Voices

Teachers Must Expand Their Roles Amid Coronavirus Pandemic By Debbie Niderberg | JNS

We are all familiar with the flight attendant’s announcement when we get on a plane, “When traveling with someone who needs assistance, make sure to put on your own oxygen mask first.” When the coronavirus pandemic struck, educators pivoted quickly, translating their curriculum overnight into remote platforms even though many lacked sufficient training. They were remarkable, but it took a toll on them.

Anticipating another disruptive semester — and seeing a need to help educators attend to their own needs and recharge, collaborate and plan for another challenging year — Hidden Sparks launched a Summer Learning Summit for nearly 100 teachers from 30 Jewish day schools.

The goal of gathering together for a Zoom learning summit was to help teachers cultivate community and student engagement despite the challenges of distance learning and social distancing; to think about what contributes to impactful and engaging in-class and remote learning; and to provide an opportunity for teachers from across the Letters » The Feds Invited Themselves As the rhetorical answer to the title of the editorial “Who Invited the Feds?” (July 30), the Portland invasion served as the perfect pretext for President Donald Trump to distract attention from his gross incompetence in country to learn with top learning experts and work together in planning for the upcoming year.

As most students will look to their teachers to be the stabilizing force in an increasingly unstable world outside of the classroom, our conversations focused on what teachers can do to embed social and emotional learning into their classrooms this fall and help students succeed.

Perhaps even more important than ever in the recent past, we need to help students feel connected and cared for. Forming connections with students and families should ideally begin before school begins. Reaching out to students or meeting them in small groups before school starts can help students feel that they are valued members of their class and help ease the return back to school.

For younger students returning to physical classrooms, teachers can meet them virtually, one on one to foster the connection to students and help prepare the children for the classroom. A conversation with a parent can help the teacher learn about the student’s responding to the pandemic that has claimed the lives thus far of more than 150,000 Americans.

Neither Operation Valor nor Operation Legend, as far as Trump is concerned, has anything to do with the proper role of federal law enforcement activities in cities throughout interests, strengths or fears, and form a connection with home to ease a potential transition to remote learning.

Once school starts, consistent routines that strengthen the feeling of community and belonging, such as morning meetings or closing circles, can be adapted and continued if need be for virtual classrooms.

Jewish day schools face the extra pressure of additional subjects because of a dual curriculum, and traditionally, there has always been a very high emphasis placed on academic achievement. Faced with the impacts of the pandemic, lost time last year and fears of a second wave of the virus, teachers will likely feel increased pressure to cover more ground before the winter.

On the other hand, children have experienced loss, anxiety, disorientation and isolation. They are returning to schools and classrooms with complex emotions that will surface. Teachers will need to be attuned to this, to validate what their students are feeling and support them. Educators have a critical role to play in

creating classrooms that feel the country experiencing waves of violent crime and protests.

As Mary Trump, the president’s niece and a clinical psychologist has written, he “requires division. It is the only way he knows how to survive.”

Barry Dwork Alexandria, Va. safe and comfortable, and that help students address their emotions so that they will be more prepared to learn.

One of the most powerful lessons we can model for our students is how we approach challenges. Enabling students to discuss what they cannot do legitimizes those feelings, but thinking about what they still can do helps them reframe the challenge and focus on what they can control, fostering resiliency.

Educators, in many ways, have been on the front line of the pandemic since its start. They have rapidly pivoted from in-class to virtual teaching, and, in many cases, have seized opportunities to run special “feel-good” programs, all while often managing their own busy households.

We are living in unprecedented times that call on us to wear multiple hats as teachers, guidance counselors, healers and hopeful leaders. Our students will learn from us by example as we model life lessons in compassion, resilience, hope and dedication to community. JT

Debbie Niderberg is a co-founder and executive director of Hidden Sparks, a coaching and teacher-training program helping diverse learners and all students in Jewish day schools succeed. As a result of the success of the Summer Learning Summit, Hidden Sparks will be offering additional back-to-school workshops for teachers and schools this summer and fall.

