This week the Schmuckgirls bring you into the group chat with a no-guest episode. They give you a deeper look into their social and work lives as well as diving deep into dating updates. They chat about life after October 7th, issues dating in LA and NYC, how dating rules should be canceled and more!
To submit questions, stories, advice, you can email schmuckboys@jewishjournal.com or DM us on instagram @schmuckboysofficial.
At the Baltic Holocaust Commemoration, held on Jan. 28 at the Latvian Community Center near Elysian Park, it was announced that two of the Baltic States — Latvia and Estonia had acknowledged their governments’ roles in in the killings of Jews during World War II. It was, according to Grant Gochin, the “first time that Baltic countries have stood up in a foreign jurisdiction and addressed the truth in public. It was really brave of them.”
Gochin, a diplomat who serves as Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo, and is Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, a philanthropist and financial advisor made the announcement. He said the two nations were able to accomplish this “because their diplomats were strong truth-tellers.” Missing, he noted, was the third Baltic state, Lithuania, where Gochin has spent the last three decades documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life. He is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation,” and is now working to expose the Holocaust revisionism within Lithuania, where far more Jews (220,000, or 90% of its Jewish population) were killed than in Estonia (1,000) and Latvia (80,000) combined. “They clearly are not going to tell the truth,” he said.
“They won’t respond to anything in public or private. They won’t go to an environment where they have to answer questions. They have made it crystal clear they are not going to be responding and will not be changing their positions.”
For Latvia, this is the country’s second attempt at truth-telling. “They tried last year,” Gochin said. “The Latvians produced an event wherein they were going to show a documentary very critical of the Latvian government.” But “the Lithuanian government objected,” he said. “It went to the highest levels of the Lithuanian government to pressure the Latvians not to do this event in Los Angeles.”
The Latvian diplomats were forced to withdraw. This year, however, Repeated pressure from the Lithuanian government failed.
Estonia participated with Latvia. Gochin noted that Estonia, with a comparatively small Jewish community, was the first Baltic country to be declared “Judenrein.” Three-quarters of Estonian Jews escaped into Russia. Estonian Jews were annihilated first, Gochin explained, because Estonia was not in the Pale of Settlement. (The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 where permanent residency by Jews was allowed. Beyond the borders, Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden.)
“The bulk of murders of Jews in Estonia were by locals,” Gochin said. “When there are no constraints on killing, the population joins en masse.” He explained that in Lithuania, the people started murdering Jews before the Nazis arrived. The Nazis in Latvia complained they couldn’t get the locals to commit murders. “But once the Latvians got started, they caught up,” Gochin said.
The three countries are vastly different from each other, even though all three were occupied by the Nazis and Soviets from 1940 until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.. Estonia is a very modern technological society. Latvia also is “forward-thinking” country with its gay prime minister. Lithuania, Gochin said, is stuck in the 19th century. In the 21stCentury, he continued, “The Russians are attacking the Lithuanians – not physically yet, but they will in time. The Lithuanians are accusing the Russians of all forms of nefarious activities. That probably is true. But Lithuania is trying to elevate as a saintly people.” If Lithuania admits they were “a genocidal nation, if they acknowledge they are as dishonest as the Russians ever have been, they lose their footing to claim victimization.” If they are perpetrators of a genocide, he explained, “how can they claim victimization by Russia?” He rejects that notion. “These events took place 80 years ago, and if they can’t tell obvious truths from 80 years ago, they never are going to,” he said.
“If Lithuania, where the crimes are so obvious, so documented and so pervasive, can lie, then anyone can.”- Grant Gochin
Asked why Latvia and Estonia are now willing to own up to their past, he said “Latvia has had Holocaust truth issues.There still are gaps. It never will be a state of perfection. But Latvia always has been slightly more forthright.” In the last decade the nation has taken a proactive position, as in “we have gaps. We need to tell the truth.’” But Latvia is “a modern, European, progressive country whereas Lithuania still has far more in common with Russia – not because of its proximity but its mentality. Lithuania “can’t get out of that victim mentality,” Gochin said.
