrontations with hostile actors, or the sight of police removing the posters.

Instead, she said, the community kept the posters in place the entire day, noticing the curiosity and empathy they sparked in passersby, and there were no confrontations. She shared video with JTA of passersby crouching to read the stories of the hostages, with some clasping their hands together in silent prayer.

People prayed and people cried and people were just absolutely they were riveted, she said, getting emotional at the recollection. In the end, we left them up for the entire day. Not one of those posters was torn down.

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South Africa's president rehearsed genocide charge against Israel in meeting with local Jewish leaders - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

The Passover Seder is always a night of questions. But this year, for many of us, the backdrop of Israels war with Hamas will make our annual intergenerational gathering around the Seder table more charged than ever.

There are those Jews, understandably, whose focus remains on the atrocities of Oct. 7, on ghastly thoughts of hostages subjected to torture and serial rape, and the steps a vigilant Israel must take in response to a variety of Iranian-driven doomsday scenarios.

Other Jews, understandably, see the gruesome images emanating from Gaza and openly wonder: At what cost of human life is war justified? Aware as they may be of the attacks of Oct. 7, not to mention Hamas cruel use of innocents as human shields, Israels response has prompted empathy for Palestinian suffering. Tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, and far more are injured, displaced, and suffering from disease and hunger.

Like the perforated grooves stamped onto a piece of matzo, Israels war in Gaza serves to disclose the fault lines of our people. Can we advocate on behalf of Israel and express compassion for Palestinians? Is it possible to mourn both the loss of Israeli and Palestinian life? Are we a people of empathy or vigilance? Compassion or vengeance? The questions run deep into the foundation of who we are as a Jewish people.

Far more than an account of ancient Israels journey from slavery to freedom, the Passover Haggadah provides us with the tools by which we can openly name and wrestle with the tensions at the core of our being. If anything, the rituals of the Seder embrace the complexities of the Jewish soulnearly every symbol of the Seder carries more than one interpretive possibility.

Is matzo a symbol of slavery or freedomthe bread of affliction or a reminder of the haste by which we left Egypt during our liberation? The answer is both.

Does the salt water on our tables signify our tears of servitude, or the luxuriant act of dipping our greenssomething only a free person may do? The answer is both.

Does the haroset represent the bricklaying mortar of the embittered Israelite slaves, or the means by which the sting of the bitter herb is softened? The answer is both.

Enslaved and free. Traumatized and overjoyed. Persecuted and privileged. It is not a contradictionbinaries are rejected. Both the Haggadah and the Jewish people contain multitudes.

To our present challenge of balancing empathy and vigilance, the Haggadah is particularly instructive. We begin the Seder by opening the door to welcome all those in need. And yet, when we welcome Elijah toward the Seders conclusion, we do so with a spite-filled mlange of biblical verses (shfoch chamatha), a petition that God pour out the divine wrath upon the nationsa spirit of inclusion going hand-in-hand with a fear and even hatred of the other.

On the one hand, in recalling that we were once strangers in a strange land, the Seder is a prompt that we must now know the heart of the stranger. On the other hand, the take-home message of one of the Haggadahs central declarations, vehi sheamda, is to remind us of the perennial threat of antisemitism. Pharoah was the first but by no means the last in a long line of oppressors who have sought to destroy us. Empathetic, yes, but Jews must be ever on guard; there is always another Pharaoh right around the corner.

Growing up, I was always deeply impressed at the point in the Seder when, just before we recited each of the Ten Plagues, we dipped our finger into our cups and removed drops of wineone drop for each plague. The reason, I was told, is that even though the Egyptians enslaved us and even though the plagues were necessary for our liberation, we are still saddened at the thought of Egyptian suffering. The cup of our redemption made less full in our awareness of the casualties suffered by our once oppressors. The message is clear: An acknowledgement of someone elses suffering, even an enemys, does not preclude us from expressing our gratitude.

