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Jewish Journal

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April 1, 2021

US to Offer Compromise to Iran, Hoping to Kick-start Nuke Talks

Leave a Comment / Middle East, News, Wires /

The White House intends to offer Tehran a compromise – partial compliance with the nuclear deal signed in 2015 between Iran and a number of world powers for partial sanctions relief, Politico reported on Monday.

The proposal marks a shift from US insistence that Iran return to full compliance with the nuclear accord before any sanctions are lifted. The Americans are anxious to get the Iranian issue off their table, an expert explained.

The compromise being prepared by the Biden administration is one US officials hope will bring the Iranians to the negotiation table after a period of stagnation, according to the Politico report. The proposal, whose details are still under consideration, offers to lift some of the American sanctions currently weighing on the Islamic Republic, in return for a partial halt to its nuclear activity.

If true, this latest development is a sign of change in the Biden administration’s policy regarding Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Until now, Washington has insisted that sanctions relief is dependent on Iran first returning to full compliance with its obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Iran has strayed significantly from its obligations under the agreement. Contrary to the deal, the country has enriched uranium well beyond the agreed purity limit, also increasing its stockpile of the material far beyond the accord’s allowance. In February 2021, The Wall Street Journal revealed that the Iranians have begun producing uranium metal, also forbidden by the agreement. The material can be used in the construction of nuclear weapons.

The Iranians, in turn, appear to have already ruled out the compromise. According to state-owned Press TV, a senior Iranian official said Tehran will stop its production of highly enriched uranium with a 20% concentration of uranium 235 – an element of the proposal outlined in the Politico report – only if all American sanctions are first lifted.

Iran has insisted that the US be the first to act and lift its sanctions, as it was the first to leave the agreement and fall out of compliance. President Joe Biden promised to return to the agreement during his election campaign, but so far, no progress has been made.

Reached in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 countries (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, the UK, France, China, and Russia – plus Germany), along with the EU, the nuclear deal was intended to put the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites under international supervision and limit its ability to produce a nuclear weapon. The effectiveness of the deal was controversial. The EU and the Obama administration were strongly in its favor, while Israel and Saudi Arabia were its loudest critics, supported by hardliners in the US.

President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the agreement in 2018, after calling it “the worst deal ever negotiated.” In its place, Trump instituted a “maximum pressure” policy regarding Iran, which included heavy sanctions.

Shimon Stein is a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and an expert on arms control.

“Each side has its conditions and I think that Iran currently has the upper hand, while the US is trying to find a way to backtrack” on its insistence that Tehran act first, “after it understood that its condition that Iran return to full compliance with 2015’s JCPOA before it begins to lift its sanctions – that’s probably not going to happen,” Stein told The Media Line.

The US, Stein explains, is interested in “putting the nuclear issue ‘back in the box’; they want to take it off their urgent agenda as quickly as possible.”

Even within American nonproliferation policy, North Korea takes precedence, and so the White House is looking to secure progress with the Islamic Republic as quickly as possible, “even at the cost of swallowing their pride, to some degree.”

Contrarily, Iran currently enjoys an advantageous position, Stein believes. It is obvious that the “maximum pressure” policy has failed to deliver, he says, and data shows that “the Iranian economy will experience growth in the coming year,” despite the US sanctions. In addition to that, the Chinese and the Russians “support the Iranian position that the US should return to the agreement and lift the sanctions because it is the one that broke the agreement.”

Stein also points to the recent agreement between China and Iran. Signed over the weekend, it lays the foundation for a 25-year partnership. While Stein says this development has mainly symbolic value at present, it should help the Iranian economy, which in turn, lessens American leverage.

“All signs are indicating that Iran is under less pressure and that the sanctions – even if they are very painful – have failed to bring Iran to its knees, and it seems doubtful that they will manage to in the near future,” Stein says.

Speaking about the impending US proposal, Mark Fitzpatrick, an associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and an expert on nonproliferation, US foreign policy and nuclear issues, told The Media Line “it’s the politically expedient move for Biden to make right now.”

The current situation is dangerous, he says, with inspections “in a limbo for a couple of months” while Iran is keenly “determined to further break the commitments to the deal.

“It’s absolutely in US interest and it’s in global interest and I don’t see any downside other than the political liability it could create for Biden. There are no security or diplomatic reasons not to do this,” Fitzpatrick says.

The expert adds that Biden may be limited by opposition within the Senate, and “this may be as much as he can do right now.”

However, he is not optimistic that such offers for partial compliance will be successful. Instead, Fitzpatrick suggests the US make some concessions for humanitarian reasons.

“I really think the US could make some unilateral steps that it could fully justify on humanitarian grounds. Releasing some of the funds impounded is an obvious step,” he says, giving one example. “It’s a way to unlock the deadlock of sequencing. This is a way that the US could move first and unlock the deadlock.”

Dr. Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with the Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program in the UK, agrees that progress needs to be made.

“The deadlock needs to be broken and it is really down to the US to start to unlock it,” he told The Media Line. “The US and its partners also know that time is pressing and unless one party takes the initiative then it will be too late − so the time for dancing is over.

“We can expect Iran to dig in its heels on sanctions relief,” Quilliam also expects, “but it will at least get things moving. If that fails, then we can expect back-channel talks to begin in earnest.”

The Islamic Republic’s upcoming election may delay an Iranian move by months, adding to the sense of urgency felt by administration officials, the Politico report stressed.

“If progress toward JCPOA re-entry stalls before Iranian presidential elections take place in June, negotiations are unlikely to begin until at least September, and by then any goodwill bounce associated with the Biden administration will be spent,” Quilliam says.

Fitzpatrick stresses that the time frame may be limited not only because of the elections.

“I think the next two months could be the make or break period for the JCPOA. If it’s not restored in the next two months, if Iran continues to break all of its commitments, it may be then impossible to restore it and parties may have to start over from a much more dangerous starting place,” he says.

The agreement has to be restored, he opined, “before Iran’s accumulated enrichment stockpile becomes more dangerous, before its research and development makes further progress and before we face a greater crisis. And that’s the urgency, even more so than the presidential elections.”

If this eventuality materializes, and the agreement is not restored, “we would be back in the situation of the 2011-2012 period, when Iran’s nuclear capabilities were at what Israel had described as the point of no return.” In this situation, a military option will be back in consideration, Fitzpatrick says.