He compared their mindset to Hamas. “Hamas goes in to U.N. schools and teaches that Jews are persecutors, while they are fine people doing Allah’s mission. In Lithuania, the people are taught that the Jews are the perpetrators, and that every Lithuanian tried to save a Jew.They have embedded so much into the minds of the population that they cannot get out from under.” For Lithuania to tell the truth now would be an admission that they have been involved in false education. “It would upset their entire society. Someone has to say, is truth about genocide relevant? To me it is.”
Gochin concluded by saying that “if Lithuania, where the crimes are so obvious, so documented, and so pervasive, can lie, then anyone can.” He was succinct in explaining the importance of uncoving the truth: “Human dignity. The value is that you are not threatened by telling the truth. Truth is a basis for reconciliation.”
Two Baltic States Admit to their Role in the Holocaust Read More »
The UCLA undergraduate student government passed a resolution endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on Tuesday night.
The Daily Bruin reported that the resolution passed the Undergraduates Students Association Council (USAC) by a of 10-3 vote in a secret ballot following a debate that lasted nearly three hours. The resolution accuses Israel of engaging in “a genocidal bombing campaign and ground invasion against Palestinians in Gaza” as well as subjecting “the occupied Palestinian population to military rule.” It further claims that UCLA won’t “acknowledge our own complicity in settler-colonial genocide and apartheid through UC contracts, pensions, and investments in companies profiting from Israeli violations of international law.”
Additionally, the resolution mandates that the USAC “maintain an updated list of boycotted vendors and corporations, including vendors and corporations targeted by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, that shall be regularly provided to all student groups/departments and any student within the reimbursement request form and upon request.” The resolution also urges UCLA “to enact similar policies preventing financial or other monetary assets from being used to purchase materials from” companies and other entities that “provide material assistance to the commission or maintenance of flagrant violations of international law and human rights, such as illegal annexation of territory, colonialism, apartheid, denial of the right to self-determination, war crimes and crimes against humanity, or that discriminate on the bases of race, color, caste, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, or age,” and denounces “all forms of oppression,” including antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism.
The USAC’s passage of the resolution comes after the UCLA Graduate Student Association passed a BDS resolution on Feb. 15, according to the Bruin.
The university addressed the passage of both resolutions in a statement on Wednesday. “These resolutions run counter to the position of the University of California and UCLA, which, like all nine other UC campuses, has consistently opposed calls for a boycott against and divestment from Israel,” the university said. “This has been the longstanding position of all 10 UC campus chancellors and the UC Office of the President. We stand firm in our conviction that a boycott of this sort poses a direct and serious threat to the academic freedom of our students and faculty and to the unfettered exchange of ideas and perspectives on our campuses.”
“These resolutions run counter to the position of the University of California and UCLA, which, like all nine other UC campuses, has consistently opposed calls for a boycott against and divestment from Israel.” – UCLA Statement
The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles lauded the university’s statement for saying that the resolutions won’t “impact campus policy.” “These resolutions are antithetical to the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech,” the Federation said in a statement. “They contribute to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty. It is imperative that the UCLA administration continue to denounce antisemitism and actively work toward solutions that help create thriving Jewish life and a more inclusive and welcoming campus environment.”
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Simon Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean and Director of Social Action Agenda Rabbi Abraham Cooper denounced the USAC vote, referring to BDS as an antisemitic movement and calling the vote “particularly divisive as it comes as Israel still struggles to free hostages kidnapped by the Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7th and still mourns the largest mass murder of Jews in a single day since the Nazi Holocaust.” “Pro-Hamas campaigners and hypocritical NGOs and diplomats and jurists thrust the victim — Israel — in the docket of accused genocidal killers, while providing mass murdering, raping, kidnapping, hostage taking Hamas terrorists a lifeline to the future so they can resume and expand their goal of the elimination of the Jewish people,” Cooper added in a statement on the Wiesenthal Center’s website. “SWC joins with renowned Dr. Judea Pearl in emphasizing that Zionism is a core historical value of the Jewish people and that Zionists on the faculty and student body must be respected and protected from intimidation and demonization.”
UCLA Hillel Executive Director Dan Gold posted a video to the Hillel’s Instagram page expressing pride in UCLA’s Jewish students for standing up against the resolution during public comment despite knowing that the vote was already “a lost cause … We heard all the tropes last night,” Gold said. “We’re the oppressor, we have blood money lining our pockets, that we’re classist, that we’re killers, and worse, that we don’t know our own history. I’m here for you, and Hillel is always here for anyone that needs support or extra uplifting this week.”