Letters should be related to articles that have run in the print or online editions of the JT, and may be edited for space and clarity prior to publication. Please include your first and last name, as well your town/ neighborhood of residence. Send letters to editor@jewishtimes.com or Baltimore Jewish Times, 11459 Cronhill Drive, Suite A, Owings Mills, MD 21117, or submit them online at jewishtimes.com/letters-to-the-editor.

Israel May Not Top Progressive Agendas Now, But Tensions Will Persist By Ron Kampeas | JTA

THE ISRAEL ISSUE isn’t necessarily toward the top of the progressive to-do lists at the moment, but that doesn’t mean elements of the movement are any less at odds with the proIsrael community.

That was evident in an interview last week that the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City co-chairwoman, Sumathy Kumar, gave with the news site Kings County Politics.

Here’s the passage involving Israel:

KINGS COUNTY

POLITICS: I noticed in the DSA questionnaire given to all local candidates looking for DSA support before this year’s state races that they were asked if they support Divestment, Sanction and Boycott (BDS) the state of Israel for their policies regarding Palestinians. Does the DSA support BDS as a policy plank? KUMAR: The DSA is in favor of BDS and believes everybody has a right to their home. Obviously in New York City, we don’t have that much that we’re doing around that here, but we have a national organization that focuses on international affairs. KCP:So does the DSA support the existence of the state of Israel? KUMAR: I feel like that’s not really relevant to this conversation.

That’s a tough stance to back in a country that’s still overwhelmingly pro-Israel. But it’s worth noting that not all progressives feel this way. Ritchie Torres, a progressive being backed by pro-Israel groups who secured the Democratic nomination last month in a Bronx congressional district, did not think the exchange made much sense.

“The leadership of the DSA declines to affirm that the state of Israel should exist,” he said on Twitter. “‘Insane’ is the word that comes to mind.”

Last week, four Democrats whose Israel positions rile the pro-Israel community — notably Sen. Bernie Sanders — met for an hourlong conversation on YouTube and Israel never came up.

Sanders, the erstwhile presidential candidate who has repeatedly angered the proIsrael community for saying things like the United States should move money to Gaza from the funds earmarked for defense assistance for Israel, was joined by three progressives he is endorsing: Jamaal Bowman of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Cori Bush of Missouri.

Bowman in a recent primary ousted longtime pro-Israel stalwart Eliot Engel and, like Sanders, said he would condition assistance to Israel. Tlaib, a Palestinian-American congresswoman from a Detroit-area district who just won her primary, believes in a binational one-state solution and backs BDS.

Bush in a primary just ousted a longtime pro-Israel congressman, Lacy Clay, in the St. Louis area. She is expected to win the general election and would become the third House member to support the boycott Israel movement along with Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar of

That’s a tough stance to back in a country that’s still overwhelmingly pro-Israel.

Minnesota.

In the event on the Sanders campaign’s YouTube channel, each of the candidates told compelling stories about themselves and their constituents who had to overcome institutionalized adversity. Bowman, for example, described how his experience as a middle-school principal informed his campaign.

“I approached education, first and foremost, as a teacher, school counselor, middleschool principal, and then maybe like a social justice educator,” he said. “You know it wasn’t just about providing a quality academic environment. It was about social and emotional learning, it was about mental health, it was about interrogating the community and why certain communities lived in concentrated poverty and others did not.”

The pro-Israel community may take some comfort in the absence of the mention of Israel, but as the Kings County interview shows, it should not.

Compelling narratives of class struggle are what is winning elections for these candidates. And when their Israel-critical posture emerges, it will be inextricably woven into those narratives, in no small part because of the tendency of some pro-Israel activists to make enemies of these folks.

Bush removed from her campaign website the page in which she endorsed BDS. Still, Clay made it an issue — he sent around a mailer that highlighted her BDS support and his own pro-Israel record.