In our home, we always read a Talmudic passage describing the Egyptian pursuit of the fleeing Israelites and how they drowned in the sea. When the heavenly angels broke out in song at the downfall of the Israelite oppressors, God reprimanded them: My handiwork (the Egyptians) are drowning in the sea, and you want to sing a song of praise? All of humanity is Gods creation, Gods empathy, and by extension, our own must extend to friend and foe.

It is a sentiment embedded in another rabbinic discussion, in response to the question as to why on the festival of Sukkot, a full Hallel (Psalms of praise) is recited throughout the holiday, but on Passover only on the first day(s)? Because, the sages explainquoting the book of Proverbs: Bi-nefol oivekha al tismach, Do not gloat at the fall of your enemy. (Proverbs 24:17) Taking time to mourn others neither weakens the strength of our cause nor weakens our resolve. It is not either-or. Empathy and vigilance are not in opposition; if anything, they are interdependentthe double helix of our Jewish DNA.

Every year, but especially this year, the success of our Seders will be found in our ability to house these multiple threads woven into the tapestry of our people. No matter how one feels about the wardetermined, angry, ambivalent, depressedwe should all be able to agree that the loss of civilian lifeall civilian life, on any sideis something we can take a moment to mourn. One need not get defensive, or get bogged down in semantic debates as to what does or does not constitute genocide, in order to acknowledge the obvious fact that lives on both sides have been lost. The horrors of Oct. 7 remain a permanent scar on the Jewish soul, the return of the hostages remains at the forefront of our concernas does the well-being of Israel; family is family. But expressions of empathy for innocent Palestinians are not betrayals of the cause; they are just the oppositethey affirm the essence of our faith.

Most of all, the Seders symposium style provides a platform by which Jews of different inclinations can come together, challenging each other, all the while allowing for their own views to be challenged. If the condition of the Palestinians stands at the forefront of your concern, now is the time to push yourself and find a way to also give voice to Israels right to self-defense and self-determination. If it is the continued defense and well-being of Israel that informs your every breath, then model for all those present how to stay true to your principles and not ignore Palestinian suffering in the process. Important as it is to ask questions, more important is our ability to listen to the answers of otherseven and especially those with whom we differ. Isnt that the real message of the Seder table? Every participant is an equal stakeholder in the Jewish story, with a placeliterally and figurativelyat the table.

If we cannot share our hopes and fears with those we know and love, there is little chance that we will be able to do so as a global Jewish people. With so much at stake this year, our Seder conversations should serve to bring us closer together.

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

My grandmothers kitchen was on the Upper East Side, but it tasted of Iraq.

As Ama brushed butter onto sheets of phyllo dough, shed share stories of her girlhood in Baghdad. Wed swim in the Tigris with water buffalo, shed say with delight at my amazement, each layer of pastry unfurling more memories. To escape the summer heat, wed sleep on the flat rooftops in the cool night air. Shed yell to my grandfather in the living room in Arabic, give my dad instructions in French, and speak politely to my measured Methodist mother in English, but to me, she spoke loving words that needed no translation; shed call meayuni(my eyes) andqalbi(my heart). Ill never know my Amas verdant, cosmopolitan Baghdad, in the region my ancestors called home for 2,500 years. But in her kitchen, I could taste it.

The food of the Iraqi Jews tells our story. Mhasha is about community. The project of coring vegetables, stuffing them with herbed rice, and stewing them in tangy tamarind is made quick by many hands. Tebit is a distinctly Jewish dish. Traditionally made to feed dozens of family members on the Sabbath, the spiced chicken and rice are placed in the oven on Friday night and cooked overnight on low through Saturday. Whole eggs are placed on the top to bake for a Sabbath breakfast, and the rice is still warm by dinner. Kubba Patata, lamb-stuffed potato patties redolent with curry powder, recalls the centuries of successful trade between Baghdad and the Indian cities of Kolkata and Mumbai. Baklava is the sweet made for massive family weddings a celebration calls for shelling hundreds of pistachios.