However, despite the “stain” the resolution leaves on UCLA, “last night showed our community’s strength and our immense connectivity of the Jewish people,” Gold contended. “Last night I heard the beauty of our community, I heard the diversity of our community, and I heard voices sharing your personal stories and your family histories and the truth of about Zionism, Israel and our Bruin Jewish community.”
He added that the Bruin Jewish community “spoke truth to power” during public comment. “You have the entire Jewish world behind you, not only at Hillel,” Gold said. “You have inspired and you have shown us that our community is in good hands, and we will have the brightest future with all of you leading it. I cannot tell you how proud I am and how moved I am and how honored I am to be with you all here at UCLA.”
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UCLA Student Gov’t Passes BDS Resolution Read More »
While Hagit Vardi has published five books of poetry in Israel, “She Wasn’t Damaged” is her first book of poems translated into English. Reading the more than 50 poems — in both Hebrew and English — in this slender volume, one cannot help but recall Audre Lorde’s iconic definition of poetry in “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”: “I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience …” and later: “For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.” While Lorde goes on to speak of the “quality of the light” that enables women to recreate their lives by way of finding language, it’s for the purpose of “survival and change” and “action.” Lorde continues: “Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”
In Vardi’s powerful book, it’s not so much about the so-called “nameless,” but about that we wish did not have a name —sexual trauma, incest and rape by a father. This is poetry that traces a journey from victimhood to empowerment — poetry that is both declarative and therapeutic, poetry that avails itself to the reader as an offering; by naming, by declaring, by confrontation via the written word, Vardi both charts and creates a path toward self-healing. The poems are performative, as is the progression itself. On YouTube, Vardi has posted a video of a somewhat truncated version of the book that offers English subtitles. And a theatrical staging of the book premiered at the 2015 Tel Aviv Citizen Here Festival, which showcases work about human and civil rights.
Many of the poems employ the use of Speaker and Chorus, and within the poems, we move from third person to second and first person as if to find different entrances to speak of the unspeakable.
Many of the poems employ the use of Speaker and Chorus, and within the poems, we move from third person to second and first person as if to find different entrances to speak of the unspeakable. These voices would seem to mirror interior spaces that exist within the victim of abuse. In the first poem, “The Abyss,” we read the words of Speaker: “The void of the mouth/Darkness of dried-out hollow eyes/ A muted scream of a baby girl/ Falling from innocence …” and ends with “A viper’s venom trickles/ Into the gaping wound/ The abyss.” It is clear, stark, powerful. As readers, we confront the crime, feeling as helpless as the victim. Although it begins from a drowning place, as abstract as an abyss might seem, the poem is concrete. With precision and horror, it speaks of the absolute defenselessness of a girlchild. No promises of silver linings here.
The book’s title poem describes a mummy-like body, named “The Mummy” — as not “maimed … Save for a wounded heart/ As the strips dry out/ Her hollow expression remains/ Pinned to the ground.” We can infer that body recovers, but we are told the heart is “wounded.” Perhaps like a mummy, she is bereft of life, deprived of actual being.
The following poem, to be spoken by “Chorus” and “Single Chorus Member” asks for “Just the Facts” — one imagines the world outside the victim asking for “evidence,” were she able to point out the perpetrator. Rape kits probably did not exist when Vardi was a child.
In “Three Baby Girls,” the Speaker uses the first person to name the parts, to acknowledge a fragmentation of the self: The three parts being the “Muted”, the “Mummy,” and the one “cast away in shame.”
In a later poem, the Speaker — using both first and third person — suggests that this was a secret kept for “sixty years.”
It’s directly followed by “And Earth Was Not Without Form and Void,” which appears to be a reworking of Genesis that also makes it clear that the perpetrator, the father in this case, is dead: “His spirit no longer hovers/Today.” This powerful linguistic and cultural resonance returns three poems later, when Vardi invokes one of the holy prayers for Yom Kippur, the Avinu Malkeinu, but with the substitution of one letter (the “k” sound, for which there are two distinct letters), “our father, our king,” becomes “our father, our aggressor.”
