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Jewish Journal

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June 22, 2020

Netanyahu Fumes Over Coronavirus Cabinet Meeting Leaks

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened Monday’s cabinet meeting by strongly criticizing the leak of recordings from a meeting of the coronavirus cabinet a day earlier, which were broadcast on Sunday evening by Channel 12 News.

“I want to begin, first of all, with the serious incident of the recording from the coronavirus cabinet that was broadcast in the media,” Netanyahu said. “I don’t remember such a thing being done in all my years as prime minister. Not from a cabinet meeting and not from a coronavirus cabinet like this. A discussion with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief, it is very serious.”

The prime minister called for an investigation into the leak, saying, “This cannot pass. I ask all the relevant officials, including the attorney general, to enable a thorough investigation,” Netanyahu said. “We cannot allow this to take root. It must not repeat itself.”

In the recordings, Israel Security Agency (ISA) head Nadav Argaman can be heard opposing the return of a controversial program to use ISA technology ordinarily reserved for counter-terrorism operations to trace coronavirus carriers and those who had come in contact with them. Instead, Argaman argued for the creation of an alternative civilian effort, with which the ISA could cooperate.

The ISA surveillance program was active for approximately three months, in an effort to minimize the spread of the coronavirus in Israel, but was shut down due to a lack of legislation to regulate it.

If the infections spread, and there is no other available solution, then at that point involving the ISA would be the right decision, Argaman said, adding, “I am asking very, very, very strongly opposed to [involving] the Shin Bet at this stage.”

According to Channel 12, during the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu banged on the table and insisted that the ISA program be renewed.

“The ships are coming at us, one at a time, and we are refusing to believe it,” he said. “Our responsibility is to stop this pandemic. The pandemic is coming back! It’s coming back! Now the question is, how much are we willing to do because of  [the virus], which is very quickly coming at us?”

Netanyahu Fumes Over Coronavirus Cabinet Meeting Leaks Read More »

Chabad Headquarters Reopens, Celebrates With Unmasked Crowds

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

JTA — It closed with dancing and it reopened with dancing.

The main Chabad synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn reopened to a large crowd Monday, more than three months after it shut its doors amid mounting restrictions meant to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The raucous service was documented in a video posted to Instagram by COLlive, a local Orthodox news site in Crown Heights. No one in the video, which shows dozens of men singing and dancing, appeared to be wearing a mask and most did not appear to maintain social distancing.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBveQ2BhHeK/?igshid=105vhrhzr21o1

The reopening is the latest evidence that some parts of New York City’s Orthodox community have largely returned to normalcy after three months of lockdown, despite the fact that the city only began its second phase of reopening Monday and social distancing and mask wearing are still recommended.

The synagogue, located at the former home of the late leader of the Chabad movement, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, waited until much of the city had shut down before closing its doors, for the first time ever, late on March 17.

The decision to close the synagogue, which is known for hosting dozens of services and hundreds of visitors each day, came days after many synagogues in New York City canceled their Shabbat services. After rabbis in the community ordered the building and other synagogues closed, men stayed at 770 and danced late into the night.

In keeping with New York’s rules for houses of worship, the building reopened last month to a service of 10 men, the number needed to form a prayer quorum called a minyan needed to recite certain prayers.

Monday’s service was the first at the building to make possible some of the activities that typically characterize prayer at 770. Under the newly widened restrictions, houses of worship may now admit up to a quarter of the people they are designed to hold — 250 for 770 Eastern Parkway, according to COLlive. (Gov. Andrew Cuomo accelerated the pace by which houses of worship could open amid pressure from religious New Yorkers, including Orthodox Jews, and left it up to each one to create its own mask and distancing rules.)

New York City’s new rules coincided with Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of a new month on the Jewish calendar, a day that is marked with  special prayers and in some synagogues, as at 770, dancing.

Chabad Headquarters Reopens, Celebrates With Unmasked Crowds Read More »

Anti-Semites and Holocaust Deniers Are Using TikTok to Target Youth, Study Shows

Leave a Comment / News /

The popular TikTok video-sharing service is being used for more than just awkward dances by users, according to a new study in Israel.

Anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and other far-right extremists are going on the social media platform to reach young people, researchers from the University of Haifa and Israel’s Institute for Counter Terrorism found in a report titled “Spreading Hate on TikTok.”

From February through May, it said, there were 196 postings related to far-right extremism, with one-fifth of them related to anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

In the same time frame, the study also found 14 postings of Adolf Hitler’s speeches; 11 postings of the Sieg Heil victory salute used by Nazis; 17 videos encouraging violence that featured Nazi or neo-Nazi symbols such as the swastika and sonnenrad, or black sun; and 26 accounts featuring the numbers “88” in their username, the white supremacist numerical code for “Heil Hitler.”

The study first appeared in the Studies in Conflict & Terrorism journal.

TikTok, based in China, has gained popularity with its short videos of users dancing and lip syncing, among other talents.

Although the platform’s Terms of Service prohibits users under age 13, many who appear in videos are clearly younger. There are a number of services for people who post videos to get on top and share their message. ExtremeLikes offers its customers the option to buy TikTok views with instant delivery and credit card payments.

“While similar concerns were with regard to other social platforms, TikTok has unique features to make it more troublesome,” the study says. “First, unlike all other social media, TikTok’s users are almost all young children, who are more naive and gullible when it comes to malicious contents. Second, TikTok is the youngest platform, thus severely lagging behind its rivals, who have had more time to grapple with how to protect their users from disturbing and harmful contents.”

The researchers identified TikTok accounts of known extremist groups, then collected posts that featured hashtags associated with extremist movements. Finally they examined the identified accounts and posts, as well as accounts that showed interest in extremism through liking, commenting or following the accounts.

Anti-Semites and Holocaust Deniers Are Using TikTok to Target Youth, Study Shows Read More »

Republicans Sign Letter Backing Israel’s Right to Set Its Own Borders

Leave a Comment / Israel, News /

Top Republicans spearheaded a letter backing Israel’s right to determine its borders at a time that Democrats are pressing Israel not to annex parts of the West Bank.

“We write to reaffirm the unshakeable alliance between the United States and Israel, to emphasize that Israel has the right to make sovereign decisions independent of outside pressure, and to express our support for you as you make such decisions in your capacity as Israel’s democratically-elected prime minister,” said the letter sent Monday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “As dedicated friends of the Jewish state, we reaffirm our steadfast commitment to the relationship between our two nations and Israel’s right to sovereignty and defensible borders.”

The letter, shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, was spearheaded by the first, second, and third-ranked Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives: Kevin McCarthy, Calif., Steve Scalise, La., and Liz Cheney, Wyo., respectively. Also taking a lead in gathering signatures for the letter were the two Jewish members of the caucus: Lee Zeldin of New York and David Kustoff of Tennessee.

It has garnered 116 signatures out of 198 Republicans in the House. The Republican Jewish Coalition recently announced that it would lobby for Israel’s right to extend sovereignty to some areas as envisioned in the Trump administration peace plan unveiled earlier this year.

The letter comes as another letter is circulating among Democrats in the House that warn Israel of the perils of annexing parts of the West Bank. That letter so far has garnered 170 signatures, including top pro-Israel leaders like Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader.

Republicans Sign Letter Backing Israel’s Right to Set Its Own Borders Read More »

Nearly 7,000 People Attend Juneteenth Shabbat Commemoration

Leave a Comment / Judaism /

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery on June 19, 1865, in Texas. Last Friday, among the proliferation of Juneteenth celebrations, several programs took a Jewish approach.  

Be’chol Lashon, which has been celebrating and advocating for the racial and ethnic diversity of the Jewish people since 2000, celebrated with a prayer service welcoming Shabbat and featuring two rabbis of color, Rabbi Sandra Lawson and Rabbi Isaama Goldstein-Stoll. Keshet, the National Council of Jewish Women and Clal co-hosted. 

Nearly 7,000 people registered. After reaching Zoom’s maximum capacity of 1,000, overflow was accommodated via a livestream on Facebook. (An edited version of the livestream is available at the Global Jews Facebook page.) 

