The Jewish Star 05-10-2024

7th Candle

By Ed Weintrob

As is customary at Yom HaShoah commemorarions, six candles were lit in the Five Towns on Sunday night, one for each million of the six million Jews who were slain by the Nazis. Four of the candles were lit by Holocaust survivors and two on behalf of survivors who could not particpate.

But a seventh candle was lit as well, to acknowledge the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and its aftermath, including the continued captivity of hostages and the growing number of Israeli casualities — 614 Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7 and more than 3,200 injured, many seriously. That candle was lit by Einav Danion, mother of 24-year-old hostage Ori Danion.

“It feels inappropriate to divert our attention from the horrors of the Holocaust and the lessons learned from the survivors,” Dana Frenkel said in opening the program. “And yet, how

could we not address the brutal massacre that took place on Oct. 7?

“The disappointing reactions of some of our supposed friends, the repulsive displays of antisemitism on our so-called enlightened college campuses — including shouts of Intifada revolution, Zionist go back to Europe — the devastating revelation of the Jew hatred that has been simmering for decades, there is nothing I can say that will make me feel that I’ve adequately addressed this community tonight.”

Survivor Sally Muscel, delivering the Fanya Gottesfeld Heller Memorial Address, described how her parents sent her away, as a 10-year-old, from their Polish home as the Nazis approached. Abandonment trauma haunts her still, she said.

“I really couldn’t understand that my parents wanted to save my life,” she said. “I thought that they don’t want me anymore.”

10

By Ed Weintrob

Riverdale remembered the Holocaust the way Jews commemorate so much: through ritual.

The device created for this by Rabbi Avi Weiss at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale was a Yom HaShoah Seder.

“There is no event in Jewish history that is remembered without ritual,” HIR President Jessica Loeser read from the Seder’s Haggadah.

“Only through a formalized ritual, enacted each year on Yom HaShoah, as the Exodus from Egypt is enacted each year on Passover, can we prevent the Holocaust from becoming a footnote in Jewish history.”

After Rabbi Steven Exler lit

six yarzeit candles, and a siren sounded to simulate the observance of Yom HaShoah in Israel, the Haggadah was read and sung, in English, Hebrew and Yiddish, over one-and-a-half hours.

Shoah testimonies were read and prayers were recited.

Before concluding with the singing of Hatikvah, Rabbi Exler said the assembled were “standing here today, still strong and resilient. Together with Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael, we represent the answer to the lament of Yechezkel 37 [that hope is lost].

“The three generations of us in this room [are] connecting to the eternal hope of our people.”

Lighting candles for the 6 million, from left: Survivors Livia Horowitz, Barbara Baker and Shoshana Friedman. At right, Sharon Fogel accompanies Einav Danion, mother of Ori, a 24-year-old hostage, who lit a seventh candle.

Survivor Sally Muscel described her life before, during and after the Shoah, then lit the first of six candles in memory of those who perished.

The Jewish Star photos by Ed Weintrob

See Candles on page

he students currently protesting against Israel on college campuses across the US have no interest in learning, let alone challenging their own assumptions. They are making a mockery of education itself and their professors are complicit.

During Passover, I visited my family in New Haven. I decided to walk over to Yale, my alma mater, to check out the anti-Israel protest there. Surprisingly, I was able to walk right into the middle of the protest circle even though I was shouting “Am Yisrael Chai!” I held up a photo of a hostage, asking students to look at it. Some of them literally covered their eyes.

There is no better illustration of the attitude of these protesters. They are refusing to see the truth, acknowledge facts and then engage with those facts. This makes dialogue impossible. You cannot debate an issue if one side won’t acknowledge that facts exist. This is not the Yale I attended.

The protesters who covered their eyes are ideological relatives of the people who tear down or deface posters of Israeli hostages. They simply don’t want to be confronted with the uncomfortable and tragic fact that 134 individuals are still held captive.

I do not deny the tragic fact that Gazan civilians have been killed. We can debate the numbers, whether those civilians are innocent and whether their deaths were necessary or justified. But I don’t deny that these deaths happened.

At Yale, I asked the protesters why so many of them were hiding their faces. Of course, they did not answer. As I have at every single protest, rally and other gathering I’ve attended since that Black Shabbat of Oct. 7 — and there have been many—I was unmasked. I wore no head covering and no dark sunglasses. The majority of the protesters did not have the courage to do the same.

Ablack protester told me I was not allowed in this “space” because I am “white.” Putting aside the obvious racism of this claim, given that none of these protesters were actually legally allowed in the “space,” I had just as much right (or lack thereof) to be there as he did.

I pointed that out and was told that saying such a thing was evidence of my “privilege” and that I had enslaved his ancestors. This was slanderous, since my family came to America long after slavery was abolished.

I asked about the white protesters present. He said they were allowed to be there because they were on the right side. So was he objecting to my views or my “whiteness” or both? Who knows? Logic is as much a casualty of this movement as facts. Again, this is not the Yale I attended. These students are responsible for their ac-

tions, but given their role models and so-called teachers, their actions are not surprising. I spoke to a group of middle-aged Yale professors who asked admiringly what I thought of the “peaceful” encampment. They were surprised when I pointed at — and objected to — a nearby poster glorifying Walid Daqqa, a terrorist who murdered and castrated an Israeli, as a martyr.

When I said I lived near Columbia University, where the scene was like a riot, a professor challenged me: “Like a riot or a riot?”

“Well, they’re yelling at Jews to go back to Poland,” I responded.

Her eyes widened.

Back home near Columbia, the scene is similar.

In front of my local public library, a small group of ’60s-era radicals passed out Palestinian and Marxist propaganda. One man carrying a sign that said “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” wore a shirt that said “Ask Me About Zionism.” So I did.

I asked him and his comrades whether they believed the Kurds deserve their own state. They refused to answer the question, knowing that their answer would only prove that they subject Jews to a double standard.

The Yale I attended welcomed all students of all backgrounds with all kinds of views. We discussed, we debated, we argued passionately and then we went to class together, ate together and partied together.

The Yale I attended abhorred intellectual dishonesty and logical inconsistency. The Yale I attended believed in facts.

May Yale and the other universities and colleges across the country return to being bastions of intellectual freedom, honesty and debate.

Yale is the only non-Jewish institution I know of that has its motto, “Light and Truth” (in Latin, Lux et Veritas, and in Hebrew slightly mistranslated as Urim v’Thummim).

May we return to the era of Lux et Veritas.

Yale University’s coat of arms.

AFTER 76 YEARS, WE’RE STILL FIGHTING FOR A JEWISH STATE.

In 1948, as Israel fought for its independence, the medics of Magen David Adom were there, treating wounded soldiers and civilians alike. Today, as Israel celebrates Yom HaAtzma’ut, MDA is still treating the injured — even under fire. But for MDA to continue being there for Israel, we need to be there for MDA. Make a donation at afmda.org/give.

SJP doc means war, and it’s America’s war

Over the weekend, I read one of the most disturbing pieces of journalism I have ever encountered. Via her Substack, the intrepid Eve Barlow — one of the best pro-Israel journalists working today — revealed extensive documentation acquired by Israel War Room. According to Barlow, the Google Drive files in question belong to Carrie Zaremba, a spokesperson for National Students for Justice in Palestine.

SJP, of course, is the vanguard of the genocidal antisemites infesting American college campuses and perhaps the leading hate group in the country, with a membership and influence that far outstrips that of any white nationalist or neo-Nazi organization. But if the documents are genuine and Barlow’s report is accurate—and I have no reason to think they are not—then SJP and its affiliates are a great deal more than that.

Put simply, the documents indicate that SJP and the movement it spearheads are a domestic terrorist network. A network, moreover, that is in only the opening stages of a genocidal campaign that, if not interdicted, could well result in damage to lives and property exponentially greater than it has already caused.

Barlow’s report points, for example, to detailed instructions for “Strategic monkeywrenching [industrial sabotage]. Disabling vehicles. Breaking windows. Plugging waste discharge pipes. Burning machinery. Smoke bombs. Stink bombs. Slingshots. Burning Billboards. Computer sabotage. Jamming locks. Avoiding arrest. Disposing of evidence. Smashing cameras. Occupying buildings. Barricading.”

Various companies such as General Mills and Chevron are named as targets that “you can BDS.” There is a link to a Wikipedia list of Israeli embassies around the world (“Israel” is written in scare quotes), along with an explicit call for an “International Intifada.” There is copious literature from terror groups like the PFLP and

terrorists like Leila Khaled, which implies that stink bombs may be the least of the weapons in question.

All of this would appear to be more than enough grounds for an FBI investigation, but it is not the worst of it. The documents also detail what can only be called an ideology of global genocide.

Barlow reproduces a document that contains the screaming declarations: “NO MORE ISRAEL. NO MORE USA. NO MORE UK. NO MORE ITALY. NO MORE FRANCE. NO MORE CANADA. NO MORE GERMANY. NO MORE AUSTRALIA.” Why Italy and France made the list while Spain, Lichtenstein and Greece did not must remain a mystery, but if there were any question as to what it all means, another document dispels it.

Despite some vague attempts at obfuscation, the document effectively advocates mass murder. It says of Americans, Britons and Israelis, “That is not to say that these folks won’t be (or ‛shouldn’t be’) killed in the process of decolonization.”

But such slaughter is not enough. The International Intifada’s targets must be killed not just physically but also metaphysically Of the US, for example, the document states, “The American as the American must die. If she will not commit suicide, she will need to be killed. … Both subtly and brutally, the messaging was placed inside us that we are American. In a nation built on stolen land, slave labor and genocide, we are a people with an untold and untellable history. The American is a great, and deadly, lie.” A lie, apparently, to be unceremoniously eliminated.

Barlow and Israel War Room appear to have done us a very great service. They have opened the lid and revealed the contents of Pandora’s Box. We guessed at what was in it beforehand, of course, but now we know for certain what we are facing: A genocidal terrorist network that fully intends to murder as many people as it can before immolating itself in world-ending apocalyptic violence. At the very least, that is the network’s demented fantasy and there is no reason to think it will not act on it.

None of us should look away from the obvious implication: This means war. The movement that has infested the universities has no intention of staying there. It will spread; it will escalate; it will kill. It will not just kill Israelis and Jews, though it certainly intends to do that. It will kill anyone it can get its hands on. In the name of “decolonization,”

A pro-terrorist protester in Toronto. Greg Finnegan, Shutterstock

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Looking back at history, we often see what appear to have been clearly defined periods, eras or growths of movements. Some good or entertaining, like the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age. Some revolutionary, like the turbulent 1960s. Others absolutely evil, like the Winds of War, the growth of Nazism in the 1930s that led inevitably to the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust.

Our general impression is that people living during those times realized, or were in some way aware of, the uniqueness of the challenges and transformations going on around them. My reading of history, however, is that for the most part — whether it be everyday people, intellectuals or world leaders — there was little realization during those years that the world as they knew it was that much different from what had come before.

Until it was. Or that tragedy lay ahead. Until it was too late.

I remember when I was in college in the 1960s, doing research papers on events that occurred in the ’20s and ’30s and noting how different the contemporary accounts of those years

and events were from the histories written decades later. In the ’20s there was the Manassa Mauler (Jack Dempsey), the Sultan of Swat (Babe Ruth) and the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame for boxing, baseball and college football aficionados. And for those who enjoyed the nightlife, there were the speakeasies, the Cotton Club, in Harlem, and the Charleston.

But when you read the newspapers and periodicals from those years, there is little if any recognition of the uniqueness of the time as an era, like the “era of wonderful nonsense,” as the ’20s were later dubbed.