To me, the spirit of the Iraqi Jews comes most alive in the simplest of dishes, like Bamia, okra stewed in sweet-and-sour tomato sauce. Where other cultures have mother sauces, we have lemon and sugar. Intense yet balanced, bamia gets its flavor from a combination of the two a combination that expresses the history of the Iraqi Jews, both its sweetness and its bitterness.

The story of the Iraqi Jews is a tale of two exiles: the first, when Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem around 587 B.C., and the second, beginning after World War II, when the Jews were expelled from Iraq. The Jews who traveled to Babylon as captives and exiles began the community that would thrive for centuries as Babylonian, Mesopotamian, or Mizrahi Jews. By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept ... How can we sing the Lords song in a foreign land? asks the writer of Psalm 137. For more than 2,500 years, the Iraqi Jews did just that in the city known since the eighth century as Baghdad.

Baghdads Jewish community prospered in business, trade, and government, most notably under the Ottoman Empire. The Sassoons, my grandfathers family, were among the most influential, establishing global trade routes between India, China, and Britain. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, everything changed. As my grandfather Abdallah Simon writes in his memoir,Vintage Years,The establishment of an independent state of Iraq following World War I effectively marked the beginning of the end for Iraqi Jews. The fact that they are virtually non-existent in Iraq today is a sad footnote after over two millennia of thriving. Fueled by rising Arab nationalism and Nazi propaganda, hundreds of Baghdadi Jews were massacred in June 1941 in a multiday pogrom called the Farhud; homes were pillaged and communities ravaged.

My grandfather became a lieutenant in the Iraqi army soon after and was able to travel to Rio de Janeiro by way of Tehran, Cairo, and Lisbon, where he took a boat to Philadelphia, securing one of the 150 U.S. visas available to Iraqis that year. In 1948, my grandmother attempted to flee over the Zagros Mountains in the north of Iraq by dressing as a nun; she was caught but eventually escaped later that year hiding under a sheet in the back of a family car on a drive into Iran. A small number of Jews (including Doris Zilkha, who developed the recipes that follow) lived there into the 1970s, when they were pushed out as Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979. Today, the Jewish population of Baghdad can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Those who made safe passage planted new roots in places like Israel, London, Montreal, and New York. My grandfather joined the wine business, founding Chateau & Estate, a fine wine importer later acquired by Seagram. My childhood memories include tastes of his French wines paired with my grandmothers Iraqi food served on green-and-white-painted Perrier-Jout plates. On the most special occasions, he would open bottles of Perrier-Jouts Belle poque or Chteau Lafite Rothschild. At Shabbat dinners, he would say the kiddush over glasses of Trimbach Pinot Gris.

How can we sing the Lords song in a foreign land? The question still resounds. Cooking is like singing. Its a way of remembering, safeguarding, and celebrating; its a form of praise. For many diasporic communities, its a way of connecting. Cooking, eating, and sharing Iraqi Jewish food, now without my grandparents, who have been gone for over a decade, has helped me imagine a place I never knew, but a place that is a part of me. Ill never know their Baghdad, but I can taste it.

Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

Vegetables stuffed with herbed rice are tucked into a Dutch oven and baked in a tangy tomato-tamarind sauce. This dish takes time to put together, but nothing is difficult to do, and several components lend themselves to advance prep.

Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

A whole chicken cooks in a bed of tomatoey, tender, spiced rice in this one-pot Iraqi Jewish dish. Tebit is often made for Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, because it can be prepped and cooked the night before. To serve, the pot is flipped over to release the rice, which caramelizes on the bottom and along the edges, creating a crunchy and dramatic crust.

Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

Kubba patata (fried potato patties) are a satisfying snack. A filling of curry-spiced lamb, pine nuts, and raisins makes these bites especially rich and comforting.

Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

Bamia means okra in Arabic, and in this side dish, the vegetable is stewed in a savory tomato sauce. The variety of okra indigenous to Iraq is petite compared to most grown commercially in the U.S., so to make this dish, look for tiny frozen okra pods at Middle Eastern markets; they hold their shape well and release very little liquid.

Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

This recipe differs from Greek and Mediterranean styles of baklava, where honey is used to saturate the pastry. Iraqi baklava is soaked and flavored instead with a homemade light sugar syrup thats subtly flavored with rosewater and lemon juice for a sweet, floral, and slightly tangy finish to the nutty pastry.

Oded Halahmy left Baghdad in 1951 and worked as a multimedia sculptor between New York and Jaffa, Israel. He remembers Iraq mostly through his art, but in 2022, he published a cookbook titledIraqi Cooking: Exile Is Home,which includes his own recipes for dishes like kibbeh and cheese-filled sambusak. Daisy Iny, a distant cousin of my grandmother, published the first Iraqi cookbook made for U.S. home cooks calledThe Best of Baghdad Cooking with Treats from Teheranin 1976. While few copies remain (you can sometimes find them on Amazon), the book has served as a touchstone for myself and other Iraqi Jewish cooks, and it is well worth snapping up if you find a copy.

Edited by Tamar Morad, Dennis Shasha, and Robert Shasha,Iraqs Last Jews: Stories of Daily Life, Upheaval, and Escape from Modern Babylonis a book of oral histories of the last generation of Jews who lived in and escaped from Iraq. The stories are poignant, personal, and brave but chronicle the everyday, too like how a mother would shop for a group of 30 at the market or how families preserved dates in summer. Mizrahi Jews are from all around the Middle East and North Africa. Follow Ciara Shalomes Instagram account@themizrahistoryfor oral histories of Mizrahi Jews from Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, and beyond.

The Iraqi Seed Collectiveis a global organization that seeks to preserve Iraqi heritage through the genetic legacy of crops by saving and sharing heirloom seeds of Iraqi produce varieties. The thing about seeds is that you can eat and share the fruit and save more seeds as you grow, says Ali Ruxin, a founding member. In the context of our history, theres something so hopeful about seeds. Follow@iraqiseedcollectiveon Instagram, and join the collective to learn more about growing plump fava beans, tender okra, and fragrant melons.

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

The organising committee of a Jewish pilgrimage to Tunisia's Djerba synagogue cancelled the annual celebration due to the war in Gaza, the head of the organising committee Perez Trabelsi told Reuters on Friday.

Trabelsi added that the annual pilgrimage will be reduced to limited rituals only inside the temple, and expects a very small number to arrive from France due to the tense situation in the Middle East.

"How do we celebrate when people die every day?," he said.

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Gaza war forces cancelation of Tunisia's annual Jewish pilgrimage - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

Chris and Calvin Marty, the owners behind Best Intentions, say they dont make a big deal that theyre Jewish. The brothers, who opened their Logan Square bar in 2015, grew up in Cambridge, Wisconsin, a village about 60 miles west of Milwaukee and with a population of about 1,600. Less than 1 percent of Wisconsins population is Jewish, per a 2020 study from Brandeis University.

We probably experience a little private guilt that maybe were not the best Jews we never went to temple, we never had bar mitzvahs, says Chris Marty.

The bars menu definitely contains some decidedly unkosher items like the Cuppa Shrimp with mild sauce, a gnarly cheeseburger, and red wine-braised short rib. The harissa chicken provides another nod to the Middle East. But tucked within the menu lies a surprise matzo ball soup and a great version at that, with a rich broth darkened by duck fat yet brightened by heavenly wafts of ginger and lemongrass.

Yes a place like this uses duck fat for its matzo ball soup.

In Chicago, its not especially hard to find a bowl of matzo ball soup, as a basic version appears on the menu of every self-respecting Jewish deli in town. But in recent years, the dish has begun to spring up in some unexpected places, too, including while perched on a bar stool on a rainy Friday in Logan Square and double-fisting a dirty martini. Best Intentions manages to channel the best of Wisconsin dives and serve fun, well-executed bar food. It was immediately clear that whoever created Best Intentions had spent some time in Wisconsins many unironic watering holes like Rivers End in rural Ontario.