I studied Biblical Hebrew (and Aramaic) in graduate school. I attended an Ulpan when I lived in Israel; watching the video, I felt the incredible power and musicality of the writer’s mother tongue. Vardi has spoken about the differences between the languages — how many more words were required for the English. In the poem quoted above, she notes that the Hebrew words for “our king” and “our aggressor” are homonyms — and in fact it’s just one letter that requires substitution to turn “our king” into, as Vardi said, “the one who beats you up.”
In the prayer, we are asking to be redeemed. In the last line of Vardi’s poem: “We will redeem and save ourselves.”
Between those two poems is the poem that provides a turning point, titled “I Met Myself in a Dream,” where, in the first stanza, Vardi writes in the voice of the Speaker “I met myself in my dream — /A sixteen-year-old.” The second stanza begins with “What do you need? I asked/ Revenge, she answered …” The third stanza begins: “How can we get revenge? I asked/ We’ll write, she said/ Write!/ And don’t you erase or embellish.” And the very last stanza, simply: “Let me write.” Notice the pronouns — how many voices there are. How they must now work together. Let the silenced one speak, let the wounded one heal you; let her express herself, let that voice be heard without misrepresentation, without contamination.
In later poems Vardi will mourn the loss of the innocence, the abject betrayal, she will angrily decry the failure of both parents to behave as protectors. Another transition occurs in a later poem with the revelation that moments of “relief” are “likely to be/ Temporary” and yet, in the poem “The Lotus Are Here Again,” she realizes that regardless of the trauma, there is yet beauty to partake of in this life.
A second, shorter part of the book, titled “Epilogue,” offers poems selected and translated into English from Vardi’s fourth book, “The Sea is Your Witness.” “I Learned to Improvise” is a striking poem that’s completely in the first person — without Speaker or Chorus — a series of couplets:
“I learned to improvise/ When the day turned sour,” “Saved from complacency/By a thorny flower” and “From the depth of my wound/I drew will and power.”
The following poem — also in the first person and without Speaker and Chorus —seems to talk back to an early poem in the first part, where she who was “cast away in shame” removes it from her body and casts it back, returns the “shame” to the perpetrator.
Thus, she is restored. By way of a reckoning with the language, she has restored herself.
It is no wonder that poems from “She Wasn’t Damaged” are used by mental health practitioners and in centers in Israel dedicated to survivors of sexual violence. An organization in the U.S. is also promoting the book for use by their staff.
Speaking of dedication: Vardi, a flutist and Feldenkrais Practitioner, has dedicated this book “to those who have experienced the expressed emotion.”
Twice a Pushcart Prize nominee, Geri Lipschultz has published in the New York Times, College English, Ms, and others, and her one-woman show, “Once Upon the Present Time,” was produced in NYC by Woodie King, Jr.
The Poem as a Therapeutic Tool Read More »
The miracle project (TMP) will receive a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Founded by Elaine Hall, who is also artistic director, TMP is a fully inclusive theater, film, social skills and expressive arts programs for individuals with autism and all abilities.
“Our vision is to change the way the media portrays and the world perceives neurodivergence and disability.” –Elaine Hall
“Our vision is to change the way the media portrays and the world perceives neurodivergence and disability,” Hall, a pioneer in creating neurodiverse experiences and opportunities, told the Journal. “Being acknowledged by the NEA as an arts organization elevates the discussion and validity of different types of minds creating equally important works of art.”
She added, “It also shows that our fully inclusive musicals, plays, music videos and films are changing the way the media portrays disability.”
TMP’s $10,000 award is one of 1,288 grants, totaling $32,223,055, announced last month in the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2024.
“The NEA is pleased to announce these grants, all of which strengthen our nation’s arts sector in different ways,” Maria Rosario Jackson, Ph.D., National Endowment for the Arts chair, said via the NEA website. “Whether it’s the creation of new art, opportunities for the public to participate and engage in the arts or work to better understand the impact of the arts, these grants contribute to the well-being of individuals and communities, help meet the challenges of our time, and build towards a future in which all people can lead artful lives and reach their full potential.”