US officials have repeatedly stated that they view the return to the deal as a springboard for discussing a wider agreement. While Iran has rejected this, saying there is nothing to negotiate further, Quilliam believes “it is essential that JCPOA re-entry is linked to other pressing issues, such as Iran’s support for militias, its proliferation of missiles and management of a regional ballistic missile program, as part of a wider deal.”

Progress that ignores this will draw strong opposition from regional players, US allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, which will likely “act as spoilers should the US pursue a narrow focus,” Quilliam says.

Stein explains that the Biden administration is aware of the current severe time constraints, which influence its policy, but at the same time, the White House does not want to appear under pressure. This is causing officials to oscillate between a tough demand that Iran act first, and proposals such as the one revealed.

However, “at the end of the day, it seems to me that – if I had to bet – the US is the side that’s going to have to compromise,” Stein says.

US to Offer Compromise to Iran, Hoping to Kick-start Nuke Talks Read More »

The Blessing of Springtime

Leave a Comment / Commentary, Opinion /

For now the winter is passed
The rains are over and gone.
The blossoms have appeared in the land.
The time of pruning has come.
—Song of Songs 2:11

Spring has arrived in Southern California, along with the month of Nisan and the festival of Passover. Life erupts in new greenery, in buds and flowers, in the smallest hints of citrus bounty yet to be. In parks and gardens across the region, extravagant bouquets of color and fragrance contribute their offerings to a symphony of smell and sight. How delightful it is to get outside these days!

In my own yard, we are blessed with so much green! The pepper tree sports thousands of bright red peppercorns, the orange and tangerine trees have the most intense and fragrant white flowers — some of which are already showing the beginnings of oranges yet to be — and even the new pomegranate tree is erupting in new leaves as it stretches itself toward the sun.

How do we respond to nature’s resurgence? These new expressions of vitality evoke the deepest feelings of marvel, awe and joy, and we are invited to join the re-emergence into life through our presence, our attention and our words.

Presence

My wife and I took advantage of the week of Passover to walk through our neighborhood and venture out to several of the extraordinary parks and gardens that festoon Southern California: The Los Angeles Arboretum, Descanso Gardens, the Huntington. We placed ourselves before these trees, shrubs, flowers and ferns to remind ourselves that we are part of something bountiful and beautiful. It is a gift to be alive.

We placed ourselves before these trees, shrubs, flowers and ferns to remind ourselves that we are part of something bountiful and beautiful. It is a gift to be alive.

Attention

Jewish tradition calls it “kavanah,” and Asian traditions speak of mindfulness. It is good to emerge again into life; it is even better to be aware of that renewal. So we take time this week to appreciate the annual carnival that is spring, with its intense colors and smells and connections. In a place where words can only point, there is power and healing in placing ourselves in the presence of ancient redwoods, miniature bonsais or raucous roses and appreciate them in silent joy.

Words

Judaism offers an ancient heritage of words and blessings for (almost) every occasion. One such berakhah (blessing) is said annually when seeing the new blooms on flowering fruit trees for the first time, generally in the month of Nisan.

When we first see and smell these new blossoms, The ancient rabbis instruct us to offer praise: “You are bountiful, Holy One our God, Majesty of SpaceTime, whose world lacks nothing and Who created goodly creatures and trees in order that humans might enjoy them.” This is a farmer’s prayer and the prayer of an agricultural society. It invites us to notice and give thanks for the miracle of fruit-producing trees and food-producing plants, which make human life not only possible but celebratory. I invite you now, while it is still Nisan, to find a local fruit tree, inhale its beautiful perfume, rejoice at its new flowers and then say this berakhah as a way of giving thanks.

In our day of climate change, we should appreciate that nature does not merely exist to serve humanity but also is glorious and beautiful as its own entity. Can we also craft a new blessing, not to replace the old, but to express our awareness of the miracle of plants and trees — not just for how the benefit us, but for how they sustain all life and make our planet a paradise?

In that spirit, join me in a new blessing for an ancient appreciation: You are bountiful, Holy One our God, Majesty of SpaceTime, whose world reminds us that we still live in a Garden of Eden, a paradise of plants and animals, mountain and ocean, sustained by the drive to live and thrive that is a manifestation of your love. May it be Your will that the springtime renewal opens our hearts anew to the call of your creatures and opens our hands to sustaining the life of this beautiful jewel of a planet, our home.

Amen.

Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson (www.bradartson.com), a Contributing Writer for the Jewish Journal, holds the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and is Vice President of American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He is also dean of the Zacharias Frankel College in Potsdam, Germany, ordaining Conservative rabbis for Europe.

The Blessing of Springtime Read More »

Meet Six Druze Leaders Changing Israel for the Better

Leave a Comment / Israel, News, Wires /

(Israel21c) The Druze of northern Israel are a tiny religious and ethnic minority. Neither Muslim nor Christian, they comprise just 145,000 of the country’s 1.95 million Arab citizens. Yet Druze Israelis are well represented at senior levels in academia, politics, the military, science, medicine, arts, sports and business.

“Relative to our numbers we are very accomplished, just like the Jews are in the world,” says Druze Israeli entrepreneur Aiman Amer (see his profile below). “We’ve learned from the best.”

Amer explains that the monotheistic Druze religion, founded in Egypt about 1,000 years ago, expects followers to live and marry within their own communities but not as a separate nation.

Altogether, there are about 2 million Druze, primarily in Syria, Lebanon and Israel, as well as Jordan, North America, Venezuela, Germany and Australia.

“Each community is completely patriotic and loyal to its country,” says Amer, adding that the Druze also value dignity and equality between men and women.

Below are profiles of six highly successful Druze citizens of Israel. All trilingual, speaking Arabic, Hebrew and English, they are role models far beyond their northern villages.

Col. (res.) professor Salman Zarka, director general of Ziv Medical Center

Professor Salman Zarka, director general of Ziv Medical Center. Photo courtesy of Ziv Medical Center.

Zarka says he completed 25 years in the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps on “the first candle of Hanukkah” in 2014. Two days later, he became the first Druze to head an Israeli hospital—the 350-bed Ziv Medical Center in Tzfat.

His parents, who spoke only Arabic and could not read, raised a large family in the Upper Galilee village of Peki’in and encouraged their children to achieve.

Zarka certainly did. He has an MD from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in public health from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Haifa. He has taught medical students and published nearly 40 papers.

After Zarka had the honor of lighting a torch on the eve of Israel’s 71st Independence Day in 2019, many young Druze told him that he inspires them to dream big and work hard.

