The Jewish Star 03-08-2024

By Heather Robinson, JNS

It is painful for Jack Betteil, 100, to remember the concentration camps he survived during the Holocaust, narrowly escaping death many times. But after offering chocolate babka and water to a JNS reporter in his Bayside home, he agreed to discuss his life, testifying to his experiences during the Shoah and memorializing those he loved throughout his long life, including those who helped him survive.

He shared haunting memories that his son Matthew Betteil, who was on hand, says often make it impossible for his father to sleep.

“This is my last interview. I’m not going to make any more,” the elder Betteil told JNS. “You can ask me anything you want, and I’ll answer you.”

‘Work faster’

Betteil was about 15 when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. He and his family were forced into the Krakow ghetto. When he was 19, in March 1943, his family was deported to the nearby Płaszów slave labor camp operated by the German SS, which Steven Spielberg depicted in “Schindler’s List.”

He remembers being in a cattle car on a train. “The train would stop for hours,” he told JNS. “The doors were locked. There was hardly any air. All the people were yelling to G-d, ‘Water! Water! Water’!”

“There were about 100 cattle cars with people. Each cattle car had 100 inmates,” he said. “It was horrible.”

A fight broke out when some of the Jewish inmates ripped open the train floor to escape. Some were against it. “They said, ‘Let’s not run away because they’re gonna kill all of us, with machine guns, the Nazis’,” Betteil said. “There was such a fight. ‘Yes, let’s go!’ Or ‘No. Let’s not go!’ There was nowhere to run. We didn’t know where we were going. Nobody knew.”

“If I could do it over again, I wish I would’ve

last interview

jumped through that hole and just run,” he said.

Everyone was yelling, screaming, crying and praying when the train arrived in Płaszów, he remembered. “Finally, the German officer says, ‘OK. Give them water.’ So they open up the hydrants and splash all the trains with water,” Betteil said. “You know what happens if you put cold water on a stove? It sizzles.”

People were dying in the steam. “It was terrible,” he said.

In Płaszów, Betteil was assigned to build barracks and to carry and stack bodies. He was assigned the latter grim duty at other camps as well.

“They made me carry bodies piled up to one flight up,” he said. “I had to carry legs and the other guy was arms.”

At one point, a Nazi officer looked at the “arms guy” and shot him to death. The Nazi looked at Betteil and said, “Work faster.”

Betteil told JNS that he had a friend in Płaszów whom he wanted to acknowledge. He never learned the young man’s last name but remembers that Giovanni helped him survive in “hell” by showing him what he could eat.

“He showed me how to eat any kind of garbage,” Betteil said.

“We never could find out what happened to Giovanni, or even his last name,” Matthew Betteil said.

“Giovanni didn’t make it,” the elder Betteil said.

To this day Betteil — a sculptor who works in metal, copper, glass and other media — pays tribute to his friend in all of his works, which he inscribes with his pseudonym: Giovanni Yankle Betteil.

Navalny death recalls fight for Soviet Jewry

By Alex Augenbraun

The death in a Siberian prison of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny could be the spark that burns down today’s iron curtain, Rabbi Avi Weiss told The Jewish Star.

Rabbi Weiss, retired spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, was a firebrand activist in the decades-long movement to free Soviet Jews, starting in the mid-1960s.

Navalny, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was taken to a Berlin hospital after falling ill during a flight to Moscow in 2020. German laboratory technicians determined he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, Putin’s signature poison.

After recovering, he returned to Russia, knowing full well that Putin would imprison him the moment his plane hit the tarmac. He died on Feb. 16 at age 47 while serving a 19-year sentence in corrective colony FKU IK-3.

Rabbi Weiss hopes Navalny will leave a mark on today’s Russian civil rights advocates similar

to that left by the Soviety Jewry movement.

“It’s going to be a test,” he said. “They could be inspired by individual figures, but movements must transcend whoever that figure may be.”

Weiss detailed his own encounters with authorities in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in his 2015 book, “Open Up the Iron Door: Memoirs of a Soviet Jewry Activist.” He was a visible figure in the fight to free Soviet Jews, who were not allowed to leave the USSR.

The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry staged demonstrations to pressure the USSR to give Soviet Jews human rights.

“Soviet Jewry deserves a legitimate place in history in bringing about the fall of communism,” Rabbi Weiss told The Jewish Star. “When they stood up and said we’re not going to bend, it sent the message to many others who were not Jewish, who were afraid to stand up to the Soviet dictatorship.”

“This is an activist who understands that the See Navalny on page 4

Jack Betteil.

Photo by Matthew Betteil

In the 1960s, Rabbi Avi Weiss protested at Soviet buildings in the US in support of Soviet Jews. In 2022, he went to the Russian compound in Riverdale to support the Ukrainian resistance. Michael Hinman, Riverdale Press

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At 100, last interview…

Continued from page 1

‘I had to take it’

Betteil shared a picture of his beloved maternal grandparents, Chaim and Feiga Kempler, with whom he was close and who lived in a small Polish town.

“When the Nazis came into Poland, the first thing they asked was, ‘Are there any Jews in this town’?” Betteil said.

His grandparents were the only Jews in the town. One of his grandfather’s friends, a Christian, pointed Chaim and Feiga out to the Nazis. “They shot them right on the spot — him and her,” he said.

Betteil’s father, Moshe/Moritz (Matthew) was a learned man, he told JNS. His mother, Rosa, “a very bright woman,” ran a store.

Betteil said that his parents and his sister Salusha (Sally), all died in the gas chambers. Another sister, Cescia, survived the camps as he did.

“I am the only one left,” Betteil said. “I miss my family.

“Thank G-d, I got my son,” he added. “He is fantastic.”

Matthew Betteil shared stories about his aunt Cescia and her husband, Karol Braunhut, both of whom survived the war.

When the elder Betteil got sick from the slave labor forced upon him in Płaszów, he went to the infirmary.

‘I’m going to shoot you’

Matthew Betteil told JNS of his aunt saving his father’s life after the war.

Cescia Betteil and her brother were in the Austrian concentration camp Ebensee in May 1945. The Nazis were fleeing ahead of the approach of American troops and discarding their weapons and uniforms to blend in with civilians. At first, many prisoners were scared to leave the barracks.

Betteil’s sister, who was then 19 or 20, left the women’s camp and found an abandoned, loaded gun. She walked to the men’s camp and located her brother, who was dying of typhus. In the immediate chaos after US forces liberated the camp, “she managed to find a horse and wagon, put Jack in the wagon and set out into the Austrian countryside for help,” Matthew Betteil said.

“It was Jack in the cart, sick, and these other women who had survived with Cescia,” he said of his dad and his aunt.

Cescia Betteil found a farmhouse and knocked on the door asking for food and blankets.

“They said, ‘No. We don’t have anything for you’,” Matthew Betteil said. “Cescia pulled out the gun. She said, ‘If you don’t give me something, I’m going to shoot you and take it’.”

At gunpoint, the family gave her food and blankets, enabling Cescia Betteil to save her brother’s life.

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“The Nazi doctor was going patient to patient and injecting them with air bubbles to kill them because they weren’t good slaves,” Matthew Betteil said. “His brother-in-law, Karol Braunhut, tapped on the window and said to Jack, ‘If you stay here, you’re going to die’.”

So Betteil crawled out the infirmary window before the doctor could reach him.

Matthew Betteil prompted another of his dad’s memories.

Betteil was taken on a forced march to a concentration camp in the Austrian town of Melk, during which he and others passed through an apple orchard. Starving, Betteil pulled an apple from the tree as he walked by.

“Dad, you said you ate the entire apple in one bite, right?” Matthew Betteil said.

Betteil nodded.

“They caught him doing it,” the younger Betteil said.

At the end of the march, the Nazis sat Betteil down in front of everyone.

Matthew Betteil remembers his aunt, who lived to be 93, “clenching her small fist” 65 years later at her granddaughter’s wedding, saying, “I wasn’t going to let them say ‘No.’ I’d do anything for my brother.”

“She had the will to live also,” Matthew Betteil said.

Life after hell

The elder Betteil came to the United States in the 1950s, after spending two years in Italy, including in a displaced persons camp.

In Italy, he served in the Irgun, loading boats with survivors headed for Israel. In one operation, he hung a Star of David flag at a British Army post.

“We opened up the window in an attic, me and two guys. We stuck the Israeli flag,” he said. “British soldiers lived in the building, and they woke up to see a Jewish flag.”

He also helped Jewish refugees get to Israel, loading them up on pontoon boats and paddling them to ships.

164-11

“They took my pants down and gave me 25 lashes with a leather whip,” he told JNS. “The officer gave me a few lashes. After that, he handed the whip to the kapo. The kapo hit me harder for the next 12 or 15.”

“If I made a sound they would’ve shot me,” he said. “So I had to take it.”

“I could have jumped on a ship, but I didn’t,” he said.

He learned to speak Italian fluently at that time, traveling around the country with other survivors. They had little money, but everywhere, people gave them food.

“In every city in Italy — Barzanò,

Jack Betteil at his 100th birthday celebration, with his family including son Matthew, nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, great-grand-nieces and great-grand nephews.

In traumatized Israel, Purim will be different

By Judith Segaloff, JNS

The Israeli Ministry of Education is imploring Israeli citizens to think long and hard about how their Purim costume choices may affect traumatized members of the community.

“Everything has changed,” says Einav Luke, senior director of the ministry’s Psychological Counseling Service. “While it is so important for everyone to continue their lives, and enjoy routines and holidays, this year we also must take the feelings of others into account.”

Think before donning a green headband or a Jason the Serial Murderer costume.

The ministry issued guidelines to all schools related to the celebration of Purim in educational frameworks, in accordance with the security situation and the unique circumstances of the current time.

“It begins with a discussion that helps administrators, parents, children and teachers process the situation and develop empathy,” Luke says.

One mother shared with JNS that her neighborhood in Israel circulated a message that read, “Let’s preempt this year’s Purim and not allow our children to buy fake ammunition and detonators. Not only are they dangerous (kids have lost fingers and such in the past), but this year they can also be a major trigger to so many of us. This year, we not only have the military PTSD, but also civilians who are very sensitive to the sound of gunshots. Please pass this message along and let’s avoid any emotional or security issues.”

The ministry encourages children and adults to select costumes that express joy and creativity without creating a dangerous or frightening environment or causing distress to anyone.

The guidelines are sparking interesting online discussions.

Chaviva Braun, an occupational therapist from Samaria, predicted that the hottest cos-

Interview…

Continued from page 2

— the Italian people, they would say, ‘Mangia, mangia’,” Betteil said, using the Italian for “Eat, eat.”

“They saw we were starved. They were very sweet, very nice to us,” he said. “Italy is a wonderful country and the people are marvelous.”

“The Italians are good people,” he added.

Betteil went on to forge a long, productive, happy life in the United States.

He met his Jewish-American wife, Helen Balamut, on the beach at Coney Island in 1952.

“She was beautiful,” Betteil recalled. “I took her out for spaghetti.”

They traveled to France and England. In addition to their son Matthew, they had a daughter.

He became a radio and television repairman; he learned karate. Once, he told JNS, he successfully defended himself against a man who tried to mug him in an elevator with a bayonet. He kicked the man in the kneecap. “He fell to the ground crying and said, ‘You didn’t have to do that’,” Betteil told JNS. “But I did have to.”

Betteil has one granddaughter and dozens of nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, who gathered recently for Betteil’s 100th birthday party at his son’s Brooklyn home.

Current events

Betteil said that he doesn’t think the United States should be involved in the war that Russia launched against Ukraine two years ago. He is especially against American boots being on the ground there.

