Jewish News, Sept. 24, 2021

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Arizona divests from Ben & Jerry’s citing ‘antisemitic, discriminatory efforts against Israel’

Arizona is the first state to divest completely from Ben & Jerry’s following its decision to stop selling ice cream in Israel’s West Bank.

“As Arizona’s chief banking and investment officer, I stand with Israel and I will not allow taxpayer dollars to go towards antisemitic, discriminatory efforts against Israel,” State Treasurer Kimberly Yee said Sept. 7. Yee announced her candidacy for governor of Arizona on May 17.

As of June 30, Arizona had $143 million worth of investments — in the form of bonds and commercial paper — in Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company. But it was zero as of Sept. 21, when the last investment in Unilever matured.

Ben & Jerry’s announced July 19 that it would continue operating in Israel, but would stop selling ice cream in the West Bank, which the company described as “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Israel disputes that designation.

Arizona is among 33 states that have passed laws or issued executive orders targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, according to a database maintained by Lara Friedman on behalf of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and Americans for Peace Now, groups that oppose the anti-boycott legislation. Arizona’s 2016 law states that public state

Israel looks to American Jews for social media support

NICOLE RAZ | STAFF WRITER

Jacob Gimbel, like many American Jews, is still reeling from the social media posts he saw during May’s violence between Israel and Hamas.

“Social media started blowing up,” said Gimbel, 17. He never before saw such “widespread hating against Israel” on his Instagram feed, with some posts even being antisemitic.

The Phoenix teen took action and began engaging with people posting content he felt was factually inaccurate. Sometimes he knew them, like his classmates, and sometimes he didn’t.

“I made a point to go and talk to them about it,” he said. “There have been times I have been blocked or unfollowed by kids at my school, but the fact about what was happening was an important point I wanted to clear up with the people around me.”

Gimbel is an example of the “soldiers on the ground” in the United States that Israel needs more of, according to Hillel Newman, Consul General of Israel to the Pacific Southwest of the United States.

During a visit to Arizona with Jewish community leaders in late July, Newman said social media is a powerful tool in combating the “ongoing attack on the legitimacy of Israel,” and Israel needs the help of American Jews, especially young American Jews, to help counter misinformation.

“It’s not for Israel to do everything; there are some things that other people should do to support Israel,” he said.

entities may not invest money with an entity that boycotts Israel.

Unilever has argued that it is not boycotting Israel.

Unilever CEO Alan Jope said on July 22, that the company remains “fully committed” to doing business in Israel and that it was not involved in Ben & Jerry’s decision.

When Unilever acquired the Vermont company in 2000, it allowed it to retain an independent board and to make decisions not approved by the corporate parent.

Regardless, because Ben & Jerry’s is a legal subsidiary of Unilever, the company is in violation of Arizona law, Yee said in a letter to Unilever Sept. 2.

Friedman, who is also president of the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, said Arizona, Ben & Jerry’s and Unilever have all been crystal clear, and the state’s law is being applied the way it was intended.

Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s say they are not boycotting Israel, but Arizona has defined boycotts to “explicitly apply to ‘in territories controlled by Israel,’” she said.

“The law basically says, ‘We don’t care if you do business inside the sovereign state of Israel, if you are differentiating between the sovereign state of Israel and areas of Israel that are not even under Israeli law, or not part of the sovereign state of Israel but are controlled by Israel. We consider that boycotting, and you’re done.’”

The State Treasurer’s office has invested more than $30 million in Israel Bonds since 2013.

“Israel is and will continue to be a major trading partner of Arizona,” Yee said.

Four days after the Vermont-based ice

cream brand’s announcement, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said on Twitter that Ben & Jerry’s decision “is discrimination.”

“Arizona stands with Israel,” Ducey wrote, and noted Arizona “will not do business with a company that boycotts Israel — in 2016 and 2019 I signed bills to make sure of it.”

Hillel Newman, Consul General of Israel to the Pacific Southwest of the United States, said he appreciates Arizona’s friendship.

“Arizona is really a true friend of Israel. I don’t say this about every state,” Newman said. “It’s a wonderful thing when you’ve got a friend like that, who comes out in real time and says, ‘We don’t allow such discrimination in our state.’ That’s a tremendous thing not many governors have done.”

Speaking to Jewish community leaders at the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus in Scottsdale on July 28, Newman said the move is an example of the BDS movement, which represents an ongoing attack on the legitimacy of Israel.

“Unfortunately, many innocent people are swept up in empty or false slogans,” he said. “They don’t understand the real roots of BDS actually come from those that are against a two-state solution — they want to end Israel as a Jewish state.”

In a 2009 interview with The Electronic Intifada, a publication covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti said it “takes no position on the political solution to the conflict,” but advocates for a secular, democratic state based on the right of return for Palestinians.

Some feel that BDS is a form of criticism of Israel, Newman said. He disagrees. “The attempt to boycott Israel is another face of the attempt to delegitimize, and in the end, erase Israel.”

At least seven other states have launched reviews of their investments with Unilever. IAC For Action, the legislative and policymaking arm of the Israeli-American Council, initiated the Arizona review last month with a formal request. JN

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Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee speaks during the Rally To Protect Our Elections conference in Phoenix, July 24, 2021.

PHOTO BY BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES VIA JTA.ORG

Ben & Jerry’s!

PHOTO BY NOELUAP IS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Israel’s public relations campaign has “improved a lot” over the years, he said. During the conflict in May, “Israel released a tremendous amount of information,” including videos on social media in real time. But, he said, the content Israel releases on social media is limited to those following its social media accounts.

Jonathan Bar-El, consul for public diplomacy and spokesperson for the Consulate, oversees its social media and works with his public diplomacy team to “gather information from reliable sources, and decide what to release and on which platform.”

He noted the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s digital channels have over 10 million followers and a monthly reach of 200 million. During the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, he said the Ministry’s channels reached an exposure of over half a billion people within 10 days. “The Israeli Consulate here in our region makes use of all relevant information.”

Gimbel agrees Israel is doing the best it can and is happy to do what he can to help protect it.

“With it being attacked from all directions, it’s our time to step in and help the cause,” he said.

But not everybody feels that way.

Antar Davidson, who lives in Tucson and has long been active in the Jewish community, thinks Israel could be doing more.

“It’s not just about showing your side anymore,” he said. “It’s about contributing to the mutual good and the general good.”

He’d like to see Israel’s PR efforts

create new dominating narratives instead of reacting defensively and relying on the same messaging it has for years.

“I think it’s ridiculous that Israel is still using ‘Israel has a right to defend itself,’” he said. “It’s just a trope at this point. The situation requires a lot more nuance than just constantly going to the same line.”

Israel has many beautiful aspects that can be shared on social media, he said. It is a diverse country with people of all colors and faiths, and people live mostly in peace and work together to innovate in many sectors, in his view.

But instead of focusing on “innovation through human development” narratives, Davidson feels Israel focuses too much on those that “validate the military industrial complex.”

He said he feels like he is doing his part to build bridges and create what he wants to see by engaging with a variety of organizations as well as by bringing his perspective where he goes.

In the last year, for example, in his role at 4D Products & Services, he spearheaded the installation of an Israelideveloped water generator, Watergen, at Rocky Ridge Gas & Market in the Hard Rock community of the Navajo Nation.

“That was a model for me of creating relationships and building narratives that are focused around nonviolent, mutually beneficial relationships,” he said. “A macro narrative of peace is made up of millions of micro narratives.”

A recent Pew Research Center survey found, overall, younger American Jews are less attached to Israel than older generations. About half of Jewish adults under 30 describe themselves as emotionally connected to Israel, compared with about two-thirds of Jews over age 64.

Newman said it is a concerning trend,

in part because young people get their information and news from social media.

“We try to spread the facts, but facts are complex,” he said. “It’s complicated to explain to someone why there is no peace with the Palestinians.”

It’s easy for someone to think that if Israel would give territory there would be peace, “so therefore Israel is to blame,” he said. “It’s a very catchy soundbite, but it’s untrue.”

Israel’s messaging directly impacts the perceptions of younger American Jews, said Debbie Yunker Kail, executive director of Hillel at Arizona State University.

For example, the words “pro-Israel” evoke “a binary concept when it’s a very complex situation with a long history,” she said.

When a Jewish college student hears those words it could leave them to believe that there’s a reason to be against Israel, or that by being pro-Israel somebody is inherently against something else.

Rabbi Michael Beyo, CEO of the East Valley Jewish Community Center, said he feels it is Israel’s job to better manage the battle of hearts and minds on social media.

“We’re going to do what we can, but we have problems here of our own,” he said. He’d like to see Israel partner with institutions like the EVJCC to increase Israel education and the connection between young American Jews in Israel.

“We need collaboration and funding, grants, so we can continue to educate our friends and neighbors about the importance of Israel, rather than us needing to raise funds from a community that is distancing itself from Israel,” he said. “Relationships are bidirectional. Where is the help from Israel, so that we can help Israel?” JN

Direct damage from Hamas rocket fire to a high school Yeshivah building in Ashkelon

PHOTO BY HASKUPIM VIA ISRAEL MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS ON FLICKR

Worried about climate, Jewish activists attempt to sway Sinema

SHANNON LEVITT | MANAGING EDITOR

In early September, much of the political world was focused on U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin’s, D-W.Va, seeming intransigence about passing the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package being debated in Congress. On Sept. 12, he made the rounds on Sunday morning shows. Meanwhile in Phoenix that morning, approximately 40 people stood outside another moderate Democratic senator’s office, asking her to be bold.

Arizona Jews for Justice organized a rally, Hear the Call: Jews for a Just Recovery Package, outside of U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s office at 3333 E. Camelback Rd. The event’s goal was to convince the Arizona Democrat to vote yes on the reconciliation package — “with not a penny less.” Their clarion call: “Climate, care, jobs and justice now!”

The bill includes billions of dollars for climate issues and by using the reconciliation process, Democrats could pass the legislation with 50 votes. Vice President Kamala Harris’ vote would break the tie.

But that would require every Democratic senator to vote yes, since it has no Republican support. The activists in Phoenix believe if Sinema signals she will vote yes, Manchin will follow suit.

At 10 a.m., as the temperature tipped over 100 degrees, Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz, AJJ’s founder, addressed the small crowd.

Alluding to Rosh Hashanah and the birthday of creation, Yanklowitz reminded people that the moment Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, they were called to be stewards and guardians of the planet.

“They are called to responsibility,” he said. “This is what every faith hears and most certainly our Jewish faith, which calls for bold action.”

He also pointed out that this is a shmita or sabbatical year, which means giving the earth a rest. “We are called to understand that everything is not for our own pleasure,” he said. “To celebrate the birthday of the world we have to return to a level of respect, a level of dignity, a level of humility.”

Yanklowitz asked that people not follow in the footsteps of Jonah, whom he called a “failed prophet” for

running away when he heard the message of the world’s impending destruction. The rabbi challenged everyone there to decide how they will respond to a similar call now that the world is imperiled again. He implored all, and especially Sinema, to heed it.

Evoking Maimonides’ analogy that the world is like a scale, Yanklowitz said, “this is one of those moments where the scale needs to break its balance towards the redemption of the world” as opposed to its destruction.

Pablo A. Sierra-Carmona, Sinema’s deputy press secretary, pointed out that the senator voted in favor of August’s procedural vote on the budget resolution and is waiting to see how the “relevant committees” detail proposals in the legislation's many areas, including climate. She will then “closely review them and continue engaging directly with her colleagues and the administration,” he said. Until then she won’t comment on any one policy.

Madeline Dolgin, part of AJJ’s first cohort of social justice fellowships, also addressed the crowd. She focused on Arizona and how the bill could affect Sinema’s constituents.

She called attention to the rise in the state’s average temperatures by acknowledging the “baking heat” of the morning. And she pointed to the state’s many wildfires, which show no sign of abating. There have already been 1,106 wildfires in 2021 burning more than 453,000 acres in the state as of June 25, 2021, she said.

She also pointed to last month’s news that the federal government declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time and announced mandatory cutbacks that will come in 2022. Dolgin cited studies that the river will soon be unable to keep up with the demands of the millions of residents who depend on it.

The reconciliation bill will address regulations for energy and climate requirements, which the state currently lacks, she said. And with Arizona having more sunny days than any other state, she highlighted the bill’s support for solar energy. Acknowledging these issues can seem “daunting,” she also said there is no choice but to keep advocating for change.

“We need to take responsibility for our actions and make reparations,” she said. “Jews are trained to heal and not to stand by as the planet falls to the fate of human folly.”

Ari Anderson, an organizing intern for AJJ who recently graduated high school, was even more direct about what is at stake.

“One of the things I find super interesting is how most of the policy makers behind this stuff won’t live to see the effects of their decisions,” he said.

Pointing to rising temperatures, which have caused the highest level of known heat-related deaths to date — more than 220 — he cautioned, “and this summer is not done yet.”

He attempted to drive home what the reality of high temps and low levels of Lake Mead, Lake Powell and the Colorado River will mean for Arizona’s residents, and he pulled no punches with his rhetoric.

“It means that people will die, and it means that I might not be able to show my kids where I grew up, and it means that my children might inherit a wasteland instead of a home,” he said.

“There is no win or lose. We are literally facing a situation of existence or extinction.”

After a few more speakers, Yanklowitz and others blew shofars “to wake people up,” he said. “The shofar is not only calling Sen. Sinema, it’s calling each of us.”

While most of the crowd was fairly young, Rivko Knox, 83, also held her sign high. She was there for the simple reason that she’s human and shares the planet, she said.

“I’ll be dead before the worst happens,” she said, but pointed to her children and grandchildren as a good reason to show up and advocate. And even if she didn’t have children, she said, it’s her responsibility to protect life.

“It’s tikkun olam,” she said.

Sunday’s rally followed on the heels of a similar gathering on Sept. 10, in front of the state capitol in Phoenix with a cohort of Arizona state representatives, Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and the Arizona Youth Climate Coalition among others. JN

Protesters hold signs in front of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s office.

PHOTO BY SHANNON LEVITT

PHOTO BY SHANNON LEVITT

of philanthropy at JFCS

NICOLE RAZ | STAFF WRITER

Jewish Family & Children’s Service provides support and counseling to more than 40,000 people in Maricopa County each year, largely enabled by financial support from individuals and corporate entities.