Zarka says he’s a proud member of the Druze community in Ussifiya on Mount Carmel, yet his Israeli identity comes first in all he does, whether serving in the IDF or providing humanitarian aid to victims of the Syrian civil war and other disasters around the world.

“The Druze were connected with the Jewish community here even before the establishment of the state,” says the father of two current Israeli soldiers.

Zarka, now 56, experienced just one incident of blatant discrimination.

“When I finished the medical officers’ training course in 1988, HR wanted me to serve as a physician in the air force, even though there were no Druze then in the air force,” he relates.

But the colonel in charge blocked Zarka’s appointment, saying he did not want to be the one to send the first Druze to the air force.

“So I didn’t go, just because I am Druze. I appealed the decision unsuccessfully, and so out of love for my country I went to the battalion where I was assigned and did my job well.”

Zarka went on to head the Medical Corps of the Northern Command, an IDF field hospital treating civilian casualties of the Syrian civil war and finally Military Health Services.

“I left as a colonel, the same rank as the person who refused to send me to the air force,” he says with a smile.

And now the Israel Air Force finally has its first Druze colonel.

Shady Hassan, cofounder of Vocalis Health 

Named to the Globes “40 Under 40” list for 2020, Hassan is the son of a physician in the Druze village of Julis. He graduated from the Technion medical school in 2006.

After a decade of practicing internal medicine, Hassan recognized an impactful opportunity to combine medicine and technology.

“While working at Carmel Medical Center, I found myself habitually listening to my patients’ voices to gauge the state of their health,” he explains.

“I realized that if I could quantify the data available in a patient’s voice, I could help millions of patients. Advances in artificial intelligence and vocal analysis technology made this possible.”

After taking courses in medical device development and business management, and getting an investment from the aMoon Fund, Hassan founded Healthymize with Daniel Aronovich and Tal Wenderow in 2017. In December 2019, the company merged with Beyond Verbal and was renamed Vocalis Health.

Their AI-assisted vocal analysis, first used to monitor respiration, was adapted as a screening tool to assess COVID-19 risk based on a unique “vocal fingerprint.”

Hassan has led Vocalis into collaborations with institutions including the Mayo Clinic and manages its clinical development in screening, detecting and monitoring acute and chronic voice-affecting health conditions.

“The Druze are well educated and integrated into Israeli society,” he says. “On the other hand, at least until a few years ago entrepreneurship wasn’t common. You’d see some Druze in senior positions at corporations but not starting companies.”

Therefore, although this medical technology pioneer hopes to resume treating patients someday, at age 39 he is gratified to be an example for young Druze engineers and physicians.

“I hope to be an inspiration, an image people can look up to,” says Hassan.

Fatma Shanan, painter

Fatma Shanan. Photo by Adi Shraga.

Born in 1986 in Julis, Shanan was exposed to art at home, at exhibitions in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and in her family’s travels to Europe. She received her bachelor’s degree in 2010 from the art institute of Oranim College and has become an award-winning painter.

Was it unusual for a Druze woman to choose art as a career? Shanan replies, “It is unusual to be an artist in general. But I had the support of my family from the beginning.”

Shanan’s realistic, large-scale oil paintings are infused with a Druze spirit, most famously in her series depicting intricate carpets typical of her village, placed in unexpected contexts.

Often painting from photographs of herself, she suggests fluid definitions of gender, national and ethnic identities through her works.

“It is not only about physicality but also about the meeting of human and nature, a little surrealist,” she says.

Painting by Fatma Shanan.

Shanan won the 2016 Haim Shiff Prize for Figurative-Realist Art from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where she exhibited solo in 2017. Her works also appeared in other major Israeli museums, at the Art Dusseldorf international art fair in 2018 and at the Armory Show in New York City in 2019. She has participated in residency programs in New York, California and Tel Aviv.

She’s now “working day and night” in her Tel Aviv studio preparing for a show at Dittrich & Schlechtriem Gallery in Berlin, where she had a solo show of self-portraits in 2019.

“Today I’m happy to see that my success is affecting lots of young people who want to study art because of me.”

Aiman Amer, founder of Skillinn Technologies

Aiman Amer, cofounder of HR-tech company Skillinn Technologies. Photo by Orel Cohen.

Also from Julis, Amer served in the famed IDF signals intelligence unit 8200, which has spawned a large percentage of Israel’s high-tech entrepreneurs.

In 1999, armed with a degree in computer science, Aiman embarked on a 17-year career recruiting and managing employees while building and managing Israeli R&D centers for multinational companies such as Intel, Microsoft and Nokia.

His experience taught him that high-tech companies struggle to find potential employees with the exact talents they need.

In 2017, he co-founded HR-tech company Skillinn with a Jewish partner and with an investment from serial entrepreneur David Maman.

Amer describes Skillinn as “the fastest search engine for tech talent. It’s an easy and intuitive platform that measures technical skills.”

Skillinn gathers and crunches data provided by the candidate and from external sources including professional online forums and posts.

The Herzliya-based startup works with job seekers and with recruiters at companies worldwide. It also cooperates with an Israeli Ministry of Labor initiative to increase opportunities for Arabs in Israel’s high-tech ecosystem.

Skillinn has extended its reach to the West Bank and Jordan, and soon Dubai.

“When I started out, few Druze were learning computer science and few were going into entrepreneurship,” says Amer.

He was speaking in the midst of his family’s move back to Julis from Haifa. He explains that he and his wife, who works at Intel, enjoyed having exposure to many cultures in Haifa but that it’s important for them to raise their two children in their own culture.

Inshirah Sgayar Shannan, senior obstetrician at Galilee Medical Center 

OB/GYN Dr. Inshirah Sgayar Shannan. Photo courtesy of Galilee Medical Center.

When Inshirah finished high school in the traditional Druze village of Yarka about 20 years ago, most of her friends headed for marriage and motherhood.

“I felt I was meant to do something else,” she says.

She entered the University of Haifa intending to become a teacher. Then she switched to psychology. During master’s studies, however, a physiology course inspired her to apply to the Technion medical school. She graduated in 2010.

“Being the first female medical student in my village was like saying I was going to the moon,” she says. “But I felt a cosmic pull to be a model for change, and my parents supported me.”

Another outside-the-box decision was to marry a Druze man from another village—lawyer Mahmoud Shannan, CEO of the Druze Heritage Center in Israel. They live in Hurfeish, near the Lebanese border, with their four boys, aged one to 10.