In Jewish American food, the two big things are matzo ball soup and bagels whats more ubiquitous than the two of those? posits Zach Engel, chef and owner of Michelin-starred Israeli and Middle Eastern restaurant Galit in Lincoln Park. Even his mother, an unenthusiastic home cook, makes a pretty killer version for family holiday meals: As far as representations of Jewish culture, [matzo ball soup] makes us look pretty good.

Matzo ball soup was once on the menu at Galit, but Engel hasnt served it since the pandemic began as the restaurant has shifted to a four-course menu of shared dishes; soup is difficult to share. Nevertheless, Engel says hes watched with interest as more restaurants work to attract diners with unexpected food while simultaneously tapping into a feeling of cozy familiarity. Matzo ball soup is a super straightforward way to get people to feel a level of comfort in their heart, but its still interesting, he says.

Though their exact origin is hazy, the proliferation of matzo balls a simple mixture of matzo meal, beaten eggs, water, and schmaltz, or chicken fat is generally attributed to German, Austrian, and Alsatian Jews who adapted regional Eastern European soup dumplings to suit Jewish dietary laws. No matter its history, the matzo balls simplicity also means that even unenthusiastic home cooks can deliver a version that will please a crowd.

The mixture is formed into balls (as usual, theres debate over the supremacy of fluffy floaters or toothsome sinkers) and simmered in boiling water or even better, soup stock, until they swell into spongy spheres. Given the relatively small number of American Jews about 7.6 million, or 2.4 percent of the total U.S. population, and a mere 319,600 in the Chicago area, according to the same Brandeis study Ashkenazi-style Jewish deli cuisine has made an outsized impact on mainstream American culture in general, from corned beef on St. Patricks Day to Meg Ryans infamous faux-gasm in rom-com icon When Harry Met Sally.

As a child, Chris Marty was close to his great-grandmother, Hannah Westler, who fled antisemitism in Europe around the turn of the century and immigrated to Milwaukee, where she worked 14,000 jobs to put her sons through law school. The brothers grew up eating her matzo ball soup, which she made from a recipe featuring a special twist: vodka. Years later, her boozy invention would inspire them to create a matzo ball cocktail for a local bartending challenge, an exercise that rekindled their connection to their familys past.

Though hed heard of it before, Best Intentions chef Bryan McClaran, whos worked at the Cambodian restaurant Hermosa and the Asian-influenced Bixi Beer, hadnt actually tried matzo ball soup when his bosses pitched the idea. Research involved YouTube videos, cookbooks, and some New York Times articles from the 80s, and in the end, the first version he wound up tasting was his own. Together, the brothers and McClaran worked to hone a recipe that would be worthy of the history it represented.

The big thing for us, other than nailing the consistency of the matzo ball, was not to goy it up with dill, Chris Marty chuckles. Anywhere we go with my mom, if theres matzo ball soup, well order it. Shes always like, Why do the goys have to load it up with so much fucking dill?

Its a Saturday in March at nearly 18-year-old deli Eleven City Diner, and owner Brad Rubin is holding court from a roomy booth inside his South Loop deli-diner hybrid. Founded in 2006 as an ode to casual midcentury hospitality, the restaurant, which at one point had a Lincoln Park location, has endured long enough to become a pillar of Chicagos Jewish culinary scene while attracting non-Jews with a retro aesthetic and plentiful plates of food.

Rubin bursts with pride as he recounts his familys Ashkenazi immigrant history and explains the meaning behind each photograph, vinyl record, and painting on its walls. His clear, resonant voice rings out as he bids farewell to customers (he learns all of their names) and jokes with employees.

Its also impossible to ignore that at least a cup, if not a bowl, of matzo ball soup can be found on half the tables. The broth is light but not additive-yellow, with fluffy-yet-firm matzo balls noteworthy for both their ample size and distinctive green flecks of parsley, mostly for color. However one feels about parsley, the diners version serves well as a baseline matzo ball soup uncomplicated, nostalgic, and reminiscent of a bubbes concoction with slightly more polish. There are no surprises in Eleven Citys bowl, and in this way, its a stark contrast to McClarans melange of elegant aromatics and ducky character at Best Intentions.