Andrea Arkow joined JFCS in June to ensure the continuation and growth of that financial support. As the new director of philanthropy and donor engagement, Arkow is responsible for generating annual, major and planned gifts to support JFCS’s mission and vision.

“One of the reasons that I love philanthropy and love working with individual donors is because it gives me the opportunity to connect them with the causes that they care about and, ultimately, to help them make a meaningful difference in other people’s lives,” Arkow told Jewish News.

She also manages the JFCS Professional Leadership Group, an eight-month program each year that provides a cohort of emerging leaders the opportunity to make a difference in the community by becoming JFCS ambassadors and philanthropists.

“In many ways, they are kind of the

future of the organization,” she said of the participants.

Arkow grew up in Greater Phoenix and said it is meaningful to be working in her home town with an organization rooted in the same Jewish values with which she was raised.

“What I love about JFCS is that it’s not just one area, one demographic or one age group that we serve; it’s truly helping individuals of all ages, backgrounds and faiths,” she said.

Before joining JFCS, Arkow was an individual donor manager for Invest in Kids. Her previous philanthropic experience includes positions with Colorado “I Have a Dream” Foundation, United Nations Entity for Gender Quality and the Empowerment of Women and The HALO Foundation.

Arkow brings a “unique combination of strategy and experience to the position,” according to Gail Baer, JFCS’ vice president of philanthropic services.

Arkow received her Bachelor of Science in integrated marketing communications from Ithaca College and a master’s degree in sustainable international development from Brandeis University. JN

BJE offers bagels, lox, cream cheese and some Jewish learning

SHANNON LEVITT | MANAGING EDITOR

Lox in a box, along with a bagel, some cream cheese and a few other treats were delivered to about 100 people on Sunday, Sept. 12. And along with the food, the Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Phoenix served up some knowledge — all par for the course for the women behind the organization.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the BJE is offering a lineup of special events and speakers, and Sunday’s Lox in a Box was only the first.

“I came up with the idea as my committee contemplated fun activities,” said Linda Feldman, BJE’s director of family education. “We wanted the event to be fun and educational and something that had not been done in Phoenix to our knowledge.”

While lox and bagel deliveries were not a staple of all Jewish communities, Feldman remembered a Jewish organization doing something like it when she lived in Maryland. Myra Shindler, BJE’s executive director, had a similar memory from her time in her university’s Hillel.

“They would tell parents, ‘Oh finals are coming up, let’s deliver lox and a bagel to your kid while they’re studying for fun.’ So, it’s been done,” Shindler said.

Even if it’s not a Phoenix tradition, Feldman said, it’s something that times out right. Delivering the boxes days before Yom Kippur provided some ideas for breaking the fast, she said.

Ultimately, people liked the idea “because it’s positive and everybody likes to eat,” joked Feldman. On a more serious note, with the delta variant of COVID-19 still causing alarm, she didn’t think inviting people to gather in person would be wise.

Paul Rockower, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, served as a volunteer, delivering the boxes to people on Sunday morning. He was happy to help out “such a terrific organization as the BJE,” he said.

“Getting to support an organization that does so much to educate our community was meaningful, and to do so by delivering lox boxes around town, getting to kibbitz with those who support the efforts of the BJE, was extra special.”

While enjoying the contents of their boxes, those who signed up watched a video of how lox are made and also received a short history of their brunch. Chaim Lauer, a Jewish educator and communal professional, author and speaker, explained the history of “the Judaizing of bagels, lox and cream cheese — none of which was originally Jewish,” he told Jewish News.

The combination of bagels, lox and cream cheese was a Jewish attempt to retain tradition while eating something that looked like eggs benedict, Lauer said. Lox was a substitution for Canadian Ham, cream cheese for hollandaise sauce and the bagel for an English muffin. The meal is the perfect encapsulation for the challenge of maintaining Jewish identity and expanding it in an American culture, which is mostly welcoming and thus invites secularization, said Lauer.

“How we maintain tradition yet accommodate the larger surrounding society is the challenge that the BJE, every parent and every Jewish institution has.”

His talk wasn’t solely about lox. He expanded his lesson to include information about fish in Jewish life, Jewish thought, laws, even educational strategies generated by fish and using Jewish fish dishes as the foundation.

“Food and fish and its accoutrements become memory makers for our community,” he said.

Ernie Muntner, one of those participating, thought the deep dive on fish was interesting. Listening to Lauer’s history brought back memories from when she lived in Long Island, New York and her mother-in-law would visit from Queens, New York with “shopping bags full of smoked fish,” she said. His presentation was a bit like déjà vu.

Lauer, who has been involved in Jewish education for over 50 years, has one regret about Sunday’s event. While he appreciates the adaptation of virtual events, he finds it more meaningful to teach “face to face with living people, especially with seniors,” he said. “Their life experience does so much to add to the discourse.”

And he also prefers the bialy when it comes to Jewish education. “No matter how much dough you throw at the bagel it still has a hole in the middle. But to get people coming back you have to create something tasty and inviting. The bialy is easier to sink our teeth into than a bagel.”

Still, Lauer, although avoiding wheat at present, ate a bagel and lox along with his viewers. “People shouldn’t eat alone,” he said. JN

Linda Feldman filling boxes with lox, bagels and cream cheese.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LINDA FELDMAN

Paul Rockower delivering a lox box to Frank Lange on Sept. 12.

PHOTO BY PAUL ROCKOWER

Martin Pear JCC CEO to walk 12 hours for ‘See Jay Run’ fundraiser

SHANNON LEVITT | MANAGING EDITOR

On Sunday, Sept. 26, Jay Jacobs, CEO of Martin Pear Jewish Community Center in Scottsdale, will spend 12 hours, albeit with some breaks, on a treadmill. His day-long physical feat is the highlight of the eponymous “See Jay Run” fundraiser for MPJCC’s SMILE Campaign.

The campaign runs the gamut from scholarships and programs to a host of services MPJCC provides, Jacobs explained. “It’s all about providing financial assistance so that no one’s getting turned away by a dollar and cents situation.”

Jacobs climbs aboard the treadmill at 7 a.m. and intends to spend the next 12 hours there. “I’ll mostly be walking,” he said. He will take 15 minute breaks every hour and 45 minutes and plans to have plenty of water on hand.

The fundraising goal is $150,000, which is a substantial amount, but Jacobs said he always likes the challenge of an aggressive number like this. He hopes to raise some funds before the day and already has some commitments on the books.

“The biggest issue is how do we create the goal today so that there are zero issues when we need to provide financial assistance for people, and we can keep supporting certain programs and services,” Jacobs said.

There will also be a treadmill next to Jacobs’ for people to walk or run alongside him at the same time, all for the price of a donation.

Jacobs also wants people to have a good time while contributing. “It’s more than just writing us a check,” he said. “Our whole goal always is how we are different.”

Pamela White, MPJCC’s director of individual giving and campaign, said the unique event is in keeping with who Jacobs is as a leader. “Jay’s tireless leadership has made him a role model for staff within the community, as well as other JCCs around the country,” she said.

Andrea Quen, MPJCC’s chief development officer, also admires Jacobs’ tenacity and “his ability to walk the walk and talk the talk.”

White agreed, and said that all the staff are excited about the event because “we

not only support Jay, we support the work that we do within the community.”

People who wish to support the campaign will have the opportunity to participate in a special sports tournament or a group exercise class on offer that day. The fitness schedule includes events like balance board yoga, cardio dance party, disco cycle, a dodgeball tournament and

more. A minimum donation of $20 will allow anyone to enter any of the classes or tournaments. All funds will go towards the $150,000 goal.

Jacobs said the whole staff is dedicated to ensuring everything will be safe in terms of COVID protocols, but thinks that won’t put a damper on the fun. “The point is to come in and do whatever class they want, and afterwards grab a soft drink, grab a beer and listen to music,” he said, pointing out there will be a DJ. Sunday’s lineup of NFL football games will also be broadcast for those who wish to watch. JN

To register, go to mpjcc.org/seejayrun or contact Megan Montgomery, director of special events, at meganm@mpjcc.org or call 480.481.1756.

If you are interested in sponsoring this event, please contact Andrea Quen, chief development officer, at andreaq@mpjcc.org or 480.481.1753.

JOIN US FOR:

Family Friendly Activities • Great Arizona Puppet Theatre

Musical Performances • Food Trucks • Photo Booth

Historical Exhibits • And much more!!!

The Arizona Jewish Historical Society is excited to celebrate the 100th anniversary of our building –the Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center. Over the last century, the center has been home to four different organizations; Congregation Beth Israel, The First Chinese Baptist Church, Iglesia Bautista Central, and the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. To commemorate the center’s centennial, we are planning a series of three events. Centennial

If These Walls Could Talk

Oct. 3, 2021Mar. 31, 2022

122 E Culver St, Phoenix, AZ 85003

Centennial Heritage Gala

Honoring AZJHS community leader, Lawrence M. Cutler Sat., Oct. 30, 2021 6:00pm

Scottsdale Plaza Resort

Jay Jacobs on a treadmill IMAGE BY TRESSA HEIGEL

Yeshiva attack in Colorado has reverberations in Arizona

SHIRA TANZER

On Aug. 17, 2021, five men broke into Yeshiva Toras Chaim in Denver, Colorado and attacked the students and rabbis learning there. Shmuel Silverberg, a 19-year-old boy from Cleveland, was killed.

While this attack happened more than 800 miles away, the news shook several Jewish families in Arizona; three of the boys attending the yeshiva are Phoenix natives.

In the aftermath of the shooting, students, teachers and parents gathered their thoughts and tried to process what this attack meant for their children, their students, their friends, themselves and the community as a whole.

Binyamin Brumer, a Scottsdale native who now studies at the Yeshiva of Waterbury, Connecticut, heard about the shooting online and began worrying about students from Greater Phoenix living there. He immediately began doing more research to figure out what had happened and if everyone was OK. But “no one really had any information,” he said.

As someone who lives away from

home, this incident made him doubt his school’s security. But at the end of the day, “it’s very difficult to stop someone with a gun whose intentions are to hurt others,” he said.

He pointed out that “every tragedy like this affects the entire Jewish community.” But it hit closer to home for Brumer because he knows some boys attending the yeshiva.

Many children across the country feared for their friends in Denver. And several parents were scared for their children, some of whom are far from home and just starting school.

Sunny Levi, who lives in Phoenix and whose son attended the yeshiva where the shooting occurred, said that she was “in complete shock” when her son told her about what happened.

“He had to tell me three times,” she said.

Levi immediately knew that she had to travel to Denver to make sure her son was OK and to take him home. When she arrived, they walked through the school and her son walked her through all the places where the attack had taken place.

“He showed me a tour of every bullet hole,” she said. He created a kind of play-by-play of the night’s events.

Levi said that the attack raised concerns about the security at both her son’s outof-state yeshiva as well as the day school her younger children attend.

Levi voiced her concerns about children’s reactions to news of shootings and wondered if it is the best idea to tell them. She believes there is really only one way to keep schools safe.

“I think having security all the time is the best bet,” she said.

Rabbi Gavriel Goetz, Yeshiva High School of Arizona’s head of school, thought a lot about the security of his own school after hearing about the attack in Denver.

“When we originally built the building, we built it bulletproof in the front, and there’s a gate around the whole building,” he said.

Although his building already has adequate security, he still wondered whether something additional was necessary and asked the yeshiva’s board of directors if anything could be improved to provide a safer environment for the students.

Goetz also changed the rules about leaving campus during the school day. Now, students must have explicit permission from their parents as well as check out in the main office.

In addition, the yeshiva has held drills for possible threats and hosted speakers to talk about what to do in such an event.

“Once you’re dealing with somebody that’s crazy, they’ll find a way to get

to you,” said Goetz. But, he added, “I don’t believe we’re supposed to be scared in life.”

When you run a religious Jewish school, that point is highlighted even further. Many Jewish students, teachers and parents must worry about threats to their children, students or friends, more

so than other schools simply because of their religion.

“As far as an antisemitic (attack), it’s always an issue,” Goetz said.

In a recent study released by the FBI, it was revealed that 57.5% of religiouslymotivated hate crimes committed during 2020 were against Jews, who make up less than 2% of the U.S. population.

“This could have been any school. This could have been here.” Levi said. JN

Yeshiva Toras Chaim is located in the West Colfax neighborhood of Denver and is part of the historic

"WHEN WE ORIGINALLY BUILT THE BUILDING, WE BUILT IT BULLETPROOF IN THE FRONT, AND THERE'S A GATE AROUND THE WHOLE BUILDING."

JNF-USA partners with Nishmat Adin to honor 9/11 anniversary, first responders

SHANNON LEVITT | MANAGING EDITOR

On Monday, Sept. 13, Scottsdale’s Beth Tefillah Congregation hosted Jewish National Fund-USA’s first annual 9/11 memorial ceremony. JNF-USA partnered with the new high school, Nishmat Adin – Shalhevet Scottsdale, to honor firefighters from the City of Scottsdale Fire Department in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack and the bravery of the first responders.

“This ceremony, and others like it, provide an opportunity to remember the victims and brave first responders who perished, as well as to honor our local heroes who dedicate their lives to keeping our communities safe,” said Jennifer Milton, JNFUSA’s national communications manager, via email. It is also an opportunity “to rededicate our efforts to bring people together to forge a brighter future.”

Joshua Meisel, Nishmat Adin’s facilitator and Judaics teacher, opened the event by describing the power of memory and highlighting its importance during the Days of Awe.

Celebrating this anniversary between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, “a very intense time in the Jewish calendar,” Meisel gave a bit of exegesis of certain High Holiday prayers pertaining to memory.

“It seems that the act of recalling has tremendous power in the moment and brings the past to life in the very present. God is giving us an insight into how we must treat them (memories),” he said.

Meisel recounted trying to discuss the events of 9/11 with his class as the anniversary approached. But he heard again and again from his students that they didn’t know much about the tragedy — they were not yet born when it happened.

That dilemma can be answered in this season’s prayers, he said.

“It is not enough to simply teach about the days and moments of history. We must somehow bring them to life. We must arouse our collective memory so that the generation who wasn’t there can carry the memory with them so that it may live on,” he said.