Shannan is now a senior physician in the fetal-maternal medicine unit and delivery room of Galilee Medical Center, treating Muslim, Bedouin, Druze, Christian and Jewish women.

In addition, she does medical research, teaches at Bar-Ilan University’s medical school in Tzfat, and is active in a clinic that her unit offers for women with poor obstetric histories.

“We review their files and tests and give them our medical opinion and support, with the goal of a better outcome in future pregnancies,” she says.

“It’s very intense emotionally and it takes a lot of time to prepare the reports,” she adds. “It’s a free service. But I didn’t study medicine to make a lot of money, just to help women.”

She spearheaded the first Israeli study on prenatal care during the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that many pregnant women were afraid to go for checkups and testing. She will urge the Health Ministry to implement telehealth and other strategies, especially in Arab villages, enabling prenatal care from home.

Shannan says she is gratified to see more Druze women following in her footsteps and seeking her advice.

“Many people know there is a Druze minority in Israel, that we are good citizens and believe in one God, but they may not know that brotherhood, peace and caring for one another are our values,” she says. “We see ourselves as an important and critical part of the Israeli community.”

Professor Fuad Fares, associate human biology professor, University of Haifa

Human biology professor Fuad Fares. Photo courtesy of University of Haifa.

“I think I was the first from my village to get a PhD in medical sciences,” says Fares, a 65-year-old native of Hurfeish.

The extended Fares family accounts for about 1,000 of the 7,000 residents of this village between Nahariya and Tzfat. His second cousin, Muhana, heads the Bureau for National Programs at Israel’s Education Ministry.

Hurfeish, a Druze village in the Northern Galilee located near Nebi Sabalan, a tomb sacred to the Druze faith. Photo by Doron Horowitz/Flash90.

A full-time associate professor at the University of Haifa’s department of human biology, Fares founded the molecular genetics lab at Carmel Medical Center and has headed it for 24 years. His goal is to screen the Druze population for genetic diseases.

“Marriage is forbidden outside the religion, and it’s important for us to remain in the same community, so we are a genetic incubator,” says Fares. “I saw that genetic diseases are a problem in some families. Therefore we encourage people to come for screening and genetic counseling in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.”

Fares got his first degree at the Hebrew University and his master’s and doctorate at the Technion. He did postdoctoral studies in molecular biology and pharmacology at Washington University in St. Louis.

With Lital Sharvit, who earned her PhD in his lab, Fares is developing a biologic treatment for pancreatic cancer using extracts from a unique Israeli mushroom and other plants. The university’s tech-transfer arm, Carmel, established CanCurX to advance and commercialize this technology.

“CanCurX has another project in gene therapy,” says Fares. “We look for genes in cancer cells that are silenced or mutated and use them for treatment of cancer.”

He’s also searching for genetic markers in families prone to cancer, and with the European Commission is developing a novel nanoparticle drug-delivery system to direct medication to cancer cells.

Fares, author of more than 75 papers published in major journals, served for 15 years on the Israel Council for Higher Education.

He says his parents encouraged academic studies, and that he and his wife have done the same for their two sons and two daughters. Fares proudly reports that each child finished a degree in the past year: two PhDs, one master’s degree and one BA—so far.

“I believe if you direct yourself to excellence then you will have no problem” getting ahead in Israeli society, he says.

This article was first published by Israel21c.

Meet Six Druze Leaders Changing Israel for the Better Read More »

The Stories of Overlooked Female Polish WWII Resistance Fighters

Leave a Comment / Books, Wires /

(JTA) — They hid revolvers in teddy bears and dynamite in their underwear. They learned how to make lethal Molotov cocktails and fling them at German supply trains. The girls with “Aryan” features who could pass as non-Jews flirted with Nazis – plying them with wine, whiskey and pastry before shooting them dead.

When the Nazis occupied their native Poland, Jewish women, some barely into their teens, joined the resistance and risked their young lives to sabotage the regime.

That crucial but often overlooked story of defiance and resistance is told by Judy Batalion in her new book, “The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos” (William Morrow). It’s the result of her 12-year odyssey digging through archives and interviewing descendants of the women. The research skills she honed while earning a doctorate in the history of art from the University of London helped her navigate the daunting challenges of crafting a cohesive, factually accurate narrative out of history shrouded in myth and neglect.

The book and a companion edition targeting 10- to 14-year-olds are both due out on April 6 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Director Steven Spielberg has optioned the book for a motion picture and signed Batalion to co-write the screenplay.

“I was slow with this book because it was so challenging – emotionally, intellectually and practically. I had to deal with reading incredibly difficult memoirs and testimonies on my own,” she said in a phone interview from her New York City home.

Batalion, who spent her mid-20s in London working as an art historian by day and stand-up comedian at night, is not a Holocaust scholar accustomed to reading graphic primary sources. She felt weighed down by the women’s accounts of being sexually assaulted by Nazis, of soldiers stomping on Jewish babies and of mass murder committed before their eyes.

“Their stories seeped into my system. I worked on it in dribs and drabs when I could,” Batalion said of her years of off-again, on-again research and writing.

Niuta Teitelbaum as a schoolgirl in Łodź, 1936. During the war, she became known as “Little Wanda with the Braids.” (Courtesy of Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum Photo Archive)

Donald Trump’s election as president, with the misogyny and anti-Semitism that she saw churned up in its wake, pushed Batalion to go all in and craft the ghetto girls’ stories into a work of narrative nonfiction.

“I felt a shift in the zeitgeist. The importance of telling honest stories about women in the Holocaust and women’s empowerment felt urgent,” she said. “I dashed off a book proposal and committed to diving into two years of intensive, focused research.”

At the heart of the project is an obscure Yiddish book published in 1946 titled “Freuen in di Ghettos” (“Women in the Ghettos”) chronicling these young women’s tales of resistance and derring-do. Batalion discovered the dusty tome by chance in London’s British Library while researching strong Jewish women. Why, despite her years of education at a Montreal Jewish day school, where she learned Yiddish and Hebrew, and as the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, had she never heard of these ghetto girls?

“My research was very complex and strangely time consuming. I had to work in multiple languages,” she said. “The women’s names and the place names had so many confusing iterations — Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, English.”

Her research missions took her to Poland for two weeks and Israel for 10 days. She visited the places that her heroines wrote and spoke about.

“I wanted to understand what the ride from Krakow to Warsaw looked like from the train window and experience a taste of what they did,” she said.