He explained that he witnessed the extreme brutality of Ukrainians toward Jews during World War II. He also said he has no use for Russia because of the extensive antisemitism there.

“I wasn’t in Ukraine, but we saw the Ukrainians killing Jews. Piling up and killing each one of them,” he said.

He told JNS of the Einsatzgruppen, the “mo-

tumes this year will be soldiers of all branches, ZAKA rescue and recovery volunteers and medical personnel.

Batia Macales from Kedumim added, “No one will dress up as an Arab, I hope.”

Another mother disagreed, writing, “Sometimes a kid needs to work through their anxiety by being the villain. … Any grownups who are so sensitive that they can’t deal with a kid’s imagination have some work to do — not the kid. There are kids who find dressing up as their enemy to be therapeutic for their trauma.”

Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990) analyzed fairy tales and their effect on children in his seminal work “The Uses of Enchantment,”

bile killing squads.”

“They were Ukrainians. I saw it. I saw them killing Jews. Women, children. That’s why when people ask me, ‘What do you think about Russia and Ukraine?’ I say, ‘I’m not interested in either one of them’.”

He supports Israel’s efforts to press on in its mission to eradicate Hamas.

“You have to fight back,” he said.

JNS asked the centenarian for his advice on longevity. “Take care of your health,” he recommended. “Eat oranges.”

“I had a good life in this country,” he added. “America is the best country in the world.”

pointing out that while many of them are dark and scary, the scary witches and evil characters help children process their fears and navigate the challenges of life.

But when evil is real, the processing mechanism is more complex. This year Israelis are looking not at witches and wolves, but at true evil, life and death, serious danger.

While Luke described the guidelines, the ministry stopped short of giving out lists of approved and disapproved costumes. They are not saying Haman is OK, Hamas is not, but since dressing as Hamas may be perceived as threatening, children who show up to school with inappropriate costumes will be asked to change to

Navalny…

Continued from page 1

cause I’m standing up for is more important than who I am,” Rabbi Weiss said. For this reason, “in America, we have to stand with Navalny. If we believe in universal values, we have to stand up for them above all else. We need to stand with Ukraine. With Israel. Even if it isn’t a popular thing to do, it is the right thing to do.”

When Rabbi Weiss campaigned for Soviet Jews, Natan Sharansky epitomized their struggle for civil rights. Releasing him from his arctic prison was a milestone toward unwinding the Soviet system. Sharansky described those years in his 1998 memoir, “Fear No Evil.”

Half a century later, imprisoned in the same work camp, Alexei Navalny read a copy and the two corresponded.

In his first letter, in April 2023, Navalny wrote, “I was amused by the fact that neither the essence of the system nor the pattern of its acts has changed. … All this guarantees an equally inevitable collapse. Like the one we witnessed.”

Sharansky replied, “Dear esteemed Alexei. I received a shock getting a letter from you… [in my] Alma Mater. … [Your] true concern is the fate of [your] people — and [you are] telling them: ‘I am not afraid and you should not be afraid either. … In prison I discovered that in addition to the law of universal gravitation of particles there is also a law of universal gravitation of souls. By remaining a free person in prison, you, Aleksei, influence the souls of millions of people worldwide.”

Rabbi Weiss describes them both as universalists.

“Governments have all kinds of commitments, that is why I never wanted to be part of the establishment,” Rabbi Weiss explained. “When you are operating from the outside, you don’t have those limitations.”

Israel faced such limitations when dealing with the USSR, he said, and as the Jewish state sought to maintain solid relations with the USSR, it was

a less threatening costume.

“We are trying to get discussions going to let everyone flesh out how their celebration may have an effect on others.”

Luke pointed out that even excessive noise such as firecrackers could alarm people. Noisemakers that sound like sirens could induce panic.

“In these uncertain times, everyone is very sensitive,” she says. “Everything must be discussed, and we all need to pay attention. It is our responsibility to be especially mindful of others for all the upcoming holidays. We must guard our health, especially now, and protect the feelings of others.”

unable to sufficiently support Russian Jewry.

“When you are operating in the government, there are times that you can’t do what you know is right because it conflicts with the voters” or competing national interests. That is why “Israel has not supported Ukraine,” Rabbi Weiss said. “This is why we need activists.”

Navalny left a message to the Russian people in the event of his death in the documentary “Navalny.”

“I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power. To not give up. … We don’t realize how strong we actually are.

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.”

As the clip ends and the music builds, Navalny breaks into laughter.

Yulia Navalnaya has vowed to continue her late husband’s work.

Rabbi Weiss encourages people to stand up for their beliefs. He acknowledges that “it’s not easy. Fear is an emotion, it’s a feeling — and feelings are not right, they’re not wrong, they just are. No one should be condemned for having feelings. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.

“The question is, if I know the cause is right, even if I am afraid to become involved, can I act contrary to my feelings and still stand up for the truth?”

People at a street party in Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighborhood at Purim 2023. Erik Marmor, Flash90

Jewish children from Pinsk-Karlin dressed in costumes at their cheder in Mea She’arim, a few days before Purim in 2022. Yonatan Sindel, Flash90

Alexei Navalny in 2007. Alexey Yushenkov, WikiCommons

Jack Betteil in post-war Italy.

Jews should not take joy in terrorists being killed

stephen M. Flatow

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, we have witnessed Israel’s long arm of counterterrorism operations. Two examples were the assassination of a Hamas leader with a wellplaced rocket through a window and a raid into a Palestinian hospital and more. Unlike the aerial assassination, the hospital raid required boots in the hallways.

The bravery of the IDF, Shin Bet, and police YAMAM counter-terrorism squads is unmatched. Yet both of these events reminded me in some respects of the death of another terrorist in October 1995 — Fathi Shikaki, leader of Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

In April of that year, my 20-year-old daughter, Alisa, was riding on a bus near the Jewish community of Kfar Darom in Gaza. Alisa was on what she thought would be a three-day vacation before Passover. In a phone call to me while waiting for her bus in Jerusalem, which would be the first leg of her journey, she told me she “wanted to get a few days in the sun” before the holiday. It would be the last time we spoke.

She never completed that bus journey because a van parked alongside the road outside the gates to Kfar Darom suddenly sped from the shoulder of the road and struck the bus on its right side. The driver then ignited a massive bomb packed inside the van.

PIJ took credit for the attack in a series of messages relayed to the media and to a college professor in the United States. (I would learn later that PIJ did not act alone; the bomb was made by Hamas’s master bomber, Yayha Ayyash, “the engineer,” who himself would be assassinated in early 1996.)

It was a Friday afternoon in October that same year when Shikaki stepped out of a hotel on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Two men on a motorcycle (likely part of Israel’s post-Munich massacre long arm of retribution, although no one claimed credit) stopped opposite him and shot him at point-blank range.

It was suggested to me that I might find some sense of justice in the death of this man. My understanding was that Shikaki’s death was carried out by Israel’s long arm of retribution (think postMunich massacre). Certainly the murder of Alisa and seven others at Kfar Darom was worthy of an effort to track down and eliminate the head of PIJ.

Word of the assassination and its link to Alisa’s murder resulted in my being interviewed by a New York City news station. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights when asked for my feelings about Shikaki’s death; all I could think of saying was “I am not going to sit shiva for him.”

Other terrorists have died at the hands of the

IDF and Israeli agents.

After blame for the recent drone attack that killed one of Hamas’s senior leaders, Saleh alArouri, was quickly placed by Hamas supporters at Israel’s feet, the social media response was interesting. His mother related that she was grateful he died as a martyr — which was his “hope,” she said. A video was posted, allegedly showing an IDF soldier handing out candy, as is frequently done in Palestinian areas when Israelis are murdered in terror attacks.

Comments from the pro-Israel side got me thinking about the issue I raise. From a limited reading of coverage in Israeli media, I came across these comments: “Whoever did the bombing, may they be more successful bombing the rest of the leadership of Iran,” “It’s a good day when terrorists die,” “What good news. More please.” “Wonderful news, just delightful – and long overdue.” And “Mazal tov.”

So what are we supposed to feel when someone responsible for the deaths of Israeli civilians meets his own end?

Many years ago, I was puzzled by the different Hallel we say on the first days of Passover and on chol hamoed. Hallel, which praises G-d, is typically 18 paragraphs. On chol hamoed Passover it’s shortened to ten, while throughout Sukkot (including its chol hamoded), the full Hallel is recited. I am not the only person who has asked why there is a difference; the question has been discussed for centuries.

There is a legalistic approach to the differences. On Sukkot the number of sacrifices offered in the Temple are set forth separately in the Torah (thus we think of each day as a separate holiday deserving its own obligation to recite Hallel). On Passover, however, the Torah says about the sacrifices, “Similarly shall you do each day for seven days.” In the words of Rabbi Basil Herring, “It is as if each day of Passover is merely an extension of the first” day and therefore the subsequent days do not require a recital of the full Hallel.

There is also a spiritual approach.

The Talmud relates the Children of Israel crossing through the Sea of Reeds and assembling on the other side. Moses composed a song; Miriam did, too; and the Children of Israel were joyful about the drowning of the Egyptians in the sea.

The Talmud relates that the heavenly angels also began to sing praises, when a heavenly voice thunders and says, “Stop your celebration, the Egyptians are my children, too.” While a full Hallel is appropriate on the first days of Passover, in commemoration of that voice, we diminish our joy of the holiday by saying a shorter version during chol hamoed.

When the Almighty punishes murderers, we can rejoice — but not by jumping for joy or extending a mazal tov to the IDF. As despicable and vile as terrorists such as Fathi Shikaki, Yahya Ayash and Saleh al-Arouri were, we should not celebrate their deaths. Heaven doesn’t want us to.

The Chosen Paper

Probe explodes myth that Israel is targeting journalists: A blood libel within a blood libel

By David Isaac, JNS

Despite Israel’s herculean efforts to avoid killing noncombatants in the Gaza Strip, a new wrinkle has been added to media charges of indiscriminate Israeli killing — a kind of blood libel within a blood libel — namely that Israel is also targeting journalists.

During its war with Hamas, Israel has killed nearly 100 journalists, if the allegations are to be believed. This would be astonishing as it surpasses the number of journalists killed in World War II and the Vietnam War.

In fact, according to UK-based journalist David Collier, the actual number is more like 15.

Collier, the author of a 200-page report titled, “The Journalists of Gaza: A Modern-Day Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Promoted by Mainstream Media,” finds that the lists relied on by the press are nothing more than Hamas propaganda.

“This report shows that the claim Israel has been targeting journalists to silence them is an unsupportable and disgraceful fiction,” he writes.

There are two lists of dead journalists. One is from the Hamas’ Gaza Media. The second is put out by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based NGO. What Collier discovered is that the lists are essentially the same. The CPJ list mirrors the terror group’s list.

Collier focused most of his report on the CPJ list, the more important of the two as most reporting relies on it.

“We know we’re dealing with Hamas propaganda when we’re talking about the Hamas list, and there’s little point addressing it. The issue that we have is when Western NGOs run with what is effectively watered-down Hamas propaganda, which is what the CPJ is doing,” he said.

Hamas’ list, abridged

The CPJ list numbered about 60 to 70 journalists at the time of Collier’s report (it has grown to 88 as of Feb. 26). All the names on it came from the Hamas list, Collier discovered. At the time, the Hamas list numbered 107. Collier surmises that CPJ culled the list to strike off those individuals who were most obviously terrorist operatives and least defensible as journalists.

Collier was able to identify 93% of the 107 people listed through their social media accounts. He found that 35 of the 70 (50%) on the CPJ list worked for proscribed terror groups.

“I mean, you could argue that they are journalists. But they work for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” he said.

