The UC Davis student president vetoed a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) resolution on June 5 that the student senate passed the night before.
Kyle Krueger, the Associated Students, University of California Davis (ASUCD) president, said in a statement that he had decided to veto the resolution, Senate Resolution (SR) 25, because most of the Jewish community on campus have been outraged over it.
“This resolution was problematic because it included minimal to no input from the Jewish community beforehand,” Krueger said. “An overwhelming majority of Jewish students at last night’s Senate meeting expressed their hurt and frustration with SR #25, and every Jewish student I have spoken with since the resolution’s passage has expressed to me the hurt SR #25 has brought upon them and their communities. The resolution has been widely condemned by Jewish students of many different sects/beliefs who feel marginalized by ASUCD and its actions.”
The ASUCD president added that the campus doesn’t have a good history regarding anti-Semitism, citing a September 2019 article highlighting how there had been two instances of neo-Nazi flyers on campus in less than a year.
“We must do more to work with the Jewish community to address this incredibly prevalent and important issue,” he said.
Krueger acknowledged that the ASUCD needs to recognize Palestinian rights and voices as well, but should not alienate the Jewish community in doing so.
“A divisive resolution about an international conflict that we have little control over is never worth sacrificing our ability to collaborate on more directly impactful initiatives — such as expanding basic needs programs for students, or increasing inclusion and diversity in the association,” Krueger said.
He concluded his statement with a call for Jewish and Palestinian students to form a consensus on a resolution going forward, one that is more specific in calling out companies engaged in human rights abuses.
“Moving forward, I will hold myself accountable to serve as an ally to the Palestinian and Jewish communities, and do everything I can to make sure that all marginalized communities have the safety and security they deserve on the UC Davis campus,” Krueger said.
UPDATE – @ASUCDofficial President vetoed the antisemitic BDS resolution that was passed last week. This is a win for justice and peace! BDS has no place on college campuses. pic.twitter.com/IuU7iVuOBw
ASUCD President Emeritus Michael Gofman, who is Jewish, praised Krueger’s decision in a Facebook post, stating that Krueger had stood up against anti-Semitism.
“I made a challenge to supporters of BDS [during the June 4 ASUCD Senate meeting]: I can commit to supporting a Jewish and democratic state of Israel peacefully coexisting with it’s Palestinian neighbor. Can you do the same?” Gofman wrote. “Not one did. Not one expressed any recognition of Israel, sinking to accusing Jews of blood libel, genocide, and a whole host of factual and historical inaccuracies.”
He added that UC Davis and the ASUCD are still not good for Jews, but Krueger’s veto of the resolution as well as the various Jewish and pro-Israel groups on campus show that UC Davis and ASUCD both could become welcoming to Jews.
Jewish groups also praised Krueger’s veto.
“We are proud of the UC Davis students who stood up to this campaign of hate and defeated a bigoted resolution full of misleading claims,” StandWithUs CEO and co-founder Roz Rothstein said in a statement to the Journal. “Divestment only serves to fuel the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and deepen divisions between students at the worst possible time. We’re glad that the resolution was ultimately vetoed.”
AMCHA Initiative Director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin similarly said in a statement to the Journal, “Kudos to UC Davis’ student president for seeing through the BDS charade. These resolutions carry zero weight. It is all part of a strategy directed by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel to ostracize and silence all pro-Israel voices on campus, mainly Jewish students. And, frighteningly, these resolutions almost always result in the harassment of Jewish students.”
She added: “In fact, our latest research demonstrates that the direct targeting of Israel’s supporters for harm, especially Jewish students, reached alarming levels. Academic BDS-compliant behavior and promotion was linked to 86% of Israel-related acts of anti-Semitic harassment. Fortunately, more and more student leaders are no longer falling for the scam, and we applaud UC Davis’ student president today for saying no to more hate and divisiveness on his campus.”
The resolution had passed the ASUCD Senate on June 4 with five votes in favor, four against and one abstention. A similar divestment resolution had been passed and signed in the ASUCD in May 2015; the campus Judicial Council struck down the resolution June 2019, arguing that it violated the Student Bill of Rights barring discrimination and harassment on campus.
The California State Board of Education released its guidelines for schools to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 55-page book of guidelines recommends that all students, teachers and staff be subjected to temperature checks and required to wear some sort of face covering. Classrooms also are recommended to keep doors and windows open in order to increase outdoor air circulation, which makes the virus less transmissible.