“Every week, Jews around the world welcome Shabbat with songs of praise and joy, recalling the creation of a world in which all of us are fully free,” said Be’chol Lashon’s Director of Marketing and Communications Marcella White Campbell on the call. “Almost 250 years after the first enslaved Black people set foot on North American soil, all their descendants were finally set free and their humanity was recognized under the law. That was the true beginning of independence for Americans …. And, like Shabbat, this is worth celebrating with joy and with song.”

“We need to show up, educate ourselves and amplify queer voices of color.” — Rachel Kann

“Two rabbis, black women, queer, leading a Juneteenth Shabbat service with thousands listening and watching. It’s a pretty monumental watershed moment,” singer-songwriter Julie Silver wrote in the stream’s Facebook comments.

Goldstein-Stoll and Lawson invoked that week’s Torah portion, about spies sent to explore Israel who returned with negative reports. Only two, Joshua and Caleb, had “courage and faith,” Lawson said. “In this moment, we need faith, we need strength and we need to believe,” she added, offering a song with lyrics by civil rights leader Ella Baker: “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.”

“Both Juneteenth and this week’s parsha beg the question of what happens when we are unwilling to address and lean into discomfort,” Goldstein-Stoll said. “I pray for myself and for everyone that in all the noise and craziness, we can take moments to sit in the discomfort and make the unbearable a bit more bearable.”

Lawson offered prayers for healing, invoking Moses’ plea to God, “el na refa na la” (‘please, God, heal her’), on behalf of his sister Miriam. “I want us to think of ‘her’ [here] as healing our country in this moment,” Lawson said. 

Be’chol Lashon was founded in 2000 as a response to a “Study of Racial & Ethnic Diversity of the American Jewish Community,” which found that 20% of America’s 6 million Jews are African American, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, mixed race, Sephardic and Mizrahi. 

“The Jewish community should affirm all events where oppressed peoples make advancements toward freedom,” said Rabbi Heather Miller, founder of Keeping It Sacred. “Juneteenth is an important milestone in the struggle for freedom for the Black community … “All Black lives, including Black Jewish lives, matter,” she said. “We are committed philosophically, financially, structurally and spiritually to affirming that value.” 

“Mah norah! How awesome that these extraordinary leaders would invite us to their Shabbat with so much graciousness and generosity,” poet Rachel Kann said. “This is only the beginning. We need to show up, educate ourselves and amplify queer voices of color. I look forward to the Jewish world continuing to co-create a reality, which welcomes Black female leadership and supports it. We have work to do!”

Nearly 7,000 People Attend Juneteenth Shabbat Commemoration Read More »

Pomona College Senior Class President Shares Instagram Story Saying Zionists Are Racists

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles, News /

The Pomona College senior class president reportedly shared a social media post on her Instagram story accusing Zionists of being racists.

The Claremont Independent, a student-run newspaper at the Claremont Consortium of Colleges, reported that the class president shared the post over the weekend. The post contained a tweet that read, “6 million people died in the Holocaust, we still commemorate it to this day. 18.4 MILLION people are dying in Yemen RIGHT NOW. That’s 3 [H]olocausts at once. Saudi [Arabia] is responsible. SILENCE IS COMPLIANCE!!!!”

Below the tweet are the words: “[O]nce again, zionist-Israel-birthright-vacation-stuck-on-comparing-holocaust-to-racism-WW2-worshipping bitches, this should be right up ur alley. Oh wait u hate brown ppl.”

The upper-right hand corner of the Instagram story features the senior class president writing that the post “put into words all I’ve been thinking!”

The Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance Facebook group started a petition calling on the senior class president to apologize or step down from her position.

“Her endorsement of the comments, as evident through her subsequent reposting and her writing, ‘[this] put into words all I’ve been thinking!’ directly isolates and targets the Jewish students she’s supposed to fairly represent,” the petition states. “This is an egregious affront, made even worse by her status as an elected member of student government.”

The petition also urged the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) and the Pomona College administration to address the matter. “We hope that you will recommit to supporting Jewish students and call out this behavior as it is: anti-Semitic,” the petition concludes.