About 19 (27%) weren’t journalists at all.

Seventy-nine percent endorsed terrorism and the killing of innocents. For Collier, the most egregious example was Hassuna Salim, who worked for Hamas-affiliated Quds News Network, and posted on a Telegram channel on Oct. 7 at 6:36 am a directive from Islamic Jihad calling for everyone to pick up a gun and fight.

“Messages such as these sent 100s of armed ‘civilians’ across into Israel to help Hamas rape and murder,” his report notes.

Others celebrated terror attacks against Israelis over a period of years. Most sound more like psychopathic killers than journalists.

Duaa Sharaf, who worked for Hamas-affiliated Radio Al-Aqsa, posted to social media on April 7, 2022 after a mass shooting in Tel Aviv, “Kill them. May Allah punish them with your hands, and humiliate them, and help you against them, and heal the hearts of a believing nation.”

“Hit Tel Aviv. Hit it,” wrote Assem Kamal Moussa, a journalist with news site Palestine

Now of the same attack. On May 2, 2023, he posted a picture of Hamas rockets launched at Israel: “And you are on your way to transfer the occupier’s life to the sanctuaries of hell.”

Blood relation

Another journalist, Jamal Mohamed Haniyeh, is actually the grandson of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas.

Collier described CPJ’s research as “sloppy,” “consistently amateurish” and “significantly compromised,” noting that all the information he worked from was publicly available. “This was the real letdown with the CPJ,” he said. “Why the hell didn’t they do that work? How could they not bother to check anybody on social media?”

Noteworthy is that CPJ broke its own rules when compiling its list. According to its website, it doesn’t include anyone who is “acting on behalf of militant groups.” That should have eliminated half of those on the list, who worked directly for terror groups, Collier said.

Another big red flag for Collier was that many of the journalists were killed in their homes, and not out “on a battlefield or in a military context,” another CPJ rule that went by the wayside.

Said Collier, “Most of the people were killed at home and this raises the big question: What was targeted?” Ahmed Shebab, who worked for Islamic Jihad’s Radio Voice of the Prisoners, died in the home of a relative, likely an uncle, who was an Islamic Jihad leader.

“Islamic Jihad came out with a notice after the assassination, after the targeted killing, saying we’ve lost our great leader. So [Ahmed] is in the house of an Islamic Jihad leader. He’s not out there in the field. He’s been killed not because of his journalism at all but because he’s directly related to an Islamic Jihad leader. This was easily accessible information,” Collier noted.

CPJ declined JNS requests for an interview, but in an emailed statement said, “CPJ does not support journalists engaged in breaking the law. In the cases we have documented, multiple sources have found no evidence to date that these journalists were engaged in militant activity.

“We do not include journalists if there is evidence that they were actively inciting violence, acting on behalf of militant groups, or serving in a military capacity at the time of their deaths.

“We continuously update our database and if we discover new information showing that a journalist was involved in such activities, we would remove them from our list,” it added.

CPJ is “playing dumb,” Collier told JNS.

“The key sources CPJ are relying on are ‘Hamas sympathetic’ to some degree, and like the terrorist group are intent on creating false images about events in Gaza,” he said. “Nor do the CPJ’s own protestations hold up to inspection. For example, they list Hassouneh Salim as a journalist. But Salim explicitly posted an Islamic Jihad call to arms

in the early hours of Oct. 7, so how on earth is that not ‘acting on behalf of the terrorist group?’ ”

Killing Israelis is legal

Collier suggests CPJ may be playing games when it claims it doesn’t support journalists who break the law, noting that in Gaza it’s not against the law to be a Hamas terrorist and kill Israelis. “The bottom line here is that the CPJ are not even playing by their own rules and the list they provide is dangerously deceptive,” he said.

“In short, the CPJ numbers are grossly exaggerated, they’ve included dozens of people they should not have done, and by promoting these fictions, CPJ are helping to spread raw Hamas propaganda into the mainstream,” Collier added.

The problem extends far beyond CPJ. Numerous media outlets have published stories using CPJ. Wikipedia, too, relies on CPJ’s list.

Alex Safian of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) told JNS: “When journalists get killed covering a war it doesn’t mean that those journalists were targeted personally or as journalists, which is why western media should not accept at face value Hamas claims that Israel has intentionally killed Gaza journalists.”

“After all, Hamas is an internationally recognized terrorist organization that is willing to murder, torture, rape and kidnap Israeli civilians, so it should not be a surprise that they would also be willing to lie,” he added.

In certain cases, there’s sufficient circumstantial evidence to show that the media itself is being deceitful. Collier pointed to a lengthy Washington Post piece on Feb. 9 based on the CPJ list. The report referred to “at least 85 journalists and media workers, such as interpreters and support staff” killed in the conflict.

When doing his report, Collier did find some real journalists, including seven of those profiled by the Washington Post who were found to be “clean,” that is, not involved in terror.

“It’s a war and people do die,” he said.

“My issue with this is a very simple one. There’s a random selection here. Given that 80% of the journalists supported terrorism against civilians and half of them worked for Hamas or Islamic Jihad, you don’t randomly select seven clean ones, which means that the Washington Post must have come across within the list many that they couldn’t profile,” he said.

The Washington Post revealed it had gone through the social media of the journalists, meaning it would have learned of the pro-terror views of most, if not outright terror ties of some. The paper even highlighted some of them, though it was careful not to profile them as part of its cherry-picked seven.

The Post used the seven to “piggyback” on the CPJ claim of 78 journalists (at the time) said to have been killed, Collier said, adding that the paper knew, “at the very least, that they were being deceptive.”

Celebrating Purim with unbounded happiness WINE AND DINE

EthEl G. hOFmAN

Purim, which begins at motzei Shabbat on March 23, is rooted in Jewish survival in the Persian Empire, thanks to the bravery and Jewish pride of Mordechai and Esther. In the face of destruction and Haman’s evil plots, Jews not only survived, but flourished.

Costumes range from traditional kings and queens, to animals, sports stars, superheroes and more. Anything goes; if you’re not dressed in a crazy outfit, you tend to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. At the Machane Yehuda open-air market in Jerusalem, I once saw a group of kilted Scots whirled to the skirl of bagpipes. It’s loud, deliriously happy, and everyone is your friend.

Inside, the main symbols of Purim are festive eating and drinking, which can be interpreted as getting drunk and sampling hamantaschen after filled hamantaschen. It is written: “One must drink on Purim until that person cannot distinguish between cursing Haman and blessing Mordechai” (Megillah 7b).

In Israel, there is no need to bake. Every store, restaurant and corner cafe displays heaps of the three-cornered pastries, symbolic of the wicked Haman’s hat. As Queen Esther is said to have eaten a vegetarian diet in order to keep kosher while living in the palace of King Ahasuerus, enterprising cooks may serve up Aromatic Chickpeas and a Poppy-Seed Vinaigrette to pour over fresh avocados. In response to requests for the Hasty Hamantaschen recipe, the kid-friendly version is included below.

Of course, there are also some required activities — four mitzvahs that are associated with the holiday: hearing the Megillah read; giving to the needy (matanot la’evyonim,; arranging and giving gifts of food to friends and neighbors (mishloach manot), and sharing in a festive meal.

Chag Purim Sameach!

Carrot, Orange and Ginger Soup (Pareve)

Serves 6 to 8

This is always on the menu at Trattoria Haba, deep in the heart of Machane Yehuda.

Cook’s Tips: •Zap the carrots in microwave for 2 minutes to soften before using. •Buy chopped onion, which is time-saving and easier on the eyes. •Use store-bought vegetable stock.

•Use store-bought shredded carrots.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

• 2-1/2 cups shredded carrots

• 1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped

• 1 orange, unpeeled and seeded, cut in chunks

• 1 cup cooked yam, cut in chunks

• 2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

• 3 to 4 cups vegetable broth

• 1-inch piece fresh ginger root, grated

• Salt and white pepper to taste

• Sesame seeds to garnish (optional)

Directions:

In a large pot, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion and orange. Cook 10 to 15 minutes, until carrot and onions are softened. Cool slightly before placing mixture in blender jar or food processor.

Add the yams, lemon juice and 3 cups broth. Return to pot. Stir in the ginger and bring to simmer over medium heat. If too thick, stir in more broth.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls, sprinkle with a little sesame seeds and serve.

Avocado Salad With Poppy Seed Vinaigrette (Pareve)

Serves 6

Cook’s Tips:

•To avoid avocado becoming brown, sprinkle with lemon juice. •For a dairy meal, top with sour cream or plain yogurt. •Instead of dicing avocados, mash to coarse consistency.

Ingredients:

4 medium avocados, peeled and diced

4 Tbsp. lemon juice, divided

3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

1 tsp. dried mint

1 tsp. poppy seeds

Nondairy sour cream

Directions:

Place the avocados in a serving bowl. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons lemon juice. Toss gently. Set aside.

In a cup, whisk the remaining 2 tablespoons lemon juice with the olive oil, mint and poppy seeds.

Pour over the avocados. Toss gently. May cover and chill for an hour or so.

Divide into 6 bowls. Top with a spoonful of nondairy sour cream and serve.

Aromatic Chickpeas (Pareve)

Serves 6 to 8. Adapted from a recipe in Phyllis Glazer’s “Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking.”

Cook’s Tips: •Keep a jar of minced garlic on hand in the refrigerator. •Zatar, a blend of sumac, sesame and thyme, is available in most supermarkets, spice stores, health-food places and specialty-food outlets. It packs a Mideast punch in soups and savory dishes. Keep in a glass container, as it can leach out of plastic bags.

Ingredients:

• 2 (14-1/2 oz.) cans chickpeas, welldrained

• 3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

• 1-1/2 tsp. zatar

• 1 tsp. minced garlic

• 1 tsp. paprika

• 1 tsp. kosher salt

• 1 tsp. fresh ground pepper

• 1/2 cup finely snipped parsley, packed

Directions:

Place drained chickpeas in a saucepan. Warm over medium heat 5 minutes. Set aside while you make the dressing.

In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Pour over the warm chickpeas. Toss gently.

Serve at room temperature.

‘Baladi’ Eggplant (Dairy)

Serves 2 to 3. A popular Middle Eastern eggplant dish. “Baladi” supposedly comes from the story of a Turkish imam who swooned at the aroma when presented with this dish.

Cook’s Tips: •To brush eggplant with oil, soak a paper towel with 1-1/2 tablespoons olive oil. Rub over eggplant before baking. •Tahini, a creamy sesame paste available in supermarkets, spice stores, health-food places and specialty-food outlets.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium eggplant

• 1/3 cup tahini

• 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

• 1/2 cup snipped parsley

• 2 to 3 Tbsp. pomegranate seeds

• Cumin to sprinkle

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking pan with aluminum foil.

Coat eggplant with olive oil and prick all over with a fork, 6 to 8 times. With a sharp knife, make a cut, about 1/2-inch deep, from end to end. Place on baking pan.

Bake in preheated oven 20 to 30 minutes, or until soft when pressed with finger. Cool slightly. Press lightly to open. Dust the softened eggplant with cumin. Spread a layer of tahini over.

Top with yogurt, then snipped parsley. Garnish with pomegranate seeds. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Note: Note that amounts of tahini, yogurt and parsley will increase for a larger eggplant.

Family-Style Shakshuka (Dairy)

Serves 6 to 8. For Purim festivities at home, shakshuka is a tasty, make-ahead dish for a crowd. May double the recipe and bake in two dishes.