Meisel told the first responders in front of him that “they deserve nothing less than to be at the front and center of our love, compassion and appreciation.”

Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega was also in attendance and used part of his time to ask people to remember those who were injured on that fateful day, as well as all the family members of the victims, and to keep them in their thoughts and prayers alongside those who died.

Ortega said he came “to learn from and support” our communities.

“People of faith, synagogues and churches are a vital part of our community and I have been engaged with the Jewish community for many years,” he told Jewish News.

Jennifer Sosnow, JNF-USA’s programs director, presented a plaque to the firemen with the help of Ortega and Beth Tefillah Rabbi Pinchas Allouche. The plaque features a photo of JNFUSA’s 9/11 memorial in Israel. Allouche read its message aloud:

“The JNF-KKL 9/11 Memorial, in the foothills of Jerusalem, expresses the deep connection and shared values between the people of Israel and the United States. It is the only memorial outside of the United States that honors each victim. The memorial is an American flag waving and transforming into a flame. A piece of melted metal from the ruins of the Twin Towers forms the base of the monument. This memorial serves as the site of an official ceremony held with the United States every year, as Israel honors the memory of the heroes who fell and recognizes the heroes who walk among us. Thank you for your commitment and sacrifice.”

Two Nishmat Adin students also spoke about what the 9/11 anniversary meant to them. They praised the first responders and

marveled at their willingness to sacrifice their lives for strangers.

Ariella Friedman, president of Nishmat Adin’s board of directors, was grateful to get the school’s students involved in such “serious and thoughtful programming” as a way to connect them to the broader world.

“These events have affected the world around us, and it’s great to get them involved in thinking about them and participating in the broader community,” she said.

In the short time they’ve been in school, students have already traveled to Los Angeles to work with the teachers and students of Shalhevet High School, Nishmat Adin’s partner. The trips, according to Friedman, have been useful in “developing a sense of cohesiveness and community” for the students.

Emily Gold, a sophomore and one of the night’s speakers, told Jewish News she loves the school so far.

“They have a lot of good learning, a lot of after-school clubs and I love how close it is,” she said. “It’s like a big family and everyone’s very nice.”

Her younger sister Liana, a freshman, agreed. She’s part of choir and Spanish club, but she is most excited about the opportunity to learn American Sign Language. She suspects one day it will be useful in the medical field, which is her hoped-for career.

She also enjoyed traveling to Los Angeles and meeting students at Shalhevet High, and she’s looking forward to her class growing in the next couple of years.

She offered the evening’s final prayer.

On Sept. 12, JNF-USA presented another plaque to the City of Scottsdale Police Department. JN

Group shot of Mayor David Ortega, Nishmat Adin students, firefighters being honored and the plaque presented to them

event, where they both spoke publicly

PHOTO BY SHANNON LEVITT

Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega offered his comments at the event.

PHOTO BY SHANNON LEVITT

Celebrating her mom, one-woman show comes to Scottsdale

NICOLE RAZ | STAFF WRITER

It was only natural for Jennie Fahn to work through her feelings about motherhood, grief and growth through humor. After all, she spent her 20s doing sketch comedy in Los Angeles.

In 2002, when her oldest son was in first grade, she began performing “You Mutha! A One Mother Show,” a solo act about “being a mother, having a mother and knowing other mothers,” Fahn told Jewish News.

She took a hiatus after its two-year run, focusing on caring for her parents and son. But after her mother passed in 2012, it was time for something new.

“My mom was a difficult person, which is not to say I didn’t love her any less, or that she loved me any less, and that’s one of the beautiful things about my show: I get to celebrate her,” Fahn said. “It doesn’t sugarcoat things, but it is a really beautiful tribute to this woman who was a very complicated but very loving person.”

Fahn’s show, “Under the Jello Mold,” is coming to the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts Sept. 23-26.

The 80-minute show tells the story of Fahn’s mother at the end of her life. Its title references where her mother kept her post-mortem instructions.

Her mother was always “pretty open” about death and the end of life, and Fahn didn’t realize that wasn’t necessarily common — until she brought it up with others.

“I found that when I talked about it, people were like, ‘Oh, my God, can I tell you something?’” she said. “They felt like they were confessing something.”

The show deals with death, hospice, mental illness, family secrets and even being a Girl Scout. Audience members each identify with something different, and Fahn most looks forward to learning about what stands out to people during post-show chatter.

Abbey Messmer, programming director for

SCPA, said she learned about the show through a trusted agent.

“He brought this really unique show to us and said, ‘You gotta have it in your small space,’” Messmer said. She hasn’t seen it yet and will be in the audience opening night.

“We all have colorful characters in our families, and I love that Fahn is talking about her mother in a really

to write it into a show, and we’re going to take it to the Hollywood Fringe (Festival), and I’m going to direct it and produce it.”

The show won the festival in 2017, and she and Cavanaugh have expanded it since. Fahn has continued to perform the show throughout California, including at Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, Fahn’s synagogue. Her last in-person performance was Feb. 9, 2020 in Sacramento.

Fahn said her mother lived her life up until the last minute. “That’s one of the main things that makes me happy in remembering her,” she said.

Fahn hopes the audience will, in celebrating her mom who is no longer here, remember to go home and celebrate the people who still are.

“Everybody is going to die. It’s not such a terrible thing,” she said. “Let’s all just make the best of it and celebrate each other while we can. Because one day, you’re going to walk in and find somebody just sitting there.”

“Under the Jello Mold” is among more than 170 shows in SCPA’s upcoming season, which kicked off Saturday, Sept. 11, Messmer said.

The center was open on and off throughout the last year with different levels of COVID safety protocols. “The focus is safety. And, second to that, it’s just getting back to work and providing opportunities for artists to work who haven’t been able to travel or perform in over a year,” she said.

Starting Oct. 1, in order to attend a show, patrons must show proof of a negative COVID test within 72 hours or show proof of vaccination. Masks are encouraged but not required.

Fahn is nervous about her upcoming in-person performance.

beautiful and comedic way,” she said.

Fahn first came up with the idea for the show in 2001 and decided to write an experimental 10-minute monologue and perform it in front of some colleagues.

A voice from the back of the room belonging to her friend, Tom Cavanaugh, yelled, “Jennie, you’re going

“I hope everyone who attends is following the science on what it takes to be safe so everyone in the theater can relax and enjoy themselves,” she said. “At its core, this show is a reminder that we all go through the same things: life, love, loss... we’re all just people. Let’s have a few

together.” JN

laughs

"MY MOM WAS A DIFFICULT PERSON, WHICH IS NOT TO SAY I DIDN'T LOVE HER ANY LESS, OR THAT SHE LOVED ME ANY LESS, AND THAT'S ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS ABOUT MY SHOW: I GET TO CELEBRATE HER. IT DOESN'T SUGARCOAT THINGS, BUT IT IS A REALLY BEAUTIFUL TRIBUTE TO THIS WOMAN WHO WAS A VERY COMPLICATED BUT VERY LOVING PERSON."

Virginia Republican apologizes, but not for antisemitism, after mocking Jewish House speaker’s nose

A Republican political candidate in Virginia is apologizing for mocking the nose of the state’s Jewish House speaker — but he says his comment was not meant to be antisemitic.

Eileen Filler-Corn, a Democrat, made history in 2020 when she became the first Jewish and first woman speaker of the oldest legislature in the United States, the Virginia House of Delegates.

Last week, the state’s House Democratic caucus tweeted praise of Filler-Corn for her work on education, attaching a picture of her addressing an online meeting. Hahns Copeland, a Republican who is running for a seat in the House, replied with a biting comment.

“I was surprised to see a pair of eyes and a mouth with that NOSE,” he wrote.

Copeland soon deleted the tweet, but not before Democrats screenshot it, and seized on the opportunity to denounce the candidate seeking to unseat a Democratic incumbent in the state’s 89th district. (The entire House is up for reelection this year.)

Copeland apologized in a tweet late Friday and said he had not intended to allude to offensive stereotypes about Jewish noses.

“My comment regarding Eileen FillerCorn earlier today was immature and impulsive,” Copeland said late Friday in a tweet. “It was never intended to be antisemitic or reference her ethnicity or religion. I apologize to anyone I may have offended. It is not an accurate reflection of my character, beliefs and values.”

Copeland said he had Jewish friends who loved him. “While the Tweet was ugly and regrettable it was never meant how the Democrats are portraying it,” he wrote. “Many of my friends in the Jewish community know me and love me. They know me as a Christian and full of love.”

Filler-Corn told The Washington Post that she had yet to hear from Copeland directly. “These types of hateful comments are unfortunately far too common today, and they are too often invoked instead of solutions to the real issues Virginians face,” she said in a statement.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and his partner had a very Jewish wedding this week after 18 years together

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis married his partner of 18 years.

Polis announced his marriage to Marlon Reis, with whom he has two children, in social media posts hours before Yom Kippur. Pictures showed the two men wearing kippahs and breaking glasses beneath a brightly colored chuppah, or wedding canopy, all hallmarks of traditional Jewish marriage ceremonies.

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, the founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh, a Renewal synagogue in Boulder, officiated. The synagogue is one of three that Polis told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2017, when he was running for governor, that he and Reis belonged to in Boulder.

The men were engaged last year after contracting COVID-19 and picked Wednesday, Sept. 15, to be married because it was the 18th anniversary of their first date.

“The greatest lesson we have learned over the past eighteen months is that life as we know it can change in an instant,” the couple wrote on social media. “We are thankful for the health and wellbeing of our family and friends, and the opportunity to celebrate our life together as a married couple. After eighteen years together, we couldn’t be happier to be married at last.”

The marriage makes yet another first for Polis, who became both the first openly gay governor of any state and the first Jewish governor of Colorado when he

was elected in 2018. Now he has become the first governor to be married in a samesex wedding while in office, according to CNN.

Polis grew up in a Reform Jewish home, told JTA that he identifies as “in between Conservative and Reform,” and counts a prominent Orthodox rabbi in Washington, D.C., among his cousins. Last spring, he became emotional when rejecting comparisons of his extended stay-at-home public health order to Nazism.

22% of adult Jewish gamers faced antisemitic harassment while playing, survey finds

More than one in five Jewish adults who play online multiplayer games faced antisemitism while playing, according to a new survey from the Anti-Defamation League.

The survey, published Wednesday, found that harassment and bigotry are common across the 97 million Americans who play multiplayer games. Among adult gamers surveyed, 83% said they have been harassed while playing. Sixty percent of gamers aged 13-17 who were surveyed said the same.

Among adults, nearly half of women said they were harassed, as did 42% of Black gamers and more than one-inthree Asian and LGBTQ+ gamers. A quarter of Muslim gamers also said they were harassed. More than 7-in-10 adults reported what the ADL calls “severe abuse, including physical threats, stalking and sustained harassment.”

Among teems, Black, female and Asian gamers also reported the highest rates of harassment in their age group, though harassment is less common across the board among teens.

Only 7% of Jewish teen gamers said they were harassed for their identity. But 10% of teen gamers, and 8% of adult gamers, said they’ve been exposed to white

supremacist extremism online. Among teens, 17% said they didn’t feel like talking to family or friends after being harassed, and 10% said they did worse in school because they were harassed.

Among both teens and adults, twothirds said they sometimes or always hide their identity as a result of being targeted by hate.

The survey was conducted in June in collaboration with Nowzoo, a gaming and esports analytics firm. It includes 1,664 adult respondents and 542 teen respondents. Depending on the group, it has a margin of error of between 2% to 3%.

Middle school goes virtual because of COVID outbreak at the bar mitzvah of Chris Christie’s nephew

A middle school in New Jersey went virtual for at least a day to stem a COVID-19 outbreak that followed the bar mitzvah of one of its students — the nephew of former state Gov. Chris Christie.

The New York Post quoted Mendham Township schools Superintendent Salvatore Constantino, who said that Mendham Township Middle School went virtual last Friday because of an outbreak reported Thursday night.

Constantino said the school had fewer than half a dozen cases stemming from the bar mitzvah the previous weekend and other existing cases, and predicted the kids would be back in the building on Monday.

Todd Christie, 56, refused to respond to queries from the Post. His wife is Andrea Lessner Christie. The couple has five children.

Chris Christie, who survived a bout with COVID he believes he caught when he attended a White House event when Donald Trump was president, told the newspaper his brother had been vaccinated. JN

Compiled from JTA

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, left, marries his longtime partner Marlon Reis in a Jewish ceremony, Sept. 15, 2021.

PHOTO COURTESY OF POLIS’ OFFICE VIA JTA.ORG

House of Delegates Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, left, and President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas attend the State of the Commonwealth address at the state Capitol in Richmond, Virginia on Jan. 8, 2020.

PHOTO BY ZACH GIBSON/GETTY IMAGES VIA JTA.ORG

COMING UP IN OCTOBER

@Virtual EVJCC OPEN BEIT MIDRASH

MINDFULNESS AT THE J

Thursdays | 9:30 am

KOHELET (ECCLESIASTES):

GRAPPLING WITH THE MEANING OF LIFE

Thursdays | 10 am

THE LIFE & PHILOSOPHY OF RAMBAM

Thursdays | 11 am

STEP-BY-STEP

JEWISH GENEALOGY WITH JUDI MISSEL

Wednesdays | October 6 - 27 | 10-11 am

TUESDAYS AT THE J

Tuesdays | 10 am

OCT. 5: Music of Broadway with violinist

JULIE IVANHOE

OCT. 12: “Frank Lloyd Wright and a New Vision for Chandler” with the Chandler Museum

OCT. 19: Strategies for Healthy Aging with Debbi Lavinsky

OCT. 26: Klezmer musical performance by Odessa

ISRAELI FILM SERIES

Sunday | October 17 | All Day

Screening of “Good Morning Son,” a drama about a young Israeli soldier who is injured in a military operation and his loving family and friends who fight to bring him back to life.

Naftali Bennett made the Time 100 list. It’s because of ‘courage,’ his Arab-Israeli coalition partner writes.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has made Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people, and his Arab-Israeli coalition partner Mansour Abbas thinks he knows why.

“It all comes down to courage,” Abbas, the leader of the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition, writes in the accompanying blurb explaining why his political opposite was recognized on the list published last week.