The guidelines also state that schools need to have increased supervision during recess and physical education to ensure that students are staying six feet apart; students should also not engage in any physical activities that involve sharing equipment. During meal times, students should not be able to share tables and food servers should be behind plexiglass.
All surfaces should be disinfected constantly, and students, teachers and staff should frequently wash their hands with soap and water. Students shouldn’t share books, toys, games or electronic devices. Anyone who begins to show symptoms of COVID-19, such as a fever, cough or shortness of breath, should be isolated and taken to seek medical care.
The state guidelines are not mandatory.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on everything we know about providing education,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said in a statement. “It forces us to enter into a new conversation about the way we provide instruction.”
Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner declined to comment to City News Service about the state’s released guidelines. City News Service noted that Beutner had stated in a recent video that students need to be in a school setting, but it will be difficult to determine the best way forward.
“We owe it to all in the school community to make sure we do this the right way,” Beutner said. “You can expect regular updates on this topic and a more definitive plan within the next month or so.”
There are currently around 131,000 COVID-19 cases in California and 4,653 deaths from the virus; the new cases and deaths in the state on June 7 were 2,190 and 48, respectively. In Los Angeles County, there were 823 new cases and 10 new deaths announced on June 8, bringing the county’s respective totals to 64,644 and 2,655.
When Jared Hasen-Klein’s Washington, D.C., internship prematurely ended in March because of the coronavirus, he returned to his native Los Angeles. The Milken Community Schools graduate and current Cal Poly Pomona junior wasn’t sure what he would do aside from spend some unplanned quality time with his family, and maybe get a jumpstart on work related to his summer job.
Then he received a request from someone he knew from the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) community, a robotics organization with which he has been involved since middle school, first as a competitor, then as a volunteer. Specifically, he was asked if he could fix a couple of pages on the recently launched website for the SoCal Makers COVID-19 Response Team, a group started by another person he knew of through robotics. Hasen-Klein said yes.
“The next thing I know, they send me a Slack invite for the team,” Hasen-Klein told the Journal. “I open it up. They put me on the project-leads channel. So, I am now a lead.
Fortunately, the 20-year-old had the time and inclination to jump in. Since the SoCal Makers COVID-19 Response Team was started in March by Boeing engineer and longtime FIRST mentor Eric Gever, a Cypress resident, the group has grown to more than 150 volunteers − many of whom are high-school or college students like Hasen-Klein. The group has provided more than 15,000 pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) to health care workers at upward of 125 hospitals, medical facilities and senior residences.
“When I came in, they were in the position where there was a lot of demand and a lot of people helping out, but there was not an organizational system in place,” Hasen-Klein said. “People were finding him on Facebook or on GoFundMe. He would have to distribute requests to volunteers. I helped out a lot with the request process and project management.”
Photo courtesy of Hasen-Klein
A couple of weeks ago, Hasen-Klein purchased a used 3D printer so he could join the ranks of response-team volunteers making PPE. Initially, he was printing the masks individually. But he figured out a better technique. Now, he said, “I can stack them so it makes more than one at once. My machine makes 16 every 12 hours.”
Under normal circumstances, people making PPE in their homes for hospital use would not be possible, he explained. “But since this is an emergency situation, the FDA has decided to allow homemade PPE during the emergency declaration. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) also released guidance, including what designs work and tips like that.”
Hasen-Klein added, “We had someone approach us, someone making a lot of these shields. They asked, ‘How are you getting hospitals to approve these? I’ve been trying for weeks.’ I was thinking, we’re nothing but a group of individuals, but us being this large group has given us a little more reputability in this space.”
Gever’s home in Cypress (near Long Beach) along with the residence of another team member in the South Bay serve as hubs for volunteers to pick up raw materials. Some volunteers are exclusively dedicated to cleaning and sanitizing the masks prior to them being packaged in sets of 10. The PPE is provided free to local health care organizations that submit requests via the website. Organizations farther afield also may request the PPE. They are asked to pay just for shipping.
As of June 1, the team has raised upward of $20,000 from nearly 300 donors via its GoFundMe page. These funds are used to purchase the materials needed to make the masks and cover the costs of any replacement parts for the various, privately owned 3D printers operating around the clock.
When Hasen-Klein came on board, demand for the masks exceeded their ability to turn them out. But a growing volunteer force has meant increased productivity − and just in time. Hasen-Klein anticipates a new wave of requests as dental offices and others begin to reopen.
The 100%-volunteer enterprise has not been without challenges. “The past few weeks, there have been some shortages of certain types of plastic we need,” Hasen-Klein said. “No one has managed a supply chain before. No one knows what to expect with demand. The news is changing daily. So we never know what’s going to be needed.”