Cook’s Tips: •Don’t be put off by long list of ingredients. Most are ready prepared, opened and dumped! •Peppers, onions and mushrooms may be purchased already chopped and sliced. Place any remainders in a plastic bag and freeze for later usage. •Instead of challah, any bread maybe used. •For a pareve dish, omit the Parmesan cheese.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp. olive oil

• 1 medium onion, coarsely chopped or 1 cup ready chopped

• 1 medium red or green bell pepper, seeded and chopped, or 1 cup ready chopped

• 1 (4 oz.) can of mushroom stems and

Avocado With Poppy-Seed Vinaigrette.

Ethel G. Hofman

Aromatic Chickpeas.

Ethel G. Hofman

‘Baladi’ Eggplant. Ethel G. Hofman Israeli Shakshuka. Calliopejen1 via WikiCommons

Celebrating Purim feasts with unbounded joy…

Continued from page 8

pieces, drained

• 1 tsp. minced garlic

• 1 (24 oz.) jar marinara sauce

• 1 (14-1/2 oz.) can diced tomatoes

• 1 slice (1/2 to inch thick) challah, crumbled

• 2 tsp. cumin

• 2 tsp. paprika

• 1/2 cup snipped parsley, loosely packed

• 6 to 8 eggs

• 2 to 3 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese

• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 9x9-inch ovenproof baking dish with nonstick vegetable spray.

In large pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion, bell peppers, mushrooms and garlic. Sauté until vegetables are softened, about 10 minutes. Do not brown. Add the remaining ingredients, except the eggs and cheese.

Simmer over low heat for 5 minutes. Stir often. Transfer to prepared baking dish. Cover loosely with foil.

Bake in preheated oven 20 minutes or until mixture is bubbly. Remove from oven.

Using a tablespoon, create 6 to 8 wells in the hot tomato mixture. Crack each egg into a cup before placing gently in each well. Return to oven.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until eggs are set and yolks are runny. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Serve hot with warm pita bread.

Scottish Strudel (Pareve)

Makes 30 to 36 pieces. Served in many Jerusalem’s cafes, inspired by the large Scottish Jewish community. This dessert consists of a spongy cake dough instead of traditional filo leaves.

Cook’s Tips:

•Do not substitute olive oil for vegetable oil! The dough will wind up too soft.

•Instead of self-rising flour, use 3-3/4 cups all-

purpose flour mixed, with 4 tsp. baking powder. •May substitute any dried fruit in place of raisins and currants (i.e., dried apricots, glazed cherries, dates, mini-chocolate chips). For a dairy strudel, some Scots sprinkle a little cheddar cheese over the filling before baking.

•For easy clean up, line baking sheet with foil.

•To make cinnamon-sugar: In a small container with tight-fitting lid, mix 3 tablespoons sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon. May substitute nutmeg for cinnamon-nutmeg sugar instead.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs

• 1 cup sugar

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floured board, roll out one piece into a rectangle about 6×10 inches. Spread 2 tablespoons marmalade over. Sprinkle with 1/3 cup raisins, ¼ cup currants and 2 tablespoons nuts. Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon.

Roll up as for a jelly-roll. Dust with cinnamon. Place on prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Repeat with the remaining ingredients. Bake in preheated oven 35 minutes. Cool.

Use a serrated knife to cut into 3/4-inch slices. May be frozen.

Hasty Hamantaschen (Dairy)

Makes 10

Cook’s Tips: •Use prepared poppy-seed filling from most supermarkets, spice stores, healthfood places and specialty-food outlets. •In a pinch, substitute grated orange rind for lemon rind. •To make pareve, use prepared puff pastry. Cut out circles using a water glass.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup prepared poppy-seed filling

• 1 Tbsp. finely grated lemon rind

• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

• 1 (12 oz.) package refrigerated biscuits

• 2 Tbsp. honey, warmed

Directions:

• 1 cup vegetable oil

• 4 cups self-rising flour

• 6 Tbsp. marmalade, melted

• 1 cup raisins

• 3/4 cup currants

• 1/3 cup chopped walnuts or other nuts

• Cinnamon and cinnamon-sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a large baking sheet with nonstick baking spray. In a large bowl, whisk eggs and sugar till pale, 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in oil. Gradually fold in the flour to blend. Refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours. Divide chilled dough into 3 pieces. On a

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, combine poppy-seed filling, lemon rind and cinnamon. Set aside.

Separate biscuits. On a lightly floured board, press each biscuit into a round about 2-1/2 inches in diameter. Place 1 rounded teaspoonful poppy-seed mixture in center of each biscuit.

Moisten edges with water. Fold up over filling to form a three-sided pyramid. Make sure to leave some of the filling uncovered. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in preheated oven 12 minutes, or until golden at edges. Brush with honey, if desired.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

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Hasty Hamantaschen. Carin M. Smilk

jewish star torah columnists:

•Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed, Boynton Beach, FL, mohel and Five Towns native •Rabbi David Etengoff of Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn

•Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem

contributing writers:

•Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks zt”l,

former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth •Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh

Weinreb, OU executive VP emeritus

•Rabbi Raymond Apple, emeritus rabbi, Great Synagogue of Sydney

•Rabbi Yossy Goldman, life rabbi emeritus, Sydenham Shul, Johannesburg and president of the South African Rabbinical Association.

contact our columnists at: Publisher@TheJewishStar.com

Five towns candlelighting: From the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY

Fri March 8 / 28 Adar I

Shekalim • Vayakhel • Shabbos Mevarchim

Candles: 5:37 • Havdalah: 6:47

Fri March 15 / 5 Adar II

Pekudei

Candles: 6:44 • Havdalah: 7:54

Fri March 22 / 12 Adar II

Zachor • Erev Purim • Vayikra

Candles: 6:52 • Havdalah: 8:02

Sun March 24 / 14 Adar II

Purim

Mon March 25 / 15 Adar II

Shushan Purim

Fri March 29 / 19 Adar II

Parah • Tzav

Candles: 6:59 • Havdalah: 8:09

Fri April 6 / 26 Adar II

Shmini • Shabbos Mevarchim

Candles: 7:06 • Havdalah: 8:16

Differences between crowds and communities

rabbi sir jonathan sacks zt”l

Melanie Reid, a journalist with The Times of London, is a quadriplegic who, with a wry lack of self-pity, calls her weekly essay Spinal Column. She told how she, her husband, and others in their Scottish village bought an ancient inn to convert it into a pub and community center, a shared asset for the neighborhood.

Something extraordinary then happened. A large number of locals volunteered their services to help open and run it.

“We’ve got well-known classical musicians cleaning the toilets and sanding down tables. Behind the bar there are sculptors, building workers, humanist ministers, Merchant Navy officers, grandmothers, HR executives and estate agents. … Retired CEOs chop wood for the fires; septuagenarians … wait at tables; surveyors eye up internal walls to be knocked down and can-doers fix blocked gutters.”

It has not only become a community center; it has dramatically energized the locality. People of all ages come there to play games, drink, eat, and attend special events. A rich variety of communal facilities and activities have grown up around it. She speaks of “the alchemy of what can be achieved in a village when everyone comes together for a common aim.”

In her column describing this, Melanie was kind enough to quote me on the magic of “I” becoming “we”: “When you build a home together … you create something far greater than anything anyone could do alone or be paid to do.” The book I wrote on this subject, “The Home We Build Together,” was inspired by this week’s parsha and its name, Vayakhel. It is the Torah’s primer on how to build community.

It does so in a subtle way. It uses a single verb, k-h-l, to describe two very different activities.

The first appears in last week’s parsha at the beginning of the story of the Golden Calf.

“When the people saw that Moshe was long delayed in coming down the mountain, they gathered (vayikahel) around Aharon and said to him: get up, make us gods to go before us. This man Moshe who brought us out of Egypt — we have no idea what has become of him” (Exodus 32:1). The second is the opening verse of this week’s parsha: “Moshe assembled (vayakhel) all

In a community, individuals remain individuals. Their participation is essentially voluntary

the community of Israel and said to them: these are the things the L-rd has commanded you to do” (Exodus 35:1). These sound similar. Both verbs could be translated as “gathered” or “assembled.” But there is a fundamental difference between them. The first gathering was leaderless; the second had a leader, Moshe. The first was a crowd, the second a community.

In a crowd, individuals lose their individuality. A kind of collective mentality takes over, and people find themselves doing what they would never consider doing on their own. Charles Mackay famously spoke of the madness of crowds. People, he said, “go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

Together, they act in a frenzy. Normal deliberative processes break down. Sometimes this expresses itself in violence, at other times in impulsive economic behavior giving rise to unsustainable booms and subsequent crashes. Crowds lack the inhibitions and restraints that form our inner controls as individuals.

Elias Cannetti, whose book “Crowds and Power” is a classic on the subject, writes that “The crowd is the same everywhere, in all periods and cultures; it remains essentially the same among men of the most diverse origin, education and language. Once in being, it spreads with the utmost violence. Few can resist its contagion; it always wants to go on growing and there are no inherent limits to its growth. It can arise wherever people are together, and its spontaneity and suddenness are uncanny.”

The crowd that gathered around Aharon was in the grip of panic. Moshe was their one contact with G-d; now he was no longer there and they did not know what had happened to him. Their request for “gods to go before us” was ill-considered and regressive. Their behavior once the Calf was made — “the people sat down to eat and drink and then stood up to engage in revelry” — was undisciplined and dissolute.

When Moshe came down the mountain at Gd’s command, he “saw that the people were running wild for Aharon had let them run beyond control and become a laughing stock to their enemies.” What Moshe saw exemplified Carl Jung’s description: “The psychology of a large crowd inevitably sinks to the level of mob psychology.” Moshe saw a crowd.

The vayakhel of this week’s parsha was quite different. Moshe sought to create community by getting the people to make personal contributions to a collective project, the Mishkan, the Sanctuary.

In a community, individuals remain individuals. Their participation is essentially voluntary: “Let everyone whose heart moves them bring an offering.” Their differences are valued because they mean that each has something distinctive to contribute. Some gave gold, other silver, others bronze. Some brought wool or animal skins. Others gave precious stones. Yet others gave their labor and skills.

What united them was not the dynamic of the

crowd in which we are caught up in a collective frenzy but rather a sense of common purpose, of helping to bring something into being that was greater than anyone could achieve alone. Communities build; they do not destroy. They bring out the best in us, not the worst. They speak not to our baser emotions such as fear but to higher aspirations like building a symbolic home for the Divine Presence in their midst.

By its subtle use of the verb k-h-l, the Torah focuses our attention not only on the product but also the process; not only on what the people made but on what they became through making it.

This is how I put it in “The Home We Build Together:”

A nation — at least, the kind of nation the Israelites were called on to become — is created through the act of creation itself. Not all the miracles of Exodus combined, not the plagues, the division of the sea, manna from heaven or water from a rock, not even the revelation at Sinai itself, turned the Israelites into a nation. In commanding Moshe to get the people to make the Tabernacle, G-d was in effect saying: To turn a group of individuals into a covenantal nation, they must build something together.

Freedom cannot be conferred by an outside force, not even by G-d Himself. It can be achieved only by collective, collaborative effort on the part of the people themselves. Hence the construction of the Tabernacle. A people is made by making. A nation is built by building.

This distinction between community and crowd has become ever more significant in the 21st century. The classic example is the Arab Spring of 2011.

Massive protests took place throughout much of the Arab world, in Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Oman, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Bahrain, Libya, Kuwait, Syria and elsewhere. Yet it turned

rapidly into what has been called the Arab Winter. The protests still continue in a number of these countries, yet only in Tunisia has it led to constitutional democracy. Protests, in and of themselves, are never enough to generate free societies. They belong to the logic of crowd, not community.