“After four elections in two years, a bold act was needed to unite a country frayed by political stalemate and brought to a desperate standstill. Something dramatic needed to change, but more importantly, someone courageous needed to make that change.”

Abbas and Bennett agree on little ideologically. Abbas leads the United Arab List, a party that champions Palestinian self-determination, while Bennett comes from Israel’s right wing and has pledged that a Palestinian state will not arise on his watch. But they coalesced around the goal of removing Bennett’s predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, who they saw as divisive and corrupt.

Arab parties have been part of coalition negotiations previously, and for a period in the 1990s supported a government from outside the coalition. But, Abbas notes, those negotiations always were conducted behind closed doors.

“I don’t do things in the dark,” Abbas quotes Bennett as telling him when Bennett surprised him by opening their coalition talks to the media.

Bennett is under Time’s “Leaders” category. Other Jewish figures in that category are Rochelle Walensky, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control who has become a public figure during the coronavirus pandemic, and Ron Klain, President Joe Biden’s chief of staff. Julie Gerberding, who served as President George W. Bush’s CDC director, wrote the Walensky appraisal, and Hillary Clinton wrote the appraisal of Klain.

Benny Gantz: Israel is OK with Biden efforts to reenter Iran deal, but wants to see a ‘Plan B’ Israel will not oppose the Biden administration’s efforts to reenter the Iran nuclear deal but wants to see a credible “Plan B” to rally international support for Iran’s isolation, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said.

“The current U.S. approach of putting the Iran nuclear program back in a box, I’d accept that,” Gantz said in an interview posted Sept. 14 by Foreign Policy magazine. That represents a significant shift from 12 years of preceding governments led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who campaigned assiduously against the precursors to the 2015 deal and the agreement itself brokered by the Obama administration. Netanyahu was key in persuading former President Donald Trump to leave the deal in 2018.

Israelis across much of the country’s political spectrum remain skeptical of the deal, which traded sanctions relief for a rollback in Iran’s enrichment of nuclear fissile material. The main criticism is that the pact does not completely end enrichment, and some of its provisions “sunset” or lapse after a decade. Also problematic, they say, is that the deal does not deal with Iran’s missile development program or its regional adventurism. Gantz and other officials have said that any new deal should address those issues.

But Naftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister who ousted Netanyahu in the March elections, has said repeatedly that he wants to repair ties between Israel and U.S. Democrats that were damaged in large part by Netanyahu’s out-front opposition to Obama and warm embrace of Trump.

Iran’s government, which has abandoned parts of the deal since Trump’s pullout and taken a harder line following the most recent elections, has rejected bids by the United States to negotiate its reentry. The agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, remains in place, with the other parties — the European Union, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — still committed to it, at least on paper.

Gantz told Foreign Policy that he wants to hear more from the United States about a “viable U.S.-led plan B” of sanctions against Iran to rally the international community to squeeze Iran should it resist U.S. terms for American reentry. Along with the United States, he wants the plan to include Europe, Asia and particularly China, an emerging economic powerhouse.

“Israel has no ability to lead a real plan B, we can’t put together an international economic sanctions regime,” he said. “This has to be led by the U.S.”

A spokesman for Gantz later told the Times of Israel that Gantz meant that Israel would support an agreement that was longer and stronger than the current JCPOA.

Biden wants to reenter the deal because he sees it as the best means of keeping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Experts have said that since Trump’s withdrawal in 2018 and Iran’s retaliatory violations, the country has gone from being a year away from acquiring a weapon to just months away. JN

Compiled from JTA

ISRAEL

The limits of a fragile coalition

We are intrigued by the experiment in governance being pursued by the eight-party coalition that currently runs the State of Israel. It is the creation of prime minister-in-waiting Yair Lapid, and is currently led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The coalition has studiously avoided dealing with potentially divisive political or policy issues, and is much more focused on self-preservation.

Few observers believed that the bizarre coalition of West Bank annexationists, twostate solution advocates, centrists and an antiZionist Islamist party would last as long as it has. They have been able to do so, however, by jointly putting the coalition’s political survival — and the preservation of the trappings of leadership they share — ahead of principle and policy.

Israel has paid a price for this extraordinary exercise. With only minor exceptions, the focus on self-preservation has neutered government and left virtually every aspect of the Netanyahu government’s programs and policies in place, with all players recognizing that material changes to the status quo could shatter their fragile coalition construct.

Yet here we are, three months in, and the government is still in place. Not only that, but earlier this month it passed the first of three readings of a state budget law, something that hasn’t been done since 2018. And, as observed by Yohanan Plesner of the Israel Democracy Institute, the coalition players “will continue to make appointments to a slew of senior positions in the public sector that have remained vacant in recent months

and years. From this perspective, one of the government’s main achievements has been to restore stability and reduce the levels of incitement and hatred in public discourse.”

All that said, what good is all that if government can’t get anything done?

Focusing only on issues with broad national consensus and avoiding those that could lead to serious disagreement means that none of the meaty issues of government (on which there is deep disagreement) can be addressed. That paralysis simply extends existing policies that were themselves the subject of intense debate through four inconclusive national elections, and makes it near impossible to move forward.

A significant victim of the paralysis is the Palestinian people, who comprise more than

The Abraham Accords a year later

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, which established normal relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by Sudan and Morocco. It was a breathtaking turn of events that has caused positive ripples among Israel’s many neighbors, even though no additional countries have come on board.

Relations between Israel and the UAE have become particularly warm. “Israel, Emirates strive for warm, vibrant, profitable peace,” read a recent headline, and it reflects the impressive strides the two countries have made. There are now daily nonstop flights between Israel and Dubai and Abu Dhabi. And just recently, UAE’s economy minister, Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, said that his

Commentary

country wants to expand economic ties with Israel to more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

The Abraham Accords have also given a positive boost to Israel’s frosty relations with Egypt. Their peace treaty, signed in 1979, has never been popular in the Egyptian streets, and while the two countries have an active level of military cooperation, Israel’s public presence in Egypt is limited. Even so, the Sept. 13 meeting Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt reflected a very different tone. That meeting was the first public visit of an Israeli prime minister to Egypt in more than a decade. When Bennett arrived, the Egyptian foreign minister greeted him on the tarmac. The meeting itself included the public display

Hope is in the bag

SARAH ELLERY AND SALLY MARKS

Afriend of mine has breast cancer. She is one of many women

I’ve known who have suffered with this disease. Fortunately, it was caught in time, and with aggressive treatment she will survive.

Many are not so lucky.

About 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer in their lifetime. Those are frightening statistics. However, in the Jewish community, the statistics

indicate a gloomier scenario. Women of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage (Eastern European descent) are at a higher risk for developing breast cancer due to the high prevalence of BRCA1 and BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) inherited gene mutations.

This type of breast cancer attacks younger women and is more deadly than the breast cancer found in older women. Many develop this cancer before the age of 40, which is the recommended age for a baseline mammogram.

That is one reason even young women, especially young Jewish women, should learn how to do a self-breast exam and

of the Israeli flag, and the Egyptian state media carried footage from the meeting. At an event to celebrate the anniversary of the Abraham Accords, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Biden administration will continue working to expand ties between Israel and Arab countries, including efforts to encourage more countries to join the Abraham Accords. On this point, all eyes are on Saudi Arabia, which has praised the accords, continues to align with Israel against their common enemy, Iran, but has yet to normalize relations.

Beyond the excitement and significant success of the Abraham Accords, the ripple effect of improved relations with Israel in a sizeable portion of the Arab world is worth noting. Those who recall the bitter references

one third of the total population under Israeli control. Engagement with the Palestinians remains in limbo, with no prospect for change. And, on that, Bennett makes no secret of his view: “I oppose a Palestinian state — I think it would be a terrible mistake,” he said. “I won’t do that.” In that respect, today’s Bennett-led government seems to be pursuing a policy that is identical to the one pursued by the Netanyahu government.

It is, of course, up to the Israeli electorate to decide on its leadership. If a “do-no-harm to our fragile governing coalition” is what Israelis want, then they have it in today’s construct. But then they can’t turn around and complain that the self-preservation mantra interferes with sound government and has paralyzed their country. JN

to “the Zionist entity” rather than Israel, the hate-filled slogan, “Zionism is racism,” and the unforgiving victimization of the coordinated Arab boycott, understand how successful Israel has been in helping to change the international discussion of delegitimization. It was during this month in 1967 that Arab leaders met in Khartoum, capital of Sudan, and issued their “Three No’s”: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.” A lot has changed since then, and it’s for the better.

We applaud the progress and the moves toward normalization. For the coming year, we look forward to Israel expanding and deepening its economic, security and peopleto-people relations with more and more of its neighbors. JN

schedule an annual exam with their obstetrician/gynecologist. Those with Ashkenazi heritage should be even more vigilant. Mothers in our community are advised to tell their daughters, nieces and granddaughters of this risk.

Detecting breast cancer when it is early in the process is optimal. However, women with breast cancer, regardless of age of ancestral heritage, need support. Fortunately, a local non-profit, myhopebag.org can help.

When diagnosed with breast cancer, one will have some questions: How will I take care of my children? or How will

A NOTE ON OPINION

we pay for all the treatments? Those are normal questions, but having an annual mammogram can help reduce one’s probability of assuming the disease.

A mammogram is like an X-ray of the breast. It can detect breast cancer up to two years before the tumor can be felt by you or your doctor. Many are diagnosed two to three years into the tumor’s growth. What could have been a lighter diagnosis may be more severe because of a missed mammogram.

After diagnosis, questions explode

SEE ELLERY/MARKS, PAGE 14

We are a diverse community. The views expressed in the signed opinion columns and letters to the editor published in the Jewish News are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the officers and boards of the Jewish Community Foundation, Mid-Atlantic Media or the staff of the Jewish News. Letters must respond to content published by the Jewish News and should be a maximum of 200 words. They may be edited for space and clarity. Unsigned letters will not be published. Letters and op-ed submissions should be sent to editor@jewishaz.com.

regarding what to do next. There are many nonprofits that can help with specific areas of concern. My Hope Bag is an organization that directs the newlydiagnosed breast cancer warrior to an extensive resource guide.

The breast cancer warrior is visited by a My Hope Bag “Hope Sister” who engages in conversation regarding the cancer diagnosis and her needs. The

Hope Sister gifts the warrior with a beautiful pink tote bag filled with many comfort items including the resource guide. She now has a friend for life and the Hope Sister keeps in touch until she has completed her treatments. Strong bonds are formed from these friendships. Many of the breast cancer warriors wish to “pay it forward” and become volunteers themselves.

During her cancer treatments, the warrior may contact My Hope Bag for needs including groceries, gas cards to

assist with getting to treatments, medical co-pays and even family outings when available.

The organization also provides the cost of a screening mammogram for those who qualify. A future goal of the organization is to open a respite center for those going through breast cancer treatments to have a place to relax, sip on coffee or tea and visit with other survivors in the non-intimidating comfort of those with whom they can relate.

Whether you received a breast cancer

diagnosis, know someone with breast cancer or are simply someone who wants to donate funds or become a sponsor, there are many ways to help. JN

For more information, go to myhopebag.org or write to sarah@myhopebag.org, for further information or to request a Hope Bag.

Pope Francis is wrong: The laws of the Torah do give life

RABBI WARREN GOLDSTEIN | JNS

Pope Francis’ recent claim that the Torah “does not give life, it does not offer the fulfillment of the promise” has raised hackles across the Jewish world.

Last week, Pope Francis sought to alleviate concerns over his comments; according to Cardinal Kurt Koch, who oversees Vatican relations with Jews, the pope made it known he “had not intended to pass judgment on Jewish law.”

Whatever the pope’s intentions, his remarks reflect a classic Christian objection to the Torah’s perceived legalese and convey a common misconception that Judaism prioritizes legal minutiae over the moral and spiritual ideals these laws are meant to express.

In the wake of this public debate sparked by the pope’s comments, it’s worth examining the fortifying value of the Torah, which has offered us a Divine blueprint for a meaningful life for millennia.

At the heart of Judaism is the understanding that grand concepts on

their own are abstract and intangible. What good are profound values if we don’t know how to put them into action? For great ideas to take shape, we need to know what to do with them. For ideals to make a difference, we need to live them.

In his classic book, Intellectuals, the historian Paul Johnson documents how many of the great Western intellectuals, who posed and pondered some of the loftiest concepts of the past century, led personally dysfunctional lives littered with poor relationships, amoral missteps and misery.

Bertrand Russell made valuable contributions to the field of moral philosophy, but he was a serial womanizer who betrayed all three of his wives. JeanPaul Sartre’s humanism made him an icon, but he silently watched as the Nazis occupied France, and he rationalized Stalin’s atrocities in Russia. Karl Marx’s writings championed the emancipation of the working class, but he often employed antisemitic canards, and his ideas would later justify cruel and oppressive regimes.

The point is that there is often a yawning gap between ideals and instincts, aspirations and actions. It takes work to translate grand ideas into good character,

for lofty concepts to make a better world. The disconnect between what we say (or think or hope) and what we do is precisely what the laws of the Torah aim to address. Contrary to Francis’ remarks, these laws by their very nature give life. The transformative power of the Torah lies not in its big ideas, alone, but in its unique synthesis of philosophy and practice.

Each Torah law, or “mitzvah,” is the practical and concrete expression of an otherwise abstract idea about how to live a moral and virtuous life. For example, we know we should have compassion for others, but it is the Torah that offers a blueprint for what this actually looks like in the world, with detailed directives on comforting mourners, visiting the sick, burying the dead and other methods for alleviating human suffering. We know we should be generous, but it is the Torah that offers practical guidelines for how much we should give, the manner in which we should give and who we should give to. We know we should take opportunities to step back from the frenzy of life to restore our energy and reconnect with our values, but it is the Torah that offers explicit instructions for what it

means to “rest” on Shabbat, and what we should do to enhance the tranquility and spiritual connection of the day.

The Torah essentially translates our values into a program of action.

Having just passed Yom Kippur, we saw how Judaism’s approach of practical wisdom came to life dramatically through the mitzvahs of the day. Our spiritual energy was focused through our fasting and prayers, and we had a clear practical path laid out by our sources of how to define sincere personal change, how to repent, how to apologize, how to confess before God, and how to resolve to be better and to do better.