Rubins resonant tone, however, drops to a hush as he admits Eleven City hasnt had kreplach since COVID began. The diners who used to order it have since moved out to the suburbs, he says. Kreplach are small and plump dumplings stuffed with fillings like meat and mashed potatoes cousins to Polish pierogi, Russian pelmeni, Italian stuffed pasta, and Chinese jiaozi. The difference between matzo balls and kreplach is mostly negligible, but, according to Rubins numbers, the gap in sales was significant. Matzo balls arent going anywhere, Rubin affirms.

Indeed, in recent years theyve also cropped up on the menu at seemingly random spots like Armitage Ale House, Lincoln Parks British pub from Au Cheval owner Hogsalt Hospitality. In West Town, chef Zoe Schor also served a pepper-laden matzo ball soup at Split-Rail, which she closed in late 2023. Schor isnt shy about her Jewish American identity but the restaurant, a neighborhood hit known for fried chicken, was never positioned as a particularly Jewish spot. But for Schor, the soup was about something bigger than Split-Rail its presence marked a broader movement among chefs seeking to connect with their own background.

I feel like in terms of the zeitgeist of becoming classically trained and cooking the food you grew up eating, Ashkenazi Jewish culinary traditions were a little later to hit the trends, she says. Shes been happy to see the ripple effects manifest in spots like Russ & Daughters, the 110-year-old New York appetizing store that launched a wildly successful cafe in 2014. I think its very cool and important that we continue these traditions and the conversation.

The early 2010s saw a matzo ball revolution of sorts, arguably ushered in by the 2013 debut of Shalom Japan, a Brooklyn restaurant where chefs Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi have made a major splash with their matzo ball ramen. In Chicago, some had the audacity to suggest adding jalapeno, and in 2020, the short-lived restaurant Rye in West Loop made matzo balls with blue corn masa. The dish has come a long way in, at least in the canon of Jewish culinary history, a very short time. But by its very nature, matzo ball soup is relevant not due to its ingredients, but rather, the sensory and emotional experiences it evokes.

Its difficult to pin down why exactly matzo ball soup has risen to such a cross-cultural level of notoriety. But a look back at the soups lore in the U.S. may shed some light. Take Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller please. Its hard to imagine a worse pairing than the legendary Hollywood sex symbol and the Jewish Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who devoted much of his career to shedding light on the American everyman.

As the story goes, the couple frequently dined at the home of Millers mother, Isadore, who served a lot of matzo ball soup. They ate it so much that at one point, Monroe reportedly quipped, Isnt there any other part of the matzo you can eat?

With that, a star was born and the humble, homely matzo ball was catapulted into American pop-culture history.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the mid-1950s (the couple married in 1956) was an unusually optimistic era for American Jews, who began to enter the middle class and seek higher education. For the first time, the American public was exposed to stories like Oscar-winning 1947 film Gentlemans Agreement, which starred cinematic icon Gregory Peck as a non-Jewish reporter who poses as a Jew to research an expos on antisemitism.

Despite ongoing institutionalized discrimination at universities and social hubs like country clubs, American Jews at the time saw broader social acceptance than perhaps in any other millennia of Jewish history. And suddenly, that cultural validation reached new heights. Monroe, the blonde bombshell herself, was eating matzo balls too, lending mainstream credibility to a tradition thats endured in Chicago and across the country well beyond Miller and Monroes marriage, which lasted less than five years.

Though reluctant to get too high-minded about what it means to serve Jewish food in a non-Jewish context, for Chris Marty, it points to a desire to push back on a national political shift toward exclusion. I think society is pretty shitty right now, he says. People are highly intolerant and very insular The beauty of the bar and restaurant industry especially in Chicago is that you have that willingness to just love it if its good.

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

Western Washington Universitys chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is set to host an Anti-Zionist Passover Seder on April 22.

The pro-Palestinian groupannounced on Instagram: Were organizing our first JVP Passover seder . . . with a focus on Palestinian liberation. Event attendees will be required to wear masks, according to the announcement.