The same is true of social media even in free societies. They are great enhancements of existing communities, but they do not in and of themselves create communities. That takes face-to-face interaction and a willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of the group. Without this, however, as Mark Zuckerberg said in 2017, “social media can contribute to divisiveness and isolation.” Indeed, when used for virtue signaling, shaming or aggressive confrontation, they can create a new form of crowd behavior, the electronic herd.

In his book “A Time to Build,” Yuval Levin argues that social media have undermined our social lives.

They plainly encourage the vices most dangerous to a free society. They drive us to speak without listening, to approach others confrontationally rather than graciously, to spread conspiracies and rumors, to dismiss and ignore what we would rather not hear, to make the private public, to oversimplify a complex world, to react to one another much too quickly and curtly. They eat away at our capacity for patient toleration, our decorum, our forbearance, our restraint.

These are crowd behaviors, not community ones.

The downsides of crowds are still with us. So too are the upsides of community, as Melanie Reid’s Scottish pub demonstrates. I believe that creating community takes hard work, and that few things in life are more worthwhile. Building something with others, I discover the joy of becoming part of something greater than I could ever achieve alone.

Considering culture, counter-culture, creativity

rABBi Dr.

tzvi hersh weinreB

Orthodox Union

Quite a few years ago, I spent almost every Sunday afternoon in one of the great museums of the city where we then lived. I no longer remember what first stimulated my interest in art, and specifically in Impressionism, but I relished those Sunday afternoons, as did my youngest daughter, then no more than six or seven.

The museum we frequented possessed the

most extensive collection in the world of the paintings of the French artist Henri Matisse. My daughter became so familiar with the works of Matisse, particularly his colorful paper-cut collages, that when we once ventured into a new museum, she saw some Matisse works at a distance and shouted excitedly, “Matisse, Matisse!”

I glowed with pride as the others in the crowded gallery exclaimed, “What a precocious child!”

It was on that occasion that I first encountered a fascinating gentleman. I’ll call him Ernesto. He was a tall hulk of a man, who had been a brilliant Talmud student before the war, but had given up all religious observance and almost all connection with the Jewish people. He had totally lost

Bezalel was not rebellious. He participated in a national project, combining creativity with conformity.

his faith as a result of his experiences during the Holocaust.

With my black yarmulke, I was readily identifiable as an Orthodox Jew, so I was easy prey.

“Jews know nothing about art,” Ernesto bellowed. “Matisse! How can you glorify Matisse? His art is only decorative. All Jewish art is nothing but decoration.”

I had no clue what he was talking about.

We soon sat down together and he began to share his story. Over the subsequent years, I came to know him better and discovered that he had many bones to pick with Judaism and was in a perpetual rage against G-d. But that morning he confined his remarks to his disappointment with what he saw as the absence of fine art in Jewish culture.

See Weinreb on page 22

Mendelevich’s Jewish war defeated communism

Kosher Bookworm

AlAn JAy GerBer Jewish Star columnist

Editor’s note: With life in Russia increasingly under the gun, and with its Jews again in the crosshairs, we revisit this column from 2013.

How ironic that a published history of the struggle to liberate Soviet captive Jewry begins with two words — Yosef Mendelevich.

“When They Come For Us We’ll Be Gone,” by the skilled journalist and essayist Gal Beckerman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), describes the struggle between Judaism and community that Mendelevich personified, and which defined a generation of Jewish youth

both in the Soviet Union and America.

In 598 pages, Beckerman tells of the titanic struggle that would ultimately defeat communism. He covers those at the grass roots level who gave of themselves to help liberate hundreds of thousands from the shackles of communist tyranny, and features such personages as Avi Weiss (see story on page 1), Jacob Birnbaum, Glenn Richter and Abraham Joshua Heschel, who helped to catapult this issue to the front pages.

Yet it was Mendelevich who came to symbolize the Jewish religious element in direct combat with Marxist-Leninist communism on both ideological and physical levels.

“Mendelevich was a shy boy with pale, pimply skin and thick horn-rimmed glasses,” writes Beckerman of the face of the struggle. He was born in post-war 1947, into an ash heap from World War Two, with a Jewish community in

physical waste from the murderous struggles that resulted in the destruction of over six million Jews.

This Jewish community was betrayed by those who it viewed somewhat favorably before 1939.

In his 1958 study, “Masters of Deceit,” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover goes into great detail demonstrating the communist betrayal of East European Jewry in helping to blindside them to what was to come at the murderous hands of the Nazis. In a chapter titled, “The Communist Attack on Judaism,” Hoover states:

“The third communist propaganda claim, that of rescuing Jews from Nazi extinction, is also a deception. In the first place, for two years prior to the Nazi invasion of Russia, when Moscow was allied with Berlin, there is no record of any Soviet protest against the Nazi slaughter

See Gerber on page 22

Drasha patience: Getting most out of Shabbos

The Yalkut Shimoni’s opening comment in his Midrashic exposition on Parshas Vayakhel is translated as follows:

Vayakhel Moshe, and Moshe gathered: Our Rabbis, the master Aggadists, said that from the beginning of the Torah until the end there is no other parsha that begins with a gathering.

The Holy One, Blessed Be He, said, “Make for yourselves great gatherings and make drashas, ser-

monize before them in public regarding the laws of Shabbos, so that future generations will learn from you, to gather every Shabbos. And they should enter the study halls to teach and to show the Israelites the words of the Torah, the forbidden and the permitted, so that My Great Name will be spread amongst my children.”

From this, the rabbis claimed that Moshe established for Israel to study the laws of Pesach on Pesach time, the laws of Atzeres [Shavuos] at Atzeres time, and the laws of Chag [Sukkos] at Chag time.

Moshe said to the Israelites, ‘If you do this in this manner, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, will count it as if you have crowned Him king in His world, as it says in Isaiah (43:12), “You are My witnesses, the word of G-d, and I am G-d.”

I think there are two important lessons we can take from this Midrashic account.

The first is that clearly the concept of a drasha, certainly around yom tov time, but even week-toweek, is a good thing.

On Shabbos, we create that experience of a community gathering together, to pray together, to hear the Torah together, to learn together, and hopefully, to be inspired together. We should not feel that the rabbi speaks too long (unless he is unprepared and does not make a point worthy of everyone’s time). We need to remind ourselves why we come to synagogue!

Some people do not have the opportunity to learn Torah during the week, but if we are a kehillah, a community, a little patience will

go a long way. The Torah thoughts shared during the sermon are the starting point of a larger conversation about Torah and our lives as Jews, under G-d.

Our patience and positive support of sermons is a way to strengthen the community, and facilitate others’ learning when the response to a sermon is insightful, thoughtful and focused on its content. And if that conversation extends to the Shabbos table, we are all blessed for it.

The second lesson is to help us focus on why we gather in the first place. Of course we come to the synagogue to pray, and to learn a little. Some people attend a class before or after the services as well, while some get their

See Billet on page 22

‘Shabbat First!’ is our takeaway from Vayakhel

Our parasha begins with Moshe Rabbeinu gathering the entire Jewish people before him, at which point we would expect some sort of listing of “the things that Hashem commanded to make.” Instead, we are met with two verses that discuss several aspects of Shabbat: Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have sanctity, a day of complete rest to Hashem; whoever performs work thereon [on this day] shall be put to death. You shall not kindle fire in any of your dwelling places on the Shabbat day.

These pasukim are followed by 32 verses that discuss the acquisition of the necessary materials to construct the Mishkan and its vessels, and the people’s largesse in providing these needs. Why did Moshe discuss Shabbat in the midst of focus-

ing on “the things that Hashem commanded to make?”

In his Commentary on the Torah on our verse, Rashi, based on the Mechilta, suggests the following well-known answer: Six days: “He [Moshe] prefaced [the discussion of the details of] the work of the Mishkan with the warning to keep Shabbat, denoting that it [that is, the work of the Mishkan] does not supersede Shabbat.” In short, Shabbat’s mention prior to the Mishkan depicts its singular import and its precedence over the construction of the Mishkan.

This order is reversed in Parashat Ki Tisa, where 11 Mishkan-focused pasukim are stated before Shabbat.

Our exegetical challenge is now quite clear. Why is the Mishkan mentioned before Shabbat in Parashat Ki Tisa while the opposite order obtains in Parashat Vayakhel?

In his Torah commentary, Keli Yakar, Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim ben Aaron Luntschitz, strengthens this question: “It is [almost] always the case in every instance where one mitzvah precedes another mitzvah that the first one is of the essence

and sets aside the second one. So, too, do we find in the verse: ‘You shall observe My Shabbatot and revere My Mikdash. I am Hashem,’ wherein Shabbat is given precedence over the Mikdash’.”

Based on this idea, Parashat Ki Tisa appears to be an outlier.

Rav Luntschitz begins his analysis by noting that Parashat Ki Tisa and Parashat Vayakhel have two different speakers. The first features Hashem’s words to Moshe, whereas the second contains Moshe’s address to the Jewish people.

Rav Luntschitz suggests that this difference helps us understand why the Mishkan is mentioned first in Ki Tisa and Shabbat is first in Vayakhel. In his view, the entire purpose of the Mishkan was to give voice to the new-found glory of the Jewish people after “the Holy One blessed be He forgave the people for the sin of the Egel HaZahav and allowed His Schechinah to rest upon them once again.” This was particularly apropos since, “the Holy One blessed be He is extremely sensitive to the honor of the Jewish people; therefore, [in Parashat Ki Tisa,] He gave

precedence of place to the Mishkan [before He mentioned Shabbat].”

In contrast, Rav Luntschitz opines that it was proper for Moshe Rabbeinu to mention Shabbat before the Mishkan in Parashat Vayakhel since “the core of Shabbat is the glory of Hashem, may He be blessed.” He builds on these concepts and arrives at the following incisive conclusion:

Moshe thought that in order to grant the requisite respect to Hashem, may He be blessed, it was fitting to give precedence to Shabbat as it teaches us about the glory of Hashem, may He be blessed, and only afterwards present the Mishkan which informs us about the honor of the Jewish people. In addition, based on this order, it is immediately understood that Shabbat sets aside all labor concerning the Mishkan, since which one is set aside for the other — clearly, the smaller matter [Mishkan] before the greater one [Shabbat].

Just as Moshe Rabbeinu honored Hashem by giving precedence to Shabbat prior to the Mishkan, so, too, may our observance of Shabbat give kavod to the Almighty and bring glory to His name. V’chane yihi ratzon.

torah rABBi DAviD etenGoff Jewish Star columnist

Parsha of the week

rABBi Avi Billet Jewish Star columnist

Rabbi Yosef Mendelevich with “Kosher Bookworm” Alan Jay Gerber in Jerusalem in 2012.

Jewish Star Associate: Nechama Bluth, 516-622-7461 ext

Opinions:

Can we rescue colleges from woke Jew-hate?

Evidence continues to pile up that antisemitism on American college campuses hasn’t just surged in the months since Oct. 7 but become commonplace. The disturbing incident this past week at the University of California, Berkeley, where a pro-Israel event for students was stormed and broken up by a violent mob chanting in favor of intifada and spewing antisemitic insults was egregious, but just the latest example. It was echoed by the testimony before Congress’ Bipartisan Task Force on Antisemitism by Jewish students from Harvard, Columbia, the MIT, Stanford, and Cooper Union.

The students, in a compendium of horror stories about troubling incidents, repeatedly said that college administrations have been unwilling to do anything about it. Both Republicans and Democrats agreed that the situation was not just unacceptable but had created a crisis that could not go unaddressed.

And yet, for all the concern expressed, there is little indication that much is being done about it. Congressional hearings are important, but will they lead to action to punish the schools? If you’re waiting for higher education in this country to fix itself, then you’re dreaming.