But Hasen-Klein is confident in the group’s ability to continue the important work. “What I have seen is the FIRST robotics community is always able to respond to situations,” he said. “The community is extremely creative.”
Home Shalom is dedicated to raising awareness of domestic abuse in the Jewish community, encouraging every synagogue and Jewish institution to become a safe sanctuary and providing tools for teens to master the skills of creating healthy relationships. Home Shalom is a program of The Advot Project.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Talmud Berahot 55b
There is a beautiful Midrash about a husband and wife once upon a time in a land far away who loved each other and had been married for ten years without having any children. In those days and in that land everyone expected to have children and it was the custom if a couple were childless after ten years that they would get divorced and then find another mate with whom to try and have children. So, given the custom of the time, this couple agreed to get divorced and decided to have a going away party for themselves with friends and family.
The next Shabbat they had a great feast during which the husband said to his wife, “When you leave after tonight to return to your parent’s home (since that was the custom of the time) you can take with you from here whatever you love most.”By the end of the evening the husband had eaten and drank so much food and wine that he fell asleep so the wife asked their servants to pick him up and carry him to her father’s house. When he awoke from his sleep he called out, “Where am I?” and the wife replied, “You are in my father’s house.” “But what am I doing here?” he asked. “You told me to take whatever I loved most in our home with me when I left, and you are what I love most.” So, they never got divorced at all and both husband and wife reminded each other each Shabbat of the power of love to heal our wounds and that sometimes it’s up to us to create a new path regardless of how things have always been done.
We are living in tumultuous times filled with pain and promise, upset and opportunity. When the Talmud wisely reminds us, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are” it is to shake us out of the complacency of, “this is how we have always done it” to “how can I better reflect the vision of a life, of a community, of a nation that I want to create today, tomorrow and for the next generation.” Each of us matters and each of us has both the opportunity and responsibility to become the person we want our children to grow up to be, to pray as if everything depends on God, but act as if everything depends on us. Ultimately the spiritual health of our country depends on each of us becoming the person we want the world to emulate so that one step at a time we create a new vision of a future together.
Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, Home Shalom
Naomi Ackerman, The Advot Project
For far too long in the United States, the American Dream has been a nightmare for too many people, based on the color of their skin.
As a former NYPD police officer and the father of a young brown-skinned man − who himself has been profiled and subject to outright harassment and unjustifiable detention by police officers based solely on the color of his skin − it pains me to no end to know that while most police officers are good, brave and fair, far too many still behave as if the color of one’s skin determines how much of a threat a person may be to them or others.
All one has to do is listen to Sen. Tim Scott’s July 2016 speech on his experiences with the police – as a U.S. senator – to know this remains a significant problem. As a U.S. senator − one of only 100 people with the job of representing their states in the most powerful legislative body on earth – Sen. Scott was pulled over by the police at least seven times in one year while driving in Washington, D.C. Sadly, Sen. Scott’s experiences with the police in D.C. as a young-looking African-American man are likely far different from the experiences of other young-looking U.S. senators.
Tragically, it should not have taken a video − where a nation painfully watched a 19-year veteran of his police department place his knee literally on the neck of an African-American man and snuff out his life during nearly nine anguishing minutes − for most Americans to realize that having brown and black skin in the U.S.A., in 2020, stills means you are far more likely to be stopped by the police and subjected to excessive force, especially if you are young and male.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – JUNE 01: A memorial site where George Floyd died May 25 while in police custody, on June 1, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
This needs to stop. And every person of good conscience in America should want this to stop and be in favor of educational, training, judicial, union and other reforms that will make it less likely that another George Floyd will die, or another Tim Scott will be pulled over, simply because of his skin’s complexion.
This is especially true for the Jewish community. As a community that has suffered for millennia from the evils of racism, from the dangers of ugly stereotypes and from being “otherized,” there is no community that should care more or fight more for the dream of American equality and for the blindness of Lady Justice to become a reality. It is this recognition that likely led to Jews being among the co-founders, along with African Americans, of the NAACP; and for Jews (despite being less than 2% of the population in America) being close to the majority of the civil-rights lawyers in America during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as fully half of the famous volunteer “freedom riders” who helped galvanize the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
As a community that has suffered for millennia from the evils of racism, from the dangers of ugly stereotypes and from being ‘otherized,’ there is no community that should care more or fight more for the dream of American equality and for the blindness of Lady Justice to become a reality.