Batalion hit the research jackpot at Warsaw’s new Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, where an archivist directed her to thousands of pages of information about Jewish resistance fighters. She snapped photos of the documents to share with a Polish translator in New York.

Renia Kukiełka in Budapest, 1944. (Courtesy of Merav Waldman)

“The Light of Days” highlights the incredible tenacity of Renia Kukielka, one of the youngest ghetto girls. As a 15-year-old, Renia saw her parents deported from the Będzin ghetto to Auschwitz. Fueled by outrage, she and her older sister, Sarah, joined the ghetto’s resistance movement.

Renia’s youthful charm, fluent Polish and soft features made her an ideal courier. The Jewish underground obtained expensive fake papers that established Renia’s identity as a Catholic Pole. She successfully ran multiple missions, smuggling weapons, correspondence and money from Będzin to Warsaw until the Gestapo discovered her papers were forged and threw her into prison. Despite repeated beatings that left her bloodied and unconscious, she clung to her cover story and never revealed her Jewish identity.

Sarah and her underground comrades bribed a guard with whiskey and cigarettes to rescue her from prison. Weak and feverish from starvation and physical abuse, Renia mustered the strength to run through forests and over snow-capped mountains. She survived a tortuous journey through hidden bunkers in Slovakia, then on to Hungary, Turkey and the ultimate destination – Palestine.

Against terrifying, oppressive odds, Renia lived to tell her story in a memoir she began writing at 19. When Batalion read Renia’s memoir she felt as if she’d discovered a kindred spirit – a thoughtful writer processing her experiences.

Batalion’s favorite research and writing involved the surviving ghetto girls’ postwar lives.

“I wanted to know how they reconstructed their lives after going through everything they did. I so wanted to talk to their children and find out who these women became,” she said.

She achieved this level of intimacy with her subjects on her trip to Israel, when she met with their descendants. Batalion was overjoyed to meet Renia’s adult children, who described their mother’s zest for family, fashion and world travel.

“This brought home on such a personal level that I was writing about real people,” she said.

Judy Batalion: “I was slow with this book because it was so challenging – emotionally, intellectually and practically.” (Beowulf Sheehan)

Batalion hopes the stories of female heroism she resurrected serve to inspire future generations of all faiths, especially her own two daughters, both in elementary school.

“These were women who saw and acknowledged the truth, had the courage to act on their convictions and fought with their lives for what was fair and right,” she said.

She feels a deep sense of connection to the ghetto girls who died fighting and believes they sacrificed themselves for the future dignity of the Jewish people. Their stories serve as a timeless call to action to women to empower themselves to resist all forms of oppression.

During this difficult COVID year, Batalion drew personal inspiration from her subjects’ life stories.

“Thinking back to their stories of courage and bravery really helped me,” she said. “I thought if they could get through the horrific challenges they faced, I can definitely get through this.”

The Stories of Overlooked Female Polish WWII Resistance Fighters Read More »

How Does Automation Help Businesses Succeed?

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Today, it is crucial for businesses to make sure that their employees pay attention to the minutest details, follow workflows, and don’t abandon tedious tasks before completion. To ensure that this is the case of your organization, you need to establish standard processes that work efficiently.

This is where automation comes in. Automated processes ensure conformity and uniformity in how your company operates. Therefore, you need to keep consistency over monotonous executions.

Many companies leverage business process automation to manage their portfolios, projects, knowledge assets, dataflow, workflows, and self-service portals.

Automation platforms and tools allow you to optimize and scale your small business by helping you minimize errors, lower costs, reach new, ultimately customer satisfaction.

Here’s how you can take advantage automation processes for your business:

Email Marketing Campaign For Your Ecommerce Site 

With automation, you can incorporate filters in your emails to automatically segregate them according to your audience/visitor types on your website.

Furthermore, you can also segment and tailor the emails based on your target customer’s interests, their last visited items on your site, etc. There are various email marketing campaign opportunities that you can leverage by automating your processes.

And with sales significantly affected amidst the COVID-19, 28% of small businesses are shifting to websites such as e-commerce platforms, whereas 51% of them are looking to expand their digital sales channels, as per a report by SMB Group.

E-commerce is imperative for business survival. Small or large businesses can no longer ignore the importance of creating a viable online presence and set up an e-store where customers can shop remotely.

With automation, you can considerably streamline your ecommerce email marketing processes by incorporating their systems to record systems. It automatically edits, populates, and deletes any data related to your products, as well as an update about the product availability on your site in real-time. Automation enhances the customer experience while simplifying your ordering processes.

Automate Your Onboarding Process Efficiently

Hiring new people is a daunting task, especially when HR has to look after many things simultaneously. Regardless of how careful you are with the entire procedure, it is time-intensive. And if you rush through the onboarding process, you may have to face other challenges due to inaccuracies.

From an HR professional’s standpoint, automation is suitable for screening candidates, finding applicants with related skills, and eradicating implicit biases, leading them to overlook a potential candidate.

Furthermore, automation also allows you to move the redundant tasks associated with the recruitment process, such as aligning schedules, sending out forms to candidates, and leading the new hires through onboarding.

Automating HR lets you gauge your employees’ capabilities every day and complete their responsibilities on time, etc.

According to a McKinsey analysis report, around 60% of professions can be automated, and the automation opportunities for automation for the activities you consider necessary but recurring or repetitive.

Optimize Remote Work

Small businesses have limited resources and encounter significant challenges as they plan to scale and grow amidst the global pandemic.

Either way, remote work is paramount and a critical necessity in this ever-evolving business dynamics. And automation enables you to make working easy for your employees regardless of their location — whether new or accustomed.

By automating your processes and workflows, your employees can work in assimilation seamlessly, moving and completing projects and no matter where they are in the world.

From drafting a simple contract or agreement with many colleagues to having your routine purchases/projects sanctioned, automation makes distance working less stressful.

Avoid Data Compliance Regulations Issues

Adhering to government and industry-related regulations can be costly and stressful, particularly for small businesses.

For instance, a healthcare provider may wonder if they are handling patient-related information accurately, while an HR manager wants accurate info on employment taxes. Specifically, a highly regulated industry, such as finance, law, healthcare, or compliance, consumes many resources and time.

The good news is that automating your business processes allows you to be more confident. You can integrate rules into your functions and workflows while ensuring that your employees follow the necessary procedures that comply with industry and regulation standards.