Woke schools won’t change

A number of the elite institutions — especially three that came under fire because their presidents disgracefully told Congress back in December that it depended on the “context” if advocacy for the genocide of Jews was against school policy — have made some noises about addressing the issue of antisemitism. And some are under pressure from Jewish donors like Harvard alum Bill Ackman. However, expectations for these efforts are low because many of the people who have been put in charge of them are part of the problem.

That’s just one of the issues at Harvard where Derick Penslar, a Jewish scholar who had labeled Israel an “a regime of apartheid”

and who had denied that antisemitism was a problem on the campus, was made co-chair of the university’s antisemitism task force. First Rabbi David Wolpe and now the other co-chair of the task force, Rafaella Sadun, resigned from it once they realized the process was set up to fail.

There is no secret about the source of the problem. The woke ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, intersectionality and so-called “anti-racism” has swept through the educated classes, convincing them that Israel and the Jews are “white” oppressors who must be resisted. In doing so, it has granted a permission slip for antisemitism.

Liberal Jews have been ignoring warnings that their willingness to along with liberal fashion was enabling a movement committed to implacable and endless racial division while putting their own children at risk of being targeted by the new orthodoxy. But recent events have shocked even many who had thought concerns about left-wing antisemitism was just a conservative political talking point to awaken to the danger.

The Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 and Israel’s subsequent effort to eradicate the terrorists who had committed the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust set off an escalation in antisemitic activity that can no longer be denied.

Harvard University’s shambolic attempt to investigate its own Jew-hatred is symptomatic of the grip that toxic leftist ideas have on higher education that must be challenged.

At Harvard, some hoped that the resignation of its president, Claudine Gay (who was forced out not because she enabled antisemitism but because of revelations about ongoing plagiarism in her scholarship), would make a difference, but that was based on a misunderstanding of the problem. The issue isn’t one or even a few individuals at the top in these schools. It’s the way their entire bureaucracies and faculty have adopted the woke DEI catechism and intersectionality as a new orthodoxy from which dissent is not tolerated. This breeds hostile environments for Jews. Yet it also creates a belief on the part of those in charge that expressions of hatred for Israel and Jews are not just “free speech” but approved speech because they are in line with intersectional ideology in which Jews are automatically and falsely labeled as victimizers of the oppressed.

While a number of schools are now under investigation by the Department of Education for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, who knows how long those probes will take or if they will result in serious consequences. Meanwhile, the federal government continues to pour billions of dollars into higher education. That not only helps colleges inflate their tuition bills as part of a vast scam in which a generation of young people is going into debt for expensive degrees that aren’t worth what they cost but also subsidizing a vast array of institutions that may now be doing more harm than good.

Seeking liberal alternatives

This is a problem for all Americans who know that in this case, as with so many other ones, the Jews are the canaries in the coal mine.

In the long run, if universities continue to be run and taught by people who are at war with Western civilization and America, they won’t survive — or at least not in their current form. Liberal education — and by liberal, I mean studies that are dedicated to the “great books” of the core curriculum that prizes the best of the West in the humanities and not the current poor excuse for learning that focuses obsessively on race and gender — is key to the survival of our university system.

It may be that college degrees — including those from the most prestigious institutions like Harvard that have always been considered a gateway to inclusion in the country’s upper echelon — will no longer be valued as highly in the past. And that is certainly true for less well-regarded schools whose degrees will certainly be worth even less in the future.

It is especially difficult for Jewish families, including those that might not have previously thought much about antisemitism when choosing a college for their children but are determined they have the best education possible.

While the woke problem is less awful in some universities than others, so successful has been the progressives’ long march through higher education that few are completely free of it. Even a well-regarded institution like Hillsdale College is not going to be an option for most Jews because it is avowedly Christian. Nor are Jews who are not Orthodox going to retreat into Jewish enclaves like Yeshiva University or religious schools, including yeshivahs.

This dilemma is what has given some impetus to a movement to provide alternatives to what is currently on offer.

Spreading ideology of violence, dehumanization

When all is said and done, antisemitism is fundamentally an ideology of violence.

Behind every missive and every barb — whether delivered online, at pro-Hamas rallies or graffitied on the walls of a Jewish communal building — is a message of dehumanization that licenses physical attacks on Jews and their property.

In the nearly five months that have passed since Hamas terrorists orchestrated the horrendous pogrom of Oct. 7 in Israel, antisemitic violence has exploded around the world. There are something like 16 million Jews around the globe, mainly concentrated in Israel and the United States, but with a presence in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Oceania as well. From what I can tell, there isn’t a single Jewish community that hasn’t been scarred by this latest wave of hostility.

Additionally, in the two decades that I’ve been writing about antisemitic violence, there hasn’t been a single episode in which the perpetrator was a public figure or someone with a media profile. I’m not referring here to the antisemitic rhetoric we’ve heard from influencers like the rapper

Don’t fool yourselves. The mob is back, and this time it wears a keffiyeh rather than a swastika armband.

Kanye West, or any number of the prominent elected officials flinging words like “genocide” in Israel’s direction, or asserting that Diaspora Jews who join the Israeli Defense Forces should be locked up on charges of treason and war crimes.

I’m talking about the people who have crossed the line into assaults and even murder, which target Jews simply because they are Jews.

The names of individuals we would otherwise have never heard of — like Kobili Traoré, who brutally murdered a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in her Paris apartment in 2017; or Stephan Balliet, the German neo-Nazi who attempted to shoot up a synagogue in the city of Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur in 2019 — are seared into our consciousness solely as a result of their bestial actions.

But that’s changing.

Last week, police in the Australian city of Melbourne arrested a known pro-Hamas influencer, a woman who has the ear of some of that country’s elected representatives and whose past activities have earned her media coverage, on the charge of having masterminded the kidnapping and torture of a young man whose only offense was that he works for a Jewish employer.

The 28-year-old Lebanese-Australian woman, Laura Allam, is the CEO of the Al Jannah Foundation, which bills itself as an Islamic humanitarian organization. While Allam’s social-media profiles specify that she is still running Al Jannah, an entry on the Australian Register of Companies notes that the foundation ceased operations in July 2023, less than three years after it was formally incorporated. But while her humanitarian organization may be little more than a husk, Allam has made sure to keep her own voice alive within Australia’s internal debate on the war in Gaza — a debate which, like elsewhere, has been stained by antisemitic invective, conspiracy theories and bloodthirsty celebrations of Israeli deaths.

On Feb. 16, Allam’s pro-Hamas activities took an altogether more sinister turn.

Along with an accomplice — identified by the

blog Israellycool as Muhammad Sharab, a proHamas fanatic whose social-media posts attacking Israel are decorated with images of samurai swords and ninjas — Allam is alleged to have seized her unnamed 31-year-old victim late at night in the Melbourne suburb of St. Albans at gunpoint. Because of the draconian restrictions imposed on reporting the case by the Australian authorities, who have banned the publication of Allam’s name and photograph by local media outlets, the full details of the assault have not been released. What we do know, though, is that the victim was so badly beaten that he required extensive hospital treatment.

Since the incident, Allam has remained silent, save for one final post on her Instagram account before it was shut down. With sickening self-re-

gard, Allam depicted herself as a victim, ignored by unnamed “community leaders” who “turn around and say such abhorrent words like ‘this is not our fight’ while a woman in your community has now endured a lifetime of pain, suffering and trauma.”

Such leaders, she went on, had nothing to fear from her, at least for the time being. “I pride myself in my selflessness (sic) and the idea of remaining quiet — for now,” she wrote. “Why? Well, I’d like to hope that you so-called ‘selfless individuals’ realize that if I decide to speak up on what has occurred, it will have the most detrimental effect on our community and every single effort we have put into our movement.”

Allam, it would seem, recognizes that her turn

A pro-Hamas fifth column intends to kill people

BENjamiN KErstEiN

Sigmund Freud always took a somewhat jaundiced view of the human psyche, but in the wake of the horrors of World War I, it turned even darker.

Confronted with mankind’s capacity to destroy itself, Freud concluded that within every living thing, there is a drive towards senescence and homeostasis — a state in which things do not change. The ultimate form of such a state, of course, is death. Thus, Freud believed, all life contains within it the seed of its own destruction and dissolution — a death drive.

But Freud understood that this was not simply a desire for stasis. In 1932, he wrote to Albert Einstein, “According to our hypothesis human instincts are of only two kinds: those which seek to preserve and unite … and those which seek to destroy and kill and which we group together as the aggressive or destructive instinct.”

These instincts are not always opposed, however. Freud asserted that “an instinct of the one sort can scarcely ever operate in isolation; it is always accompanied — or, as we say, alloyed — with a certain quota from the other side, which modifies its aim or is, in some cases, what enables it to achieve that aim.”

In the unity of sex and death, Freud implied, there comes a point at which the death drive becomes a desire for the orgasmic destruction of oneself and others. Sex enables death and viceversa.

All of this came to mind when I read that a man named Aaron Bushnell had committed suicide by setting himself on fire in front of the

Israeli embassy in Washington while shrieking, “Free Palestine.”

Iwas neither shocked nor surprised by the news. It was inevitable from the moment the pro-Hamas fifth column in the United States began its pro-terror campaign.

The instant the genocidists took to the streets, it was obvious that behind all the screaming and slogans was nothing more than an inchoate murderous rage. This rage has reached such a peak of intensity that it has ceased to be mere antisemitism. It is nothing but itself. It is the death drive. These people want to die and they want others to die. Worse still, they take pleasure in that desire and its consummation.

In Hamas’s case, the death drive took the form of mass murder. In Bushnell’s case, it took the form of suicide. One could say that this is a point in Bushnell’s favor. At least he didn’t try to take anyone else down with him. But his selfimmolation has prompted statements from his ideological kin that point to something far more sinister.

Reporter Andy Ngo recently tweeted about a post on the anarchist website CrimethInc featuring an email Bushnell apparently sent to the site stating his intentions. CrimethInc. seems to be dedicated to promoting illegal activities to further the anarchist cause. As such, its comments on Bushnell’s missive are disturbing, to say the least.

At first glance, it appears that the site simply wants to dissuade others from immolating themselves, saying, “Let’s not glamorize the decision to end one’s life, nor celebrate anything with such permanent repercussions. Rather than exalting Aaron as a martyr and encouraging others to emulate him, we honor his memory, but we exhort you to take a different path.”

The site never explicitly states what that “different path” might be. However, it does say, quite

falsely, “All available evidence indicates that the Israeli military will continue killing Palestinians by the thousand until they are forced to stop.”

Given the necessity of forcing Israel to “stop,” the site muses, “If protests are going to exert leverage towards stopping the genocide, it is up to people in the United States to figure out how to accomplish that. But what will it take? Thousands across the country have engaged in brave acts of protest without yet succeeding in putting a halt to Israel’s assault.”

“If your heart is broken by the horrors in Gaza and you are prepared to bear significant consequences to try to stop them, we urge you to do everything in your power to find comrades and make plans collectively,” the site exhorts. “Lay the foundations for a full life of resistance to colonialism and all forms of oppression. Prepare to take risks as your conscience demands, but don’t hurry towards self-destruction. We

desperately need you alive, at our side, for all that is to come.”

“All that is to come,” once again, goes unnamed, but the site reemphasizes, “Let’s admit that the kind of protest activity that has taken place thus far in the United States has not served to compel the U.S. government to compel a halt to the genocide in Gaza. It is an open question of what could accomplish that. Aaron’s action challenges us to answer this question — and to answer it differently than he did.”

The site is careful about its rhetoric to the point of esoteric writing, but there is a small indication of what it means by “differently.” It states, “If nothing else, Aaron’s action shows that genocide cannot take place overseas without collateral damage on this side of the ocean.”