The Challenge America grant is primarily offered to small organizations for projects that extend the reach of the arts to underserved groups and communities. These projects range in disciplines from artist communities, arts education, dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literary arts and local arts agencies to media arts, museums, music, musical theater, opera, presenting and multidisciplinary arts, theater and visual arts.
While TMP has received monies from various foundations and government entities, showing their programming as therapeutic and educationally valuable for the general public to understand how neurodivergent individuals are creative artists, this honor is different.
“This award identifies us as having artistic significance among other impactful arts organizations,” Hall said. “It will allow us to expand further the knowledge of the beauty of what neurodivergent individuals are capable of.”
TMP will use this grant to fund the Miracle Project Workforce Training Initiative for Neurodiverse Artists, which is comprised of three programs.
“Express Yourself” is a first-of-its-kind production workshop. An online class, it includes writing, producing, costuming, choreography and acting training for those who use assistive technology to communicate.
“I Can Do That,” offered as a beginning, intermediate and advanced class, trains neurodivergent and disabled actors for careers as actors or voice-over actors in the entertainment industry.
The “Miracle Masters Internship Program” focuses on the hiring of neurodivergent and disabled individuals for positions such as board members, teachers and office support staff.
“The NEA grant calls attention to The Miracle Project’s newest program, ‘Miracles In Action!’” Hall said. “This is a fully inclusive leadership development and mentorship program for teens and adults interested in giving back to the community, spreading awareness and giving opportunities for tikkun olam.”
When asked how this endorsement validates the important work they do, Hall said it shows that TMP is not only therapeutically meaningful to their participants and their families, and educational to the general public, but it’s also artistically significant.
“It validates TMP’s vision that the world will recognize the innate talents within those with disabilities, and that they will be able to pursue their dreams, while educating the public as to how their way of being in the world is as valid as that of neurotypical individuals,” she said.
Hall continued, “It furthers our Jewish mission of emboldening young people to fully access and use their G-d-given gifts to the best of their abilities; developing job skills, leadership, and creativity is core to our Jewish values.”
February is Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month (JDAIM).
“Everyone during JDAIM and beyond can listen to those who cannot speak, be welcoming to those who may appear different than you and honor the voices and perspectives of all,” Hall said.
Miracle Project Receives NEA Grant Read More »
On Feb. 16, the UC Davis student government voted in favor of a bill that bars the student government’s $20 million budget from going toward “the purchase of products from corporations identified as profiting from the genocide and occupation of the Palestinian people by the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] National Committee,” according to The Algemeiner.
The bill, which was signed into law by the student president, “makes BDS a permanent policy of the school and links it to the issue of racial justice,” The Algemeiner reported.
Hillel of Davis and Sacramento said in a statement posted to Instagram that they are “deeply disappointed” with the student government’s decision.
StandWithUs announced on Feb. 14 that they have sent a letter to a school district north of Seattle to investigate a lesson for second graders that glorified anti-Israel protests.
The letter, dated Jan. 17, expressed “deep concern” over a lesson at Syre Elementary School in Shoreline, Wash. The video showed, among other things, children doing the “from the river to the sea” chant. This video was described as young people protesting for “what is right.” After the video was shown, students were directed to make “a poster in support of Palestine.”
The Shoreline Unified School district said in a statement to the Journal, “The lesson materials that appear to have been used are not part of the district-approved ‘Social Studies Alive!’ or ‘Storypath’ curricula.”
Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) President Sally Kornbluth announced on Feb. 13 that the university has suspended the Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA) for holding a protest on campus without receiving permission from the university.
Campus Reform reported that the protest in question was an “Emergency Action Hands Off Rafah” demonstration calling on the university to cut ties with Israeli forces. Kornbluth said in a video statement that while the university’s action had nothing to do with the CAA’s viewpoint, “we have clear, reasonable ‘time, place and manner’ policies in place – for a good reason! The point of these policies is to make sure that members of the MIT community can work, learn and do their research on campus without disruption. We also need to keep the community safe – and we can’t do that without enough advance notice to organize staff and police resources.”
The CAA claimed that the university is silencing “our voices by applying a double standard to our actions” and “that MIT fears the mass mobilization of our community.”