What the pope seems to overlook is that without such practical directives for daily living, our ideals often get sidelined by our day-to-day needs and desires. Without tangible rules for behavior, we resort to what feels right in the moment. In this way, the Torah’s laws bring our values to life. It is through the Torah’s synthesis of action and ambitions that we fulfill the Divine promise of improving ourselves and the world. JN

No one lost their Jewish last name at Ellis Island. But we gained a safe haven.

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL | JTA

Shortly before he died, my dad gave me a trove of family documents, some dating to the 19th century. For the first time I had confirmation of what our family name was before a great-uncle changed it to Carroll when he and his brothers immigrated to America.

My father’s parents moved from Russia to Paris before coming to the United States. Among the papers is a yellowed French immigration document signed by my grandfather on March 13, 1913;

there he spells his last name Karoltchouk. On my grandmother’s “Permis de sejour a un etranger,” issued in Paris in 1914, it’s spelled Karolchouk. A cursory web search locates Jews with variations like Korolczuk and Karolchuk, which I am told is a common Polish surname.

My father was always ambivalent about his last name. His uncle was probably right that a deracinated name like Carroll made it easier for a family of Polish Jewish immigrants trying to gain a foothold in America (although my dad’s parents didn’t quite get the memo in naming my father Irving). On the other hand, Dad always felt the name suggested that he

was trying to hide something or pretend to be something he

was not.

The dilemmas of Jewish name-changing form a powerful chapter in novelist Dara Horn’s new collection of essays. “People Love Dead Jews” is an examination — deeply reported, at times brilliant and often bitter — on the persistent hatred aimed at Jews, even in their absence. A recurring theme of the book is the way antisemites, philosemites and Jews themselves rewrite and distort the past, and how Jewish identity is “defined and determined by the opinions and projections of others.”

Our last names are a case in point.

Horn explodes the old myth that Jews’ names were changed at Ellis Island by clerks too lazy or malevolent to spell them right. In public lectures and a 2014 essay, Horn would explain that “nobody at Ellis Island ever wrote down immigrants’ names.” Instead, she’d cite works like Kirsten Fermaglich’s “A Rosenberg by Any Other Name,” a deep dive into the data showing the “heartbreaking reality” of Jewish immigrants changing their own names “because they cannot find a job, or because their children are being humiliated or discriminated against at

Sarah Ellery is the CEO/founder of My Hope Bag. Sally Marks is president of Marks Public Relations and a volunteer for My Hope Bag. The organization is based in Gilbert.

Rabbi Warren Goldstein is the chief rabbi of South Africa.

Breaking the fourth wall

future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.”

(Lev. 23:42-43)

he architecture of our lives begins with a basic anatomy lesson, which features the intersection of the evanescent and the eternal. Our corporal body is a complex environment, magnificently designed to be multifunctional and time limited. Our spiritual body is always present, but invisible, lightinfused, designed to navigate timelessness. Among other notable characteristics such as aesthetic, functional, relationship to nature, architectural expressions provide modes of protection. We can consider how the three-dimensional human body is an architectural structure, created by The Source of Life, that shelters the spirit like walls shelter people. However, the human body, unlike a steel building, is particularly vulnerable on all sides. One could argue that the spirit, having a timeless bandwidth, is stronger and needs the body less.

During Sukkot, we observe the ancient tradition of building huts, or booths, and their direct correlation with human fragility and God’s redemptive powers.

According to our Biblical account: “You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths in order that

TAcross the generations, these temporary structures dutifully enveloped ancient Jewish traditions, personal and familial memories. As the walls of the sukkah were secured in place, the boundaries of the festival were delineated and we began marking sacred time by our association with them. In the middle of the holy first two and final two days of Sukkot, we address the experience of being in between, the reality of impermanence and the visible presence of walls in transition. When we read Kohelet on Chol Hamoed Sukkot, we are further reminded of life’s changing seasons and their implications.

Imagine how walls have their seasons and their diversity. For example, think about their physical, psychological and metaphorical qualities. Interestingly, the Talmud highlights the potential for variety when constructing the walls of the sukkah. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, z”l referenced the Talmud’s guidance in Masechet Sukkah 6. Although a minimum of three walls were needed to build a sukkah, the third wall could be a different size, even smaller than the other two: a tefach (handbreath) wide. According to Jewish law, the smaller wall is acceptable as complete. Furthermore, Rava asserted that this different wall allows for a private domain, a reshut ha yahid, for

Shabbat purposes, as well as Sukkot. Today, with room for interpretation of shapes, sizes and materials, there are sukkah design contests all over the world that translate sukkah walls into architectural wonders. Like a sukkah, within theatrical performance, there are three different directions, or walls, in which the action unfolds on a stage. Then, there is the imaginary “fourth wall” that separates the audience from the performance. The fourth wall is also used in literature to identify the conceptual barrier between the story and the reader. “Breaking the fourth wall” is a term attributed to French philosopher, art critic, author, Denis Diderot, in 1758. Removing, or breaking the barrier of the fourth wall enables more intimate encounters, bringing people closer to the performance, or story, and making them an integral part of the art form. Engagement shifts. Conditions of participation, interchange and a range of emotions are enhanced. In this case, what is broken isn’t something in need of repair, or less than whole. Instead, what is broken allows for opportunities and closeness.

Because the actions of our lives unfold in the space between birth and death, because Torah is articulated in that space, we could argue that Chol Hamoed, these in between days, represent a particular holiness that isn’t necessarily less important, or less spiritually charged. Shaping holy space/ time of the in between are the walls we

construct, revise, deconstruct, destroy. As we gather the four species in our hands and bless in all directions — above, below, forward, back, side to side — we can remind ourselves that the blessings we give, receive and hope for, are as multidimensional as the spaces we create with and without walls.

On Sukkot, we break that fourth wall in keeping with the mitzvah of Haknasat Orchim. In the opening, we manifest one act of courage, one act of welcome, one act of inclusion, one act of beauty, one act of kindness at a time. Animating the thirteen attributes of God (Ex. 34:6-7), Sukkah Shalom is made possible. With infinite possibilities, we contribute to the perfecting of our world. Then, the sounds of Tz’man simchateinu reverberate across the valleys and mountains and no wall will ever be the same. JN

school, or because with their real names, no one will hire them for any white-collar position.” Genealogists like Jennifer Mendelsohn and Philip Sutton and Ellis Island officials like Peter Urban have confirmed this over the years.

What Horn didn’t count on was the anger of her audiences, who insisted that their grandparents and greatgrandparents were passive victims of a clerk’s pen. Horn explains this denial as a “deep pattern in Jewish history,” which is “all about living in places where you are utterly vulnerable and cannot admit it.” Instead of fessing up to that vulnerability and their culpability in bowing to it, many Jews prefer to invent more benign “origin stories,” either to exonerate their non-Jewish neighbors or spare themselves and their children the “humiliation” that the new country is no more friendly to Jews than the one they left. If Jews were to tell the truth about why Karolchouk became Carroll, or (in my mother’s case) Greenberg became Green, they’d be “confirming two enormous fears: first, that this country doesn’t really accept you, and second, that the best

way to survive and thrive is to dump any outward sign of your Jewish identity, and symbolically cut that cord that goes back to Mount Sinai.”

Horn ends up saluting the “enormous emotional resources” displayed by the Jews who cling to the Ellis Island myth, but I felt hers is an overly harsh assessment of the survival strategies employed out of necessity by a previous generation of Jews. I can’t prove that my great-uncle and his brothers weren’t humiliated by the name change, but I am guessing that it went down easier than Horn imagines. A new country, a new language, a new alphabet. So much was lost in translation. I think given the choice between the misery they left behind in the Old Country and the opportunities available to them even in an intolerant America, their generation felt losing the last name was a palatable tradeoff.

History bears out their choice. Within a generation or two, the namechangers’ children were able to assert their Jewishness in countless ways. The prosperity that came with “passing” allowed them to build public Jewish lives, worship as they chose and climb the ladder of success unthwarted by the twisted imaginations of antisemites.

Having achieved success, these Jews would build forward-facing Jewish institutions, proudly attach their names to dormitories and concert halls, and send their children to Jewish day schools without fear that they would be denied admission to the top universities. Horn’s book, by contrast, is haunted by the killings of Jews in Pittsburgh, Poway and Jersey City, but those attacks remain the exceptions. Despite the beefed-up security at American synagogues in the wake of 9/11, and the renewed feelings of vulnerability they instilled, those attacks don’t reflect the lived reality of most American Jews 100 years removed from Ellis Island.

Jewish survival and adaptation have often depended on shape shifting, from first-century Yavneh to 20th-century Tel Aviv, when Jews like David Grün and Goldie Myerson traded one kind of Jewish name for another. Besides, what we consider “Jewish” last names are often themselves “un-Jewish” place names and occupations, adopted after state legislation in Yiddish-speaking lands required hereditary names instead of the patronymics the Jews had been using. They certainly didn’t go back to Sinai.

Name changing wasn’t a humiliation but

a strategy, and one that, in the American context, has paid off handsomely.

Like my dad, I sometimes wish our last name sounded more Jewish. I fret that Carroll undercuts what little authority I have as a “public” Jew, or reinforces my own occasional feelings of inauthenticity (which I define as “not having gone to Jewish summer camp”). But of course, to even think of reclaiming a “Jewish” name is a privilege that would have been unimaginable to so many Jews living in truly hostile lands. And the notion of what is and isn’t a “Jewish” name is itself being complicated — and enriched — by conversion, interfaith marriage and all the other factors that have diversified the Jewish community in recent years.

Still, as Horn wrote in her original article about the Ellis Island myth, the internet has become a “toxic sea” of antisemitic misinformation, and “that makes it all the more important to get Jewish history right.” We should all recognize the Ellis Island story for the myth that it is, and embrace the real stories of courage and adaptation that brought us to this place and time.

JN

Rabbi Mindie Snyder serves as the rabbi and chaplain for Sun Health Communities.

SHABBAT

CHOL HAMOED

SUKKOT RABBI MINDIE SNYDER

SILOW-CARROLL CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

What happened to all the art that Nazis looted? This Jewish Museum exhibit tells the story of several masterworks.

CHLOE SARBIB | JTA

Great works of art often become so present in our everyday lives — the “Mona Lisa” on a mug, “The Starry Night” on a sweater, Basquiat in Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Tiffany campaign — that it’s easy to forget how fragile the originals are. These images that populate our collective consciousness all started as a single destructible canvas. But most museums don’t highlight the life these artworks have had as physical objects — often because that history is wrapped up in colonialism and theft.

At the new Jewish Museum exhibition “Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art,” which opened last month in New York, this overlooked aspect of a painting’s history becomes the focus.

“It is often difficult to understand the ‘biography’ of an artwork simply by looking at it, and even more difficult to uncover the lives and experiences of the people behind it,” reads the text on the first wall visitors encounter, displayed beside Franz Marc’s “The Large Blue Horses.”

The gallery is organized around how the artwork it features — including works by Chagall and Pissarro (both Jewish), Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Klee and more — came to hang there. All the pieces displayed have one quality in common: They were either directly affected or inspired by the looting and destruction of the Nazis.

“The vast and systemic pillaging of artworks during World War II, and the eventual rescue and return of many, is one of the most dramatic stories of twentiethcentury art… Artworks that withstood the immense tragedy of the war survived against extraordinary odds,” the text continues. “Many exist today as a result of great personal risk and ingenuity.”

One of the most striking instances of bravery the exhibit recounts is that of Rose Valland, a curator at the Jeu de Paume, which housed the work of the Impressionists. During the collaborationist Vichy regime, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, or ERR, took over the museum building. The ERR, “one of the largest Nazi artlooting task forces operating throughout occupied Europe,” used the space to store masterpieces it had taken.

Valland, who had worked at the Jeu de Paume before the war, stayed on during the Occupation and collaborated with the French Resistance to track what the Nazis did with the stolen paintings. “At great personal risk,” including sneaking into the Nazi office at night to photograph important documents, “she recorded incoming and outgoing shipments and made detailed maps of the extensive network of Nazi transportation and storage facilities.” Pieces by Jewish or modernist artists were often labeled “degenerate” and slated for destruction. Valland was unable to save many of them, and referred to the room where they were housed as the “Room of the Martyrs.”

In the exhibit, Valland’s story is overlaid on a 1942 photograph of this room. Some of the works in it — by Andre Dérain and Claude Monet, among others — are believed to have been destroyed. But three of the paintings that survived are on the adjacent wall: “Bather and Rocks” by Paul Cezanne, “Group of Characters” by Pablo Picasso, and “Composition” by Fédor Löwenstein. They last hung together in the Room of the Martyrs, awaiting their fate like many of the Jews of Europe.

Some Impressionist paintings on display at the Jewish Museum, like Matisse’s “Girl in Yellow and Blue with Guitar,” spent the Holocaust in the personal collections of high-ranking

Nazi officials — Hermann Goering in this case. Others — like Marc Chagall’s “Purim,” a study for a commissioned St. Petersburg mural he never painted — were confiscated, labeled “degenerate” for their Jewish authors and content. But that didn’t stop the Nazis from selling them to fund the war effort. The exhibit calls out these financial incentives that spurred the Nazis to steal from Jewish collectors: It was as much about seizing Jewish wealth as about any ideological beliefs. Germany was in debt when the Nazis came to power, and even “degenerate” art was often sold on the international market “to raise funds for the Nazi war machine” if they thought it would fetch a good price. So the Nazis weren’t even principled in their anti-Jewishness; they were happy to profit off of works by Jewish artists and were often motivated by simple greed.

“Purim,” painted in 1916-17, contains “folkloric imagery and vivid colors drawn from Chagall’s memories of his childhood in a Jewish enclave in the Russian empire.” Seeing a depiction of a holiday that celebrates Jews surviving persecution in this World War II context is poignant.

The exhibit includes documents from the collection points, in Munich and Offenbach, where the Allies traced the paths of stolen work, stored them when recovered, and eventually tried to “reverse the flow” by sending them back where they belonged. Staring at a map of how far some confiscated Jewish literature had traveled is intimidating in the sheer scope of this staggering pre-internet task.