It is quite clear what “collateral damage” means in this context: dead people. Such dead people will be produced, the site forthrightly states, “differently.” That is, they will not be produced by suicide. People will be murdered.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the implications of this are fairly obvious: The pro-Hamas fifth column in the US intends to kill people.

Given the atrocities of the current moment, it is impossible to imagine that most if not all of those people will be Jews. It seems that however careful they may be about saying so, the death cultists in the US intend to imitate their fellow death cultists in Gaza. The death drive will seek to sate itself on American Jews as it did on Israeli Jews. The pleasures inherent are too much for the cultists to resist.

Major Jewish organizations, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and all relevant agencies should take note: Bushnell’s death was not just a suicide, it was also an exhortation to murder — and people are listening.

Photographic portrait of Sigmund Freud by Max Halberstadt, circa 1921. WikiCommons

A pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne, Australia, on Oct. 15, 2023. Matt Hrkac via WikiCommons

Democratic rhetoric’s perilous turn for Jews

caroline

glick

Israel Hayom

In an appearance this week on MSNBC, veteran Democratic political strategist James Carville made a stunning statement. Speaking of the uncommitted vote in Michigan, Carville said that it will be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fault if Biden loses the election in November.

“There is a problem all across the country [with Democratic voters who will punish Biden if he continues to support Israel] and I hope that the President and [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken can get this thing calmed down, because if it don’t [sic.] get calmed down before the Democratic convention in Chicago it’s going to be a very ugly time in Chicago. I promise you that. They’re gonna have to tell Bibi Netanyahu, ‘Hey dude, we’re not gonna lose our election because you’re scared to go to jail’.”

Carville’s bit about jail was part of a larger conspiracy theory that he has been peddling since shortly after the Hamas-led Palestinian invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7. That theory has it that Netanyahu only decided to wage a war to eradicate Hamas to deflect public attention from his criminal trial.

Beyond the obscenity of the contention itself, the fact is that since Netanyahu’s trial opened two years ago, the prosecution’s entire case has fallen apart. But the new wrinkle that Carville incorporated is that it will be Israel’s fault if Biden loses.

Carville is far from alone in making this claim. Pro-Hamas Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) is one of its most outspoken champions. Ahead of the Michigan primary last Tuesday, Tlaib led a campaign of pro-Hamas Muslims and progressives to convince like-minded Michiganders to vote “Uncommitted” to show their opposition to what they perceive as Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas.

of the vote and only 13.2% of Michigan voters voted “uncommitted.”

While 13.2% is being presented as a major achievement, it is anything but significant. It isn’t clear what portion of the 13.2% voted “Uncommitted” out of support for Hamas, for one thing. Around the same percentage of primary voters regularly vote “Uncommitted” in Democratic presidential primaries. For instance, when thenPresident Barack Obama was running unopposed for re-election in 2012, 11% of Michigan primary voters voted “Uncommitted.”

•Beyond that, the Harvard-Harris poll of US opinion on Israel’s war with Hamas, which was published the day of the primary, showed that 82% of Americans support Israel compared to 18% who support Hamas. The implications are clear. Both the election results and the HarvardHarris poll demonstrated that Tlaib and her proHamas supporters do not have the political weight to throw a presidential election.

The claim that support for Israel will cost Biden the election is also fatuous because Tlaib and her supporters are bluffing. Donald Trump was the most pro-Israel president in history, and they know it. They will not enable him to return by refusing to support Biden. Tlaib admitted this herself at a press conference on Thursday.

“It’s really important for folks to understand: I am incredibly, incredibly scared of a second term for Trump. And I think it’s really important to emphasize this,” she said.

Democratic movers and shakers are grafting antisemitism onto the party’s DNA.

•The third reason it is absurd to blame Biden’s bad numbers on Israel is that his numbers have been terrible since September 2021. Real Clear Politics’ polling data show that Biden’s numbers on the economy, foreign policy, inflation, crime, the Israel-Hamas war and the Russia-Ukraine war are all negative. Trump has been leading Biden in national and swingstate polling since well before Oct. 7. For instance, an ABC News-Washington Post poll from Sept. 24 showed Trump leading Biden 51-42.

remain in power in Gaza after the war, 43% of young Americans said that Hamas should be allowed to remain in power in Gaza after the war.

By placing the blame for Trump’s likely victory on Israel, Carville and others like him are working to secure and maintain the loyalty of the large anti-Israel demographic among young voters.

The second reason that Carville and other leading Democratic voices in politics, academia and the media are blaming Israel for what they fear will be a Trump victory in November is because they are setting up Israel — and more broadly “the Jews” in the United States and worldwide — as the scapegoat. They don’t want to blame their party’s policies on the economy, the border, crime, energy, social issues or foreign policy for the anticipated loss. So instead, they are placing all the blame on Israel and its supporters (read: Jews). If it weren’t for them, Biden would be coasting to victory now.

A Direct Polls survey from Feb. 13 showed that Israelis favor Netanyahu over his top two rivals, Minister Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, 47%34% and 49%-28%, respectively. Netanyahu’s support owes largely to his willingness to stand up to ever increasing pressure from the Biden administration to end the ground operation in Gaza without victory.

Responding rationally to the administration’s hostility and to the groundswell of antisemitism rolling through key institutions in the United States, Israel is moving quickly to limit, with the goal of ending, its dependence on US arms supplies. The government has budgeted billions of shekels for Israel’s military industries, and it is anticipated that within two years, Israel will have the domestic industrial capacity to wage war without US resupply of ammunition.

Others, including academics, have piled onto the bandwagon. For instance, NYU professor Mohamad Bazzi wrote in the Guardian last week that Biden is risking reelection by not reining in Netanyahu. In his words, “While Biden complains about the petulant Israeli leader who won’t listen, his presidency is now at risk. It’s a self-inflicted wound that Biden would have avoided by standing up to Netanyahu months ago.”

The allegation that Netanyahu is going to cost Biden the election because of his unwillingness to end the war with Hamas without victory is absurd for three reasons.

•First, the Michigan primary showed the emptiness of the threat. For more than a month, the media provided around-the-clock coverage of calls by Tlaib and her Hamas-supporting partners for Muslims and progressives in Michigan to vote “Uncommitted.” But in the end, Biden won 81.1%

Carville is one of the top political strategists in America, and has been since he served as Bill Clinton’s political guru in the 1992 elections. There is no way that he isn’t aware that his assertion is totally unfounded.

There are two explanations for why a man of his professional stature and political savvy would blame Israel’s refusal to bow to US pressure and capitulate to Hamas for Biden’s likely loss of the presidency.

The first reason is that Carville is trying to present the Democratic Party as the political home for an up-and-coming generation of Americans, which unlike all of its predecessors is not sympathetically inclined towards the Jewish state. The Harvard-Harris poll that showed that 82% of Americans support Israel also showed that 53% of Americans aged 18-25 support an unconditional ceasefire, which would leave Hamas intact and capable of rebuilding its terrorist ranks. Whereas 78% of Americans oppose permitting Hamas to

The implication of this move is that the Democratic movers and shakers are grafting antisemitism onto the party’s DNA.

In the 1920s, the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany’s loss in World War I — and won a lot of support among Germans who didn’t want to look inward and blame themselves for their nation’s defeat.

Likewise, Democratic strategists and opinion makers who are peddling this new antisemitic conspiracy theory view Israel bashing — and Jewbashing more generally — as an effective means to avoid the need to reconsider their party’s deeply unpopular policies on everything from illegal immigration to transgenderism. They see antisemitism as a much easier tool for political mobilization and are adopting it.

Israelis are already alarmed by the open hostility they’re facing from the Biden administration. And they are willing to risk an open breach with the administration to ensure victory in the war.

In recent years, the main victim of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel has been Diaspora Jews, not Israel. It is they who face harassment and ostracism on their campuses and workplaces. Israel, a sovereign state, has managed to weather the storm with minimal losses.

Likewise, the main victim of the campaign being waged by the likes of Carville to blame Biden’s likely electoral defeat on Israel will be the American Jewish community.

If this campaign succeeds, and the unhinged notion that Israel is the cause of Biden’s political woes becomes accepted wisdom, the consequences for American Jews will be devastating.

If antisemitism is grafted onto the DNA of the party most American Jews call home, the consequences will be disastrous. The community will find itself politically, professionally and socially isolated and vulnerable in ways that are almost unimaginable, but will become all too real if what is now taking form is not stopped in its tracks before it is too late.

Continued from page 19

to antisemitic violence would be a setback for the community she claims to represent. Yet there is no apology on her part, merely a tactical decision to “remain quiet — for now.” Quite the pledge from a woman with her record.

Before news of the attack in Melbourne, Allam had already attracted national attention for her furious messages on social media. “Good riddance,” she declared on learning of the deaths of four IDF soldiers in Gaza.

One day after the Oct. 7 pogrom, she announced that she had “woken up to some great news from our beloved Palestine.”

Allam’s rejoicing in the mass killing, rapes and

mutilation that defined Oct. 7 were an obvious signal to Australian politicians to avoid any contact with her — but they didn’t. At a pro-Hamas demonstration outside the Australian parliament in Canberra at the beginning of February, Allam stood alongside senators from the left-wing Green Party, drawing a rebuke from TV host Andrew Bolt.

“The Greens may not have known of Allam’s past, but this is who they find next to them in their gutter,” he stated, in a reference to the news in December that Allam was using the Al Jannah Foundation to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Australia, which led opposition politicians to question whether supporters of Hamas were being imported into Australia under the guise of humanitarianism.

By orchestrating an assault on someone whose “offense” was to work for a Jewish employer, Allam ceased being a cheerleader for Hamas

and became, in effect, a vehicle to spread its vengeance outside the Middle East.

Cheering “resistance” is no longer enough for the pro-Hamas movement cluttering our schools, colleges and streets with their genocidal slogans; they are now duplicating those same “resistance” tactics to intimidate defenseless Jewish communities in their midst.

Allam may be a shocking example of this trend, but sadly, she is not the only one.

Last week, Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley were forced to evacuate a building where they were due to hold a meeting after pro-Hamas agitators gathered outside, banging on the windows and screaming “intifada, intifada.” Two Jewish students ended up being assaulted.

If you study the video of that episode, you’ll be struck most of all by the demeanor of the mob,

their faces a veritable picture of virtue signaling as they bellow “shame on you” at Jewish kids who were just trying to hold a get-together, but who were, in that moment, the embodiment of the hated Zionist state.

Our elected leaders — in the United States, in Europe and elsewhere — have failed us. Every outburst of antisemitic hatred in history has been directed by a mob, and the present situation is no different.

Don’t fool yourselves; the mob is back, and this time it wears a keffiyeh rather than a swastika armband.

If the authorities won’t expel these people from our campuses and imprison them when they engage in attacks on Jews, and if we are unwilling or unable to defend ourselves, we will find, sooner rather than later, that the only option we have is to head for the exits.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Joe Biden in New York City on Sept. 20. 2023. Cameron Smith, Official White House photo

We are Zionists.

The children of Israel are the indigenous people of the land of Israel, returning home at last.

Weinreb…

Continued from page 17

Frankly, I had never given much thought to the subject. The best I could do was to refer to Bezalel, mentioned in this week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel (Exodus 35:1-38:20).

I quoted the verses to him: “See, the L-rd has singled out by name Bezalel, son of Uri son of Chur. … He has endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft and has inspired him to make designs for work in gold, silver and copper.”

“Surely,” I argued, “the figure of Bezalel, so prominent at the very beginning of our history, is evidence that art has a central place in our tradition.”