Sadly, since then, there has been a growing movement to divide Jews and African Americans in the U.S., and to sow the seeds of age-old forms of anti-Semitism within the language of modern-day “intersectional” exclusion of Jews as minorities.
This movement to divide African Americans and Jews primarily comes from two sources. One is the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. The other is far-left anti-Israel groups in alliance with groups such as AMP, SJP and MSA.
Both have reveled in promoting propaganda designed to “otherize” Jews and their nation-state, Israel; to try and cause African Americans to view Jews and Israel collectively as somehow being the embodiment of all anti-Semitic stereotypes. And to blame Jews − not the Arabs and Europeans who plainly colonized Africa and most often sold Africans into slavery and shipped them to the Americas − as somehow being uniquely and most malevolently responsible for African-American suffering in the U.S.
Sadly, this effort has been pretty fruitful.
ADL surveys throughout the last 20 years have shown that while approximately 12% of European Americans have “entrenched” anti-Semitic views, among African Americans, that number jumps to a frightening 34%.
Since at least 2016, that effort to paint the Jews and Israel as being uniquely evil, and particularly responsible for the historic suffering of African Americans in the U.S., including excessive force used by law enforcement, has also found a home among many of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Immediately following the heinous death of George Floyd, we saw terrible images posted in various anti-Israel social-media accounts trying to connect Israel to his death.
In a policy platform titled “A Vision for Black Lives” drafted by more than 50 organizations known as the “Movement for Black Lives,” the platform held out for a unique tongue-lashing only one foreign country: Israel.
This platform and the BLM leaders who defend it claim there is a link between American racism and police brutality − which is based on more than 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow laws in North America − and the Arab-Israeli conflict, which began when we Jews began to have the audacity – barely over a hundred years ago – to act politically on our desire for freedom, emancipation and self-determination in our indigenous homeland.
This platform continues the anti-Semitic propaganda promoted by Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam and anti-Israel activists in America to tar Israelis and Jews with the crimes of others (such as those directly responsible for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) while it ignores the ongoing oppression and decimation of black lives in places including Nigeria and the Congo (where hundreds of thousands of primarily Christian Africans have been massacred since 2001); Libya (where there is presently an active slave trade selling indigenous Africans into slavery); or the ongoing use of indigenous Africans as slaves in countries such as Mauritania and Kuwait.
In response to the relatively few people expressing concern via social media over this mini-pogrom, many people over social media justified these attacks, echoing the hate speech and ahistorical anti-Semitic nonsense promoted by Farrakhan and many of the current leaders of Movement for Black Lives.
This choice by the “Movement for Black Lives” to singularly vilify Israel and ignore all other countries in the world, including those directly oppressing and even destroying other black lives, did not occur in a vacuum. For years, the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan have been inundating African-American communities and the internet with the vilest anti-Semitic lies. For years, far-left leadership in America has not only tolerated that hate; they have heaped praise on Farrakhan, and also heaped praise on “intersectionality” theory, which claims all forms of hate and oppression are somehow connected to each other, except Jew-hatred.
It also occurred because of the sadly all-too-successful efforts of various anti-Israel groups to appropriate and use other people’s tragedies for their purposes to increase hatred of Israel.
This happened after Ferguson in 2014. It happened in 2018 when the Durham City Council gave into the blood libel campaign against Israel, which somehow blamed Israel for centuries of racial problems in America and American police departments, when it voted that Durham city police officers could not attend emergency response and counterterrorism training in Israel.
And it is happening once again.
Immediately following the heinous death of George Floyd, we saw terrible images posted in various anti-Israel social-media accounts trying to connect Israel to his death. Some were outright fakes – such as a picture posted of a Chilean police officer with his knee on someone’s neck – but with a caption mislabeling him as an Israeli soldier. Others were in the form of cartoons that depicted a soldier with a ubiquitous Star of David on his arm, with his knee on the neck of an Arab in a keffiyeh, directly next to the image of a cop like Derek Chauvin with his knee on an African-American man’s neck.
Synagogue Congregation Beth El on Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles. (Credit: Lisa Daftari, Twitter)
Setting aside the awful appropriation of the horror of George Floyd’s murder for their own political purposes, it should be plain to anyone with any sense of history that the Israel-haters making these claims and trying to draw these purported connections, just as those who drafted the original “Movement for Black Lives” platform in 2016, are engaging in a modern-day blood libel − blaming the state of Israel and Zionism (the Jewish people’s indigenous rights movement) for problems in the U.S., problems that have been literally centuries in the making.