Jewish groups condemned the post.

“Why would an elected leader go so far out of their way to spread hate against the Jewish community, especially at a time like this?” StandWithUs co-founder and CEO Roz Rothstein said in a statement to the Journal. “We stand with Pomona students who are mobilizing to hold the class president accountable for anti-Semitism.”

B’nai Brith International also denounced the senior class president’s sharing of the post in a tweet.

“We are outraged that the @pomonacollege senior class president accused ‘Zionist-Israel-birthright-vacation-stuck-on-comparing-Holocaust-to-racism-WW2-worship[pers]’ of being indifferent to the plight of the Yemenis,” the Jewish group tweeted. “No one with these vile views should represent Jewish students.”

San Francisco Voice for Israel co-founder Mike Harris also tweeted, “Anti-Semitism is the hatred that doesn’t get you canceled on campus.”

https://twitter.com/DrMikeH49/status/1274909603319304193?s=20

The ASPC and Pomona College did not respond to the Journal’s requests for comment.

The controversy surrounding the Pomona senior class president comes after Florida State University (FSU) student senate president Ahamad Daraldik has come under fire for past social media posts stating “#f—Israel” and “stupid Jew.” A vote of no confidence against Daraldik failed on June 17. StandWithUs sent a letter to FSU on June 19 urging the university to take action against Daraldik.

UPDATE: A spokesperson for Pomona College said in a statement to the Journal, “We condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms, and we seek to foster an atmosphere of respect for all members of our community. In this case, the student government representative has apologized and reached out to support cross-cultural dialogue, which we encourage.”

Her apology, which states that she was trying to raise the awareness to the situation in Yemen and didn’t see the comments accusing Zionists of being racists, can be read here and here.

Pomona College Senior Class President Shares Instagram Story Saying Zionists Are Racists Read More »

Home Shalom Monday Message #13

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Home Shalom promotes healthy relationships and facilitates the creation of judgement free, safe spaces in the Jewish community. Home Shalom is a program of The Advot Project.

“God began by creating just one human being so that no one could say, ‘My ancestors were better than yours.’” Talmud Sanhedrin 38a

The rabbis in the Talmud entered into a long discussion about the nature of creation as described in the Book of Genesis in the Torah. They asked themselves why since God is said to have created all the animals in the world in a single day didn’t God simply populate the world all at once as well rather than create only one human being first as in Genesis 2:7, “God formed the Human from the soils humus, blowing into his nostrils the breath of life: the Human became a living being.” As they wrestled with this question, in typical rabbinic fashion they ultimately drew several powerful ethical lessons from this version of the text. The first lesson they taught was that this is to teach us that one who destroys even one life is counted as if he destroyed the entire world and one who saves even one life is counted as if she has saved the entire world. 

The countless demonstrations and protests that have emerged throughout the world to the image seen over and over again of those horrific 8 minutes and 40 seconds of the tragic murder of George Floyd under the knee of former police officer Derek Chauvin have proven the truth and power of the insights of those Talmudic rabbis of two thousand years ago.

The second powerful lesson they derived from the story of the creation of humanity in the Torah is the lesson quoted above. They taught, “God began by creating just one human being so that no one could say, 

‘My ancestors were better than yours.’” It is a lesson in the fundamental necessity of humility and a clear assertion of universal equality among all human beings. 

To have written the foundational creation story of Jewish civilization in such a way that all humanity is said to have grown from the same ancestry is to assert that no one people, or race, or religion, or culture, or language or country is inherently better than another but that all are of equal value in the eyes of God who created us all.

In this time of such division and discord among peoples and nations, among races and political philosophies this is a lesson for all of us to take to heart so that we might build together a world that recognizes the humanity and worth of us all. 

Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, Home Shalom
Naomi Ackerman, The Advot Project

Home Shalom Monday Message #13 Read More »

Joel Schumacher, Director of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ Dies at 80

Leave a Comment / Obituaries /

Joel Schumacher, director of “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “The Lost Boys,” “Falling Down,” and two Batman franchise movies, has died at age 80 after a year-long battle with cancer.