Similarly, in the 1930s, there was the media coverage of Hitler’s election in Germany, perhaps describing him as heavy-handed, but certainly nothing like the monster he would become (and actually already was).

While there would be increasing concern over the growing repression of Jews in Germany, that awareness was nothing like what it should have been. And Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland was met by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler with hope of “peace in our time.”

All this was ignored by too many America Firsters who chose to be isolationists. And then there was Pearl Harbor, the Axis of Evil and World War II.

The 1960s began with President John F. Kennedy and his New Frontier, hailing America’s greatness and pledging to “support any friend, oppose any foe,” before America slowly but inexorably edged throughout the second half of the decade into a maelstrom of out-of-control campus demonstrations, flag-burning, Woodstock, the Age of Aquarius and what grew into a permanent drug culture subset.

What will future historians say about today’s myriad crises and cultural challenges? Russia invading Ukraine, and threatening the European order that has prevailed for almost

eight decades. China dramatically expanding its military, threatening Taiwan and spreading its economic power and influence throughout the world. Israeli being horrifically attacked by Iran’s proxy, Hamas, followed by thousands of pro-Hamas, antisemitic demonstrators marching in the streets of New York, occupying college campuses across the country and threatening Jewish students at those colleges. America’s response to these challenges?

More Democrats turning against Israel’s government. More Republicans becoming isolationist and turning against Ukraine. More American businesses increasing their dealings with China. College presidents negotiating with pro-Hamas, antisemitic students illegally taking over campuses.

Are we blind? Has history taught us nothing, and are we forcing ourselves to relive the worst days of history? G-d help us all.

An anti-war protest in New York in July 1941. America entered World War II five months later.

ICJ never called the genocide libel ‘plausible’

By David M. Litman

Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Media and Reporting

When the International Court of Justice issued an order on Jan. 26 in the genocide case brought against Israel by South Africa, it soon became common knowledge that the ICJ had found it “plausible” that Israel was committing “genocide.”

This common knowledge, however, was in fact a myth.

The ICJ said no such thing, as the president of the court, Joan O’Donoghue, has now clearly explained, stating on the BBC, “I’m correcting what’s often said in the media—[the court] didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

But it shouldn’t have taken a statement by O’Donoghue for this to come out. There was never any support in the language of the Jan. 26 order for the claim that it found genocide “plausible.”

Provided below is a list of news outlets that nonetheless falsely reported otherwise, in their own words.

Associated Press

•“The top United Nations court has concluded there is a ‘plausible risk of genocide’ in Gaza…” (Apr. 5, via ABC News)

•“In Britain, more than 600 British jurists, including three retired Supreme Court judges, pressed the government to heed the International Court of Justice’s conclusion that there is a ‘plausible risk of genocide’ in Gaza and stop shipping weapons to Israel.” (Jill Lawless, Apr. 6, via ABC News)

•“In a preliminary phase of the case brought late last year by South Africa, the UN court has said that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel’s actions in Gaza could amount to breaches of the convention.” (Mike Corder, Apr. 9, via ABC News)

BBC News

•“The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is investigating Israel for ‘plausible’ allegations of genocide against the Palestinians in a case brought by South Africa.” (Jeremy Bowen, Apr. 7)

Boston Globe

•“…the Massachusetts Democrat said of the International Court of Justice, which found in January it was ‘plausible’ that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and continues to investigate.” (Jim Puzzanghera, Apr. 8)

•“In January, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ highest court, found it ‘plausible’ that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza…” (Kenneth Roth, Apr. 22)

CBS News

•“The court’s president Joan E. Donoghue said Friday in the court at The Hague, Netherlands, that, based on an initial assessment of Israel’s actions and remarks from Israeli leaders, it would not accept Israel’s request to dismiss the case as there were plausible claims of possible genocidal acts.” (Haley Ott and Sarah Carter, Jan. 26)

CNN

Note: After CAMERA informed CNN of the errors detailed below, CNN corrected all three articles so that they correctly reflect the language used by the International Court of Justice.

•“The public letter, released Friday, comes a week after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to be ‘plausible’… ” (Mick Krever, Feb. 2)

•“The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that it was ‘plausible’ that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza…” (Ivana Kottasova and Adi Koplewitz, Feb. 4)

•“In late January, the ICJ found South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to be ‘plausible’…” (Ivana Kottasova, Feb. 17)

Foreign Policy

•“In January, South Africa accused Israel of violating the Genocide Convention during its assault on Gaza. The court ruled that such allegations were plausible.” (Alexandra Sharp, Apr. 8)

The Guardian

•“The measures it did call for — including directing Israel not to commit or incite genocide — reveal that not only is protection for ordinary Palestinians urgent, but that there is a .plausible claim of the Gazan population being decimated.” (Editorial Board, Jan. 26)

The Intercept

•“WITHIN MOMENTS OF the International Court of Justice issuing a preliminary finding on Friday morning that South Africa had made a plausible genocide case against Israel…” (Ryan Grim, Jan. 29)

•“Last Friday, just three days after the lawmakers sent the letter, the ICJ ruled that it is plausible that Israel is carrying out a genocide.” (Prem Thakker, Feb. 1)

•“Shortly after the International Court of Justice announcing its finding that South Africa had made a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza….” (Ryan Grim, Feb. 2)

•”Unequivocal and all-out military, financial, and diplomatic support for Israel remains, and the killing and destruction continues on a scale that the International Court of Justice has deemed ‘plausibly genocidal.’” (Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Feb. 14)

•“The fact that the International Court of Justice has found grounds to investigate Israel for plausible acts of genocide in Gaza…” (Jeremy Scahill, Mar. 23)

Los Angeles Times

•“In the case, brought by South Africa last month, the court ruled that it is plausible that Israel is perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” (Raz Segal, Jan. 27)

MSNBC

•“Israel, through some of its policies, is refusing to distinguish between civilians and militants, and the International Court of Justice has found that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel has committed acts that violate the Genocide Convention.”

(Zeeshan Aleem, Jan. 30)

•“Written just a week after the International Court of Justice ruled assertions that a USbacked genocide is transpiring in Gaza are ‘plausible’…” (Zeeshan Aleem, Feb. 5)

National Public Radio (NPR)

•“The International Court of Justice has found it is ‘plausible’ that Israel has committed acts that violate the Genocide Convention.” (Fatima al-Kassab, Jan. 26)

•“ICJ finds Gaza genocide case ‘plausible’.” (Anandita Bhalerao and Rachel Treisman, Jan. 26)

•“The courts found sufficient evidence that it’s ‘plausible’ that Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza and ruled that Israel must prevent genocidal attacks” (Alexis Williams, Corey Antonio Rose, Brittany Luse, Jessica Placzek, Bilal Qureshi, Barton Girdwood, Liam McBain and Veralyn Williams, Jan. 26)

•”This is in response to a lawsuit brought by South Africa alleging that Israel’s military operation in Gaza amounts to genocide against the Palestinian people. Donoghue said the court finds that plausible…” (Lauren Frayer, Jan. 26)

•“So the court issued a provisional order saying that it is, quote, ‘plausible’ that Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza….” (Leila Fadel and Lauren Frayer, Jan. 26)

•“But what the court did say is that the allegations that South Africa is making against Israel, mainly that Israel is committing acts of genocide in Gaza, were in the least plausible.” (Eyder Peralta, Jan. 27)

•“Last week, the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling that the charge brought by South Africa that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza is ‘plausible.’” (Ari Daniel, Jan. 30)

•“Late last month, the court found it ‘plausible’ that Israel has committed acts that violated the Geneva agreements, and it directed Israel to ensure its forces do not commit any such acts.” (Becky Sullivan, Feb. 9) [Note: the case is under the Genocide Convention, not the Geneva Conventions, as the author seems to mistakenly believe.]

New York Times

•“‘All that South Africa has to do to win a provisional measures order is convince the court that its charge of genocide is “plausible”,’ said William Schabas, a former chairman of a UN commission of inquiry into Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip in 2014 ” (Isabel Kershner and John Eligon, Jan. 10)

•“Because their purpose is to prevent genocidal acts from occurring, petitioners essentially only need to show that there is a plausible risk of genocide.” (Amanda Taub, Jan. 19)

•”For now, they have ordered a series of measures, which amount to temporary injunctions, aimed at protecting Palestinian civilians because they found the dangers of genocide ‘plausible.’” (Victoria Kim, Mar. 7)

A Jerusalemite watches a Jan. 26 hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, regarding the lawsuit initiated by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide. Chaim Goldberg, Flash90

Candles…

Continued from page 1

As she moved east with a family friend, “the way we were traveling was very difficult. The bombs were falling. There were dead soldiers. There were so many people that want to get our horses. I did not stop crying.”

She eventually made it to Sibera, and with great difficulty and perseverance survived the war.

Heller read from a haunting poem she composed:

I remember the loving softness of my mother, the gentle kindness of my father. I screamed and I cried — I will be good, I will behave. I promise, I promise, please don’t send me away. …

I remember my father’s words: “The winds are so strong. …Whatever will be is not ours to know. So remember my child your father’s last words — no matter what life has in store for you, remember my child, remember well, that you are a daughter of Israel.” I remember. I remember forever and ever.

After the war Heller married in a DP camp in 1948 and came to the US in 1949. She and her husband had two daughters, seven grandchildren, and 29 great grandchildren.

Other survivors joining Heller in lighting candles were Livia Horowitz, Barbara Baker, and Shoshana Friedman.

“We focus on the experiences of those who survived the Holocaust, and those who were tragically murdered al kiddush Hashem, Frenkel said. “Tonight, we reaffirm our commitment to the kedoshim — never again. …

“Never again will we be a nation without a force to protect it. But instead, a nation of heroes and heroines who stand tall and proud, bursting with pride at the opportunity to protect the Jewish people.”

The Greater Five Towns Community

Yizkor. Remember. Yet again.

Rabbi YossY Goldman S. African Rabbinical Assn.

It is more than 80 years since the Holocaust. The child survivors are today elderly men and women. Please G-d, may they be with us for many more years to come.

When we think of Israel, we remember those who gave their lives in our defense, as we should. But do we give enough thought to the injured, many seriously wounded and maimed for life? Presumably, almost all our brave fighters have been traumatized to one degree or another and will require much therapy when this is all over, please G-d soon.

Similarly, I wonder if we’ve given enough attention to those who survived the Holocaust but were also traumatized for life.

My late father, Shimon Goldman, was the sole survivor of his family in Poland. He fled to Vilna and when his Lubavitch yeshivah there received life-saving visas from the legendary Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, he traveled with his fellow students to Moscow and then across Russia to Vladivostok. They took a boat to Kobe, Japan, where they spent a year. In 1941, when Japan joined Nazi Germany in World War II, they moved on to Shanghai, where they spent the rest of the war years until

Yom HaShoah Program brought seven local shuls together at Congregation Beth Sholom in Lawrence — Congregation Anshei Chesed, Congregation Bais Tefilah of Woodmere, Jewish Center of Atlantic Beach, and the Young Israels of Hewlett, Lawrence-Cedarhursrt, and Woodmere.

they received visas to go to the United States.

Though orphaned and alone in the world, my father never lost his mind, his faith or his sense of humor. He rebuilt his family and, when he passed away at age 91, he left behind children, grandchildren and 80 great-grandchildren. Today, there are many more, thank G-d. But does that mean he was not scarred? We don’t have an inkling of his inner trauma.

In his 1950 wedding pictures, he, the bridegroom, isn’t smiling. In 1961, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, he woke up with nightmares screaming, “Eichmann araus!” Outwardly, he was fine, functional and a pillar of his community on many levels. Inwardly? We have no idea.