This is classic anti-Semitism. Scapegoating Jews for problems caused by others or by nature (such as the Bubonic Plague or the virtual plague of racism).
In this particular case, it also is ironic, as anti-indigenous African racism in the Arab world is rampant, where the most common slur for an indigenous African remains to this day the Arabic world for slave (“abeed”). But this modern-day anti-Semitic blood libel is not only false and ironic; it is dangerous, particularly for American Jews, who already were starting to feel that it is once again dangerous to be visibly Jewish.
This anti-Semitic rhetoric, like all racist rhetoric, also has very real-world and dangerous consequences.
The growing currency that deeply held anti-Semitic views have among too many African Americans and organizations that purport to represent African Americans, such as the “Movement for Black Lives,” is not something we should or even can ignore.
Just a few months ago (lest we forget with all of the terrible things that already have transpired in 2020) every day of this past Chanukah included a violent attack on Jews, most of which, sadly, were conducted by African Americans in New York City.
Those violent attacks were sandwiched between two murderous attacks that tried to mass murder Jews: one at a kosher supermarket and Jewish day school in Jersey City on December 10 and the other in a Rabbi’s home in Monsey, N.Y., on December 28, 2019.
Within days of George Floyd’s death, we sadly know that many justifiable protests turned unjustifiably violent, and resulted in a terrible amount of looting, destruction and even murder, which has garnered almost as much media attention, if not more, than the protests themselves.
One thing that has seemed to escape much media attention, or even the attention of much of the Jewish community, is that the rioting in Los Angeles last week included a mini-pogrom directed at the Jews. Five synagogues and three Jewish schools were vandalized, including with anti-Israel rhetoric, as people stormed the Fairfax district (which is a well- known Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles), yelling “F’ing Jews” as Jewish owned stores were looted and ransacked.
In response to the relatively few people expressing concern via social media over this mini-pogrom, many people over social media justified these attacks, echoing the hate speech and ahistorical anti-Semitic nonsense promoted by Farrakhan and many of the current leaders of “Movement for Black Lives.”
Responding to a Jewish girl’s concern about the “anti-Jewish racism” and “acts of hate” being directed at Jews by some of the rioters, “Jeff K.” responded: “Racism only exists with power. Jewish Americans hold all the power in the country, thus you cannot be racist or anti-Semitic towards them. It simply doesn’t exist. They are not an oppressed people.”
Another person, named “Jonny,” responded to the same girl with: “#BlackLivesMatter: Jewish whites were the most prolific slave owners in history. They practically created slavery in America. So, with all respect and love, synagogues are as free game as any other building.”
As Jewish-owned stores, houses of worship and schools were being attacked within months of Jews being murdered solely for the “crime” of being Jewish in America, people were justifying the attacks by claiming Jews “hold all the power in America” and that Jews “were the most prolific slave owners in history” and “practically created slavery in America.”
The first claim of “Jewish power” has been used to justify the murder and mass murder of Jews for centuries; and it is disturbingly impossible to distinguish today between whether it is being uttered by a Nazi, a white supremacist, a member of Hamas, a follower of Farrakhan or a leader of the BLM movement.
LOS ANGELES, CA – JUNE 3: Protesters march through downtown, during a peaceful demonstration over George Floyds death on June 3, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Warrick Page/Getty Images)
The second claim, that Jews “practically created slavery in America,” comes straight from the lies Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam has been feeding far too many people in the African-American community for decades. It has no basis in anything but hate, and like all anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and propaganda through the centuries, it seeks to uniquely hold Jews responsible for the actions of others; in this case, primarily for the actions of European and Arab colonialists and slave traders.
The growing currency that deeply held anti-Semitic views have among too many African Americans and organizations that purport to represent African Americans, such as the “Movement for Black Lives,” is not something we should or even can ignore.
Jewish history, including the very recent history of attacks on Jewish institutions and on visibly identifiable Jews this past winter in New York and New Jersey, have taught us that ignoring anti-Semitic rhetoric always comes with a price in Jewish lives.
As a result, no matter how much we want to (and should) stand in solidarity with all good people against the racism that makes far too many brown and black people in America feel like they have a target on their backs simply because of the color of their skin, we cannot do so with the condition that we ignore and/or tolerate Jew-hatred and anti-Semitic propaganda.
Menachem Begin famously said, “I am not a Jew with trembling knees.” Begin was right. No Jew should have “trembling knees” or accept the notion that they have to ignore their concern for Jewish safety, or their desire to resist anti-Semitism, to fight racism against others in America.