The event description reads: Join us in celebrating Pesach! Build community, learn about the holiday, make friends.

JVPdescribes itself as the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, and states that it is organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews into solidarity with Palestinian freedom struggle.

[RELATED: Rutgers students hold globalize the intifada press conference, complain about going to class]

The WWU chapter of JVP has hosted several other anti-Israel events this year.

The grouphosted a movie screening on Feb. 20 of Pinkwashing Exposed, an hour-long documentary on anti-pinkwashing and Palestine solidarity activism in Seattle.

Pinkwashing refers to when a state or organization appeals to LGBTQ+ rights in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices,according to a quote from the group Decolonizing Palestine that JVP shared on its website. Pinkwashing is a term some anti-Israel activists apply to the Jewish State.

One day after the movie screening, the group displayed a one-day alter [sic] to provide a safe sanctuary space and sacred space for grief, healing, and resistance to all those who have been killed in Gaza, asseen from an Instagram post.

Campus Reform has long reported on the actions of JVP chapters on other campuses.

[RELATED: Columbia anti-Israel protesters STILL operating encampment on campus after NYPD arrest over 100]

In December, Campus Reform reported that JVP and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Columbia University appear to still be holding unauthorized events on campus, even though both groups were suspended.

In February, Campus Reform wrote that Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, while investigating Columbias response to anti-Semitism at the school, claimed that Columbias SJP and JVP held a Chanukah menorah lighting ceremony that compared the terrorist attack against Israel to the Chanukah story in violation of their suspension.

Campus Reform has contacted Western Washington University and the universitys Jewish Voice for Peace for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.

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Jewish Voice for Peace to host 'Anti-Zionist' Passover Seder at Western Washington University - Campus Reform

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Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

If you watch the new Amazon Freevee show Dinner With the Parents, based on the British sitcom Friday Night Dinner, you will be delighted, by, well, all of it. But specifically, you will be delighted by Carol Kane as the most extra of Jewish grandmothers, who has a thick Eastern European accent, some of the best unexpected jokes, and who also brings some surprisingly meaningful moments of Jewishness to the fore like a scene in which she chants the Mourners Kaddish in the most impeccable way.

According to Dan Bakkedahl, who plays the Langer family patriarch in the series, it was Kane who kept them honest and close to Jewish tradition. Carol in real life knows a lot about it, and understands and upholds a lot of it, and was trying to keep us as close to honest as the script will allow us to go.

So you might be surprised to learn that Kane, whose parents were both Jewish, did not grow up particularly observant. It was the movie and TV sets she has worked that have served as her synagogue. Everything she knows about chanting prayers, Yiddish and the seder plate were learned while working on the many incredible Jewish projects shes been a part of, including Joan Micklin Silvers classic Jewish film, Hester Street.

All the Jewish moments she partakes in during the series? Everything extremely not off the cuff, a delightful Kane tells me in a joint video interview with the shows creator, Jon Beckerman. I apologize, but the truth is, Im a very uneducated Jew. I dont know the songs, we didnt really go to temple.

Kane has nothing to apologize for, of course, shes brought us so much empowering Jewish representation on screen. In my life, I keep getting parts where I get to learn different things. I just finished a movie where I got bat mitzvahed, and I got to learn a Torah portion, she says, referring to the anticipated romcom Between the Temples where she stars alongside Jason Schwartzman.

Without these movies and TV shows, I would know nothing, Kane muses. Hester Street was my Yiddish training, she adds. Im really lucky. But none of it is off the cuff. Its very hard-earned learning.

Beckerman also brought some really heartwarming specificities of his own Jewish childhood to this show, which, like his own upbringing, is set in a Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia. The first season of the show feels even more Jewish than Friday Night Dinners, with Jewish holiday celebrations, mourning rituals and talks of the bar and bat mitzvah circuit.