My friend’s father-in-law also survived Auschwitz and went on to rebuild his family in London, becoming a successful diamond merchant. But whenever he traveled, in his carry-on case together with his tallit and tefillin, there was always one more item he would never travel without — a loaf of bread. As successful as he was, the hunger pangs of Auschwitz remained with him for life.

Ionce read a story of a man in Talpiot, Israel, who lived in a big, beautiful villa but would collect the leftovers after the Kiddush in shul on Shabbat morning. One day, a little boy in his innocence asked the man directly: “Excuse me, sir; I don’t understand. You have a beautiful home. Why do you need to collect the leftovers?”

The man looked at the boy and replied: “How could you understand? Were you in Auschwitz?”

Can we understand this? Can we — born in freedom and privilege — grasp what they must have lived through for the rest of their lives?

Besides the Six Million who perished, a generation of survivors was scarred for life. And the world would have us simply forgive and forget!

Today, we see clearly how the past informs the future. Who would have believed possible what is happening now in the United States at “enlightened” universities?

That’s why we dare not allow ourselves the luxury of national amnesia. We can never forget, and we can never tire of remembering the past.

And so, as difficult as it may be, even now, in the throes of another war against the new Nazis of today, we will still remember the Six Million martyrs of the Holocaust and honor their memories.

At the same time, we will pledge to stand strong against every enemy on any battlefield — whether in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Iran, or even against anti-Israel and anti-Jewish protesters on the Ivy League college campuses of America.

When we do, let us also spare a special thought for the traumatized survivors of then and now.

Biden talks of Yom HaShoah

tism in America and around the world.”

Biden spoke seven months to the day after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, launching the war that is continuing in Gaza.

“This hatred [of Jews] continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world and requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness,” he said.

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President Joe Biden delivered an address on Tuesday marking Yom HaShoah. He denounced the “ferocious surge of antisemi-

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WINE AND DINE

Loving springtime in my timeless kitchen

As Pesach holiday drew to a close, I wondered why I didn’t get to try out the 23 or 24 new Passover recipes I collected this year. Maybe next year.

And once again I found myself thinking (out loud) that our kitchen is too small as I stood between boxes of Pesach dishes and pots on one side and boxes of regular dishes and pots on the other side, not to mention the boxes of food I had to put back into the newly cleaned cabinets.

When we moved into our house, we had a 6-month-old baby. The kitchen seemed fine — until I tried to cook a company meal in the tiny wall oven. The roasting pan with chicken and the casserole dish with rice couldn’t fit in the oven at the same time. Then, when winter came, we discovered that the huge single pane window grew a thick sheet of ice — inside! The cabinets under the cooktop were impossible; if a pot or cover slipped off inside the cabinet, I would have to crawl inside to retrieve it. It was easy then — I was in my twenties! And then, one day, the counter suddenly developed a big long crack in the laminate.

So we redid the kitchen; took out a door, added an insulated window, new cabinets and a real stove. Domestic heaven. Within a month I noticed a bump in the counter. I called the installer; he came and fixed it — and the next one a week later. Like some bad whack-a-mole game, one bump would be fixed, and another would appear. They replaced the counter. A month later more, bigger, bumps. The kitchen guys were visiting even more than my mother! Eventually, they offered me a new kind of counter called Corian, indestructible and no more whack-a-mole

laminate.! My kitchen was heavenly!

We soon grew from a family of three to four and then five. As the kids got bigger, the kitchen got smaller! Yes, the food got cooked, the meals got served and there was very little breakage or bloodshed. Still, I dreamed of expanding the kitchen out to the deck. With lots of Passover storage and lots more space for appliances and maybe even an additional wall oven.

We never did that; day school tuition came first. Over the years, our house became teen social central, and I would guess that several tons of food passed from the kitchen to their always hungry stomachs over the years. Teen boys can certainly eat!

The kids grew, I fed as many as 34 for a Seder one year, and still drew sketches of my dream kitchen. Then there was college tuition! And soon, before I blinked, everyday meals for five became meals for four, then three and finally, now, we are two with frequent mealtime visits by kids and grandchildren. My kitchen never grew, but we survived. And somehow, now, it doesn’t seem so small anymore, even with 18 guests for Passover and many of them back throughout the week.

So I guess my kitchen, though not the huge one I designed in my daydreams, has served us well through three kids, numerous parties, holiday meals and too-many-to-count Shabbat dinners. In all honesty, it really was the kitchen of my dreams! As they say, the kitchen is the heart of the home and mine is ticking just fine and filled with love and gratitude.

And now … it’s spring, time to enjoy fresh delicious spring veggies and healthy eating to help shed those Passover (chocolate) pounds.

Spring Onion and Potato Soup (Dairy or Pareve)

This is a creamless, milkless version. Delicious!

• 4 bunches of spring onions, about 8 to 10 spring onions

• 1/2 stick salted butter or pareve transfat-free margarine

• 3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

• 2 yellow onions, peeled and chopped

• 3 to 4 large russet potatoes

• 3 to 4 large yellow potatoes

• 4 to 6 cloves garlic, to taste, minced

• 2 to 3 quarts vegetable stock

• Salt and white pepper, to taste

• Garnish: Thinly sliced onion tops, or freshly snipped chives

• OPTIONAL: Sour cream or plain yogurt for garnish, chili oil, croutons

Cut the green parts of the spring onions away from the white and reserve. Peel and coarsely chop the white part of the onion.

Place the butter and oil in a large soup pot over medium heat and stir until the butter is melted. Add the chopped spring and yellow onions and stir. Cook until softened and lightly golden, about 10 to 15 minutes. Stir often.

Meanwhile, peel and dice the potatoes. Add the garlic and mix for 1 minute. Add the potatoes, stir to mix with the onions, and cook for 10 minutes, until the potatoes are slightly golden in a few places. Add the vegetable stock. Stir once

more. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to a simmer and cook until the potatoes fall apart, about 20 to 30 minutes or less depending on the size of the potato pieces.

Turn off the heat and let the soup cool for about 10 minutes. Use an immersion blender and process the soup until creamy smooth. Season with salt and white pepper, to taste.

Finely mince the green onion tops, or, for a milder flavor, some fresh chives, ladle soup into each bowl and garnish with a teaspoon of the greens. If you like, you can garnish with a dollop of sour cream and then sprinkle with the green onion tops. Makes about 3 quarts of soup.

Asparagus With Orange and Sesame (Pareve)

This is usually served cold, but is also delicious served warm.

• 1 pound asparagus stalks, ends trimmed

• 1 Tbsp. olive oil

• 3 shallots, minced

• 1 clove garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press

• 2 scallions, white part and about 2 inches of green, minced

Continued on next page

Kosher Kitchen

JONI SchOcKEtt Jewish Star columnist

Asparagus With Orange and Sesame.

• 1 tsp. grated fresh ginger

• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

• 1/2 tsp. grated orange zest

• 1/2 to 1 tsp. honey

• 2 Tbsp. lemon juice

• 2 tsp. soy or tamari sauce

• 2 tsp. toasted sesame seeds

Steam the asparagus until it is bright green and crisp tender, about 3 to 6 minutes depending on thickness of stalks. When done, place under cold water to stop the cooking process. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the shallots and scallions. Stir and heat a minute, then add the garlic and ginger. Stir often and cook until soft, about 6 to 8 minutes. Add orange juice, orange zest, honey, lemon juice and soy or tamari sauce. Cook, stirring constantly, until liquid is reduced by about one third or about 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Taste and adjust seasonings. If not sweet enough, you can add a bit more honey. Place the cooled asparagus in a shallow baking dish and pour the sauce over. Toss to mix thoroughly. Add the sesame seeds, toss, and chill for 30 minutes, or overnight. Garnish with orange slices or mandarin orange segments before serving. Serves 4 to 8.

Roasted Baby Spring Vegetables (Pareve)

Yes, this is simple and mindless, but so delicious that I make it all the time with lots of different veggies. From family dinners to company, there is nothing better than beautiful roasted baby veggies on a gorgeous platter. Season with a simple vinaigrette or just salt and pepper and a little olive oil.

• 1 bunch spring onions

• 5 to 6 large shallots, peeled and cut in quarters lengthwise

• 1 cup baby red onions

• 2 bunches baby carrots (not the cut ones, true baby ones, just pulled from the ground with green tops still in place)

• 1/2 to 1 pound fresh green beans, trimmed and cut in half

• 1 pound baby bok choy, cut in half lengthwise

• Small zucchini, cut in half lengthwise

• Large white or small Portobello mushroom caps

• OTHER VEGGIES: small tomatoes, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, creamer potatoes, eggplant any veggies you like

• 2 to 3 Tbsp. olive oil

• 1/2 to 1 tsp. kosher salt

• Herbs: 3 to 4 fresh rosemary stalks, small bunch fresh thyme, chives, etc.

• OPTIONAL: 1 Tbsp. pure maple syrup

• 1 to 2 tsp. balsamic vinegar

• Freshly squeezed lemon juice and a sprinkle of lemon zest

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with foil and add a piece of parchment paper. Set aside.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and blanch the baby red onions for about 2 minutes. Scoop them out with a slotted spoon and plunge them immediately into a bowl of ice-cold water. Peel the onions and set aside. Keep the water boiling. Place 1 tablespoon of olive oil on the parchment and brush it over the paper. Peel the shallots, cut them in quarters and put them in the casserole dish. Trim the spring onions, peel them, trim off the green tops (save for salads), cut into quarters and add them to the dish. Add the rest of the olive oil and toss to coat the veggies. Place in the oven for about 20 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Trim the greens from the carrots, leaving a bit

at the top for color. Wash them and add to the boiling water. Simmer for about 10 minutes until barely fork tender. Remove from the water and place on a paper towel to dry them.

After about 20 minutes, check. The onions should be golden, but not burned. Remove the dish from the oven and add the other veggies. Place sprigs of the herbs over tall the veggies. Place in the oven for about 15 minutes. Remove the dish from the oven, stir the veggies and add the green beans. Return to the oven for about 10 minutes.

When the veggies are fork tender and beginning to brown, the onions and shallots should be just about caramelized, remove from the oven. Remove the herbs and season with salt and pepper. If you are using a vinaigrette: Mix the maple syrup with the vinegar and the oil (or mix any vinaigrette you like) and drizzle half the mixture over the veggies right after adding them to the pan. Roast as directed above, checking often to make sure they are not burning. You can drizzle the rest of the marinade over the veggies for the last 5 minutes of roasting. Remove the herbs before serving. Serves 8 to 10.

Sauteed Broccoli Rabe with Garlic and Goat Cheese (Dairy)

Broccoli Rabe is a vegetable that is frequently eaten in Italy. It is often called rapini and is loaded with phytonutrients, it has a slightly bitter flavor which can be reduced by boiling it first. Leave out the cheese for a Pareve dish.

• 1 pound broccoli rabe

• 2 to 6 cloves garlic, as much as you like

• 2 to 4 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

• 1/4 to 1/2 cup goat cheese, Feta cheese, or Parmesan cheese

• Salt and pepper to taste

• OPTIONAL: A pinch of red pepper flakes

Rinse the broccoli rabe and trim the tough bottom stems. Roughly chop the broccoli rabe and set aside. Bring a large pot of salted water to a rapid boil. Add the broccoli rabe and cook for about 3 minutes. Drain well and set aside.

Heat a large skillet and add the olive oil. Add the minced garlic and sauté until fragrant, about a minute. Add the well-drained broccoli and sauté for about 3-5 minutes, turning to coat with the oil and garlic. Cook until heated through and fork tender. (I taste a bite of the stalk to make sure it is not too tough.) Season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a platter and drop little pieces of cheese over the rabe. Toss gently and serve. Serves 4 to 8.