No other minority group is being asked to ignore its safety or the blatant racist rhetoric being directed at its members in the way Jews presently are being told to in order to stand in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives or with the BLM movement.
We must reject this false choice, as well as the chorus of people telling us that now is the time to simply support Black Lives Matters without questioning any anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric. No. That is not a choice any proud Jew should ever make.
Black lives do indeed matter. And just as so many of our Jewish ancestors fought against racism and Jim Crow in the U.S., Jews today should continue to support our African-American brothers and sisters in the fight against the evil of racism; but at the same time, we have to loudly and proudly stand in solidarity against anti-Semitic rhetoric and to the inevitable violence it incites.
Swastikas reportedly were found on the pavement of a bike trail near the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on May 28.
The Lincoln Journal Star reported that the swastikas were drawn in light-blue spray paint on the John Dietrich Trail, which had been spray-painted with various images. The trail is located east of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s City Campus.
There has been recent instances of swastikas in Lincoln. On May 26, 20 trees in Wilderness Park had been spray-painted with several images, including multiple swastikas. Wilderness Park is also located near the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; the university uses the park as a venue for outdoor classes.
In January, a swastika and the words “black shirt” — referencing Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party uniforms — were spray-painted on the South Street Temple in Lincoln. A man was arrested for allegedly committing the vandalism in February.
Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird proposed an ordinance on May 28 that would ban any attempts to intimidate people based on their race, place of origin, gender or sexuality. Such offenses would result in a maximum jail sentence of six months and a $500 fine under the proposed ordinance.
“By adding this additional tool, we hope to demonstrate that hate has no home in Lincoln, and that every resident belongs here,” Gaylor Baird said in a statement.
Recently, as I sheltered in my home, fearing not only the invisible enemy of a deadly virus but also the very visible and noisy protestors half of a block from my house, I sank into a deep dread. My personal reality has been dealing with my husband’s systemic illness: being admitted and discharged from the hospital multiple times over the past few weeks, and sensing another trip was imminent as curfew approached.
My inner and outer world has felt totally upside-down and, at times, terrifying. For 24 hours, necessary medication wasn’t accessible because our Rite-Aid was closed as a result of a violent break-in and stealing frenzy by desperate looters in the pharmacy. Overwhelming helplessness began to seep into my center. In rare moments, I have succumbed to such feelings and, in these most trying times, I sensed the pull and seduction of those feelings again.
But then, there was the rage. The fantasy of standing on my front porch actually holding a gun, shouting at strangers to stay away or they would pay dearly, as I protected my home and my family. Who was this person my subconscious released into the world? The image was almost as frightening as the reality I’ve been living.
The rage is real. Our enemies are both unprecedented and all too familiar. A déjà vu surfaced of sitting huddled with my then-younger children and husband as fire and looting overtook Los Angeles during the last race confrontation. The Rodney King beating unleashed the venom that lay under the surface for so many.
Yet, this is different. A level of maturity rests among much of the nation. People of all colors and religions, together, share their outrage and absolute indignation at the horrific sight of a man dying in front of our very eyes. Generations ago, he would have been hung by a rope while white people dressed in white garb stood with pride at their accomplishment. In rural America, these scenes were all too common — but the nation didn’t have to face its reality.
Today, through the technology of a tiny phone, horror and inhumanity are now transmitted for the whole world to see, forcing every person in the world to face the cruelty and inhumanity that exists within the heart of some men (and women).
Our enemies are both unprecedented and all too familiar.
Now we say enough is enough! One black man, a man with a family, one of God’s children, has become a symbol — a martyr — to rally all good people to demand a reckoning that is much overdo and hopefully, not too late.
As a child of Holocaust survivors, I can only imagine what it would have meant decades earlier if all good people had joined to protest the wanton denigration of Jews. To see the police officers humiliate and force the last breaths out of George Floyd’s body prompted another déjà vu, of police beating and kicking unarmed men and women as they walked down the streets in Germany and Poland. Watching those in uniform wield their power is a cellular traumatic memory for many of us.
And let us not ignore that our own government has set the tone for such behavior repeatedly to exist and resurface, highlighted by a president standing with a Bible in hand as he permitted innocent, peace-loving people to be attacked with toxic sprays and rubber bullets.
Yes, the world is upside-down, but it is the pus that comes to the surface, the fever that represents the sepsis within that is being released so medical attention will be addressed and healing can take place.