“Afterlives” also features art by Jews who faced persecution directly — pieces made at the camps themselves or while in hiding. The haunting, delicate drawings of Jacob Barosin, who made them while fleeing to France and ultimately to the U.S., were moving. And the presence of “Battle on a Bridge,” a looted painting so revered by the Nazis that Hitler had earmarked it for his future personal Fuhrermuseum in Austria, was chilling. Its inventory number, 2207, is still visible on the back of the canvas.

But what was most captivating about the exhibit was how it helps the visitor imagine what Jewish cultural life was like before the Nazis came to power. I often have the impression that accounts of the Holocaust concentrate more on the horrors of the camps and less and on the individual lives and communities they destroyed. Here, I learned about Jewish gallerist Paul Rosenberg, whose impressive gallery the Nazis co-opted — after seizing his valuable art, of course — for the “Institute of the Study on the Jewish Question,” an antisemitic propaganda machine. I learned about his son Alexander, who, while liberating a train with the Free French Forces thought to be full of passengers, recovered some of his father’s art against all odds. I saw August Sander’s “Persecuted Jews” portrait series from late-’30s Germany, and looked into the faces of people forced to leave their homes. And I saw a huge collection of orphaned Judaica and ritual objects from Danzig (now Gdansk), Poland, where the Jewish community shipped two tons of their treasures to New York for safekeeping in 1939. If no safe free Jews remained in Danzig 15 years later, these items would be entrusted to the museum. None did. The exhibit also includes the work of four contemporary artists grappling with the contents of “Afterlives” and the era it evokes. Maria Eichhorn pulls from the art restitution work of Hannah Arendt. Hadar Gad uses her painstaking process to paint the disassembly of Danzig’s Great Synagogue. Lisa Oppenheim collages the only existing archival photograph of a lost still-life painting with Google Maps images of the clouds above the house where its Jewish owners lived. And Dor Guez, a Palestinian North African artist from Israel, created an installation from objects belonging to his paternal grandparents, who escaped concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Tunisia. They previously ran a theater company, and a manuscript written by his grandfather in his Tunisian Judeo-Arabic dialect was damaged in transit. Guez blew up the unfamiliar handwriting and ink blots into abstracted prints that hang on the wall. In Guez’s words, “the words are engulfed in abstract spots, and these become a metaphor for the harmonious conjunction between two Semitic languages, between one mother tongue and another, and between homeland and a new country.”

I’ll let the exhibit’s curators sum up how I felt as I left: “Many of the artists, collectors and descendants who owned these items are gone, and as the war recedes in time it can become even harder to grasp the traumatic events they endured. Yet through these works, and the histories that attend them, new connections to the past can be forged.” JN

“Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art” is on view at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan through Jan. 9, 2022. This article originally appeared on Alma.

Felbermeyer, movement of repatriated art

PHOTO VIA JEWISH MUSEUM VIA JTA.ORG

The Room of the Martyrs, in the Archives du Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangère – La Courneuve

PHOTO VIA JEWISH MUSEUM VIA JTA.ORG

A teacher’s Nazi salute roiled an NYC school in 2018. Did it also inspire Netflix’s ‘The Chair’?

CHLOE SARBIB | JTA

Light spoilers ahead for “The Chair.”

“The Chair,” Netflix’s new sixpart dramedy set in the English department of a fictional Ivy League school, is about a lot of things: existing as a woman of color in academia, workplace sexual tension, parenthood, grief, Sandra Oh’s incredible double-breasted jackets. It’s also about a casual Nazi salute — if there is such a thing — which occurs during the first episode and reverberates throughout the rest of the series.

That moment, replayed and refracted, becomes a way for the show’s writers to explore cancel culture on college campuses. It’s a narrative device, but it’s also very similar to a real event that occurred a few years ago at a prestigious New York City private school — the very one that Jewish co-creator Amanda Peet attended.

In February 2018, Ben Frisch was teaching precalculus at the high school where he’d taught for three decades, Friends Seminary in Manhattan. In demonstrating an obtuse angle, he found himself inadvertently in the posture of a

“Heil Hitler” salute. Horrified, Frisch, grasping for a way out, called it out: “Heil Hitler!” he said. The joke fell flat.

Then, Frisch tried to explain: Until recently, making fun of Nazis was common, a Mel Brooks-inspired form of humor. Now, of course, any reference to Nazism was taboo. The class moved on, resuming discussion of math. As in “The Chair,” that seemed to be that. At first. But soon after, Friends’ principal, Bo Lauder, fired Frisch.

This incident and its aftermath were complicated by Frisch’s own Jewish heritage: Though, like Friends Seminary, Frisch is Quaker, his father was Jewish, and two of his great-grandmothers died at Auschwitz. Much of the student body rushed to his defense. They taped petitions to the principal’s door, staged sit-ins, wore “Bring Back Ben” pins and protested. Per the New York Times: “In a commencement address, the senior Benjamin Levine offered a thinly veiled critique of the administration: ‘It’s so much easier and simpler to decide someone is racist or ignorant or naïve — or antisemitic — than to engage in the messy work of trying to communicate

and understand when conflicts arise.’” One protest sign read: “Firing a Trade Unionist Jewish Son of a Holocaust Survivor For Having a Mel Brooks Sense of Humor is Antisemitic.”

Anyone who’s seen “The Chair” will note where these stories align. Like Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass), the charmingly disheveled and wildly popular professor who makes this gaffe in the show, Frisch was well-liked, as shown by the ensuing wave of support. (Dobson, who is also a successful novelist, has an almost cultish student following.) Where the stories diverge is in the student reaction to the incident: In “The Chair,” after the salute is surreptitiously recorded on several students’ phones during the lecture (of course), the clip goes viral, devoid of all context, and starts a campus-wide protest for “No Nazis at Pembroke.” One Jewish student, a Professor Dobson devotee, even lists off statistics about the recent rise in antisemitic incidents in an attempt to help him understand why reactions are so strong.

As mentioned, co-creator Amanda Peet attended Friends Seminary (though well before the 2018 incident with Frisch).

Peet’s Jewish identity is important to her: Born to a Jewish mother and a Quaker father, she’s married to Jewish writer and former “Game of Thrones” showrunner David Benioff. In 2015, she wrote a children’s book about being Jewish during Christmas time.

Though Peet has yet to mention Frisch in interviews around “The Chair,” this story, of another Jewish Quaker at her alma mater, may have inspired her.

In the Times piece about Frisch, Jonathan Mahler wrote: “That no one has accused Frisch of being an anti-Semite was beside the point: His invocation of the Nazi salute in a classroom full of high school students, regardless of his intentions, was enough to end his career.” Without spoiling too much, this very same question — of intent versus action — plays a key part in the fate of the fictional Bill Dobson.

But back to real life: In the end, after a union-supported hearing, Ben Frisch got his job back; he is once again teaching at Friends Seminary. It’s unknown if he’s watched “The Chair.” JN

This article originally appeared on Alma.

Sandra Oh and Jay Duplass in “The Chair.” ELIZA MORSE/NETFLIX VIA

Whistle, Gotham City’s latest superhero, is Jewish. It’s a full-circle moment for the comics industry.

JULIAN VOLOJ | JTA

It turns out that Batman’s hometown of Gotham City has a historically Jewish neighborhood, complete with a synagogue. And during this year’s High Holidays, at least one masked superhero was worshipping there.

Her name is Whistle, a.k.a. Willow Zimmerman, and she’s a Jewish superhero — DC Comics’ first to be explicitly created as Jewish in 44 years. She’s an activist-turnedmasked-crusader who draws inspiration from Jewish teachings; she develops the ability to talk to dogs; and she’s making her debut this month in “Whistle: A New Gotham City Superhero,” a graphic novel geared to young adults.

“There’s a long and fascinating history of Jewish creators in comics,” the book’s author and character creator, E. Lockhart, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Superman, Batman and Spider-Man were all invented by Jewish men, and scholars have interpreted them through a variety of lenses that take that into account. But while there have certainly been Jewish superheroes before, Whistle is the first Jewish hero to originate as Jewish from DC Comics since 1977.”

Lockhart was referring to Seraph, a superhero from Israel who helped Superman in “Super Friends #7 before immediately falling out of the public eye.

Yet the roots of superheroes are distinctly Jewish.

Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, the sons of Jewish immigrants, effectively kicked off the lucrative genre in 1938 with the debut of Superman in “Action Comics #1.” Superman was a new kind of hero, a noble, allpowerful defender of American ideals who harbored a secret identity and origin story that made him distinctly an outsider. If his origins weren’t specifically Jewish, they were certainly informed by the Jewish experience.

Superman became an unexpected bestseller and, consequently, the blueprint for a whole genre, as the market soon flooded with new superheroes. The vast majority of these comic book pioneers — writers, illustrators and publishers — were Jewish, including Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. However, their characters were a generic form of “all American” without any religious or ethnic affiliation. So while Captain America was allowed to punch Hitler on the cover of the hero’s debut, it took decades for superheroes to have a Jewish identity.

There have been exceptions over the decades, most notably Marvel’s “X-Men” villain Magneto, retconned as a Holocaust survivor following his debut, and popular DC antihero Harley Quinn, a Brooklynite who sprinkles in Yiddish phrases and was voiced in her original 1990s animated TV debut by the Jewish comedienne Arleen Sorkin. (Harley’s current film incarnation, played by Margot Robbie, drops the Jewish signifiers.)

But what makes Whistle unique is that her origin story is centered around her Jewish identity. Willow Zimmerman is a social justice activist who volunteers at a local pet shelter and lives with her single mother, an adjunct Jewish studies professor, in Down River, a Gotham City neighborhood modeled after the Lower East Side. That means it comes with a long Jewish history, making Judaism canonical in Gotham more

than eight decades after Bob Kane and Bill Finger, two Bronx Jews, created the Dark Knight.

The setting was informed by Lockhart’s own upbringing. Growing up, she often visited the real Lower East Side with her father, the playwright Len Jenkis, who wrote for “The Incredible Hulk” TV show in the 1970s.

“I always had a strong sense of my paternal family’s heritage and the history of New York City as intertwined,” she said. “I had done research on the Jewish history of the LES for another book, so when DC invited me to create a new Gotham City hero, it felt natural to use

some of that research and my own love of the neighborhood to create a new part of Gotham that’s a lot like the LES of the 1980s.”

For Whistle herself, Lockhart drew inspiration from a different trailblazer at DC’s rival: Kamala Khan, the Muslim Ms. Marvel introduced in 2013.

“I love Ms. Marvel and was definitely inspired by the way [author] G. Willow Wilson engaged with questions of heroism and the superheroic body through the lens of Kamala’s Muslim identity,” Lockhart said. “I thought about it a lot while I was writing Whistle.”

“Whistle,” which is illustrated magnificently by Manuel Preitano, is Lockart’s debut as a graphic novelist.

“I write novels about young women who are navigating morally complicated situations,” she said. “Very often the stories are about agency and power and self-knowledge, one way or another. So in that sense, ‘Whistle’ is right on brand for me.”

Those familiar with the Batman universe will recognize many side characters, such as the Riddler and Poison

“It was great fun […] to play in the sandbox of DC Comics’ Gotham City, which has a wonderful rogues gallery of spectacularly deranged supervillains,”

Another Batman supervillain, Killer Croc, plays a central role in Willow’s transformation into a superhero. Outside her local synagogue, she and her sidekick, a loyal stray Great Dane named Lebowitz (named after Fran, Lockhart confirms), collide with Killer Croc and wake up being able to understand each other.

“When she gets superpowers, she becomes Whistle — and no longer feels helpless,” Lockhart explains. “It’s a fantasy of empowerment, but her position is also morally complicated. I didn’t want to shy away from asking questions about what it means to be a hero, emotionally

Like Lockhart herself, Willow is secular. Her visit to Gotham’s synagogue is for meditation purposes.

“I knew I would tell the most truthful and nuanced story if I wrote from my own identity and from the community I’m in,” Lockhart said on her decision not to make the character strictly observant. “My heroine engages with her Jewishness in much the same way

Rooted in Lockhart’s own past, Willow’s Judaism leans on old-neighborhood nostalgia and Yiddishisms like “bubbeleh.” It’s a more traditionalist approach to a Jewish superhero identity than other recent efforts, such as Marvel’s relaunch of “White Tiger” in 2002 as a biracial Jew of color struggling with his Black and Jewish identities.

But Lockhart does touch upon many presentday topics animating Willow’s generation, such as gentrification, social justice and environmental issues. With Willow, a hero whose actions are clearly informed by her Jewish identity and the concept of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, Judaism will now be an integral part of Gotham’s mythology. JN

Whistle, a.k.a. Willow Zimmerman, is DC Comics’ first explicitly Jewish superhero in decades.

IMAGE COURTESY OF DC, WRITTEN BY E. LOCKHART, WITH ART BY MANUEL PREITANO, COLORS BY GABBY METZLER AND LETTERS BY ALW’S TROY PETERI VIA JTA.ORG

Willow Zimmerman visits a synagogue.

IMAGE COURTESY OF DC, WRITTEN BY E. LOCKHART, WITH ART BY MANUEL PREITANO, COLORS BY GABBY METZLER AND LETTERS BY ALW’S TROY PETERI VIA JTA.ORG

For Mallorca’s Jews, their first ‘public’ sukkah is a triumph over the Spanish Inquisition

CNAAN LIPHSHIZ | JTA

Before the Spanish Inquisition, the island of Mallorca had a sizeable Jewish community. Every fall, the island became dotted with the leaf-roofed huts that Jews are commanded to erect during the holiday of Sukkot.

But that all changed under the Inquisition’s campaign of persecution that began in 1488 (four years before it started on Spain’s mainland) and was only officially abolished centuries later in 1834.

This year, however, the island’s tiny Jewish community in the capital Palma was determined to reintroduce its Sukkot tradition with a public statement.

Ahead of the holiday, the Jewish community along with the municipality of Palma erected what organizers are calling the island’s first “public” sukkah since the Inquisition, situated in the city’s former Jewish Quarter.

“It’s one of several firsts for the Jews of Mallorca, and it’s especially meaningful because it restores something from this community’s past,” said Dani Rotstein, founder of Limud Mallorca and secretary of the Jewish Community of the Balearic Islands. A tourism and video production professional from New Jersey, he has led efforts to promote Mallorca’s Jewish community since he moved there in 2014.