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) signed onto a statement for a ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Inside Higher Ed reported that, according to a member of the AAUP’s national council, a “significant majority” of the council voted to sign onto the statement. The statement, which was put forth by labor unions in the United States, reads in part: “We express our solidarity with all workers and our common desire for peace in Palestine and Israel, and we call on President Joe Biden and Congress to push for an immediate ceasefire and end to the siege of Gaza.” The statement also calls for Hamas to release the hostages and for both Israel and Hamas to follow international law.
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign Professor Cary Nelson, former president of the AAUP, told Insider Higher Ed that the AAUP needs to be “politically neutral” and “to treat Hamas as a traditional international interlocutor is just an absurdity.”
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced on Feb. 13 that they are investigating Johns Hopkins University over two statements calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
One of the statements, which was signed by more than 120 faculty members at the university denounced “the horrific ongoing violence inflicted on the Palestinian people, and we urgently call for an end to the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip,” according to Jewish Telegraphic News Agency (JTA). The other statement, from the Teachers & Researchers United graduate student union, urged the university to call for a ceasefire and to release all documentation of the university’s support for the Israeli military. Zachary Marschall, the editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, filed the complaint to OCR, alleging that both statements have resulted in a “unsafe” environment for Jewish students on campus.
The university told JTA that they would cooperate with OCR on the matter and that the university “abhors anti-Semitism and discrimination of any kind.”
Campus Watch February 22, 2024 Read More »
Israelis may have been shocked by the recent IDF military intelligence report that Hamas will survive the war in Gaza. Leaked to the press in an apparent attempt to shame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials, the internal report belies their repeated pledges to destroy Hamas completely.
“The bottom line,” said Israeli investigative reporter Ilana Dayan, an outspoken critic of the government, about the report’s findings, is that “Hamas will survive this campaign as a terror group and a guerrilla group.”
As jarring as the army’s predictions are in their opposition to Netanyahu’s claims, they should neither surprise nor embarrass anyone. Of course, Hamas will survive the war. The only question is: in what form?
If we’re talking about an organization with nearly 30,000 members in its armed Al Qassam Brigade — active terrorists arrayed into an estimated 24 battalions, massively armed and positioned in as many as 450 miles of tunnels — all under the command of Yahya Sinwar and other military leaders, the answer is no, Hamas will not survive the war.
Israel has already killed 10,000 terrorists and wounded or arrested several thousand more. This means that up to 60% of Hamas’s forces have been neutralized.
Hamas the military force will never be the same after this Israeli campaign. But Hamas the movement, Hamas the idea, will surely survive.
The government can reduce the threat of a resurgent Hamas, but only by taking bold diplomatic decisions that include the demilitarization of the Gaza strip and efforts to deradicalize its population.
While armed forces can destroy a terrorist army and its bases, no amount of firepower can annihilate a concept. The United States spent trillions in the fight against ISIS and Al-Qaeda, yet both organizations still exist and occasionally mount attacks. In its theology, Hamas is identical to other Islamist groups that seek to recreate the medieval Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and then expand it globally. It differs only in seeking Israel’s destruction as the first stage in that quest.
That threat can only be eliminated by longterm efforts to combat radicalization, especially among children. Such campaigns have been initiated in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, and are already registering success.
Absent a similar effort among Palestinian youth, Hamas the idea will continue to inspire numbers of them to launch terrorist attacks against Israelis. Hamas cells will form in the West Bank and elsewhere and strive to act, sometimes with agonizing effect. But deprived of the backing of an independent state, the ability of these groups to cause major damage will be greatly diminished.
But even the most ambitious reeducation program will prove insufficient without providing Palestinians with a diplomatic horizon, as well as a detailed “day after” scenario for Gaza.
Neither, unfortunately, has been provided by the Israeli government, beholden to its most radical factions. The result has been a vacuum in which the United States, together with Arab and Palestinian leaders, are drawing up plans for a future Palestinian state which most Israelis will likely reject. More acceptable would be federated and expanded autonomy plans that would pose far less of a threat to Israelis.
Hamas, by contrast, may welcome the creation of a state where it enjoys overwhelming popular support. That backing, Hamas might conclude, will enable it to rise, once again, from Gaza’s rubble, and reemerge as more than a mere idea.