Easy Lemon Garlic Sesame Asparagus (Pareve or Dairy)

• 2 pounds asparagus

• 3 to 5 cloves garlic, minced

• 2 tsp. butter or pareve margarine

• 2 tsp. extra virgin olive oil

• 2 Tbsp. sesame seeds

• 1 tsp. freshly grated lemon zest

• 1 to 2 tsp. water

• Additional extra virgin olive oil

Trim the asparagus and cut each spear into about 3 to 4 pieces, depending on length. Set aside.

Heat a large skillet and add the butter and olive oil. Add the garlic and mix, stirring constantly just until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the asparagus and 1 scant teaspoon water. Cover, and heat for 1 minute, stirring once or twice. Add 1 teaspoon of water if the water is completely evaporated. Add the lemon zest and stir to heat. When the asparagus is cooked to your liking, remove from the pan to a platter, Sprinkle with sesame seeds and a tiny drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Serve or place in a Tupperware like container, refrigerate and serve cold on salads. Serves 4 to 6.

Almond Crusted Fillet of Sole with Chive Lemon Sauce (Dairy)

This is a simple variation of sole almandine. A yummy dish for family or company.

• 8 sole fillets, about 5 to 6 ounces per person

• 1/2 cup unbleached flour

• 2 eggs

• 1 cup ground almonds

• 1/2 cup fine breadcrumbs

• 1 tsp. onion powder, divided

• 1 tsp. dried parsley flakes, divided

• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

• Canola oil

Sauce:

• Juice of 1 or 2 lemons, about 1/3 to 1/2 cup

• 1/2 stick butter

• 1/3 cup pareve chicken broth

• OPTIONAL: Splash of white wine See Wonderful springtime on page 14

Easy Lemon Garlic Sesame Asparagus. Sarah Alvord, feedingyourfam.com

Sauteed Broccoli Rabe with Garlic and Goat Cheese.

Almond Crusted Fillet of Sole with Chive Lemon Sauce. ADOBE

Roasted Vegetables.

AI ADOBE

• 1 Tbsp. freshly snipped chives

• 1/2 clove garlic, pressed through a garlic press

Garnish:

• 1/2 cup toasted, slivered or sliced almonds

Heat a frying pan and add the sliced almonds. Shake the pan or stir constantly until just fragrant and beginning to turn golden. Remove from heat immediately and pour right onto a plate to cool. Place the flour in a shallow bowl and add half the onion powder and parsley. Beat the eggs in a shallow bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste. Place the breadcrumbs and ground almonds in a flat shallow bowl and season with the remaining onion powder, parsley and some salt and pepper. Place the bowls side by side, flour, egg and breadcrumbs. Place a plate next to the bowl of crumbs. Sprinkle about 2 tablespoons of the crumbs on the plate.

Heat a large frying pan (you can use the one from the almonds) and add enough Canola oil to generously coat the bottom.

Rinse the fish fillets and pat them dry. Dip the fish in the flour, shaking off the excess, then the egg, letting the extra drip off, and finally, into the crumbs, pressing gently to coat. Place on a plate. Repeat with three more pieces of fish. Place the four fillets in the hot oil and cook about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Place the fish on a heatproof pan and place in a 250-degree oven to keep the fish warm. Repeat with the rest of the fish.

FOR THE SAUCE: Squeeze the lemon juice into a cup. Add the pareve chicken broth. Place half the butter, garlic, and the snipped chives in another microwave-proof small bowl. Heat both until the butter is just melted. Stir and set aside to cool for just a minute. Add the heated liquid to the butter and whisk. Add the remaining butter in small pieces whisking constantly until the butter is melted and the sauce is smooth. Drizzle

over the fish and top with the toasted slivered almonds. Serves 4.

Rhubarb Berry Crumble with Whipped Cream (Dairy)

The rhubarb in my yard is about 10 inches tall and lush. Can’t wait to harvest! This recipe calls for 5 cups of berries. You can use all strawberries or any assortment you like. It is really a simple recipe to make and is delicious.

Filling:

• 4 cups chopped fresh rhubarb

• 3 cups strawberries, hulled, rinsed, cut in half or quarters if large or a mix of 1 cup raspberries, washed and gently dried

• 1 cup blackberries, cut in half, if large

• 1 cup sugar

• 1 tsp. grated lemon rind

• 2 Tbsp. cornstarch

• 1/3 cup pomegranate juice

• Crumble topping:

• 1 stick plus 3 Tbsp. butter, cut into pieces

• 2 cups unbleached flour

• 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

• 1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed

• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

• 1 cup chopped pecans, almonds, or walnuts or a mixture

Pinch salt

• 1 egg, slightly beaten

• 1/2 stick butter melted

Garnish:

• 2 cups heavy whipping cream

• 2 Tbsp. confectioners’ sugar

• 3/4 tsp. vanilla extract

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly butter the bottom of a large (4-quart) baking dish.

Place the rhubarb and berries in a large bowl, add the sugar and lemon rind and toss gently. In a small bowl, dissolve the cornstarch in the pomegranate juice and toss with the rhubarb mixture. Pour the berries into the prepared dish and set aside.

Cut the butter into small pieces and set aside. Place the flour, oats, brown sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and mix well. Add the butter and cut into the flour with two forks or a pastry blended. Add the nuts and mix well. Add the eggs and mix well until the mixture is crumbly Spread the mixture evenly over the rhubarb mixture. Melt the butter and drizzle over the crumble topping. Bake for 45 minutes, or until nicely browned and bubbly. Remove from oven and let cool. Place the beaters of an electric mixer in the freezer for about 10 minutes. Pour the whipping cream into the bowl of an electric mixer and whip the cream on slow. As it begins to thicken, increase speed to high and add the sugar, slowly. Add the vanilla extract and whip until stiff peaks form. Serve the crumble with the whipped cream. Serves 8 to 10.

Rhubarb Berry Crumble.

ADOBE

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

תבש לש

Fri May 10 / Iyyar 2

Kedoshim

Candles: 7:42 • Havdalah: 8:52

Mon May 13 / Iyyar 5

Yom Hazikaron

Tues May 14 / Iyyar 6

Yom Ha’Atzmaut

Fri May 17 / Iyyar 9

Emor

Candles: 7:49 • Havdalah: 8:59

Fri May 24 / Iyyar 15

Behar

Candles: 7:55 • Havdalah: 9:05

Fri May 31 / Iyyar 23

Bechukosai • Shabbos Mevarchim Candles: 8:01 • Havdalah: 9:11

Judaism’s 3 voices and Kedoshim’s commands

rabbi sir jonathan sacks zt”l

The nineteenth chapter of Vayikra, with which our parsha begins, is one of the supreme statements of the ethics of the Torah. It’s about the right, the good and the holy, and it contains some of Judaism’s greatest moral commands: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and “Let the stranger who lives among you be like your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were strangers in Egypt.”

But the chapter is also surpassingly strange. It contains what looks like a random jumble of commands, many of which have nothing whatever to do with ethics and only the most tenuous connection with holiness: Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

Vayikra 19:19

Do not eat any meat with the blood still in it. Do not practice divination or sorcery. Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.

Vayikra 19:26-28

And so on. What have these to do with the right, the good and the holy?

To understand this we have to engage in an enormous leap of insight into the unique moral/social/spiritual vision of the Torah, so unlike anything we find elsewhere.

The West has had many attempts at defining a moral system. Some focused on rationality, others on emotions like sympathy and empathy. For some the central principle was service to the state, for others moral duty, for yet others the greatest happiness of the greatest number. These are all forms of moral simplicity. Judaism insists on the opposite: moral complexity. The moral life isn’t easy. Sometimes duties or loyalties clash. Sometimes reason says one thing, emotion another. More fundamentally, Judaism identified three distinct moral sensibilities each of which has its own voice and vocabulary. They are the ethics of the King, the ethics of the Priest and fundamentally, the ethics of the Prophet.

Jeremiah and Ezekiel talk about their distinctive sensibilities:

An ordered universe is a moral universe, a world at peace with its Creator and itself.

For the teaching of the law [Torah] by the Priest will not cease, nor will counsel [etzah] from the wise [chacham], nor the word [davar] from the Prophets. Jer. 18:18

They will go searching for a vision [chazon] from the Prophet, priestly instruction in the law [Torah] will cease, the counsel [etzah] of the elders will come to an end. Ez. 7:26

Priests think in terms of Torah. Prophets have “the Word” or “a vision.” Elders and the wise have “etzah“. What does this mean?

Kings and their courts are associated in Judaism with wisdom — chokhmah, etzah and their synonyms.

Several books of Tanach, most conspicuously Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (Mishlei and Kohelet), are books of “wisdom” of which the supreme exemplar was King Solomon. Wisdom in Judaism is the most universal form of knowledge, and the Wisdom literature is the closest the Hebrew Bible comes to the other literature of the ancient Near East, as well as the Hellenistic Sages.

It is practical, pragmatic, based on experience and observation; it is judicious, prudent. It is a prescription for a life that is safe and sound, without excess or extremes, but hardly dramatic or transformative. That is the voice of wisdom, the virtue of kings.

The prophetic voice is quite different, impassioned, vivid, radical in its critique of the misuse of power and the exploitative pursuit of wealth.

The Prophet speaks on behalf of the people, the poor, the downtrodden, the abused. He or she thinks of the moral life in terms of relationships: between G-d and humanity and between human beings themselves. The key terms for the Prophet are Tzedek (distributive justice), mishpat (retributive justice), chessed (loving kindness) and rachamim (mercy, compassion).

The prophet has emotional intelligence, sympathy and empathy, and feels the plight of the lonely and oppressed. Prophecy is never abstract. It doesn’t think in terms of universals. It responds to the here and now of time and place. The Priest hears the word of G-d for all time. The Prophet hears the word of G-d for this time.

The ethic of the Priest, and of holiness generally, is different again. The key activities of the Priest are lehavdil — to discriminate, distinguish and divide — and lehorot — to instruct people in the law, both generally as teachers and in specific instances as judges. The key words of the Priest are kodesh and chol (holy and secular), tamei and tahor (impure and pure).

The single most important passage in the Torah that speaks in the priestly voice is Chapter 1 of Bereishit, the narrative of creation. Here too a key verb is lehavdil, to divide, which appears five times. G-d divides between light and dark, the upper and lower waters, and day and night.

Other key words are “bless” — G-d blesses the animals, humankind, and the seventh day;

and “sanctify” (kadesh) — at the end of creation G-d sanctifies the Shabbat. Overwhelmingly elsewhere in the Torah the verb lehavdil and the root kadosh occur in a priestly context; and it is the Priests who bless the people.

The task of the Priest, like G-d at creation, is to bring order out of chaos. The Priest establishes boundaries in both time and space. There are holy times and holy places, and each time and place has its own integrity, its own setting in the total scheme of things. The kohen’s protest is against the blurring of boundaries so common in pagan religions — between G-ds and humans, between life and death, between the sexes and so on.

A sin, for the kohen, is an act in the wrong place, and its punishment is exile, being cast out of your rightful place. A good society, for the kohen, is one in which everything is in its proper place, and the kohen has special sensitivity toward the stranger, the person who has no place of his or her own.

The strange collection of commands in Kedoshim thus turns out not to be strange at all. The holiness code sees love and justice as part of a total vision of an ordered universe in which each thing, person and act has their rightful place, and it is this order that is threatened when the boundary between different kinds of animals, grain, fabrics is breached; when the human body is lacerated; or when people eat blood, the sign of death, in order to feed life.