Improved And Effective Collaboration

With automation, you can manage complex projects much simply and effortlessly. It is imperative to leverage tools and platforms that help you automate your project management. These automation tools help you ensure that the information is flowing in the right direction and to the relevant teams at the right time. That way, it also allows you to monitor your team members’ tasks, responsibilities, and accomplishments.

Automation keeps everybody in the loop. All the people involved in a project can stay updated on the project progress and status, which helps you oversee all the team members and gauge if they are on the right track. It also enables you to make sure that you meet all your deadlines.

Furthermore, manual data entry and overall processes leave every business vulnerable to errors in critical operations such as bookkeeping, invoicing, contract creation, and inventory management.

These problems are inevitable and are a nuisance that can sometimes cost you thousands of dollars. That is where automation comes in handy and saves you from extra trouble.

Automation makes sure greater accuracy in your business, eliminating the blunders that come with manual tasks. Minimizing human error is paramount to seamless business processes. It also helps you save your small business from wasting time, resources, and energy.

Wrapping Up

Ultimately, business automation is all about improving productivity and enhancing the overall experience for your customers.

Automating removes the human element/intervention from repetitive, time-intensive, and low-impact business tasks. This gives your employees time to concentrate on the necessary functions that require skilled professionals.

When done right, your business can make the most out of such a capability to generate better results and drive ROI.

Jay T. Ripton is a freelance business, technology, and lifestyle writer out of Scottsdale. He loves to write to inform, educate and provoke minds. Follow him on Twitter @JTRipton.

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A Moment in Time: Taking a Closer Look

Leave a Comment / 'A Moment In Time', Blogs /

Dear all,

Care to guess what this photo represents?

Is it from an airplane looking down at desert mountains?
Is it from a telescope looking at the surface of another planet?
Is it of a stone wall in an ancient city?

Believe it or not, this is a close up of a tortoise taken from our Pre-School at Temple Akiba!

In Genesis, when God looked at the creation, God didn’t just look at the world from far away. God saw the crevasses in each mountain, God saw the colors of each fish, God saw the twists in every vine, and God saw the tears in humanity. And when God saw this, God said, “This is good.”

When we take a moment in time to look, to really look at the world more closely, the ordinary becomes exceptional, and the mundane becomes awesome. What will you see this week?

Rabbi Zach Shapiro

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After Election, Netanyahu Turns to Desperate Measures

Leave a Comment / Israel, News, Wires /

(The Media Line) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu finally broke his weeklong silence Wednesday evening, addressing the nation in his first public appearance since election night on March 23.

Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett, come home. … Let bygones be bygones

“Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett, come home,” Netanyahu called, imploring his political rivals – the heads of two right-wing parties who, prior to the elections promised to unseat the long-serving prime minister – to “let bygones be bygones” and form a government headed by him.

Yet many saw the desperate plea as merely another rhetorical trick, meant to allow Netanyahu to turn to an altogether different coalition.

The odds of both Bennett and Sa’ar, former colleagues turned foes of the prime minister, forgetting the bitter past and joining forces with Netanyahu are extremely low.

In lieu of a homogeneous right-wing government, consisting of Netanyahu’s Likud, Bennett’s Yamina, Sa’ar’s New Hope and the radical Religious Zionism parties, the prime minister has instead signaled his willingness to establish a government that would lean on a surprising new partner.

Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab List, broke free of the predominantly Arab Joint List during the latest election cycle, refusing to commit to either of Israel’s pro-Netanyahu or anti-Netanyahu blocs.

Vowing only to care for Israel’s Arab minority, Abbas has pledged to support any coalition that would allocate the funds required to heal the community’s rising crime, unemployment and poverty rates, even a coalition made of mostly right-wing parties and headed by Netanyahu.

Unlike the Joint List, which refuses to sit with Netanyahu and accuses him of outright racism, Abbas, who netted four seats in last Tuesday’s elections, now serves as Israel’s kingmaker, able to hand the required 61-seat majority to either side.

Yet while the anti-Netanyahu coalition, headed by center-left candidate Yair Lapid, has in recent months reiterated its readiness to sit with parliament’s Arab representatives, Netanyahu himself repeatedly ruled out any such option.

“I will not form a government with the United Arab List, I will not lean on Abbas in any way, either by his support or abstention, to establish my next coalition,” Netanyahu insisted again and again during his interview blitz in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

Yet with the final results showing the pro-Netanyahu bloc unable to muster a government, Netanyahu’s Likud party quickly changed tunes.

“It is our duty to do everything to avoid a fifth election,” Likud MP Miki Zohar said last week. “We have to exhaust all political options to form a government.”

Tzachi Hanegbi, another Likud member close to Netanyahu, was blunter.

“It wasn’t our preference, but in our current situation, we definitely see Mansour Abbas as a potential [partner],” Hanegbi said.

Conscious of the extreme flip-flop, Netanyahu has since ordered his Likud MPs to remain silent, as negotiations over a coalition move forward.

These are people who sympathize with terrorists, who refuse to accept Israel as a Zionist state, whom the Likud itself asked to disqualify from contention in previous rounds. How could they possibly become our allies?

“No way, I won’t accept it,” Amir, a Likud voter from Jerusalem, told The Media Line of possible cooperation with Abbas’ party.

“These are people who sympathize with terrorists, who refuse to accept Israel as a Zionist state, whom the Likud itself asked to disqualify from contention in previous rounds. How could they possibly become our allies?”

Abbas’ United Arab List is the political wing of the Southern Branch of Israel’s Islamic movement, considered aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Zehava, another Jerusalemite who gave her vote for Netanyahu, was more open-minded.

“If they’re willing to let go of national aspirations and the Palestinian cause, and focus only on civilian issues like crime and social problems, then what’s the harm?” she asked.

When reminded that it was Netanyahu himself who condemned similar overtures to the Arab parties by Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party in the previous rounds, Zehava insisted there was a stark difference.

If it were a leftist coalition and the Arabs had a central role in it, then yes, that would be dangerous

“We’re talking about a right-wing government, with one small Arab party supporting it from the outside. There’s no danger of anything going wrong,” she assured The Media Line.

“If it were a leftist coalition and the Arabs had a central role in it, then yes, that would be dangerous.”

Last year, fearing that a coalition was forming between Blue and White and the Joint List, Netanyahu warned such an alliance would pose “an immediate existential threat to our country.”

Weeks before that, Netanyahu explained Arab lawmakers could not be partners to a government because “that was the will of the Zionist voters.”

The prime minister in past elections warned his supporters that “the Arab voters were arriving in mass numbers at the ballot boxes,” and a Facebook message sent from Netanyahu’s page said that Arab Israeli citizens would “slaughter our women and children.”