We all have personal challenges. We all live with enemies looming before us —but we have wisdom, strength and the ability to act. The irony for me is that our leadership has been given a strange gift — a pandemic and racial inequality, challenges that call for rising up, bringing hope and making meaningful change. This opportunity has been squandered by our country’s leadership! I believe this darkness will invite and welcome new light and transformation to take place once and for all.
Rabbi Cantor Eva Robbins is a rabbi, cantor, artist and the author of “Spiritual Surgery, Journey of Healing Mind, Body and Spirit.”
I returned from burying my father in Israel to an America on fire. Mourning a parent is soul-destroying. Doing so while you mourn the downfall of civility in a country you love can make it nearly impossible.
I witnessed things this week that beggar the imagination. Tens of thousands of demonstrators marching through the streets of New York, outraged at the senseless death of George Floyd by police. Endless shops in Manhattan boarded up against looters. Broken glass at stores near our organization’s Townhouse on the Upper West Side. An African-American activist speaking to hundreds of marchers while addressing the police standing in front of him: “You know you’re all murderers. And especially shameful are those of you who are black cops and other cops of color. How can you disgrace yourselves by being members of the NYPD?” He said this as two African-American female cops in riot gear stared at him in stony silence.
The original American sin is racism. It can be hard to believe that just 150 odd years ago, black babies were still sold on the block like cattle, ripped away from their mothers’ breasts in the slave markets. It can be hard to believe that after nearly 700,000 Americans died in the Civil War, we then went through 100 years of Jim Crow and blacks being sent to the back of the bus or beaten with lead pipes for trying to integrate America’s schools. And it can be hard to believe that 50 years ago, the greatest American of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr., was felled by an assassin’s bullet for marching peacefully in Memphis, demanding rights for sanitation workers.
Yet all these are painful American truths.
Yet we dared hope it was part of our past. We dared hope that after a majority-white United States elected an African-American as president, the terrible race struggles that have convulsed our nation would be something of the past. That’s what’s so utterly shocking about Floyd’s death and the worst race riots to convulse America in half a century.
Can this all be happening? Are African-American men and women being shot by the police because of the color of their skin? Are stores and shops really being burnt to the ground in paroxysms of violence? And is this all happening while a global pandemic has just killed more than 100,000 Americans in only three months?
Is this not all some terrible nightmare from which we’ll all awaken?
I have long had a special relationship with the African-American community. Beginning with making Cory Booker – now our senator in New Jersey – my student president at Oxford in 1992 to becoming the first white radio host on America’s legacy black radio station, WWRL 1600 AM, in New York City, I have always cherished the ties between the black and Jewish communities. I believe blacks and Jews are united not through a shared history of mutual suffering, but a shared commitment to mutual values. We are two communities who, through centuries of suffering, have forever reposed hope in physical redemption through spiritual promise.
I BELIEVE blacks and Jews are united not through a shared history of mutual suffering but a shared commitment to mutual values. We are two communities who, through centuries of suffering, have forever reposed hope in physical redemption through spiritual promise.
Both communities largely have been led not by politicians but by religious figures: rabbis in the Jewish community and reverends in the African-American community. Both Jews and blacks have looked to the Bible, especially the story of Moses standing up to Pharaoh, for inspiration in enduring subjugation to tyranny. And both communities have emphasized how attachment to community and family, even while passing through the valley of the shadow of death, will eventually bring us to the Promised Land.
Which is why it’s been so painful for me this past week, while I grieve for my father, to feel so helpless as I grieve for America.
The United States is one of the most righteous and just nations on earth, and humankind’s last great hope. I don’t believe the overwhelming majority of Americans are racist. To the contrary. I believe Americans are loving, benevolent and good. I believe the police are heroes who risk their lives for their communities every single day.
And yet, there are Americans who undoubtedly are racist, and there are some bad-apple cops who have committed murder based on abominable bigotry and prejudice.
But how can we create healing? How can we bridge the divide between these two Americas? For God’s sake, who will stop the American house from being burned to the ground as we are gripped by racial hatred, increased lawlessness, a killer disease and growing hopelessness?
Are people now really talking about defunding the police? You mean that a robber will be able to hold up a bank and walk away scot-free because there will be no cops? Is this not insanity?
Is America losing its mind?
I have a friend who is a Jewish leader, highly educated, incredibly savvy and professionally successful. He is also a left-leaning Democrat. He actually wrote to me that he plans to buy a gun to protect his family and protect his synagogue, once the police are defunded.