To be fair, Palma has seen its share of sukkahs since the Inquisition. The city and the island, which is a popular vacation destination off of Spain’s eastern shores, for decades has had a small but active Jewish community of about 100 members, plus several Jewish expats. They are celebrating the 50th

anniversary since British expats founded the community in 1971. Palma also has a synagogue, a small Jewish museum and a resident rabbi.

But this year’s weeklong holiday of Sukkot, which began Monday night, marked the first time that a sukkah was built on public grounds with funding from the local municipality. It was erected at the Ca’n Oms mansion, the seat of the city’s department of culture and other municipal bodies.

Jews and non-Jews are able to enjoy cultural programming from Limmud Mallorca, including lectures in the sukkah and tours of the area, over the course of two weeks.

The public sukkah is part of a Europeanwide initiative European Days of Jewish Culture, a series of events celebrating Jewish heritage in dozens of cities in Europe each year in September and October.

This development is the latest in a series of moves by Rotstein and others designed to commemorate the pre-Inquisition presence of Jews in Mallorca, who became known as chuetas, the local name for anusim — or those who were forcibly converted to Christianity during the Inquisition.

On Rosh Hashanah, local Jews hosted a festive service and musical concert to celebrate the new Jewish year, with the cooperation of a local Catalan cultural center, in its garden located in the old Jewish quarter.

It was symbolic to participants because of a painful chapter in the history of Mallorca’s Jewish community. In 1677, local crypto-Jews, who risked

their lives by practicing their faith while pretending to be Christian, held a Yom Kippur service in secret in a garden outside the city walls.

Local Jews say that when Spanish rulers learned about the service, they salted the garden’s soil to ensure that nothing could ever grow there again, and doubled down on eradicating Jewish celebrations from the island.

In recent years, authorities have made an effort to acknowledge and atone for such atrocities.

In 2018, local authorities unveiled a memorial plaque at the Palma square where 37 crypto-Jews were publicly burned in what was once known locally as “the bonfire of the Jews.”

In 2015, the city helped build a small Jewish museum in what used to be the Jewish quarter. The area, featuring sandstone facades and quiet, cobbled streets, used to be a thriving and heavily Jewish shopping and business area, with many tanneries, shoe shops and butcher shops. Today few if any Jews live there, and most visitors are tourists.

Also in 2015, the parliaments of Spain and Portugal passed laws that give descendants of Sephardic Jews the right to citizenship. Millions of dollars in public funds are being invested in preserving and developing Jewish heritage sites in those countries.

Many chueta families continued to practice Judaism in secret. Even those who did not keep up their Jewish practice at the time were treated with suspicion and excluded in many ways from the rest of society.

Some Jewish traditions remained in

chueta families, such as the lighting of candles on Shabbat, covering mirrors during mourning and the spring cleanings associated with Passover. But over time the island’s Jewish population dwindled.

But, ironically, society’s exclusion of chuetas proved to be the key to Judaism’s revival in Mallorca, historians say: because they were not allowed to intermarry freely with the Christian population, chuetas married among themselves. This helped preserve a distinct chueta identity well into the 1970s, when the dictatorship of Fransisco Franco finally collapsed, opening Spanish society to the rest of Europe.

When that happened, Mallorca had thousands of people who defined themselves as chuetas, a minority that numbers about 20,000 today.

In recent years, chuetas who returned to Judaism and converted have taken the community’s reins. In 2018, two chuetas were elected to the community’s fourperson executive board. And in June, the community received, for the first time since the Inquisition, a rabbi who was born in Palma to a chueta family, Nissan Ben Avraham.

This process, as well as the public events for Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, “are a victory,” Iska Valls, a chueta returnee to Judaism and the wife of Toni Pinya, one of the Jewish community’s chueta board members, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“It’s a victory [over] the Inquisition and proof that we are like a phoenix, rising once more from the ashes,” she said. JN

Members of the Jewish community of Mallorca, Spain, attend a Tu B’Shevat picnic, Feb. 10, 2019.

PHOTO BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ

A leather shop that used to be a synagogue in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

PHOTO BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ

Featured Event

MONDAY, OCT. 18

The Great Arizona Artisan Challah and Babka Bake: 6 p.m. Founder and head baker at Oven Fresh Challah in Phoenix, Miriam Litzman, will lead a virtual and in-person challah and babka bake. The in-person event will be at Pardes Jewish Day School, 12753 N Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale. Virtual Cost: Free, if using your own ingredients, or $18 if you buy and pick up the ingredients at Pardes. In-person cost: $18 per person, $5 for every additional family member. Open to kids 9 and up. Masks required. RSVP by Sun., Oct. 10. To RSVP and receive more information, visit shabbatprojectaz.org, or email contact@shabbatprojectaz.org.

Events

Friday, Sept. 24

Sukkot Tot Shabbat: 5 p.m. Join PlayDates by Design for a holiday tot shabbat at Pardes Jewish Day School, 12753 N Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale, Partners include Harper Jack, Modern Mitzvah and PJ Library. A craft will be offered and enter to win a Harper Jack sensory kit. Cost: $15 per family. Masks required for adults. For more information and to register, visitplaydatesbydesign.com/event-details/ sukkot-tot-shabbat.

SATURDAY, SEPT. 25

Kids Night Out: 6-10 p.m. Families can drop off their kids at the Martin Pear Jewish Community Center, at 12701 N Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale, and have a night out. Each Kid’s Night Out will have a different theme that will bring fun games, exciting movies, a yummy pizza dinner and more. Cost: $30 individual or $50 for the family for members, $35 individual or $65 for the family for guests. Additional $5 for registration the week of the program. For more information and to register, visitmpjcc.org/events/2021/09/25/youth/ kid-s-night-out-mad-science-party.

SUNDAY, SEPT. 26

Comedy: 2 p.m. Jennie Fahn’s solo 90-minute comedy, UNDER THE JELLO MOLD, makes its Arizona debut at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, 7380 E 2nd St, Scottsdale. The show was winner of the 2017 Hollywood Fringe Festival’s Best Solo Show and Producer’s Encore Awards and named Pick of the Fringe. Cost: $35. Purchase online at UnderTheJelloMold.com or call (480) 499-TKTS (8587).

See Jay Run: 7:30 a.m.- 5:30 p.m. Martin Pear Jewish Community Center CEO Jay Jacobs has committed to raising $150,000 for the SMILE Campaign by being on the treadmill for 12 hours straight. Support Jay on his quest and get in on the fun by participating in a group exercise class or tournament during 12 hours of new and exclusive fitness events, or walk or run next to Jay for $100 per hour, or donate to the campaign online. The MPJCC is located at 12701 N Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale. For more information visit, mpjcc.org/seejayrun.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 28

Breakfast and learn: 9:30-10:45 a.m. Join the Martin Pear Jewish Community Center, at 12701 N Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale, for an informative breakfast with Dr. David Wood, chief medical officer at Advantage IR. He will cover the latest Interventional Radiology procedures that provide an effective alternative to surgery, require minimal recovery time, are outpatient and Medicare-covered. Registration and social distancing are required, masks optional. Cost: Free. To register or learn more, contact Lynette Stein at 480.481.7040 or lynettes@mpjcc.org.

SATURDAY, OCT. 2

The Red Rocks Music Festival will present concerts at the Arizona Jewish Historical Society, 122 E Culver St, Phoenix, on Wednesday, September 1st, at 7:30 p.m featuring works by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Bartok; Thursday, September 2nd at 7:30 p.m. featuring works by Boccherini, Piazzolla and Dvorak; and Saturday, October 2nd at 7:30 p.m. featuring works by Ravel, Rodrigo, Boskovich, Lavry, and Schumann. Cost: $36. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit redrocksmusicfestival.com.

THURSDAY, OCT. 7

Bingo for breast cancer: Join the Martin Pear JCC, 12701 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale, for The J’s second annual event of which 10% of proceeds will benefit a local cancer organization. Enjoy a wine tasting, raffle prizes, dessert, and bingo. Cost: $30 for members, $40 for guests. For more information and to register, visit apm. activecommunities.com/valleyofthesunjcc/ Activity_Search/1831.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13

Keep Your Balance: 11:30 a.m. Join the Martin Pear JCC, 12701 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale, for an in-person lunch and learn in honor of National Falls Prevention Awareness Day. Industry specialists from Sante and MEASURAbilities Home Safety will share techniques that prevent serious injury from a fall and how to safely get back up, teach balance and strength exercises and discuss cost-effective safety interventions that will help you stay independent and in the comfort of your own home. Following lunch, Sante will provide a complimentary gait analysis. Registration is required. Face masks are optional. Presented by Sante and the Martin Pear JCC. Cost: Free. For more information and to register, visit eventbrite.com/e/keep-your-balanceprevent-falls-before-they-happen-tickets168473168783?aff=erelpanelorg.

THURSDAY, OCT. 14

Networking and Nosh: 8-9:30 a.m. Join the Martin Pear JCC, 12701 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale, for an in-person outdoor breakfast and mingle with other business professionals from the J community. Facial masks are optional. Presented by Kierman Law and Weiss Wealth Strategies of Raymond James. Cost: Free. To register or learn more, visit eventbrite.com/e/networking-nosh-tickets168629422141?aff=erelpanelorg.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 27

Founder Presentations: 6:30 p.m. The founders of two prominent Jewish organizations, Becca Hornstein of Gesher Disability Resources and Andi Minkoff of the Minkoff Center for Jewish Genetics will each speak about their agency’s remarkable origins at the New Shul, 7825 E. Paradise Lane, Scottsdale. This panel is sponsored by the Women’s Leadership Institute. For more information and to register, visit bit.ly/WLIOct21.

9:30 a.m. Bring your babies, toddlers and preschoolers to our weekly all ages in-person storytime at Modern Milk, 3802 N Scottsdale Rd STE 163. We will integrate favorite children’s books and songs while giving parents new ideas for play. Cost: $5. For more information and to register, visit modernmilk.com/after-baby.

SUNDAYS

Bagels: 9-11 a.m. Join the Martin Pear JCC, 12701 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale, for Bagels And Gabbing every last Sunday of the month in-person. Grab a bagel and a cup of coffee and enjoy some time with your friends and make new ones. You must register to attend. Bagels and coffee will be provided. Cost: Free for members, $5 for guests. For more information and to register, visit apm.activecommunities.com/ valleyofthesunjcc/Activity_Search/1787.

J Youth Theater Rehearsals: 2-4 p.m. Beginning Sunday, Sept. 26, the Martin Pear JCC, 12701 N. Scottsdale Rd., Scottsdale, is hosting rehearsals for kids in Kindergarten and first grade for this year’s production: Schoolhouse Rock Live! JR. Cost: $175 for members, $250 for guests. For more information and to register, visit mpjcc.org/theaterk.

Hybrid Meetings, Lectures & Classes

SUNDAY, OCT . 10

Book Discussion: 10-11 a.m. Join Tucson Jewish Community Center’s Weintraub Israel Center in-person at 3800 E. River Road, Tucson or via Zoom for a presentation by Israeli actress, writer, producer and activist Noa Tishby about her book, “Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Place on Earth.” Childcare is available with advanced registration. Cost: Free. For more information and to register, visit tucsonjcc.org/ israel. Contact the Tucson J with questions or for help registering at 520.299.3000 or info@tucsonjcc.org.

THURSDAY, NOV. 4

Surviving Catastrophe: 7-8:30 p.m. Rabbi Ed Feinstein will discuss the “Jewish genius for surviving catastrophe.” This event is tentatively in person--the location is to be determined-with a Zoom option. Only the first 100 who register will be permitted to attend in person. Masks will be required, and attendees must be vaccinated. Seating will also be socially distanced. Cost: $18. For more information and to register, visit valleybeitmidrash.org/event/ the-jewish-genius-for-surviving-catastrophe.

Virtual Meetings, Lectures & Classes

SUNDAY, OCT. 3

Author Presentation: 5 p.m. David Rubenstein, author of “The American Experiment: Dialogues

on a Dream,” will virtually discuss his book, in a series presented by the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta Book Fest in Your Living Room and the National JCC Literary Consortium. Cost: $11 without a copy of the book, $40 with a copy of the book. For more information and to register, visit showclix.com/ event/david-rubenstein-american-experiment/ tag/scottsdale.

MONDAY, OCT. 4

Squirrel Hill: 11 a.m. - noon. In this virtual Valley Beit Midrash class, Mark Oppenheimer, from the Podcast Unorthodox, will discuss the Tree of Life shooting and how the historically Jewish community of Squirrel Hill embodied resilience in the aftermath. Cost: $18. For more information and to register, visit valleybeitmidrash.org/event.

TUESDAY, OCT. 5

Music of Broadway: 10 a.m. Join the East Valley Jewish Community Center for a virtual presentation by violinist Julie Ivanhoe. Cost: Free. For more information and to register, visit evjcc.org/tuesdays.

Author Presentation: 5 p.m. Joe Posnanski, author of “The Baseball 101,” will virtually discuss his book, in a series presented by the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta Book Fest in Your Living Room and the National JCC Literary Consortium. Cost: $11 without a copy of the book, $31 with a copy of the book. For more information and to register, visit showclix.com/event/ mindy-weisel-after-book/tag/scottsdale.

TUESDAY, OCT 12

Museum at the J: 10 a.m. Join the East Valley Jewish Community Center for a virtual presentation by the Chandler Art Museum called “Frank Lloyd Wright and a New Vision for Chandler.” Cost: Free. For more information and to register, visit evjcc.org/tuesdays.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13

Author Presentation: 5 p.m. Mindy Weiseli, author of “After: The Obligation of Beauty,” will virtually discuss her book, in a series presented by the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta Book Fest in Your Living Room and the National JCC Literary Consortium. Cost: $6 without a copy of the book, $46 with a copy of the book. For more information and to register, visit showclix. com/event/joe-posnanski-baseball-book/tag/ scottsdale.

THURSDAY, OCT. 14

The Light of Days: 2 p.m. Join the Arizona Jewish Historical Society for this virtual book discussion on “THE LIGHT OF DAYS,” by Judy Batalion. Learn about the exploits of a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—who helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. Cost: Free. For more information and to register, visit azjhs.org/ the-light-of-days.