Pro-Israel PACs spent $1.5 million in a bid to defeat Bowman, a similar amount to defeat Sanders and millions in an effort to replace Omar. The only thing protecting Tlaib from a similar onslaught was her primary rival’s associations with Louis Farrakhan.

How tightly the Israel postures of these progressives are tied to their appeal was evident in how Bowman celebrated when he learned that he had earned the endorsement of Barack Obama. Bowman told his followers on Twitter that he heard the former president endorsed him in part after reading his letter to Rabbi Avi Weiss in trying to address the longtime New York Jewish activist’s concerns about the candidate’s Israel policies.

“He loved it,” Bowman said.

Notably, Weiss did not. JT

Ron Kampeas is Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Washington correspondent.

How to Help a Failed State?

By Jonathan Tobin | JNS

THE DISASTER in Beirut epitomizes everything that is wrong with Lebanon. But we didn’t have to wait for an investigation into the explosion at the Beirut port that left more than 150 people dead to know what is wrong with that country.

The problem with Lebanon isn’t merely that Hezbollah largely runs it. Nor is the damage solely to do with the fact that Hezbollah is primarily an ethnic terrorist organization that takes its orders from the tyrannical theocrats that run Iran. Those facts alone would doom that nation to be dragged into conflicts that are not in their interests and that serve only Tehran’s goal of regional hegemony.

The Lebanese disaster is more than Hezbollah. It goes back to its founding as a separate nation after World War I, when the Allied powers carved up the remains of the Ottoman Empire. The French received a mandate for Lebanon and Syria. They went on to draw the borders of these new entities arbitrarily, with little relation to any sense of nationhood shared by the different populations that actually live there.

The French had ties to the Lebanon region since the days of the Crusades, where the Maronite Christians trace their origins. Seeking to enhance the power of that Catholic community, Paris drew Lebanon’s borders to encompass more territory. But that meant ensuring that the Christians would not have a stable majority and would have to share the country with Sunni and Shia Muslims, as well as the Druze, communities with which they had been in conflict from time immemorial.

In order to facilitate the sharing of this polyglot entity, the French helped them draw up a constitution whose basic formula would survive after Lebanon achieved independence during World War II. It involved a complicated scheme whereby the president would be a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and parliament would be divided strictly along sectarian lines with a permanent 6-5 ratio of Christians to Muslims, even though the latter would eventually strongly outnumber them. It was a prescription for an on-and-off civil war — and that is exactly what has happened over the course of the last half-century as Muslims, and particularly the Shia with their strong ties to Iran, began to predominate.

The main thing to know about Lebanon is that it is not a country in any real sense. It is a place where warring tribes are locked inside borders where they continually tear each other to pieces, as is the case with neighboring Syria, which is just now winding down its own civil war produced by the conflicts between competing religious and ethnic groups that cost half a million lives and created at least 5 million refugees.

As far as Lebanon goes, with Iran’s help, Hezbollah and the Shia currently have the upper hand over all the groups. Were ethnic and religious war not the determinative factor in defining civil and communal life, it would be a prosperous and beautiful country — and for a very short time once was. Instead, it is both strife-torn and an economic basket case.

Over the last few decades, both the United States and Israel have been dragged into Lebanon’s civil wars in ways that didn’t benefit anyone.

The question we should be asking is not only what can be done about Hezbollah and Iran. Rather, we should be contemplating whether there is anything the West can do to fundamentally change these countries.

Much of the world wants to help the Lebanese recover from the port disaster (including Israel, though the Lebanese don’t want their help since the Jewish state is demonized there, as is the case throughout the Arab world). France is taking the lead on this.

But no one is optimistic about a long-term solution for the problems that allowed this tragedy to happen because there are none. There is nothing that would fix Lebanon that wouldn’t involve a foreign takeover and/or reimagining of it in modern and democratic terms. As the United States proved in Iraq, such a task is a fool’s errand.

