The Jewish Star 05-17-2024

They’ll ask, ‘ What did you do after Oct. 7?’ Hoenlein tells YIW

Our grandchildren will judge us

R’dale optimism amid sorrow

By Ed Weintrob

Riverdale marked a somber Yom HaZikaron on Monday night, with several hundred people filling the SAR HS auditorium to listen to SAR choirs, the chanting of Tehilim, words about soldiers and hostages and, at the program’s end, a message of hope.

Among those attending were leading Bronx elected officials who organizers praised as standing firm with the borough’s Jewish communities — and with Israel — in all the days since Oct. 7.

Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson, Rep. Ritchie Torres, Councilman Eric Dinowitz, and Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz sat respectfully in the front row for the full hour-and-a-half length of the service; none spoke.

Riverdalians were praised for their quick and ongoing response to Oct. 7 by the Riverdale Y’s director of community engagement, Rabbi Scott Kalmikoff.

“You’ve shown up” over these seven months, participating in Manhattan rallies, riding 500 strong on buses to Washington, and raising over $120,000 to buy an embu-

lance for Magen David Adom, he said.

“I saw someone post on Twitter, ‘Can anybody share some positive news in all this darkness?’ And someone responded to that post, ‘We’re Jewish.’ For me, that was very powerful,” Rabbi Kalmikoff said.

“In the last few months, it has been hard to be a Jew. People are scared to wear their yamaka on the street or to wear a Magen David necklace on the subway. But we need to be proud of who we are always,” he continued.

“Our ancestors used to say in Europe, it’s hard to be a yid, it’s hard to be a Jew. And we had hopes that the creation of the State of Israel is changing that.”

“We know that the world is challenging, but we have to stay positive,” he said.

“We have to stay together and stay united and love our fellow Jews no matter what — to take care of one another in the bad times, in the challenging times, but also in times of goodness and in times of joy.

“Let’s continue to love each other and be there for each other and continue to feel hope.”

By Ed Weintrob

Just as many have asked, “Where were America’s Jews in the 1930s and during the Shoah?,” our grandchildren will ask, “Where were you after Oct. 7?”

That’s the message voiced Monday night by Malcolm Hoenlein to a full house at the Young Israel of Woodmere, in an event bridging Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut.

“This is a time when each of us has to make the declaration — ‘no more, never again’,” Hoenlein said. “Make that promise to your grandchildren and their grandchildren, because they will turn back and judge you. They will ask what did you do, just as we judge the generation of 80 years ago and ask what did they do?”

Hoenlein, vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, has been an articulate Jewish communal leader for decades.

“Today you know everything,” he continued. “You see it on your computers, you can get access to all the information instantly. The question is what do you do about it.

“Do you rise to the challenge? And will you bring many others with you — so that when your grandchildren look back and they judge you and ask you what did you do at that critical time in Jewish history, they will praise you and thank you for making it a safer world for them.

With the very existence of the Jewish state and the lives of its seven million Jews threatened, and with life in American Jewish communities becoming more precarious, “you can’t do everything, but you can do something. This is a time when each of us is going to be measured.”

Hoenlein referred to Oct. 7 as “a watershed in Jewish history” whose full impact has yet to be felt.

When he addressed the Young Israel of Woodmere more than 10 years ago, “I spoke about the danger of antisemitism, about what was happening on campuses and about Iran. People were skeptical and came to me and said, we don’t experience it. This was 10 years in the making. This didn’t just happen — neither what happened on the borders of Israel or what’s happening on the campuses in America.”

Not long after Oct. 7, Hoenlein visited Sderot, the closest city to the Gaza border. He said he didn’t want to go, but wounded soldiers insisted he needed to be a witness so he would later be able to personally recount what had happened there.

“I saw it,” he began, describing how he was escorted “by a young soldier who said, don’t step there because we’re looking for DNA, they burned a little baby in that location.”

The soldier asked him to follow, but “I couldn’t walk past this brick wall, which wasn’t there. It was the smell, something so strong I literally couldn’t penetrate it. He pulled me through it and opened the door of a truck and there were already See Hoenlein at YIW on page 6

Malcolm Hoenlein speaks a full house at the Young Israel of Woodmere Monday night, as Yom HaZikaron transitioned to Yom HaAtzmaut. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star

Rabbi Scott Kalmikoff, community engagement director at the Riverdale Y, concluded SAR’s Yom HaZikaron program with words of chizuk Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star

T H E C A R E I S

Letter from an Israeli to her extended family in America

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ost of the news we get about America these days is about the awful demonstrations on the university campuses. They already stopped calling for a ceasefire, and have starting demanding “intifada” (ie, suicide bombers, etc), death to all Jews, and the total elimination of Israel.