In the secular West we are familiar with the voice of wisdom. It is common ground between the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the great Sages from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne.

We know, too, the prophetic voice and what Einstein called its “almost fanatical love of justice.” We are far less familiar with the priestly idea that just as there is a scientific order to nature, so there is a moral order, and it consists in keeping separate the things that are separate, and maintaining the boundaries that respect the integrity of the world G-d created and seven times pronounced good.

The priestly voice is not marginal to Judaism. It is central, essential. It is the voice of the Torah’s first chapter. It is the voice that defined the Jewish vocation as “a kingdom of Priests and a holy nation.” It dominates Vayikra, the central book of the Torah. And whereas the prophetic spirit lives on in aggadah, the priestly voice prevails in halakhah. And the very name Torah — from the verb lehorot — is a priestly word.

Perhaps the idea of ecology, one of the key discoveries of modern times, will allow us to understand better the priestly vision and its code of holiness, both of which see ethics not just as practical wisdom or prophetic justice but also as honouring the deep structure — the sacred ontology — of being. An ordered universe is a moral universe, a world at peace with its Creator and itself.

If we’re holy, we’ll treat elderly with respect

Rabbi

DR. tzvi heRsh weinReb

Union

Ilove visiting residences for senior citizens. For one thing, being around older people invariably helps me feel young by comparison.

Recently, I was a weekend guest scholar at such a residence. I dispensed with my prepared lectures and instead tried to engage the residents, not one of whom was less than 90 years old, in a group discussion. This proved to be a wise move on my part, because I learned a great deal about the experience of getting old. Or, as one man insisted, “You don’t get ‘old’ — you get ‘older’.”

The question that I raised to provoke discussion was this: “What made you first realize that you were getting older?”

I was taken aback by the group’s reactions, because there were clearly two very different sets of responses.

One member of the group responded, “I knew I was getting older when people started to ignore me. I was no more than a piece of furniture to them. Worse, they no longer noticed me at all.”

About half of the group expressed their agreement with this person’s experience. They proceeded to describe various experiences that they had in being ignored. Some of those stories were quite poignant and powerful. One woman even described how she was present at the outbreak of a fire in a hotel lobby, and the rescue workers “simply did not see me sitting there. That is, until I started to scream!”

But then some of the others spoke up expressing quite different experiences. “I knew that I was getting older when passengers on the subway or bus stood up for me and gave me their seat,”one gentleman said. That basic gesture of respect conveyed to these senior citizens that they had indeed reached the age when they were not ignored, but rather the beneficiaries of acts of deference.

The discussion then entered another phase, as both groups agreed that, while they certainly did not want to be ignored, they also were resent-

ful of these gestures of respect. The group unanimously supported the position articulated by the oldest person there, who said: “We don’t want gestures of respect. We want genuine respect.”

They wanted their opinions to be heard, their life experience to be appreciated, and their accumulated wisdom to be acknowledged. Symbolic gestures were insufficient, and sometimes were even experienced as demeaning.

This week’s Torah portion, Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27), contains the basic biblical commandment regarding treatment of the elderly: “You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old; you shall fear your G-d: I am the L-rd.” (ibid. 19:32)

Rashi’s comments on this verse indicate how sensitive he was to the subtle reactions expressed by the members of my little group. Here is what he says, paraphrasing the Talmudic Sages:

“What is deference? It is refraining from sitting in his place, and not interrupting his words. Whereas one might think to simply close his eyes and pretend not to even see the old person, the verse cautions us to fear your G-d, for after all, he knows what is in the heart of man.”

Interestingly, not sitting in his seat means

much more than just giving him a seat on the bus. It means recognizing that the elderly person has his own seat, his own well-earned place in society, which you, the younger person, dare not usurp. It is more than just a gesture. It is an acknowledgement of the valued place the elder has in society, a place which is his and his alone. Similarly, not interrupting the older person’s conversation is much more than an act of courtesy. It is awareness that this older person has something valuable to say, a message to which one must listen attentively.

How well our Torah knows the deviousness of which we are all capable. We can easily pretend not to notice the older person. But He who reads our minds and knows what is in our hearts will be the judge of that. We must fear Him and not resort to self-justification and excuses. We must deal with the older person as a real person, whose presence cannot be ignored but must be taken into full account in our conversation.

See Weinreb on page 22

There are certain things we must never forget

One of the most celebrated mitzvot of our parasha, Kedoshim, is “v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha (and you shall love your fellow Jew like yourself).”

Rashi, citing the Midrash Sifra to Sefer Vayikra, notes: “Rabbi Akiva said: ‘This is an all embracing principle of the Torah’.”

Perhaps it is Rabbi Akiva’s unparalleled intellectual greatness, or his heroic gesture of teaching Torah to his students during the height of the 130’s Hadrianic persecutions, that caused his words to become part of the moral fabric of the Jewish nation. Either way, whenever we think of our personal responsibility towards one another, the Torah’s verse, and Rabbi Akiva’s expression, are writ large in the collective con-

sciousness of our people.

In Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 31a, we find a restatement and implicit discussion of the phrase, “v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha:”

“On another occasion it happened that a certain non-Jew came before Shammai and said to him, ‘Make me a convert, on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot.’ Thereupon he repulsed him with the builder’s staff which was in his hand. When he went before Hillel, he converted him and said to him, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the entire Torah, while the rest is commentary; [now] go and learn it’.”

Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim ben Aaron Luntschitz (1550-1619) maintains that the Talmud’s phrase, “what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor,” is a reformulation and an interpretation of “v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha.” In addition, Rav Luntschitz carefully examines the interaction between Hillel and the would-be convert, and in so doing reveals the underlying intent of the latter’s famous words, “teach me

the entire Torah while I stand on one foot.”

According to Rav Luntschitz, the non-Jew who came before both Shammai and Hillel was no prankster or joker — even though Shammai seemed to have viewed him as such. Instead, and this is apparently how Hillel perceived him, the aspiring convert was a potential ger tzedek, a truly righteous individual, who deeply desired to accept the Master of the Universe and His Torah, live according to His mitzvot and join our people.

Rav Luntschitz analyzes the ger tzedek’s ultimate purpose in making his request:

“As a result of this [‘on one foot’ notion,] he would be able to understand all of the mitzvot [with particular emphasis upon the proper ethical behaviors that the Torah commands between man and his fellow man]. He desired this so that he would never forget [the meaning of the mitzvot,] since this would be all too easy for a convert who had not studied anything whatsoever regarding the commandments during his youth. …

“Thus, his intention [when he deployed the unusual phrase, ‘teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot,’] was [for Hillel] to teach him something that could be said quickly and was comprised of few words. This, then, would be the fundamental concept of the Torah, and ‘the one foot’ that he needed; for as a result of this idea, he would be able to remember [and understand] all of Hashem’s mitzvot.”

In Rav Luntschitz’s estimation, the ger tzedek was driven by the highest spiritual ardor in order to understand the authentic meaning of the mitzvot. In many ways, therefore, he serves as an ideal role model for us all, since far too often, we become overwhelmed by the challenges of daily living and forget that the Torah and mitzvot should appear to us as holy gifts from the Almighty.

The ger tzedek helps us refocus our priorities, so that we may redouble our energies and create a spiritually suffused relationship with the Master of the Universe. With His help and our fervent desire, may this be so. V’chane yihi ratzon.

‘Canada’s Rabbi’: His story’s in daughter’s book

By Jodi Green

Rikki Ash (pictured) has always known her beloved grandfather was a special person. She knew that he had lived a life of purpose and made every day count. In her new book, “Canada’s Rabbi: The Life and legacy of Rabbi Reuven Bulka” (Ktav), Ash presents a biography of Rabbi Bulka z”l through the lens of Viktor Frankl’s study on how people’s lives are framed by a search for meaning, known as logotherapy.

Rabbi Bulka, often referred to as Canada’s Rabbi, served as the Rabbi of Congregation Machzikei Hadas of Ottawa for over 50 years.

It is no accident that Ash chose Frankl’s work as a backdrop of the biography as Rabbi Bulka was close friends with the renowned psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, and was even asked to preside over Frankl’s funeral.

Ash, whose father is Shmuel Bulka of Woodmere, grew up on Staten Island before moving to the Five Towns where she now lives with her husband and children. She recalls that Rabbi Bulka visited her family often in New York, and she loved the annual trip to Ottawa for Sukkot. It was always a happy time to celebrate such a family-oriented holiday together in the cold Ottawa fall.

“My conversations with my grandfather felt very intimate. It felt like we were the only two people in the world, and once I started writing and interviewing other people, I realized how impactful his style was,” she said.

“He treated everyone like they were the only person that mattered. So, I didn’t want the book to just be a biography about his life. That could come off as a little dry, especially if you don’t know him, I wanted there to be some purpose behind the book. My hope is that when you read this book you will see a person who lived with meaning and be inspired to live your own life with purpose.”

Ash recalled how her grandfather always supported the dreams of all his grandchildren, of which there were many, but he would never count them (great grandchildren too) perhaps because of the Talmudic teaching that blessing is not found “in something that has been weighed, nor in something that has been measured, nor in something that has been counted, only in something that is hidden from the eyes.”

She remembers that she once told him that she wanted to be an author and showed him how she had written a short children’s story. Rabbi Bulka, who was a well-respected and prolific author with more than 40 published titles, printed off copies for her and turned her into an author.

This support of her writing eventually led her to become a co-author of Rabbi Bulka’s (“Honeycombs, The Amidah Through the Lens of Rav Yonasan Eybishitz and Rav Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad”) and edited Rabbi Bulka’s final book when he was ill (Fixing Tikkun Olam & Other esays).

“Working together on his books took our relationship to a higher level. It made it more adult and made me feel like he really trusted me with his work and valued my input. I wish he were here today to read my book. I’d love to know his opinion of it.”

Ash, who works as a high school teacher and who has also started a life-coaching business based on logotherapy, hopes that her grandfather’s message of purpose carries on for years to come.

“I want people to read this book about a person who lived a life of purpose, and hopefully translate that into their own lives,” she explains.

“It doesn’t take some monumental change to live a purposeful life. It’s really the small things. I think that’s what you’ll see in the book. Every chapter is not about a huge thing that my grandfather did but does talk about small acts of kindness. And over time, the ripple effect makes a big impact. I hope readers can see how they can contribute to making the world a better place.”

An example of Rabbi Bulka’s many acts of kindness came up most recently while Ash was doing an interview for her book.

“I was just doing a TV interview … and the interviewer knew my grandfather and had worked on his radio show. He shared that my grandfather would bring cookies to the studio every week.”

She marvels at this, adding that she doesn’t know how he managed to make everyone feels so important, how he was able to love his community and family so much that neither ever felt that they were not a priority.

“Canada’s Rabbi” is available at Judaica Plus and on Amazon.

Jodi Green is the Communications and Advocacy Specialist for the Jewish Federation of Ottawa. This article first appeared in the Ottawa Jewish E-Bulletin.

Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, in his commentary on this verse, refers us to a passage in the Midrash Rabbah on Parsha Beha’alotecha

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Post-Oct. 7 Yom HaShoah: Shoah ed failure

Jonathan S. tobin

JnS Editor-in-Chief

For decades, American Jewry has marked Yom Hashoah with the same rituals and rhetoric. They heard from survivors, whose numbers continue to dwindle and who bore witness about their horrific experiences. They heard from scholars, who were part of what had become a growth industry centering on Holocaust studies, which to many Jews and nonJews became the sum total of their knowledge of the history of the Jewish people. And they also heard from politicians and community leaders, who mouthed empty rhetoric about “never again” letting such an awful thing happen. It was a necessary exercise because, not without reason, Jews feared that without the ceremonies, memorials and museums that proliferated in the last few decades, the memory of the destruction of European Jewry at the hands of the German Nazis and their collaborators would be lost or erased. Preserving that memory will require continued work from Jews today and our successors.