In light of its egregious failures on Oct. 7, Israelis have little reason to trust in the IDF’s intelligence estimates. This one must nevertheless be taken seriously. The government can reduce the threat of a resurgent Hamas, but only by taking bold diplomatic decisions that include the demilitarization of the Gaza strip and efforts to deradicalize its population.
Michael Oren, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Knesset Member, and Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, is the author of the Substack, Clarity, and the founder of the Israel Advocacy Group.
What Will Happen to Hamas? Read More »
And this is what you shall offer upon the altar: lambs in their first year, two a day, continually. ~Exodus 29:38
If you want the Holy One to dwell amongst us
you’re going to need a continuous supply of lambs.
One in the morning, and one in the afternoon.
Young ones, too, so make sure your adult lambs are frisky.
They’re going to need to keep producing.
The supply must be continuous.
Have the Holy One’s preferred recipe on hand.
Stock up on flour, and olive oil, and wine, and fire.
If you’ve been following along with civilization
you should be able to make your own fire
but the other ingredients are going to take work.
It is still the pre-grocery store era and
what you’ll need, you’ll have to produce.
It takes a lot of work if you want the Holy One
to dwell amongst us, and that’s by design.
Otherwise, God could show up in the middle of
any people who’ve hardly put in any effort and dwell
amongst them. Would they even appreciate it?
Anything worth doing is worth doing right and
we are told now how to do it right, so God can
take meetings with us and, presumably, provide
much more direction about how to live our best lives.
So ready the livestock, and please don’t contact the ASPCA.
No lambs were harmed in the writing of this poem.
Rick Lupert, a poet, songleader and graphic designer, is the author of 27 books including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion.” Find him online at www.JewishPoetry.net
Baaad Situation – A poem for Parsha Tetzaveh Read More »
Could something good come out of the October 7 murders, rapes, and beheadings? At least one ex-State Department official seems to think so—and it’s not the first time U.S. officials have suggested that Palestinian Arab violence might have a positive side.
Writing in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, former Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk asserts that as awful as October 7 was, there could be a beneficial result—the creation of a Palestinian Arab state.
“As a result of the war in Gaza,” Indyk writes, the Biden administration has “stronger leverage to transform the resurrection of the two-state solution from a talking point to a reality.” Moreover, Israel’s “deterrent power took a blow on October 7,” creating a “new dependence” by Israel on the United States, which “makes Israel vulnerable to U.S. pressure,” according to Indyk.
The fact that Hamas is holding Israeli hostages could also help this process, Indyk suggests. If the U.S. brokers “another hostages-for-prisoners swap” (by “prisoners,” he means convicted Palestinian terrorists), then “the Israeli public would be profoundly grateful,” and therefore President Biden might be able to convince average Israelis that creating a Palestinian state would “keep Israelis safer.” Thanks to the “massive costs” that the Hamas pogromists inflicted, the Israeli public might be ready to give in, Indyk theorizes.
This is not the first time Indyk or other U.S. officials have suggested that Palestinian Arab violence against Israelis has a positive side, but they used to be more coy about it.
In June 1997, an unnamed “senior U.S. official” told the Jerusalem Post that Arab violence against Jewish residents of Hebron was “a plausible safety valve” that “lets the Palestinians vent their anger.” Indyk was the U.S. ambassador in Israel at the time. Two months later, the Israeli news media reported that aides to PresidentBill Clinton recommended “that he allow what [they called] the ‘explosive’ situation between Israel and the Palestinians to deteriorate to a violent clash [because] this will convince the sides of the need to renew negotiations.”
Indyk subsequently was promoted to assistant secretary of state. After he met with Israeli officials in early 1999, the Jerusalem Post reported that “a senior U.S. administration official” remarked that it was “unreasonable” not to expect the Palestinian Arabs to “resort to desperate actions” if Israel did not make additional concessions.
In May 2000, Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, rationalized Arab violence by invoking the biblical concept that something can be both a curse and a blessing. He said Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israel was a curse, but it was also “a blessing,” because “the tragedy that awaits in the event of inaction also constitutes the greatest incentive for immediate action” toward a negotiated agreement.