It looks very, very scary to be a Jew in America right now. I’m sure you all are living your lives without that fear, and without encountering that antisemitism and hate — we only see the bad from here that makes the headlines. Similarly, I’m sure most of the time you only see awful stories coming from Israel. The reality is a lot different.

There is a cloud over everyone. You couldn’t really say “Happy Pesach” without the words catching in your throat. With all the deaths and huge number of injuries in the last almost 7 months, and with the 134 hostages (probably most no longer alive), no one can really celebrate. However, we all go on with our lives, at least those who aren’t in mourning or recovery, or aren’t banished from their homes because of the danger of rockets or even infiltration, or because their homes and communities were destroyed.

The world talks about Gazans whose homes were destroyed or who have been uprooted from their communities, but no one talks about the Israelis who have been homeless for 7 months or the killed and wounded on our side.

One comment about the “numbers game.”

Hamas has been quoting a number that has been killed, and it has been going up at a steady rate, regardless of what we are doing.

Statisticians have proven that the numbers were going up at a predetermined rate and had nothing to do with reality; the whole world (even President Biden) accepted those numbers, even though they are from a terrorist organization that uses every method possible to make us look bad. They of course claim that most are women and children, and the whole world quotes that, too. I’ve been in touch with our cousin Max (he’s such an amazing person!), and he shared with me the following:

The Gaza Health Ministry (Hamas) now admits that 11,371 of the 33,091 deaths that are marked as “incomplete” are fabricated. That means a total of 22,000 are dead, and of that 22,000, 15,000 are Hamas terrorists. Therefore, a total of 7,000 civilian deaths have occurred.

Even the 7,000 “civilian” deaths are questionable, because most of the terrorists dress up as civilians, keep their weapons hidden in a house (soldiers have stated that about 80% of all houses in Gaza are storehouses for weapons or serve as terror tunnel entrances or both), and jump out and shoot at our soldiers, still dressed as “civilians.”

In addition, Hamas has killed thousands of people in Gaza, either because of rockets that backfired, or because they shot at the hungry Gazans who have tried to grab the food aid that Hamas hijacked for their own uses.

Each death of innocent people is tragic, but the number is much, much smaller than claimed, and is exponentially smaller than any other war in history, especially an urban war. We paid for those small numbers with a large number of losses of our own — it’s much easier to bomb out a whole neighborhood or city (like Americans have done in all their wars), it’s much harder to go house by house, exposing themselves to immediate and intense danger, collecting the weapons, and making huge efforts to ensure that innocent people aren’t affected.

Many missions have been called off at the last minute when civilians were discovered entering a home.

Max also shared about the “story” of the mass graves that were “discovered” next to Shifa hospital, and blamed on Israel. Of course, the graves were found to have been dug years ago by Hamas.

As you all know, 350 drones, ballistic missiles, and rockets were fired toward us from Iran. It was a very scary night; we all knew they were on their way toward us, but we didn’t realize the scale of the attack until it was over. We went to sleep with our phones next to our heads because the attack was due to arrive at 1:30 am.

We had no idea how many lives would be destroyed and we all charged our phones and stocked up on water in case critical infrastructure was destroyed, as has been the case in Ukraine. Each rocket had the potential of destroying an apartment building where hundreds live or knocking out a power station or worse. It was a huge relief to wake up in the morning and discover that 99% of the projectiles had been destroyed, with help of America, Jordan, the UK and France (though most were shot down by us). No one was hurt, with the exception of a young girl who was seriously injured by falling shrapnel.

I hope none of you has to be in a situation where an enemy country will do anything to kill as many of you as possible. We are very thankful for our army, our “partners” and the millions of prayers that were recited during that long night.

Finally, a little on the personal note. Our boys are all home from the army (though Be’eri has to go back in about 2 months), and we’re very thankful that they all got home safely.

We are proud of what they all are doing and what amazing parents they are all are becoming! Avi is continuing to travel two days a week to the south, working with individuals who have experienced trauma, and leading groups that have been created for new widows and bereaved parents. It’s difficult, demanding, and holy work. So many lives have been destroyed.