But after Oct. 7, 2023 — and all that has happened since then — we cannot continue conducting these same rituals in the same manner as before.

Instead, we must begin to integrate our necessary commemorations of the Holocaust into the broader context of Jewish history and the struggle for Jewish survival throughout the ages and into the present-day war against Israel. Just as important, we must reassess our approach to Holocaust education in light of the horrifying reactions to the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust and the surge in antisemitism that has occurred throughout the world and, most particularly, on North American college campuses.

In the eight decades since the Holocaust and then the birth of modern-day Israel in 1948, the world has remained a generally danger-

ous place for Jews. But the generations who grew up since these epochal events, particularly in the United States, thought of antisemitism and attempts at Jewish genocide as something that was relegated to the distant past.

After the horror of that Black Shabbat and Simchat Torah — when residents of 22 Israeli communities and attendees at a music festival were attacked by Hamas and their Palestinian allies in an orgy of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction — that complacency is no longer viable.

Though much lip service has been paid to memorializing the Holocaust and promises made about not forgetting it, after Oct. 7, the usual routine of drawing lessons from the events of the past won’t wash anymore. Despite Jews being subjected to unspeakable atrocities by vicious enemies who are, once again, bent on their extermination, the international community has turned on them.

While much of the world looks on with indifference and disinterest — or actually cheers on the murderers — the events of the Holocaust are no longer so remote from our contemporary experience. The difference, of course, is that the Jewish people are no longer defenseless.

In the era from 1939 to 1945, the Jews had little or no ability to either defend themselves or find safe-haven from a genocidal foe where they would be welcomed. Now, even as the full force of international opinion and intellectual fashion is arrayed against the State of Israel (whose existence is the one true memorial to the six-million slain by the Nazis), the Jewish state alone ensures that two millennia of Jews being persecuted and slaughtered with impunity have come to an end.

Having suffered the fate of powerless victims at the hands of the Nazis, in the wake of Oct. 7, the Jews now are now demonized by those who think that they have no right to defend themselves against Hamas and other terror groups that wish to destroy Israel and slaughter its Jewish population.

Despite being the party that was attacked and using more care in avoiding civilian casualties in the course of conducting urban combat

Those who cheer the prospect of more terrorism against Jews have been indoctrinated in the toxic myths of critical race theory and intersectionality that analogize the war to destroy Israel to the struggle for civil rights in the US.

than any other contemporary army, Israel’s subsequent military campaign to eliminate Hamas is routinely smeared as a “genocide.”

Indeed, the entire apparatus of international human-rights advocacy and aid that was created in the wake of the Holocaust is now not weaponized against the Jewish victims of Islamist attacks.

How is that possible?

The post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism has nothing to do with the actual events of the current war with Hamas. It needs to be repeated that Gaza wasn’t occupied on Oct. 6 and that the failure to create a Palestinian Arab state (aside from the one that existed in Gaza in all but name since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal) is the result of repeated refusals from both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to make peace or accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn.

If Israel is now routinely and falsely accused of being an “apartheid state” or committing “genocide,” it is due to the success of a leftist/ Islamist propaganda campaign that has convinced a considerable portion of young Americans and others that it has no right to exist. Those on campuses who chant for its destruction or cheer on the prospect of more terrorism against Jews have been indoctrinated in the toxic myths of critical race theory and intersectionality that analogize the war to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet to the struggle for civil rights in the United States.

During the Holocaust, a Nazi movement steeped in racism convinced the citizens of the most educated nation on earth to see Jews as subhuman. Now, many of the most educated elements of American society have been seduced by a movement that dubs itself “anti-racist” but that is predicated on the notion that we are all locked in a perpetual race war between white oppressors and victims who are people of color.

Like all variants of Marxism, this woke ideology targets Jews and classifies them as “white” oppressors, even though the conflict with the Palestinians has nothing to do with race and the majority of Israeli Jews are themselves people of color since they trace their origins to the Middle East and North Africa.

Jews suffering from a wave of antisemitism since Oct. 7 is the result of the success that “progressives” have had in making this new secular religion the orthodoxy that prevails throughout academia and many other sectors of American society. As historian Niall Ferguson noted in his seminal Free Press essay, “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” much like the way the demonization of Jews was enabled by the educated classes prior to the Holocaust, contemporary elites have embraced this old/ new faith that also legitimizes Jew-hatred. The woke lies have not gone unanswered, and the open advocacy for violence against Jews and the excesses of the student protests

See Failure of Shoah ed on page 21

Colombia to Columbia: Unceasing war on Israel

In times of adversity, Jews respond in many ways, perhaps the most precious of which is humor.

When the Soviet Union was effectively a prison for its Jewish citizens, the jokes were legion and biting, laced with melancholy and hilarity at the same time.

There’s the one about the Red Army officer who asks a Jewish boy to name his father (“the Soviet Union”) and his mother (“the Communist Party”) before inquiring what he wants to be when he grows up (“an orphan”).

Or the one about the KGB arriving at the home of a Jewish man to arrest him unless he agrees to give up something that he treasures. “Esther, my darling,” the man calls to his wife, “the KGB are here for you!” I’d love to go on, but you get the idea.

In the months since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel, Jews have frequently turned to humor as a means of processing the trauma brought about by the worst act of antisemitic violence since the Holocaust.

There are far too many examples to cite, but many readers will be familiar with “Rabbi Linda Goldstein,” a spoof account on X/Twitter operated by the anti-Zionist “Chief Rabbi

of Gaza,” which beautifully juxtaposes the left’s obsession with the micro-details of identity politics with the unabashed homophobia and misogyny of its Hamas allies.

And often, as many commenters point out, there is no need for parody because reality is parody. In this case, I’m thinking of the plea from a Columbia University Ph.D. student for “humanitarian aid” to be allowed into Hamilton Hall, occupied last week by a pro-Hamas mob, that was accompanied by her resentful claim that anyone opposed to such action obviously wants students “to die of starvation and dehydration.”

The humor is easy to come by, for two reasons. Firstly, antisemitism is essentially a form of idiocy, and idiocy — as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Steve Martin and Ricky Gervais have all proven over the years — is funny. Secondly, there is the bizarre alliance of hardened and brutal, yet authentic revolutionaries, in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere with the keffiyeh-clad, glutenavoiding faux revolutionaries on American university campuses. And that, too, is most amusing.

Such levity is particularly helpful in dealing with otherwise intolerable situations — and make no mistake, this present situation is intolerable.

When the movement to target Israel with a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) emerged 20 years ago, its ultimate goal was to turn the Jewish state

into the kind of pariah that apartheid South Africa was throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A necessary condition of achieving that was the passage of the core message of BDS — that Israel is a racist entity with no right to a sovereign existence — into mainstream awareness.

To a great extent, that has now happened. Over the last week, I’ve seen images of a Delta Airlines check-in counter attendant at a US airport and a bus driver in the English city of Manchester wearing Palestinian flag pins while at work; read the news that the main Jewish newspaper in the Netherlands is now mailing its print edition to subscribers in plain

envelopes so as not to out them as Jews; and observed signs at elite American university campuses urging Israel’s Jewish population, the majority of whom are Mizrahim, to “return” to Europe.

One of the more radical slogans that emerged during the struggle against South African apartheid was “one settler, one bullet.” Exactly that message is now being delivered — verbally and through actions — to Israelis and Jewish communities around the world. Last Thursday, Colombia’s far-left president, Gustavo Petro, announced that he was

The prognosis for American Jewry is not good

The steep rise in antisemitism in the United States has reawakened the debate about whether the so-called “Golden Age” of American Jewry has run its historical course. It’s a reasonable question.

Rather than arouse horror over the sadistic crimes that Hamas committed against innocent men, women and children on Oct. 7, the mass murder galvanized Jew-haters across America. Protests against the Jewish state erupted before southern Israel was even cleared of the thousands of terrorists who’d infiltrated the Gaza border.

This wasn’t due to a lack of information about the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust. On the contrary, the Hamas perpetrators not only filmed themselves raping, burning, beheading, mutilating and kidnapping men, women and children; they proudly posted their deeds all over social media.

The response on the part of Muslim extremists and their progressive fellow travelers has been to alternate between denial and justification. On the one hand, they reject Hamas’s brutality. On the other, they hail it as heroic.

Nor did they bother waiting for the Israel Defense Forces ground invasion nearly three weeks

The very idea of an inhospitable

later to accuse the “apartheid state” of Palestinian genocide. No, they shouted their lies in megaphones about the “occupation” of Gaza just as promptly and forcefully as they tore down posters of hostages. Even the picture of 9-month-old Kfir Bibas [pictured] and his 4-year-old brother, Ariel, in the arms of their terrified mother, Shiri, wasn’t spared being ripped and trampled on.

Once the war was in full swing, the protesters parroted the bogus casualty figures put out by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. They were bolstered by left-wing voices in the media and academia hungry for any opportunity to vilify Israel — not that an excuse to do so was needed by

the likes of Joseph Massad, a tenured professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, who referred to Hamas’s deadly raid on Oct. 7 as “awesome.”

Such incidents would turn out to be only the tip of the iceberg, however, as the recent surge of physical and rhetorical anti-Israel violence on the campuses of Columbia, Harvard, Brown and other institutions of higher learning illustrates. The only positive aspect of these frightening displays is that they’ve let the cat completely out of the bag.

Indeed, despite hiding behind face coverings, the demonstrators have unmasked their

true intentions. Shedding the pretense of decrying Israeli government policy, they — like Hamas and Hezbollah, whose flags they’ve been waving — are openly rooting for the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Their message is so clear that it renders the US State Department and International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definitions of antisemitism superfluous. These “working definitions” arose to erase the false distinction between various manifestations of Jew-hatred, one of which is targeting the Jewish collective.

The slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Must Be Free,” for example — a call for the elimination of the State of Israel — falls under this category. So do demands to “globalize the intifada” and the plea to “burn Tel Aviv to the ground.”

But the chants of the rioters who have been camping out in tents on college lawns now include unmistakable antisemitic epithets. While preventing Jewish students from traversing the quad, these unabashed promoters of terrorism have been screaming at them to “go back to Poland.”

To make matters worse, university administrators have been slow to take action, going as far, initially, as to forbid police from entering the premises to protect Jewish students and restore order. Their excuse focused on the mantra of upholding “free speech.”

The real reason was fear of offending the privileged hooligans whose Marxist indoctrination has taught them to fabricate victimhood and then weaponize it. It’s the “tyranny of the weak” on steroids.

None of this is new. Whenever Israel is forced to conduct defensive military operations against the Tehran-backed terrorist organizations within and surrounding its borders, the “cry-bullies” come out of the woodwork.

The presidential inauguration of Gustavo Petro in Bogotá, Colombia, on Aug. 7, 2022. Casa Rosada, Presidencia of Argentina, WikiCommons

A half-ripped poster seen in Ventnor, NJ, on April 28, of Kfir Bibas, an Israeli child abducted to Gaza with his brother and parents on Oct. 7. Carin M. Smilk

Universities in America were always extreme

Daniel

The Nazi cheers of “Sieg Heil” didn’t start out in Munich, but in Massachusetts.

The Nazi chant was borrowed from Harvard football cheers and imported to Germany by Ernst “Putzy” Hanfstaengl, a Harvard man in good standing who befriended Hitler and helped build a more respectable brand for the National Socialists.