A New York native, Schumacher was a department store window dresser and costume designer before he began directing films, TV episodes and music videos. He did music videos for INXS, Smashing Pumpkins and Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” from “Batman Forever.” His screenplay work includes “Car Wash,” “D.C. Cab,” and adaptations of the Broadway musicals “The Wiz” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”

Schumacher’s other films include “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,” “Flatliners,” “Flawless,” “8MM,” “Trespass,” and movie versions of John Grisham’s novels “The Client” and “A Time to Kill.” Most recently, he directed two episodes of Netflix’s “House of Cards” in 2013.

The son of a Jewish mother from Sweden and a Baptist father from Tennessee, Schumacher studied at Parsons the New School for Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. In the 1970s, he designed costumes for “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” “The Last of Sheila,” “Blume in Love,” and Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” and “Interiors.”

“I think I’m one of the luckiest people that ever lived. I got my dream. I got it so much bigger than even I could have dreamed it,” Schumacher once told the Hollywood Reporter. “I’m just a kid whose parents died very young who was on his own and grew up behind a movie theater before TV, and I wanted to tell those stories, and look what happened.”

Joel Schumacher, Director of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ Dies at 80 Read More »

Nevada Jewish Man Stabbed, Assailant Shouted ‘Heil Hitler’

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

A Jewish man reportedly was stabbed in Carson City, Nevada, on June 19 as the assailant allegedly shouted, “Heil Hitler!”

Carson Now reported the stabbing took place in front of a pub called The Tap Shack; the assailant asked the victim for money before stabbing him in the head. Witnesses say the assailant shouted, “Heil Hitler, you piece of s—!“ and “Sieg heil!” and gave a Nazi salute.

The Jewish man “was conscious and alert when he was taken to the hospital,” according to Carson Now.

Liora Rez, director of the Stop Anti-Semitism.org watchdog, said in a statement to the Journal, “We were afraid as soon as stay-at-home orders were over, attacks on Jews would again continue; this brutal assault unfortunately proved us right. We are outraged this attempted murder isn’t being shared on major news networks, and demand answers from the Carson City PD as to who the attacker is and if he will be charged with a hate crime and attempted murder!”

Bryan Leib, former national director of the Americans Against Anti-Semitism watchdog, tweeted, “Please find this criminal and lock him up ASAP!”

On June 12, a Chasidic rabbi in London was stabbed multiple times while standing in front of a bank. He was hospitalized and is in stable condition.

UPDATE: A suspect, identified as Jeremy Jay Ortega, has been arrested in connection to the stabbing.

Nevada Jewish Man Stabbed, Assailant Shouted ‘Heil Hitler’ Read More »

‘The Marvelous Music of Maisel’: Emmy Season Music Video Raises Awareness and Funds for Charity

Leave a Comment / Entertainment /

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” won’t return to Amazon for its fourth season before 2021, but a new music video highlighting the talent of its actors, singers, dancers and creative team just hit YouTube, just in time for Emmy Awards voter consideration.

Inspired by Season 3’s Miami-set fifth episode, the nearly 10-minute video combines scenes from the show with existing musical numbers and new recordings, including a new socially distanced collaboration on “Strike Up the Band.”

Shot in just three days, the video involved over 60 people—19 tap dancers and 20 musicians among them—participating in quarantine from their homes all over the country. Darius de Haas, who plays Shy Baldwin in the show and his Silver Belles backup singers Markita Prescott, Alysha Deslorieux, and Brennyn Lark also made their contributions separately and virtually on “One Less Angel” and “No One Has to Know” by songwriters Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore.

Costume Designer Donna Zakowska did fittings with all of the dancers and performers via video conferencing, and then dancer’s costumes were shipped to their homes. The director, choreographer, editors, sound and visual effects supervisors also worked remotely. 

As the end-card announcement indicates, the video raises awareness and support for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, MusiCares, and Swans for Relief, “so that ballet dancers may dance, music creators can continue to make music, and those affected by HIV/AIDS have access to vital services.”

‘The Marvelous Music of Maisel’: Emmy Season Music Video Raises Awareness and Funds for Charity Read More »