Robert Popper, who created Friday Night Dinner, grew up in North London in a Jewish neighborhood with a brother. When I saw that show, I immediately related to it because I grew up with a brother in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, which is a Jewish neighborhood. As a kid, all of my neighbors were Jewish. I remember the first time a non-Jewish family bought one of the homes and moved in. When Christmas would roll around, thered be one house decorating for Christmas I grew up in this bubble, where I just kind of thought everyone was Jewish. Turns out I was wrong.

When the opportunity to adapt it to American audiences came, Beckerman brought all these experiences to the set, where they feel alive and anchored in reality, despite the ridiculousness of so many of the shows scenarios.

I dont know that I grew up any more observant or less observant than Robert; we havent really talked about it that much. But I think that storytelling is best when its specific, Beckerman says. So once I knew we were going to do a show about a Jewish family, I thought lets take advantage of it and tell some stories that you wouldnt otherwise get to tell. These are the stories grounded in Jewish life including an episode about a shiva and one about a seder. It was just great fun for me to be able to draw from that part of my life, Beckerman adds.

Like Kane, though, the family at the center of the show, the Langers, are pretty secular. Theres something wonderful and relatable about the tension that happens when a rabbi, or someone more observant, shows up. They want to appear as more observant or more educated than they are, Beckerman explains.

The show has a Judaism consultant, which results in the Jewish details being pretty spot on. But theres also an irreverent aspect to it this isnt a show for the faint of heart when it comes to treating Judaism with the outmost veneration. More often than not, youll see the characters getting themselves in some pretty hilarious and cringe-inducing messes, especially when it comes to feigning Jewish observance.

I remember filming that shiva episode, occasionally Id glance over at this nice fellow who was the Judaism consultant and just see him shaking his head, looking very grim, Beckerman recalls. Whenever I saw that, I was like: Yes! Were doing the show I want to be doing.

That irreverence was part of Beckermans childhood, including at his familys seders. When I was a kid, we would always have them at my dads parents condo, and wed have the whole family there, he tells me. And there was something that I found so funny about Dayenu.'

I would always get into a situation with my mom, whos like me, a very silly person, where once we locked eyes and saw each other, almost laughing, it would become almost impossible not to crack up. Its that thing when you shouldnt be laughing and it makes it impossible not to, Beckerman recalls.

Kane relates, adding, Thats what I remember most about the few times I went to temple trying not laugh, not at anything in particular, just probably because you werent supposed to.

When I ask about Passover traditions, both Beckerman and Kane have fond, though perhaps alarming memories of Passover wine.

We had almost no traditions, Kane recalls, but I do remember Manischewitz wine. And I remember that it came in a little bottle that was a little lady. And it had a pack of four that didnt have a straight bottom. (PSA: If anyone reading this can help Carol and I find what bottles shes referring to, I would be so appreciative, because I havent stopped thinking about them in the weeks since our interview.)

I can really relate to the Manischewitz part of it, Beckerman says of his own familys seders. As a little kid, my brother and I would have several glasses of wine. By the end of the night, we would be passed out on my grandparents. So I remember getting a very warm feeling in my face and feeling very kind of loose and carefree. Wed end up basically passing out. I hope Im not gonna embarrass my family by saying, this but this is what happened. Theres a lot of drinking involved at a seder as we all know.

Our conversation ends with talk about the most important topic of all their favorite Jewish food. I like smoked fish and bagels, Kane says.

Its hard for me to choose because I have many, but if I had to narrow it down to one, matzah brei is a dish Im obsessed with. Ive taught my kids to make it, Beckerman says. Theres a big division between people who go sweet and people who go savory. As a kid I was always served it with salt. And so I like it with salt and pepper. The rest of my family will only eat it with sugar and maybe some syrup. But I would never eat it like that.

My daddy made wonderful matzah brei, Kane reminisces, sharing that he made it with jam, a sweet and very Jewish childhood memory of her own.

The first four episodes of Dinner With the Parents are now streaming on Amazon Freevee, with two additional ones added each Thursday until May 9.

Lior Zaltzman is the deputy managing editor of Kveller.

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