“Putzy” was one of a number of Ivy League elites who were enchanted by the Third Reich. Columbia University, whose Hamas occupation filled the front pages while driving Jewish students off campus, has changed little in some ways. A hundred years ago, Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler was laboring to keep Jewish students out while celebrating Mussolini’s fascism. Butler’s admiration for fascism was common among university presidents, leaders of society and even in the FDR administration.

Not just remastered football cheers, but eugenics, another obsession of Ivy League elites,

The idea that elite academic institutions ever had their politics defined by liberalism and a respect for the rights of man has no basis in reality.

made its way over to Germany, where it was implemented in a far deadlier fashion, not only against Jews but against German disabled and others deemed to be “life unworthy of life” in keeping with the ideology whose adherents included Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.

Peeling back the layers of the dominant ideologies that Ivy Leaguers hold today leads to National Socialist or Communist ideologies. The Ivy League elites who were environmentalists, socialists, globalists and population control advocates a century ago were strongly influenced by these totalitarian ideologies that called for tyranny and mass murder.

They weren’t liberals then and they’re not liberals now.

A century ago they believed that human beings were defined by race and they still believe it now. A century ago they were convinced that mankind would go extinct unless strong leaders clamped down on independent thinking and undertook emergency measures to impose order. And they still believe it now. A century ago they believed that the only way forward was a planned economy, expert rule and the necessary deaths of certain people and groups.

Do they still believe it now?

The complete support for Hamas at Columbia, Yale and other Ivy League schools took some by surprise, but the idea that elite academic institutions ever had their politics defined by reason, liberalism and a respect for the rights of man has no basis in reality. While these universities and many others had some brilliant professors and students, and provided a rich environment of methodical learning at one time, university politics were always shot through with radicalism.

Even early in the twentieth century, the poison Ivy Leagues were filled with loathing for Americans, democracy and free enterprise while being attracted by any radical ideology. The question was only whether the Marxists or the National Socialists would triumph on campus.

After National Socialism died a mostly unlamented death, Marxism — and then, a late entry, Islamism — began a battle for the hearts and minds of America’s elites.

What does Hamas offer the Ivy League? Much like Nazism and Communism, it believes that America, individualism and free enterprise are worthless, and that only a revolutionary ideology implemented by force can turn around our society. Few of the Yale or Columbia non-Muslim students cheering for Hamas believe in the message of the Koran, but they find it more believable than the American one.

Radicalizing Ivy League students is a lot like tripping the blind. Between the wealthy Third World activists who claim to be victims of racism and the radical rich brats whose hobby is revolution, they need little convincing to support any cause, no matter how horrible and evil, as long as it’s directed against America and is a good fit for their addiction to virtue signaling.

Generations of Muslim Brotherhood activists and their leftist allies did for Hamas and jihad what “Putzy” did for the Nazis. They made them respectable by rebranding them, giving them some new chants, logos, and an agenda that is less religious and more anti-American.

The Jew-hatred of “Putzy” or Hatem “Hate ’em” Azian, the professor behind the campus jihad, made them more popular on campuses where many students, especially those most likely to join leftist movements, quietly resented the competition from the sizable number of Jewish students. Turning on those students by supporting Hitler or Hamas was all too easy.

The multicultural Nazis of today may be more racially diverse than their forebears in the thirties, but, much as then, their intellectual diversity runs the gamut from one totalitarian movement to another. Back then the Ivy League was torn between Fascism and Marxism, now it’s

See Greenfield on page 22

Nazis old and new at the George Washington U

The image of a pro-Hamas student at George Washington University brandishing a poster calling for a “Final Solution” was horrifying. But it was also deeply ironic. Because on the very same campus in Washington, DC, where that Nazi slogan was invoked last month, actual Nazis were repeatedly welcomed in the years before World War II.

In October 1933, Gustav Struve, an official of Nazi Germany’s embassy in Washington, spoke on GW under the auspices of the university’s German Club. In February 1934, Gerrit Von Haeften, Third Secretary of the German Embassy, visited GW to address the German Club’s Valentine party. And in May 1937, two Nazi representatives, the wife and daughter of the German embassy’s Chancellor, Franz Schulz, participated in an event on campus sponsored by GW’s International Studies Society.

Friendly attitudes toward Nazi Germany appear to have permeated the campus. The visits by Nazi officials proceeded without any sign of objection or protest — unlike, for example, at Columbia University, where hundreds of students held multiple protest rallies when the

Nazis were repeatedly welcomed at GW in the years before World War II.

Nazi ambassador, Hans Luther, was invited to that campus in 1933.

Both the German Club and the International Studies Society at GW held screenings of films which were “procured through the German Consul,” according to the student newspaper, the Hatchet. At least one of the events also included displays of foreign flags; the Hatchet’s coverage included a large image of Nazi Germany’s swastika flag.

That was in April 1937 — four years after Hitler came to power, after the Nazi regime’s boycott of Jewish businesses, the nationwide book-burnings, the Nazi takeover of German universities, the mass firing of Jews from most professions and the mob violence against Jews in Berlin and elsewhere. It also was after the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship.

Yet the Hatchet, which was published by the university, continued to run advertisements from the Nazi government’s tourism department, and touted upcoming summer tours by GW students to Europe that included visits to Nazi Germany.

During those years, GW maintained a junior-year student exchange program with the Nazi-controlled University of Munich, despite the purging of Jewish faculty, implementation of a Nazi curriculum and mass book-burning at the Munich school.

The Hitler regime viewed such exchanges with American universities as a way to soften the Nazis’ image abroad. The Nazi official in charge of sending German students to American universities was quoted, in the New York Times, as describing the German students in such exchanges as “political soldiers of the Reich.” But that did not deter GW from participating in the program.

GW was not the only American university to sponsor student exchanges with Nazified German universities, as Stephen Norwood documents in his book, “The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower.” But not every American school with ties to Germany turned a blind

eye when the Nazis rose to power and took over the country’s universities. Williams College, for example, terminated its student exchanges with Germany as a protest against Nazi policies. GW did not.

Among anti-Israel demonstrators at George Washington University in downtown Washington was a protester calling for a “Final Solution.” Twitter

See Medoff on page 22

GreenfielD Jewish studies

rafael MeDoff

Pro-terrorist demonstrator outside the gates of Columbia University on Oct. 12, 2023. Pilar, Shutterstock

Failure of Shoah ed...

Continued from page 18

have shocked many Americans. But they are still repeated every day in much of the corporate liberal media and by leading political figures. Major news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post, and broadcasters like MSNBC and CNN, consider them ideas to be debated (and which reasonable people should agree to disagree about), rather than antisemitic and racist falsehoods to be condemned.

How then should we remember the Shoah at a time when Jews are once again under siege?

We must start by no longer trying to isolate the Holocaust from the rest of Jewish history or contemporary struggles. The Shoah was a unique historical event that should not be treated — as it is by many Americans — as simply a metaphor for something very bad, a particularly egregious example of man’s inhumanity to man.

It must be seen as part of the narrative of Jewish history that stretches back to the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth by the Romans to today.

Sadly, many, if not most, of those involved in the spread of Holocaust education have sought to make its lessons palatable to non-Jews by universalizing its lessons. As a result, rather than being understood as an example of how antisemitism is hatred used for specific political purposes, it became merely seen as stemming from ordinary prejudice.

That was mistaken, in and of itself. But it also made it less likely that even those who had undergone some sort of rudimentary Holocaust education — as is true of many if not most of today’s college students — would be unable to understand how current woke ideas grant a permission slip to antisemitism.

Indeed, the language of Holocaust education is now used against Israel and the Jews with their enemies no longer using the vulgar dehumanizing terms employed by the Nazis but instead libelously accusing them of being genocidal racists.

This means that as we honor the memory of the Holocaust, we must now do so without ever forgetting that Jews are once again under siege today. And we must do so without losing sight of the critical fact that the only difference between then and now is that the Jewish people are not as vulnerable as they were in the world that existed without Jewish sovereignty and military power.

We keep being told that many of those who demonstrate in favor of an end to the current war that would leave Hamas alive and well — and able to make good on its promises to repeat the horrors of Oct. 7 again and again — are well-meaning and simply sympathetic to the suffering of Palestinians. But the objective of the movement these supposedly well-meaning people support is to strip the Jews of Israel — and Jews everywhere, for that matter — of the ability to defend themselves against Islamists

for whom Oct. 7 is just a trailer for what they wish to do to every Jew on this planet.

Simply put, if you are demonstrating for Hamas’s survival, you are on the side of a group that wishes to repeat the Holocaust. No matter how well-intentioned you may claim to be, that makes you no different from those who viewed the Nazis, who had their own narrative of grievance, with equanimity.

The German people suffered terribly as a result of the war that they launched, yet today, those who claim to speak for humanitarian values believe that there can be no consequences for those who commit or condone (as is true for the overwhelming majority of Palestinians) the mass murder of Jews and that Jews who defend themselves against genocide are the Nazis. Would those who demonstrate against Jewish self-defense apply the same les sons to the Allies who, in order to liberate the Nazi death camps had to kill many people, in cluding civilians?

By the same token, those who wish for uni versities and other institutions to engage in discriminatory commercial conduct that would divest from anything to do with Israel are not criticizing Israel’s policies or leaders, but sup porting a contemporary version of Nazi boycotts of Jews.

It is also just as clear that the leftist/Islamist attack on Israel is also aimed at the West and the United States. This debate over the war against Hamas is not one about whether Israel or its government and military are perfect but about a struggle for the future of the West, much as was true of the war against the German Nazis. The Jews are, as they were during the Holocaust, the canaries in the coal mine, warning humanity of the dangers of tolerating genocidal hate.

As we remember the Shoah, rather than stick to our usual routine of memorialization, it’s time for decent people of all backgrounds and faiths to understand that the war on the Jews didn’t end with the defeat of the Nazis. It continues to this day under new slogans, flags and worse, with many of those who claim to stand for enlightened thought allowing the enablers of Jew-hatred to pose as advocates for human rights and the oppressed. Those lies must not be allowed to stand.

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There should be no Holocaust Memorial Day observance without it being made clear that there can be no proper honor given to the Six Million slain by the Nazis without linking that struggle to those against the antisemites of our time. We must not tolerate those who shed crocodile tears for Jews murdered in the past while tolerating or even supporting policies that enable antisemitism in the present, envisioning Israel’s destruction and the continued slaughter of Jews.

If we cannot understand that, then invocations to remember what happened or ensure that it is “never again” allowed in this world are nothing more than pointless and counterproductive virtue-signaling.

ICJ never called...

Continued from page 8

•“Last month the ICJ said South Africa’s claims that Israel violated the genocide convention were not implausible…” (Stephanie van den Berg, Mar. 1)

USA Today

•“The International Court of Justice did not find Israel violated the 1948 Genocide Convention. Instead, it found South Africa’s claims that Israel committed genocide were ‘plausible,’ which experts said is a low legal bar meant to preserve the rights of Palestinians so the court can rule on the case’s merits at a later stage.” (Andre Byik, Jan. 31) [Note: A mostly accurate fact check that still got the basic ruling wrong.]

•“A recent ruling by the International Court

of Justice concluded it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is committing acts of genocide.” (Micaela A Watts and Jacob Wilt, Feb. 4)

•“Correction: The International Court of Justice found allegations of genocide to be ‘plausible,’ but did not condemn Israel or its military campaign, and instead urged Israel to take measures against preventing genocide.” (Cy Neff, Feb. 27)

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•“As Israel culls Gaza, the Biden administration calls ‘meritless’ the charge of genocide that the International Court of Justice validated as plausible.” (Spencer Ackerman, Feb. 27)

•“As Israeli forces grind through Gaza in what the International Court of Justice defines as a ‘plausible’ case of genocide…” (Peter Maass, Apr. 9)

Kerstein...