We can argue that Lebanon, like Syria and Iraq, are breeding grounds for terrorism that cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of bad actors. Still, the idealism that led Americans to believe that these countries can be remade in the West’s image was a fantasy. We can and should wish their peoples well, and send aid if they wish to shake off the ancient quarrels that breed slaughter and have reduced them to penury.

Israel should be supported in its efforts to ensure that violence in Lebanon and Syria doesn’t spread. And the West should continue sanctioning and isolating Iran so as to prevent it from creating more mischief. And sensible people should support Israel’s refusal to create a Palestinian state that would be just as much of a disaster as Lebanon or Syria.

For too long, Americans have labored under the delusion that we can fix the Middle East. But the slaughter in Syria and Iraq, added to the catastrophe that is Lebanon, should remind us that the only sensible approach to these faux nations is to stay clear of being dragged into their endless and futile internecine conflicts. JT

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS— Jewish News Syndicate.

French Kosher Cafe Opens in Pikesville By Jesse Berman

Croustille Café

PASS THE RUGELACH, s’il vous plaît?

The long-awaited Croustille Café held the grand opening of its Pikesville location at 1404A Reisterstown Road on Aug. 5, offering kosher French pastries to any and all.

The cafe’s planned opening, which the JT first reported on in November 2019, was understandably hampered by the arrival of the novel coronavirus and its effects on the restaurant industry.

“It was very stressful,” said Moshe Mimoun, co-owner of the cafe. “It was not easy to find employees and to be ready.”

To promote employee and customer health, hand sanitizer was made readily available in the cafe, employees are required to wear gloves and everyone must wear a mask.

In addition to the nowubiquitous carryout option, dine-in service is also available, with the cafe able to serve up to 50% of its normal capacity, Mimoun said.

Mimoun got his start in food services in his family’s two cafes/bakeries: Manicoti in Marseille and Les Delices de Maxime in Paris. He decided to leave France over concerns of rising anti-Semitism and began looking for quiet towns that could provide his children with a quality education. In Pikesville, he said, he found everything he was looking for, adding that his children attend Bais Yaakov and Talmudical Academy.

Since moving to the area, he has begun davening at Mercaz Torah U’Tefilla in Baltimore,

Mimoun said. He added that he and his family “really, really appreciate this community, because it’s an amazing community.”

The cafe’s menu, certified by STAR-K Kosher Certification, includes French pastries, danishes, coffee, cheesecake, crepes, salads, sandwiches and homemade ice cream, Mimoun said. He added that the baguette and the chocolate croissant were proving particularly popular with customers, while Larry Lichtenauer, a spokesman for the property’s landlord, Hill Management Services, stressed that everything is prepared fresh each day in-house.

The cafe will be open Mondays through Thursdays from 7 a.m.-5 p.m., on Fridays from 7 a.m.-3 p.m. and Sundays from 8 a.m.-4 p.m., Lichtenauer said. Naturally, of course, the kosher cafe will be closed on Saturdays and on all Jewish holidays, Mimoun added.

The cafe takes up approximately 3,800 feet, Lichtenauer said, adding that the atmosphere of the location is “very open and lively, and once COVID passes it’s gonna be a place where you’ll be able to linger and meet people. … It’s going to be a social gathering spot for the community.”

By Mimoun’s account, the cafe’s opening day was very successful. He stated that his cafe was offering something truly unique to the community. In fact, he is even considering opening a second location in the future, though for now he wants to focus on getting his current store on a solid foundation.

Mimoun thanked Hill Management Services for their support of his business and expressed his hopes regarding the future of local small businesses. “In this day and age, people are looking to help their neighbors and their community,” he said. “And just looking out at this Pikesville shopping center, and it’s got a lot of boutiques in the corridor. And I think that’s what people are trying to really help out.” JT

jberman@midatlanticmedia.com

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