Not only was he unimpressed, but he responded with a rant that seemed to go on forever. “Bezalel was no more than a Matisse,” he insisted. To him, Matisse was the epitome of a bankrupt artist, one who could produce colorful designs but had no message for the culture at large. He contrasted Matisse with Picasso, who had lot to say, in his art, about the political world in which he lived.

He concluded his tirade by shouting: “Besides pretty decorations for the Tabernacle, what did Bezalel have to teach us? What did he have to say to the human race?!”

In the many years since that first encounter with Ernesto, who passed away 60 years to the day after his release from Auschwitz in 1945, I have struggled with that challenging question: “What can we learn from Bezalel?”

I have since concluded that Bezalel had a lot to teach us, especially about the creative process. He was able to do what so many others who are blessed with creative talents have not been able to do.

Most creative geniuses throughout history, and I say this fully expecting objections to the contrary, have either been misfits or have rebelled against society.

Creativity often sees itself as in opposition to conformity. The place of the artist is rarely in the contemporary culture; rather it is in the counter-culture. The creative artist, whatever his medium, typically sees himself as the creator of a new culture, one which will replace the current culture and render it obsolete.

Bezalel’s genius lay in his ability to channel his artistic gifts to the cause of the culture being constructed around him. He was not rebellious and not withdrawn. He participated in a national project as part of the nation. He combined creativity with conformity.

One lesson that he taught all subsequent artists is that they need not limit their role to critical observation. Quite the contrary, they can cooperatively partner with society and bring their skills to the service of what is going on around them.

This is the deeper meaning of the passage in the Talmud which reads: “Bezalel knew how to combine the mystical primeval letters from which heaven and earth were created” (Berakhot 55a). Bezalel’s art was an art that “combined” letters, joining them together harmoniously. His was not the art that tears asunder the constituent elements of the world around him. His was the art that blends those elements into a beautiful whole.

Bezalel’s lesson is not just a lesson for artists. It is a lesson for all gifted and talented human beings. Somehow, the best and the brightest among us are the ones who are most cynical and critical of the societies in which we live.

We see this today in the harsh criticism directed at Israel from the world of the academe, and sadly, from the Jewish intelligentsia. There is something pernicious about great intelligence that makes one unduly and unfairly critical of the world.

Bezalel, on the other hand, was able to demonstrate that one can be highly gifted, indeed sublimely gifted, and use those gifts in a constructive fashion, cooperating with others who are far less gifted, and participating in a joint venture with the rest of society.

This is a lesson in leadership which all who are blessed with special talents must learn. Special talents do not entitle one to separate oneself from the common cause. Quite the contrary: They equip one to participate in the common cause, and in the process elevate and inspire the rest of society.

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of Jews, so far as is known. The good-neighbor policy between the communists and the Nazis, initiated by the Stalin-Hitler pact, is clearly established by the following report sent by the German Foreign Office, where it came to light after the war. … ‘The Soviet Government is doing everything to change the attitude of the population here toward Germany. The press is as though it had been transformed’.”

Hoover continues by stating, “Then, too, the silence of the Soviet leaders on the outbreaks of Nazi anti-Semitism completely misled Eastern European Jews as to the real character of the Nazi threat and hence, some two million Russian and East European Jews made no attempt to escape the Nazis during the early months of the German invasion of Russia. And even after the Nazi onslaught, there was a shocking failure on the part of the Soviets to reveal Nazi atrocities against the Jews.”

“Not only did the communists in the Soviet Union fail to make any effort to save Jewish people during the war, they showed no concern over their fate,” Hoover wrote.

Furthermore, the director notes that concurrent with the Holocaust, the communist attitude toward Zionism reflected policies and actions that would lead to mass suppression, targeting Jews who wished to identify with and later to emigrate to the Jewish state.

This was the world into which Yosef Mendelevich and his contemporaries were born, a world hostile to both Judaism and its concurrent Zionist ideology. In this world of communist oppression, Mendelevich was to experience severe cruel persecution and eventual brutal imprisonment, horrific experiences described in great detail in Mendelevich’s recently translated, “Unbroken Spirit: A Heroic Story of Faith, Courage, and Survival” (Gefen Publishing, 2012), translated by Benjamin Balint.

Mendelevich’s work is “an extraordinary testament. It tells us that nothing can kill the human spirit,” Beckerman says. “Even living in a totalitarian regime, where his basic rights were denied, Mendelevich managed to rise to great heights of bravery and faith. He recounts his story beautifully and powerfully. It is impossible not to be moved by the resilience of his Jewish soul.”

It was to this Jewish soul, the spirituality that frames Mendelevich’s whole existence, that most impressed me when I met him last year in Jerusalem.

This sentiment is reflected by Mendelevich in the following:

“Someone who called to urge me to publish this book accurately observed:

‘The value of your book lies in the fact that you have so faithfully and consistently continued to live the life you began all those years ago.’ He was right. If I were to honestly ask myself, ‘Are those values you believed in — the people of Israel, the land of Israel, and the Torah of Israel — still significant for you?’ I would answer, ‘Yes, yes, yes !’

“Not only have I not veered from the path on which I originally set out, but I have progressed along it. I have studied a great deal of Torah and, aware of how much I do not know, I wish to learn much more. I have endeavored to act for the good of the Jewish people here in Israel, and wish to do so much more. It is for this reason that I feel privileged to address Jews all over the world.”

In a special message for this essay, Glenn Richter, one of the premier leaders of the Liberate Soviet Jewry movement, writes the following tribute to his friend:

“My respect for Yosef has grown over the past 41 years since we campaigned for his release from the brutal gulag. He remains clearly focused — that the plot to hijack a small plane to fly to freedom, though doomed, was the strongest possible expression of the desperation of Soviet Jews to exit to Israel, that it galvanized Jews across the USSR to demand their freedom and free world Jews to support them — and we can never forget that sense of abiding solidarity.

“Yosef realizes that he remains a role model, and is willing to shoulder the burden, for those who wish to take their Jewish identity seriously and put practical application to their beliefs. His book shows how he thought each step of belief and then acted upon it. Sometimes the appellation ‘inspiring’ is used too loosely. In Yosef’s case, that’s just the beginning.”

At the conclusion of an interview in the OU’s Jewish Action magazine, Bayla Sheva Brenner asked Mendelevich this question: “As a Jew who believes in hashgachah pratis, why do you think G-d deemed that Yosef Mendelevich be born in communist Russia and find a way to blossom as a Jew in that environment?”

Mendelevich replies: “I have no explanation, but I am thankful to the Ribbono Shel Olam for having selected me for this mission. It is the reason I wrote my book, to show how, with the help of G-d, it is possible for even an assimilated Jewish boy living in communist Russia to find his Jewish soul. It is my hope that the next generation of Jews will read the book and think, ‘If a simple Jew like Yosef Mendelevich could do it, I can too.’”

Let me conclude by stating that we all can only respond with a hearty Amen to these heartfelt sentiments. As a student of Marxist communist ideology, I can only marvel at the fortitude that Mendelevich represents to all of us.

Our faith deserves this commitment and we, in turn, must dedicate ourselves to further observance to the tenets of our faith in G-d, equally both in ethics and ritual.

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fill from the sermon. But all of us attend for the focus of which the Yalkut Shimoni spoke, “so that My Great Name will be spread amongst my children,” and so that “G-d will view it as if we have crowned Him King in His World.”

Many shuls have a statement on or above the aron kodesh. In the interest of space I won’t share the many I’ve seen, but here is a summary of their presumed objectives. Some are meant to put the fear of G-d in those who are present. Some are meant to emphasize G-d’s presence in our midst. Some are meant to bring the joy of having G-d in our lives to people’s conscience. The joy of Torah might be a focus as well.

More than anything, I think our goal in synagogue attendance is to bring G-d in the shul space and into our lives.

Rabbi Shimshon Pincus said that sometimes we can accuse ourselves of being guilty of having “cultivated a Judaism from which we have left Hashem out of the equation.” Sometimes we are so busy serving G-d that we forget about G-d. Too often, even while we are praying, we don’t pay attention to Whom we are praying! We focus too much on “did you say that part yet?” as opposed to “Did you communicate with your Creator?”

Even our Shabbos observance may run the risk of hitting all the check marks — cholent and kugel, extra sleep, family time, even beautiful davening — and forgetting that all of these are only means to a much higher and important end: G-d Himself, Who is truly the beginning and the end!

Shabbos is such an integral part of our Jewish experience because it is through Shabbos that we testify to G-d’s existence, and that we note how He created the world in six days and stopped His creative work on the seventh, choosing to sanctify it and make it holy.

Many of the sermons of the great Chassidic masters focus on the special nature of Shabbos. I sometimes wonder why the rebbes felt the need to always talk about Shabbos. Whether we identify as chassidim or not, it is hard to imagine sincere chassidim violating the Shabbos.

But I think the rebbes were trying to ensure that with all the trappings of chassidus — the dress code, the rebbe’s tisch, etc. — that we not forget what Shabbos is really all about. It is not about whether you got shirayim from the rebbe, but whether you remembered to bring G-d into your life.

It’s hard to remember to maintain the special focus. It’s hard to make the Shabbos table conversation one of Torah and holiness at the forefront instead of as an afterthought at desert time.

The Yalkut Shimoni reminds us that we can follow even the simplest ingredients.

We must take the most we can out of the sermon, no matter where we find ourselves for Shabbos. Remember and recall not just whatever story or good line the rabbi told, but take the Torah content and message to heart.

We must make the most we can out of Shabbos. Seek to crown G-d as King in His world, and bear witness to His role in our lives. We who are so good at going through motions must strive to take all that we do to the next level — to feel as if we are His subjects at all times, with the responsibility, or better yet privilege, we have to fulfill His will.

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One such new option is the University of Austin, a private school that will admit its first students next fall. This promising project, which is backed by people like journalist Bari Weiss and renowned historian Niall Ferguson, will offer a classical Western education dedicated to both the genius of Western civilization and the kind of open discourse that is no longer to be found at most schools, especially the most prestigious ones. And it has gained considerable support in terms of donations and student interest since Oct. 7.

Another such option is the New College of Florida, a state-run institution that has begun the work of changing itself into a bastion of Western thought after its previous leftist leadership essentially put it in danger of closing due to mismanagement. It doesn’t have the prestige of the Austin project, but its value lies in its trying to provide a model to the nation that will show how public colleges and universities can be saved.

As Bruce Abramson, its director of student admissions, told me, the small school that previously had little in the way of Jewish life is seeking to appeal to Jewish students who want a classical education at a place where they won’t have to worry about woke antisemitism.

That’s an important selling point, and both Austin and New College, each in their own way, are in the vanguard of a movement that is likely to grow because of the demand for what they are offering.

Cutting funding is the only answer

In the meantime, the best and the brightest, including and especially Jewish students, will still want to go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford and the rest of the elite schools simply because they remain the surest path to success even if the value of their education on offer is clearly declining.

If those schools can’t rid themselves of their illiberal and antisemitic wokeness — and there’s no reason to think they can — then some other way must be found to force them to change. The only possibility is for Washington, which plays such a key role in enabling and spreading the problem through funding policies, to change.

Instead of backing up DEI mandates, it needs to overturn and ban them, withholding federal funding from those academic institutions that resist.

It will also mean a realization within the political class that their expressions of horror about the rise of antisemitism on campus are meaningless unless it is ready to start rolling back the progressive capture of these schools by starving them of the money they have used both to bilk students and to hire an army of DEI bureaucrats who have made the current surge in Jew-hatred possible.

Until that happens, we should expect the tales of Jewish victimization on American campuses once dedicated to liberal thought to continue and grow worse.