Continued from page 4

it will ultimately have to face the fact that the entire human race, except for a few tribes in sub-Saharan Africa, are colonizers of one kind or another. So, it will try to kill everyone. The network has declared war on humanity itself.

Of course, short of the vanishingly unlikely scenario of sparking a nuclear war, there is no way that the network can accomplish its fantasies of planetary slaughter. The question is how many innocent people will die in the course of its attempt to do so.

None of this, however, has to happen — if the responsible authorities take decisive action now:

•Banning all organizations involved in the network.

•Opening full FBI and DHS investigations into the organizations and their members.

•Holding Congressional hearings on who is funding, training and directing them.

•Prosecuting implicated parties under the RICO Act, with relevant intelligent services examining their international.

•Establishing a zero-tolerance policy for antisemitism, support for terrorism and politically motivated violence and vandalism at all major American institutions.

The US government’s track record in effectively combatting such threats is, unfortunately, decidedly mixed. Moreover, many of those involved in the network are already bored deep into major sectors of American life — politics, academia and the activism industry. Powerful forces, out of malice or useful idiocy, will work to prevent effective action against the network. They should hope for their own failure, however. If history is any guide, it is the collaborators and the idiots who will pay the highest price when the bloody mayhem begins.

What is certain is that America did not seek this war. Nonetheless, it has been declared. If America wants to ensure, at the very least, domestic peace, this is a war it will have to fight. If the responsible authorities act now, the war will be bloodless and of decidedly short duration.

Cohen... Blum...

Continued from page 19

cutting diplomatic ties with Israel — a move warmly lauded by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the Islamist regime in Iran. In a speech delivered at a May Day rally, Petro perfectly captured the left’s Palestinian fetish, along with the fervent belief that the defeat of “Zionism” will usher in a new era of people power.

“Today the world could be summed up in a single word, which vindicates the need for life, rebellion, the raised flag and resistance,” Petro declared. “That word is ‘Gaza,’ it is ‘Palestine,’ they are the boys and girls who have died dismembered by the bombs.”

Petro, who was elected in 2022, is a genuine revolutionary with the life experience of one, having joined the M-19 terrorist organization while still a teenager and having been tortured at the hands of Colombian military officers. Nonetheless, his words resonated deeply at the other Columbia — the Ivy League university in New York City — where pro-Hamas demonstrators playing at revolution while their parents pay exorbitant fees set up an illegal tent encampment.

They resonated as well in Tehran, where Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi lauded “the uprising of Western students, professors and elites in support of the oppressed people of Gaza,” while foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani expressed satisfaction with “the awakening of global society … regarding the Palestinian issue and the depth of public hatred toward the crimes of the usurping Zionist regime and the genocide supported by America and some European governments.”

Again, these are exactly the same sentiments being articulated at Columbia, at UCLA, at George Washington University, and at the other American campuses turned upside down by the wave of solidarity with Hamas.

Continued from page 19

Assaults on Jews in major US cities were rampant, for instance, during “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Israel’s 11-day conflict in May 2021 with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza. That this was precipitated by massive rocket barrages on Israeli population centers made no difference to the keffiyeh-clad mob and their ignorant American-born bedfellows.

At the time, I found myself nervous about a family visit to New York. This was surprising on two counts. For one thing, I was born and raised in Manhattan until moving to Israel at the age of 19, and in those years, it was being female and white, not Jewish, that jeopardized my safety.

Secondly, I had just emerged from two weeks of running for shelter from Hamas rockets raining on Tel Aviv. This was after spending decades trying to guard my children against attacks in the form of missiles, rocks, Molotov cocktails, suicide-bombings, stabbings and car-rammings.

Nevertheless, the travel warnings to Israelis to keep kippahs and stars of David out of sight — in America of all places — caused me greater anxiety than air-raid sirens. Hearing that an acquaintance in Los Angeles had decided to remove the mezuzah from her front door was almost too much to process.

Regardless of one’s permanent residence, the very idea of an inhospitable Goldene Medina is unsettling, to put it mildly. So, the latest Harvard CAPS-Harris survey ought to have put trepidation to rest.

The poll revealed that an overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel over Hamas. According to Harvard-Harris co-founder Mark Penn, the findings indicate that the student protests are not in line with overall public sentiment.

As much as this is a relief, it’s misleading. Statistics may serve as a kind of weather vane, but they can’t convey the complexities of a cultural climate. Nor can they determine what percentage of Hamas supporters would suffice to tip the scales towards societal disintegration.

Continued from page 20

Some GW students who spent a year at the University of Munich returned with upbeat reports about the new Germany. GW student Mary-Anne Greenough, for example, stated in a 1937 university newsletter that during her year in Germany, she attended the Nazis’ celebration of the anniversary of Hitler’s failed 1923 putsch; she said she found the event “worthy of admiration.”

Some GW faculty who visited Germany during the 1930s likewise came back with positive descriptions of the Nazi regime. Assistant professor of philosophy Christopher Garnett, returning from a visit to Germany in 1934, reported to the campus historical society that “[t] he optimism which permeated the Germans, even those who at first opposed the present regime, is almost unbelievable.” Such apologetics whitewashed Nazi outrages and made Hitler more palatable to the American public.

The time has come for the GW administration to acknowledge that it was wrong for GW to invite Nazi representatives to campus and to maintain student exchanges with Nazi-controlled institutions.

But that is not all.

In 1985, GW presented an honorary doctorate to Mircea Eliade, a noted scholar of comparative religion. Before Eliade was a scholar, he was a Nazi collaborator.

During the 1930s, Eliade authored viciously antisemitic articles in the extremist Romanian periodical Cuvantul, raving about the alleged “Jewish onslaught” threatening Romania. He actively supported the fascist paramilitary group known as the Iron Guard, and when the Romanian government cracked down on Iron Guard activists in 1938, Eliade was among those whom it imprisoned.

in the Book of Numbers, which understands the phrase “you shall fear your G-d” as being the consequence of your showing deference to the elderly. Thus, if you treat the elderly well you will attain the spiritual level of the G-d-fearing person. But if you refrain from showing the elderly that deference, you can never aspire to the title “G-d-fearing person” no matter how pious you are in other respects.

There is another entirely different perspective on our verse which provides a practical motive for honoring the elderly. It is to be found in the commentary of Abraham ibn Ezra, who explains the phrase “You shall fear your G-d” in the following way:

“The time will come when you will be old and frail and lonely. You will long for proper treatment at the hands of the young. But if you showed disrespect for the elderly when you were young, and did not “fear G-d,” G-d will not reward you with the treatment you desire in your own old age.”

As each of us strives to show genuine respect to our elders, we help construct a society in which the elderly have their proper place. That society will hopefully still be there when we become older, and then we will reap the benefits of our own youthful behavior.

Our Torah portion is entitled Kedoshim, which means “holy.” One of the major components of the holy society is the treatment it accords to every one of its members, especially those who are vulnerable. Treating the elderly with genuine respect, truly listening to them and valuing their contributions, is an essential part of what it means to be a “holy people.”

To many Jews, all this will seem like a colossal failure — a failure of Holocaust education, which Jewish communities have been deeply invested in for several decades; a failure to accurately convey the true nature of Israeli society beyond the “settler-colonial” caricature pushed by much of the left and some far-right influencers; a failure to maintain constructive relationships with those other minorities where sympathy for Hamas and its atrocities is rife, particularly American Muslims, many of whom originate from non-Arab countries, and African-Americans.

Perhaps the toughest aspect of all is the realization that debate and argument are fruitless, not least because refusal to communicate with “Zionists” has become an article of faith at the pro-Hamas rallies and demonstrations.

Still, at the same time, we need to shake off the myth that these demonstrations are an expression of “civil society” — individuals and volunteer groups mobilizing for Gaza out of desperation at the bloody scenes in that territory. From Moscow to Bogota to Ankara to Tehran, the world’s authoritarians are delighting in the opportunity to wield the language of human rights in the faces of gullible Westerners.

Rather than persuading, we should be focused on defeating at the source. That means, in Colombia’s case, lobbying US legislators to impose trade restrictions and other sanctions on its government for as long as it demonizes Israel, a democracy and a stalwart American ally, as a rogue state. Doing so will anger and alienate the left even more, but we have no choice. All we can do is act. And, from time to time, laugh.

Woke culture has already been contributing to America’s decline. Perhaps all it takes for the metaphorical “canary in the coal mine” to be poisoned by undetected carbon monoxide is a small dose of the antisemitism that has pervaded both the ivory tower and halls of Congress. If so, the prognosis for American Jewry is not good.

After the Iron Guard came to power in 1940, Eliade was appointed as one of its diplomats in London. (British officials privately called him “the most Nazi member of the legation.”) The Iron Guard regime actively collaborated in the mass murder of Romania’s Jews.

“Particularly gruesome,” the US Holocaust Memorial Museum notes, “was the [Iron Guard’s] murder of dozens of Jewish civilians in the Bucharest slaughterhouse. After the victims were killed, the perpetrators hung the bodies from meat hooks and mutilated them in a vicious parody of kosher slaughtering practices.”

Continued from page 20

Marxism and Islamism, which have signed their own sort of Hitler-Stalin pact, enabling them to team up against America, Christians, Jews and the entire fabric of Western civilization.

The one thing that the Ivy League can agree on is that the world should be run by the right sort of people, and that they are just the right sort of people to run it. Behind the hysterical rallies and the feigned victimhood is a deep contempt and even hatred for much of humanity.

Right now the campus Hamas Nazis may be cheering for the death of Jews, but tomorrow they will be cheering once again for race riots burning down cities or for some new evil wave of terror. The real question is not just who they hate, but who they don’t hate.

That hatred is why the Ivy League has always been so easy to radicalize with a steady drip-feed of students eager to be taught that everything they grew up with is a sham, that nothing can be trusted and that the only way to save the world is to put them in charge of managing it.

Generations of Ivy Leaguers have been told at ponderous graduation ceremonies that they are the hope of tomorrow, and that history has tasked them with solving the troubles of the nation and the world by implementing the dogma of the moment. No king was more blatantly endowed with the right to rule without the fitness for it than these puffed up and well-connected children.

Each ruling class is more vicious, hollow and inept than the last. From cheering Nazis to cheering Hamas, the only thing the Ivy League elites have learned is an appetite for destruction.

Eliade continued to defend the Iron Guard after the war, praising it in his 1963 autobiography. For some reason, that didn’t deter GW from giving him an honorary doctorate in 1985. The time has come to revoke that honor.

Two years ago, public concern over racism in the United States prodded the George Washington administration to remove the name of its longest-serving president, the late Cloyd Heck Marvin, from the student center because he advocated racial segregation. And last year, the administration changed the school moniker from “Colonials” to “Revolutionaries” because of the many injustices associated with colonialism. GW should now show similar sensitivity to the concerns of its Jewish students and faculty.

Ninety years after actual Nazis were warmly welcomed at GW, extremist students on its campus today are invoking the infamous Nazi phrase “Final Solution” — meaning mass murder of Jews.

That’s a blatant violation of the GW Student Code of Conduct. Section V (F) prohibits “acting in a way that threatens, endangers, or harasses others, including verbal, written, or any other form of communication.” Violators are subject to a range of possible punishments, from a warning to permanent expulsion. It’s time for George Washington University to implement its own rules.

Acknowledging the error of GW’s friendly attitude toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s, revoking Mircea Eliade’s doctorate, and taking meaningful action against today’s violators of the Student Code of Conduct is the path to restoring order and decency at George Washington University.

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