Abortion and Halacha: 1-2 p.m. In this Valley Beit Midrash virtual presentation by Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig, examine the different attitudes within Jewish law towards the possibility of abortion. Cost: $18. For more information and to register, visit valleybeitmidrash.org/event.

TUESDAY, OCT. 19

Healthy Aging: 10 a.m. Join the East Valley Jewish Community Center for a virtual presentation by Debbi Lavinsky, a health and wellness coach and Pilates tacher, about strategies for healthy aging. Cost: Free. For more information and to register, visit evjcc.org/tuesdays.

Restorative Justice: 1-2 p.m. In this virtual Valley Beit Midrash presentation by Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Cohen, look at a Rabbinic understanding of justice. It is not punishment centered, but rather centers the victim’s experience and looks at the

three-way relationship between victim/survivor, offender, and society as the basis for creating safety and justice for everybody.

Cost: $18. For more information and to register, visit valleybeitmidrash.org/event.

THURSDAY, OCT. 21

Legacy of German Judaism: 1-2 p.m. In this virtual Valley Beit Midrash presentation by Professor Paul Franks, learn about German Judaism, and what it still can offer us today. Cost: $18. For more information and to register, visit valleybeitmidrash. org/event. Cost: $18. For more information and to register, visit valleybeitmidrash.org/event.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 25

The Chassidic Story: 1-2 p.m. In this virtual Valley Beit Midrash presentation by Jonnie Schnytzer, learn about the ways Chassidic masters created a Jewish revolution, which rekindled a mass of souls that were on the verge of burning out.

TUESDAY, OCT. 26

Odessa: 10 a.m. Join the East Valley Jewish Community Center for a virtual presentation by the Odessa, which will perform Klezmer music. Cost: Free. For more information and to register, visit evjcc.org/tuesdays.

MONDAYS

Partners in Torah: 7:30 p.m. Join a growing group of inspired learners with Project Inspire. Cost: Free. Tune in at: us04web.zoom. us/j/3940479736#success, password is 613. For more information, email Robin Meyerson at robin@projectinspireaz.com.

Ethics of Our Fathers: 7 p.m. Learn with Rabbi Zalman Levertov online. Tune in at: bit. ly/2Y0wdgv. Cost: Free. For more information, visit chabadaz.com.

Quotable Quotes by our Sages: 7 p.m. Learn with Rabbi Shlomy Levertov online. Tune in at: JewishParadiseValley.com/class. Cost: Free. For more information, visit chabadaz.com. Learning to Trust in God: 7:30 p.m. Learn with Rabbi Yossi Friedman online. Tune in at: ChabadAZ.com/ LiveClass. Cost: Free. For more information, visit chabadaz.com.

Torah & Tea: 7:30 p.m. Learn with Rabbi Yossie Shemtov online. Cost: Free. For more information, visit Facebook.com/ChabadTucson.

TUESDAYS

Keep Calm and Play Mahjong: 6:30-8:30 p.m. Play mahjong from home with myjongg.net. Cost: Free. To join a table, email Nicole at nicoleg@vosjcc.org.

Maintaining an Upbeat Attitude: 7 p.m. A class exclusively for people in their 20s and 30s, learn how Jewish Mysticism can help with your attitude with Rabbi Shlomy Levertov online. Cost: Free. Tune in at: JewishParadiseValley.com/YJPclass. For more information, visit chabadaz.com.

Let’s Knit: 1:30-3:30 p.m. Share the pleasure of knitting, crocheting, etc. and help others with a project or pattern. Can’t knit? We can teach you! Every level welcome. We will be sitting outside at the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus and social distancing. Our last meeting before August will be Tuesday, May 11. Cost: Free . For more information, email Nicole Garber at nicoleg@mpjcc.org.

WEDNESDAYS

Happiness Hour: 11:30 a.m. An online class taught by Rabbi Pinchas Allouche that delves into texts and references culled from our traditions to address a relevant topic and draw uplifting life lessons from it. For more information or to join, visit cbtvirtualworld.com.

The Thirteen Petalled Rose: 1 p.m. An online Kabbalah class that studies “The Thirteen

Petalled Rose” by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, focusing on the many foundational and transformational concepts of Kaballah and Jewish Mysticism and applying them to everyday life. For more information or to join, visit cbtvirtualworld.com.

JACS: 7:30-8:30 p.m. Virtual support group for Jewish alcoholics, addicts and their friends and family on the first and third Wednesdays of the month. Cost: Free. For more information, email jacsarizona@gmail.com or call 602-692-1004.

Torah Study with Chabad: Noon. Take a weekly journey to the soul of Torah online with Rabbi Yossi Levertov. Cost: Free. For more information, visit chabadaz,com

Torah Study with Temple Beth Shalom of the West Valley: 11 a.m. - noon. TBS of the West Valley’s weekly virtual study group explores that week’s portion and studies different perspectives and debates the merits of various arguments. Intended for adults, Torah study is open to students of all levels. The goal is to achieve an understanding of what the text is and what it can teach us in the contemporary world. For more information, contact the TBS office at (623) 977-3240.

Lunch & Learn: 12:15 PM. Grab some food and learn online with Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin. Cost: Free. Tune in on Zoom by emailing info@ ChabadTucson.com. For more information, visit ChabadTucson.com.

THURSDAYS

Ladies Torah & Tea: 10:30 a.m. Learn about the women of the Torah with Mrs. Leah Levertov online. Cost: Free. Tune in at: ourjewishcenter. com/virtual. For more information, visit chabadaz. com.

SATURDAYS

Saturday Mindfulness Gatherings: 9:30 a.m.

Hosted by Hospice of the Valley. To join by phone dial 1-253-215-8782, meeting ID 486 920 2119#. To get the Zoom link or for more information, contact Gill Hamilton at ghamilton@hov.org or 602-748-3692.

Book Discussion: 1:30-2:30 p.m. Join Or Adam Congregation for Humanistic Judaism on the third Saturday of every month for a virtual book discussion. For more information and to register, contct oradaminfo@gmail.com.

SUNDAYS

Jewish War Veterans Post 210: 10 a.m. Any active duty service member or veteran is welcome to join monthly meetings, now virtual, every third Sunday, Cost: Free. For more information, email Michael Chambers at c365michael@yahoo.com.

Seniors

THURSDAY, SEPT. 30

Scottsdale Museum of the West: 11 a.m. -noon. Take a live, virtual tour from within the Scottsdale Museum of the West. Cost: Free. For more information and to register, visit jfcsaz.org/ events/. Contact CSE Director Jennifer Brauner at seniorcenter@jfcsaz.org or 602-343-0192 with questions.

SUNDAY, OCT. 17

The Beauty of What Remains: 11 a.m. Rabbi Steve Leder will inaugurate the Wise Aging Speaker’s Bureau, a program of the Bureau of Jewish Education, for Fall 2021. As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply. The class will be virtual. Cost: $50. For more information and to register, visit bjephoenix.org/ events/2021/center-for-wise-aging-fall-speakerseries-rabbi-steve-leder. JN

Upcoming Special Sections

Senior Lifestyle

October 1

From home health aides to financial planners, independent living facilities to nursing homes, this is the perfect venue to showcase how your business can help older Jewish residents navigate these challenging times.

Camp & School Guide

October 15

Parents are looking for the best for their kids. Showcase your offerings to Jewish News readers.

Bar/Bat Mitzvah Planner

November 5

Ideas and resources for families planning celebrations or B’nai Mitzvot. Don’t miss the opportunity to showcase your products and services.

Remembering 9/11

School children of all ages in Scottsdale, many of whom attend Pardes Jewish Day School, honored City of Scottsdale Police Department District 3 officers with remarks of gratitude, poems and a plaque gifted by Jewish National Fund-USA on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. The plaque features a prominent photo of JNF-USA and KKL-JNF’s 9/11 Living Memorial in Jerusalem — the only commemorative site of its type outside of the U.S. that lists all the names of those who perished on 9/11.

New Year's blessings

The Jewish Care Network delivered Rosh Hashanah care packages, including baking kits prepared by the Gilbert Hebrew School.

Taking notes from the pros

Students of Arizona School for the Arts take a photo with professional musicians at Red Rocks Music Festival.

BY MOSHE BUKSHPAN

The soothing sound of strings

A string quartet plays for the audience at this year’s Red Rocks Music Festival.

A helping hand

A volunteer helps Gilbert Hebrew School students put together care packages for Rosh Hashanah.

PHOTO BY RABBI MOSHE LEVERTOV

around the Valley and the world. Submit photos and details each editor@jewishaz.com by 10 a.m. Monday.

PHOTO

PHOTO COURTESY OF JNF

PHOTO BY RABBI MOSHE LEVERTOV

PHOTO BY MOSHE BUKSHPAN

Isaiah Paxton Gruber becomes a bar mitzvah on Oct. 2, 2021, at Temple Solel. He is the son of Shlomit and Robert Gruber of Phoenix.

Grandparents are Tina and David Robbins of Phoenix. Great-grandparents are the late Beverly and Joseph Sirotkin of Delray Beach, Florida.

For his mitzvah project, Isaiah is collecting funds to plant trees in Israel through the Jewish National Fund and planting trees locally at the Ronald McDonald House.

A student at Cocopah Middle School, Isaiah enjoys basketball, online gaming and hanging out with family and friends.

Sandra “Sandy” (Whitman) Goodman, 86, of Scottsdale, passed peacefully at home surrounded by her family on July 21, 2021, after a prolonged battle with breast cancer.

Sandy entered this life with a deep intuition and departed in a clap of thunder. Her spirit electric and friendliness infectious, she was passionate about politics, sports and people. Deeply devoted to family, friends, community and service, she worked in nursing for five decades, beginning in pediatrics and volunteering with Hospice of the Valley well into her 70s.

Born Jan 11, 1935, in Warren, Ohio, Sandy was the oldest child of Rose and Harry Whitman. After graduating Warren Harding High School and Pittsburgh’s Montefiore Hospital, she met her late husband of 57 years, Frank Goodman, whom she married on March 11, 1956. Together they became the loving and devoted parents of four children. Judaism was central to her life. She was an active member of Beth Israel Temple (Warren), where she was involved with Hadassah and Sisterhood, and after moving to Arizona in 1993, she belonged to Temple Solel, where she deepened her relationship with her faith. She was proud to become a bat mitzvah at the age of 78 and remained an active synagogue member.

Mason Henry Zinman becomes a bar mitzvah on Oct. 2, 2021, at Congregation Or Tzion. He is the son of Jana and Mark Zinman of Scottsdale.

Grandparents are Roberta and Richard Wall of Phoenix; and Ann and Ted Zinman

For his mitzvah project, Mason is volunteering at Miracle League of Arizona, a nonprofit providing a safe, inclusive and fun baseball experience for children and adults with special needs. Mason has donated time to it since he was 10.

A student at Cocopah Middle School, Mason enjoys playing basketball and football, listing to music and playing games on Xbox. He is also on the student council and is a member of the Boys

Sandy’s greatest love was people. She was quick to initiate conversation, made fast friends and cultivated lifelong relationships. Preceded in death by her parents, Rose and Harry Whitman; and her husband, Frank, she is survived by her son, Louis Goodman (Tom Siebenaler); daughters, Margie (Lenny) Sussman, Stefanie (Don) Foreman and Holly Goodman; grandchildren, Bethany Sussman, Erica (Josh) Mantel, Jake and Sydney Foreman and Quinn and Finley Carpenter; great-granddaughter, Raegan Mantel; sister, Phyllis (John) Shaffer; brother, Marshall Whitman; and many nieces, nephews and cousins. She was loved as deeply as she will be missed.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to Temple Solel in Paradise Valley or Hospice of the Valley. Funeral and burial services have already been held. Arrangements by Sinai Mortuary.

Shawn C Naughton, 54, died Aug. 23, 2021. He was born in and lived in Phoenix. Shawn returned home to his family after a summer in the hospital and died peacefully surrounded by love.

He is survived by his spouse, Elizabeth Ketzler-Naughton; his daughter, Josephine Naughton; his mother, Sandy Eastlake and her spouse Bruce Eastlake, his stepmother Patti Naughton; and his siblings, Kevin Naughton, Matt Klonowski, Kendra Elliott and Kevin Eastlake. He is preceded in death by his father, Jerry Naughton, OBM.

Shawn was part of the Beth El Men’s Club and US Foods Spice It Up Toastmasters International.

Leslie Friedlander, 67, died Sept. 14, 2021. She was born in Lakewood, New Jersey She is survived by her spouse, Mitchell Friedlander; her daughter, Melissa Freud;

Arrangements by Sinai Mortuary. JN

Services were held at Beth El Cemetery. Arrangements by Sinai Mortuary. https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-naughtons-funeral-expenses-medical-bills https://www.caringbridge.org/public/miracle4shawn

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NOVEMBER 20, 2020 | KISLEV 4, 5781 | VOLUME 73, NUMBER 5

SPECIAL SECTION | 14 CHANUKAH GIFT GUIDE Fun gift ideas for the holiday SEE COVID, PAGE 3

after the divisiveness of this election cycle. For those involved in the election process, whether it was informing voters, advising poll observers or canvassing for a candidate, it was a long campaign season. Ahead of Election Day, voters were bombarded with outreach efforts and reminders to vote, all of which helped produce record voter turnout: In Maricopa County, over 2 million ballots were cast, representing just over 80% of eligible voters. Temple Chai’s civic engagement initiative was one of many outreach campaigns. Since July, volunteers were busy participating in phone banks that focused both on the Temple Chai community itself and on reaching marginalized communities where people were less likely to vote. For Kaylie Medansky, director of teen, community and social action programs

CAMP: U. of Illinois to address ‘alarming’ increase of anti-Semitism on campus

Synagogues work to limit community spread

WELLEN O’BRIEN | STAFF WRITER Time for some self-care Talya Kalman holds up a miniature pumpkin she painted during Hillel at ASU's Wellness Wednesday event. To read more, go to p. 7. PHOTO BY ABDULLAH SEE ELECTION, PAGE 2 KEEP YOUR EYE ON jewishaz.com  ISRAEL when it opened on May 20. The shul closed again on Thursday, June 11, and reopened Friday, July 17. PHOTO COURTESY OF AHAVAS TORAH

Camp NATIONAL INTERNATIONAL

CAMP Israel, EU discuss possible rail link between Mediterranean, Gulf states

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