In a poll released Wednesday evening by Channel 13 News, 45% of those identifying as pro-Netanyahu voters – but not exclusively Likud supporters – approved of a hypothetical government headed by the incumbent and aided by Abbas.

A slightly smaller figure – 39% – opposed such a possibility.

“We haven’t been asked to poll such a question,” Rafi Smith, the Likud’s pollster in the recent election cycle, told The Media Line.

“It’s not something we’re testing among Likud voters, and I honestly couldn’t estimate what the response would be. It’s an interesting question.”

Still, the breathtaking about-face still has some hurdles.

Even with Abbas’ backing, which is anything but assured, Netanyahu would still require the support of Bennett, who could land the coveted prime minister’s office if he would instead elect to join the Anti-Netanyahu group of parties.

And then there is the Religious Zionism party, which Netanyahu also must have behind him, and whose head Betzalel Smotrich unequivocally ruled out any chance of joining a coalition aided by Abbas.

“Forget it… they’re not legitimate partners,” Smotrich wrote on Facebook last week. “It won’t happen, not on my watch. Period.”

On Monday, incidentally the same day on which Netanyahu’s corruption trial enters its evidentiary phase, the various parties will arrive at President Reuven Rivlin’s Jerusalem office to announce their recommended candidate for prime minister.

Rivlin will then nominate the politician with the highest chances of forming a viable coalition within one month.

“I’m telling you right now, if they do this, they’ve lost my vote. It’s ridiculous,” Avner, another Likud voter, told The Media Line on Thursday.

“They need Sa’ar and Bennett to come home and help establish a right-wing government, and if that doesn’t happen, then fifth elections are fine. But a minority government with [the United Arab List]? No way.”

The most important thing is keeping [Netanyahu] in office

Kobi, a Likud voter from Beersheba, had a different view.

“The most important thing is keeping [Netanyahu] in office,” he told The Media Line.

“He’s brought us the coronavirus vaccines, he’ll pull us out of the economic mess. I trust him. If he says Abbas is fine, then he’s fine by me.”

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NY Man Attacks Hasidic Jewish Couple and Baby With Knife

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

A New York man was arrested on March 31 for allegedly attacking a Hasidic Jewish couple and their one-year-old baby with a knife. The New York Post reported that the suspect passed the couple on the streets of Lower Manhattan before turning back attacking the couple from behind.

The Hasidic man sustained a wound to the head and the Hasidic woman was cut on her lip. The suspect also attacked the couple’s daughter, who got slashed on the chin. The couple proceeded to run away from the attacker and the suspect followed them.

The Hasidic Jewish couple, who were reportedly visiting New York from Belgium, told the police that while the suspect was ranting during the attack, he didn’t say anything anti-Semitic.

The suspect was later arrested on counts of assault, criminal possession of a weapon and possession of a controlled substance. He had been released from prison in February after pleading guilty to a robbery and assault that occurred in August 2011.

Jewish groups weighed in on the attack. “We are aware of this terrible incident and are reaching out to Law Enforcement to find out more,” Anti-Defamation League New York / New Jersey tweeted. “If you have information about it, please contact @NYPDHateCrimes and @ADL_NYNJ.”

The Stop Antisemitism.org watchdog tweeted that the fact that the suspect turned back to attack the couple shows that the attack “was NOT random; he saw Jews and WALKED BACK to attack them.”

 

Former New York Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who heads the Americans Against Anti-Semitism watchdog, also tweeted, “This is horrendous! How much violence is needed before NYC leadership figures out it’s untenable?! Must people die?! Violence is out of control in the city, [especially] targeting Jews. Enough! Where is the public outrage?! All the ‘humanitarians’ silent?! Because victims are Hasidic?”

Bryan Leib, executive director of Iranian Americans for Liberty, similarly tweeted, “Jews have been under attack in NYC for years!!! Where is the public outrage? Where is the wall to wall coverage on cable TV about this? When will Jewish Lives matter???”

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I Want to Break Free From my OCD

Leave a Comment / Columnists /

The obsessive thoughts started when I was a kid. As soon as I woke up each morning, I’d think, “I am going to be late for school. I am going to be late for school.” Then I’d scream, “Mommy! I am going to be late for school!”

“No, you’re not!” she’d yell back groggily from her room. She never liked waking before 10 a.m. if she didn’t have to, but since I was too young to get myself ready, she had to be up at 8 a.m., the crack of dawn, to get me to Mrs. Walsh’s homeroom.

While inside my mother’s Toyota Corolla, I’d bite my fingernails and glance at the clock, outside my window, at the clock, then outside my window, over and over again.

“Mommy, it’s 8:26. I have to be at school in four minutes.”

“We are two minutes away,” she’d sigh.

I’d stare at the clock until it turned so I could justify my nagging.

“Mommy, it’s 8:27. Hurry up!”

I’d bite my fingernails so low they’d be bleeding by the time we’d arrive.

“Put pressure on it,” my mom, the nurse, would say. “It’ll stop.”

I’d say goodbye, slam the car door and run into class, and of course old Mrs. Walsh wouldn’t take her unenthusiastic rendition of attendance for another 15 minutes.

After school, I’d walk home with my best friend Ashley and stop every 30 seconds or so to check the bottom of my shoes.

“What are you doing that for?” Ashley once said.

“Dog poop. I want to make sure I didn’t step in dog poop,” I said so sternly, as if it were a grave concern a third grader should be worried about.

“I didn’t see any,” Ashley would reply. Her mother constantly yelled at her to make her bed perfectly every day before she went to school, or else. I related a lot to her mom.

When my mom would go to bed and I’d be the only one awake in the house, I’d check to make sure the front door was locked and the oven was off and there were no fires burning or burglars trying to break in or leaky faucets that could flood the basement. My friends who came over, by contrast, were scared of my Charlie McCarthy doll. But I knew dummies didn’t come to life; that was ridiculous.

One day, my mom couldn’t take it anymore. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to take it much earlier than that, but now she had a boyfriend with money and could afford to send me to the psychiatry hospital, Sheppard Pratt. I started seeing a cognitive behavioral therapist (CBT) for my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

The therapist was a nice woman with brown hair who tried to explain to me — using a Mr. Potato Head — that whether she removed his eyes or changed his nose or switched around his mustache, he was still Mr. Potato Head. I don’t exactly remember the psychology behind it, and I’m surely dumbing it down now, but somehow, it worked, and I was compulsion-free for maybe three months or so. I felt that I could think clearly, that the weight was gone. There was so much free space in my head to concentrate on the Backstreet Boys instead.