Where will healing come from amid this insanity? In my opinion, it will not come from politics. Now is the time for religion to rise and bring healing to America.
Let rabbis and pastors and priests and Imams join in once voice with a declaration of the following principles:
Every human being is created equally in the image of God. We are all equally God’s children, and no person is more or less valuable than another.
Skin color is by far the least important of all human qualities, and it’s an abomination against God to believe in anything other than one human family or to ever divide the human family into more than one human race.
Racial injustice, especially murder based on race, is an abomination before God and a sin of incalculable evil.
Individuals must be judged based on individual actions and never as part of a collective. That means demonizing all police because of the actions of racist cops is an affront to decency and goodness.
Forgiveness is the cornerstone of all world religions. From Yom Kippur being the holiest day on the Jewish calendar to the Christian belief that Jesus died for our sins, real spirituality calls us to rise above hatred and find healing through repentance.
We are all one family and are redeemed through loving one another.
Violence in the name of religion, or the pursuit of racial justice, or correcting other social wrongs is unacceptable.
The path to social change, as Martin Luther King, Jr., so emphatically pledged and for which he was martyred, comes through peaceful protest, shaming the perpetrators into permanent change.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s Holocaust memoir, “Holocaust Holiday: One Family’s Descent into Genocide Memory Hell,” written with historical contributions by Mitchell Bard, will be published later this year. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @RabbiShmuley.
Nestled among rocky inlets on the French Riviera is a beach enclave with bright blue waters, white sand and 20 kosher restaurants and cafes.
You’ve probably never heard of Juan les-Pins (pronounced Juwan le’Pan), a small town that boasts two synagogues, gourmet kosher markets and patisseries offering the finest French delicacies. Bordered by glitzy, ritzy Cannes, the playground of Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs, and the medieval charms of old Antibes, Juan les-Pins is a popular summer vacation destination of French Jews.
Two summers ago, more than 150 friends and family joined us in the south of France for the wedding of my son Ariel and his beautiful bride, Rachel. The chuppah overlooked the beach in Cannes. The celebration featured an amazing band and talented singers, lots of dancing and a very lively traditional North African henna ceremony. The food was deliciously, classically French pate de fois gras, roast lamb and Provençal fish.
We all stayed in the same hotel in Juan les-Pins and it felt like a fancy summer camp: meeting for breakfasts in the morning, swimming in the warm Mediterranean waters and walking the old cobblestone streets.
It’s the memory of the fabulous Tunisian tuna sandwich that Rachel and I shared in Juan les-Pins that we wanted to describe to our readers.
Imagine a crusty demi baguette smeared with rusty red harissa, layered with flakes of tuna, slices of egg and potato, salty black olives and bright yellow preserved lemons, then topped with diced red onions, cherry tomatoes and crispy green cucumber slices. Every crunchy mouthful excites the taste buds with its perfect combination of spicy, sweet, salty and umami flavor.
Who is thinking about the nutritional benefits of so much protein, fiber, vitamins and probiotics in one sandwich when it’s so darn delicious? You’ll need both hands to eat this overstuffed tuna sandwich.
TUNISIAN TUNA SANDWICH
2 medium Yukon gold potatoes
4 rolls or demi baguettes
1/2 cup harissa
1 small English cucumber, thinly sliced
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup pitted Kalamata or oil-cured black olives
2 5-ounce cans tuna in oil
2 hardboiled eggs, sliced 1⁄2 small red onion, diced
1⁄2 cup preserved lemon, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Olive oil
Peel and boil potatoes. When tender, slice thinly and salt them.
Split baguettes horizontally.
Spread harissa atop lower slices of each baguette, then arrange on top layers of sliced potatoes, cucumber, tomatoes, olives, tuna and hardboiled egg. Top with red onion and preserved lemon.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.Drizzle the top of each sandwich with bit of harissa mixed with olive oil.
Cut sandwiches in half to serve.
Serves 4.
Rachel Sheff’s family roots are Spanish Moroccan. Sharon Gomperts’ family hails from Baghdad and El Azair in Iraq. Known as the Sephardic Spice Girls, they havecollaborated on the Sephardic Educational Center’s projects and community cooking classes. Join them on Instagram at SephardicSpiceGirls, or on Facebook group SEC food.
Reflections on the intersection of two mega stories, and moving forward on the fight against racism.
How do we manage our lives during the coronavirus crisis? How do we keep our sanity? How do we use this quarantine to bring out the best in ourselves? Tune in every day and share your stories with podcast@jewishjournal.com.