In more recent years, some U.S. officials have made similar statements. The Israeli news media reported in May 2014 that a “senior U.S. official” (from the Obama administration) said: “The Palestinians are tired of the status quo. They will get their state in the end—whether through violence or by turning to international organizations.” The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Israeli officials believed the person who made the remark was Martin Indyk.
There are historical precedents for State Department officials, and other prominent Americans, viewing human rights violations by evil regimes as less important than some policy goal. Breckinridge Long, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ambassador to Italy, considered Mussolini’s abuses a minor matter compared to his “punctual trains” and “well-paved streets.” And while Long did not endorse the brutal persecution of Vienna’s Jews following Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, he argued that Hitler’s move should be accepted because the Nazis would “bring order, system, and comparative peace” to that region. Nevertheless, FDR promoted Long to assistant secretary of state.
“I am not in accord with the Jewish situation in Germany,” aviation hero Charles Lindbergh wrote after visiting there in 1936. But while Hitler “is a fanatic in many ways,” he “has accomplished results (good in addition to bad) which could hardly have been accomplished without some fanaticism.” Overall, “the condition of the country” demonstrated that Hitler had “far more character and vision” than his critics acknowledged, Lindbergh argued.
University of Arizona President Homer L. Shantz, who led an academic tour group to Nazi Germany in 1934, did not deny there had been a “little furor” aimed at Jews there. But what was really important, he declared upon his return, was that Nazi Germany was creating “the most perfect [land use] ever developed…there are not as many weeds in Germany as in one square mile in this country.”
Such attitudes were, needless to say, disgraceful. Nazi abuses were not some kind of necessary cracking of eggs in order to make an omelette. Mussolini could have developed efficient trains without torturing dissidents; Hitler could have eliminated weeds without massacring Jews. It is equally wrong to view Palestinian Arab violence as inevitable, and as something that is less important than its possible diplomatic consequences. Jewish victims of Arab terrorism are real people who are being murdered or maimed, orphaned or widowed.
In his Foreign Affairs essay, Martin Indyk is saying, in effect, that while October 7 was a nasty piece of business, that’s just what Palestinian Arabs do, so we should look on the bright side—it might convince Israelis to give in to U.S. pressure for a Palestinian state. That’s an ugly sentiment, and unfortunately, it’s nothing new; Indyk is just finally saying the quiet part out loud.
Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest is Whistleblowers: Four Who Fought to Expose the Holocaust to America, a nonfiction graphic novel with artist Dean Motter, published by Dark Horse Books.)
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Charisma is a gift of self-projection
to perfect strangers, in a way
that obviates what may be their objection
to problematic things we say.
Moses, David, Solomon possessed it, and
a lot of other heroes in the Bible too.
It is a charm we from our leaders may demand,
but blooms, unfortunately, only in a few.
Preciously once present were the charismatic goods
from which the tabernacle in the wilderness was made
with polished gold and silver, bronze, and rare, exotic woods,
the model for the temple where Judeans sang and prayed.
However great was then charisma of the holy building
Jews built first in the wilderness to house the Ark and then in
Jerusalem, these buildings should be seen as merely gilding
the lily of God’s presence it contained in them, within.
Alas, the centerpiece, the holy ark, was lost,
together with the broken tablets Moses smashed;
we Jews are its survivors; rolling stones unmossed,
God’s charismatic relics all, who won’t be trashed.
‘A rolling stone gathers no moss’: English proverb originally Latin.
Exod. 25:8 states:
וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃
And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.
Bava Batra 14b states:
The verses state: “At that time the Lord said to me: Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first…and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, and you shall put them in the Ark” (Deuteronomy 10:1–2). This teaches that both the second set of tablets and the broken pieces of the first set of tablets were placed in the Ark.
In “Charged Wonders,” NYR, 2/8/24, Peter Brown, reviewing an exhibition, “Africa and Byzantium,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, November 19, 2023–March 3, 2024; and the Cleveland Museum of Art, April 14–July 21, 2024), writes:
Charismatic goods were privileged goods. They bore with them a charge of life-enhancing energy, delight, and majesty that appeared to have been brought from the ends of the earth. They were supposed to transform their owners, touching them with a speck of glory that raised them above the humdrum routines of daily life and the ordinary exchange of goods.
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Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
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