The thoughts came back, though, and they got more vicious, more invasive, more time-consuming. Instead of spending 30 minutes a day obsessing, I was now spending a few hours. I became addicted to America Online, and I would go on my computer for 12 hours a day. My worst fear was that the computer would get unplugged and I would lose everything, from the Britney Spears website I was working so hard on to the 2001 version of “Lady Marmalade” that I was downloading for the last six hours. Every few minutes, I’d check that the computer plug was firmly in the socket. If it looked like it was slightly coming out of the wall, I’d quickly push it back in. One time, it came unplugged, and just like when I saw a bare Mr. Potato Head, nothing happened. Still, something could. That’s how I justified it in my head.

I also started overeating because of my OCD. I was worried about what would happen to my food if I didn’t finish all of it at once. Crabs were my favorite food, and one time, I saved my leftover crabs in the fridge to enjoy when I got home from school the next day. When I opened the fridge and they weren’t there, I asked my mom what happened. She said she ate them. I cried my head off. She said she wouldn’t replace them — they were $50 a bushel. I never left a crab or a slice of pizza or a bag of Chex Mix uneaten again.

I began to learn more about my illness but only from pop culture. When I was 14 and read David Sedaris’ “Naked,” in which he talked about his obsession with licking the light switches in his school classroom, I finally felt like I wasn’t alone.

Later on, as I became an adult and got married and started loving my life, I became absolutely terrified that I didn’t deserve any of it and that someday it would all come crashing down. Things were going too well, I was too happy, and the universe was going to show me what I had coming.

I’d think: My husband’s been out for three hours, and his phone is off. What if, G-d forbid, he’s hurt? The plane I’m on is shaking a little bit; this is a bad sign, and I’ll have to start calling all my family members and telling them I love them because we’re going down. I’m pulling out of my driveway during rush hour? I have to check each way three times before going because I’ve heard too many horror stories.

One thing I always obsessed over was my beloved pit bull Juno dying. I believed she would one day get run over by a car. The older she got, the more I played this terrible image over and over in my head. It got worse when I was postpartum after having my daughter because I was suddenly more anxious than ever that my beautiful little world was going to collapse.

Then, one night after obsessing about Juno for close to an hour, I decided I needed help. I read on a message board for dog owners that this is a very common worry, and we shouldn’t think about our dog dying because our dog wants us to be happy. That really helped. I went to bed peacefully and stopped imagining it. And then Juno died of kidney failure three weeks later. I vowed from then on to never stop thinking about my dogs dying.

In Judaism, we have this custom where if you say it, it might come true. So if I do have to speak about something that I don’t want to happen, I throw in a “G-d forbid” and/or “bli ayin hara” (“without the evil eye” or, colloquially, “back off evil forces”). Listen, evil eye, when I said that thing, I didn’t actually mean it, so don’t take me literally. I’m convinced that all my “bli ayin haras” are keeping me alive. (I do realize, of course, that I added another layer of OCD to my OCD in constantly reciting this saying).

My OCD is like a dear friend that I also hate. It can be quite good to me: It keeps my house clean. It probably keeps me safe in some ways. It definitely makes sure I am over-nourished at all times. It gives me a cool edge, I guess, something interesting I can mention at parties. I can claim to be offended when someone says, “Oh my gosh, I am so OCD,” and I know they are lying. “My illness is not a colloquialism. Take it back, Tiffany!”

My OCD is like a dear friend that I also hate.

But my OCD takes a turn when it gets too needy, and then I have to try and extract myself from its grip. I usually don’t succeed.

So how will I contend with this? My lifelong friend and foe. Will I go on medication for my OCD? No. I went on that stuff for my anxiety with varying success, and I gained 20 pounds and became much more OCD about my weight.

I won’t embrace the OCD like it’s some sort of honor because it isn’t. It makes me messed up, and it makes my life harder in most ways. I’d like to go to bed for once and not get up three times to check on my daughter and my dogs and my oven and my locks and my shower faucet and my windows and my heater and the ADT alarm system. I would like to be free.

This Passover, in pursuing my own freedom, I decided that I am sick of being at the mercy of my illness, and I’ve made an appointment with a CBT therapist. I am going to do intensive therapy, facing my fears and not giving in to my obsessive thoughts. I hope to conquer this thing one final time and get that much closer to recovery and a happier life overall.

But before I do that, I need to check the stove.

Kylie Ora Lobell is a writer for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, The Forward, Tablet Magazine, Aish, and Chabad.org and the author of the first children’s book for the children of Jewish converts, “Jewish Just Like You.”

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A Bisl Torah — Training Wheels

Leave a Comment / A Bisl Torah /

We took the training wheels off of Henry’s bicycle. He hasn’t perfected his riding skills with the training wheels, but he insisted. Henry wants to ride like the big kids and didn’t hesitate jumping on as soon as the wheels were removed.

Did he magically start riding? Not even close. A few falls, some bruises. Huge smiles and an eagerness to keep trying. I found myself envious and encouraged by his tenacity. Why does a five year old jump so high without concern when so many of us concentrate on the long way down? While his lack of inhibition may result from lack of understanding, I often wish there was a special preschool balm to apply when adults need a little boost to start something that feels slightly out of reach.

We are nearing the final days of the Pesach holiday. Soon we will put the dishes away, clear out the matza, and Passover 2021 will be stored in mental memories and iPhone archives. But the exodus from Egypt continues to be told through our daily and Shabbat prayers. A reminder that striving for freedom is a story that must be revisited over and over again. Otherwise, we might lose the urgency to fight for justice and disable our ability to see past what looks ultimately hopeless.

We must invoke liberation to bolster our spirits when we have been trained to believe that a goal isn’t ours to attain. How many times have you heard: You’re too young. You’re too old. It’s not your time. I don’t think you’re ready. Others are bigger, faster, more important. You should wait. Take a back seat.

But here’s some advice from a five year old. Freedom is only ours if we’re willing to see ourselves without an imprisoned soul. Take off your training wheels. You will most likely fall. But you just might fly.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach

Rabbi Nicole Guzik is a rabbi at Sinai Temple. She can be reached at her Facebook page at Rabbi Nicole Guzik. For more writings, visit Rabbi Guzik’s blog section from Sinai Temple’s website.

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