I’m keeping the home front going, helping our kids, and trying to work as much as possible.

May we all be blessed with peace, may our hostages return soon — alive — and may our dear soldiers and citizens be safe. May you all also be safe in a place that seems much less welcoming than in the past.

Love to all.

The author, a practicing architect, moved to Israel after getting married. A resident of Jerusalem, she is the mother of five and grandmother of seven.

After city lived with 275 years of ghosts, Jewish Charleston is bullish on its future

By Menachem Wecker, JNS

A third of the way into an hour-and-a-half tour of Charleston’s Jewish historic Coming Street Cemetery on an overcast afternoon in April, Anita Rosenberg admits believing in ghosts.

The docent and former president of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) — a Reform congregation a mile away that is celebrating its 275th birthday — had directed JNS to stand in a spot along a path lined with decidedly unkosher oyster shells.

“Would you like a ghost story?” the octogenarian asked. JNS affirmed that it did.

About a decade ago, Rosenberg received a call from a man the cemetery hired to cut down a large oak tree threatening a retaining wall. The “young fellow” had quite a view 60 feet up in the air, strapped to the trunk, letting one branch down at a time. He decided to snap a picture.

“My phone rings. He says, ‘Come to the cemetery.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘You’ve got a ghost,’” Rosenberg told JNS. “I said, ‘Oh, Charleston is full of ghosts. Don’t worry about it. Just keep cutting.’”

“He said, ‘No. No. I have a picture of your ghost. You have to come,’” Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg showed JNS a blowup of the man’s photo in both positive and negative. An eerie, white shape — reminiscent of a man — appears in the negative.

“I said, ‘Oh. I know exactly who that is — that’s Theodore Belitzer, because we have a real picture of him in the museum’,” Rosenberg said.

The photo that Rosenberg showed JNS of Belitzer, whose family was part of the KKBE congregation and who fought for the South in the Civil War, resembles the negative in the tree man’s picture.

(KKBE boasts of being the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the nation. Touro Synagogue, in Newport, RI, is older but hasn’t been used continuously.)

A Confederate soldier — 23 of whom are buried in the cemetery — Belitzer was taken captive and left on a ship off the North Carolina coast that went up in flames in 1864.

“He never had a proper Jewish burial,” Rosenberg said. “So he’s wandering looking for his place to be, and this was home. This was where his buddies were.”

A colleague of Rosenberg’s, Randy Serrins, was giving a tour of the cemetery to a group of Canadian women in town for Charleston’s annual Spoleto Festival and told Belitzer’s story. “The lady says, ‘Oh, that touches my heart. This young man has got to have a cenotaph of his own,’” Rosenberg said. (Cenotaphs mark bodiless graves.)

“She whipped out her checkbook and gave Randy a check on the spot, right here, and said, ‘Build that boy a cenotaph’,” Rosenberg said. “We

did, and we haven’t seen him since,” she said of Belitzer’s ghost.

JNS asked if that meant Rosenberg believed in ghosts. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Absolutely.”

“We have a lot of ghosts in the family,” her son David Rosenberg, 59, a past president of the Modern Orthodox synagogue Congregation Dor Tikvah in Charleston, told JNS. (Charleston also has a Chabad House.)

“Ghosts are not an extraordinary thing in our world,” added the 10th-generation South Carolinian on his mom’s side.

Anita Rosenberg, who started following her grandmother and the latter’s gardener around the cemetery trimming weeds as a 2-year-old, has her eyes, Janus-like, on both Charleston’s Jewish past and future.

She is “absolutely optimistic” as she considers the next 275 years of Charleston Jewry.

“We’re definitely growing,” she told JNS.

She finds that some young people are interested in Charleston’s Jewish history, and people are retiring to the city and bringing “a whole different perspective” and receptivity to learning about its Jewish past.

“When we say the Jews have been happily ensconced in the Carolina colony from the 1600s, their eyebrows go up, and they say, ‘Tell me more. I never heard of such a thing,’” she said. “The state was a real haven. Religious freedom was guaranteed right here.”

Sitting in the voluminous sanctuary of KKBE across the aisle from Mark Swick, executive director of the congregation, is an exercise in selfrestraint to focus on the conversation and not the arresting interior.

Light pours in through colorful stained-glass windows, many with biblical themes. Some depict Noah’s ark, perhaps a nod to the merchants drawn to the city’s ports. An apparent depiction of the burning bush is damaged, a kind-of echo of the 1794 synagogue building’s destruction in an 1838 fire that destroyed many city blocks.

Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim is both a re-emerged phoenix and a pioneer several times over.

In 1840, KKBE became the first synagogue in the nation to introduce an organ. (The current one on the balcony is its fourth organ.)

“Music within the service, and integration of instrumental music, was one of the requests for reform that our founding congregants and their descendants petitioned the trustees, and were initially unsuccessful,” Swick told JNS.

The reformers broke off and formed the Reform Society of Israelites but rejoined KKBE when the society failed. Years later, traditionalists broke off from the congregation, which is seen as the birthplace of Reform Judaism.

The first Jews arrived in Charleston in the late 17th century — largely Sephardic merchants drawn to the city’s seaport and its unusual hospitality toward Jews, among others. By 1749, KKBE was formed, building its first synagogue 45 years later.

The current Greek Revival building draws on classical Greek architecture while suspending a dome — a distinctly ancient Roman feature — underneath the roof, according to an informational video that plays in the sanctuary for visitors. The elegant ark and interior suggested that Judaism, an older tradition, surpassed the best of Greece and Rome, per the video.

Joshua Lazarus, president of the Charleston Gas Light Company, chaired the KKBE building committee and served as synagogue president from 1850 to 1861. When he introduced gas light-

ing — literally, not figuratively — to the state, he made sure KKBE got it first.

After the synagogue’s balconies and other parts of the sanctuary were damaged in an August 1886 earthquake, KKBE opted not to rebuild the balconies, as men and women were already sitting together on the main floor. The congregation also added the stained glass windows then, replacing prior clear windows.

In much more recent years, KKBE has been growing, according to Swick, a native of suburban Washington, DC., who has lived in Charleston for a dozen years, after living in Mississippi and Indiana.

“I think people are surprised, in general, that they are welcomed into the Jewish community and that there is a Jewish community,” he said of Charleston, which is increasingly drawing retirees. “The first question is ‘Are there Jews?’ The second question is ‘Is there antisemitism?’ The answer is ‘Yes’ and ‘Not really,’” he said.

Some eight years ago, KKBE had about 430 families that were dues-paying members. Its current membership is about 500 families. “We’ve grown. We’ve also done a better job of being honest about our numbers,” Swick said.

An informal demographic study the Charleston Jewish Federation conducted in 2023 estimated that some 10,000 and 14,000 Jews between the ages of 18 and 80 live in Charleston. In 2016, the Federation estimated that between 8,000 and 11,000 Jews lived in the greater Charleston area, after a 2011 study had estimated about 6,000 Jews.

The religious views of David Lopez, a Jewish builder who designed the current synagogue building, are puzzling, according to Mapping Jewish Charleston, a project of the College of Charleston.

“Initially in favor of an organ in the synagogue, he soon changed his mind, siding with the Orthodox members who left KKBE (ironically, the building he had constructed),” per the site.

“Then there is this: His first wife was not Jewish. When she was not allowed to be buried in the Coming Street Cemetery, he bought a small piece of land where she could be interred adjacent to Shearith Israel’s burial ground, on the northside

of KKBE’s cemetery,” it adds.

As Anita Rosenberg told JNS on a tour of the cemetery, the traditional group that split off from KKBE, Shearith Israel, constructed its own plot adjacent to the cemetery with a 12-foot wall separating the two. Much of that wall no longer exists, but visitors can still see traces of that mechitzahlike barrier.

When Lopez’s first wife died, her conversion papers could not be found, according to Rosenberg. When the builder learned that his late wife could not be buried in the Jewish cemetery, he bought an adjacent, rectangular plot and built her the most magnificent grave in the entire cemetery. (It wasn’t clear if the community also rejected her children as Jews at that point.)

When KKBE held a rededication in 2020, it acknowledged that Lopez used slave labor to construct the synagogue. One of the first things that visitors see when they enter the synagogue complex is a plaque noting: “Upon the renovation and rededication of the building in 2020, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim rededicates itself to recognizing the errors of the past and reconciling the beliefs of our faith with our actions as we commit to spiritual growth and social justice for all.”

“It’s hard to find many spaces in Charleston that are not impacted by war and past indiscretions,” Swick told JNS. “What we try to do is be honest.” The plaque is upfront about “the original sin of the enslaved labor who helped construct our building,” he said.

Many KKBE members fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Tombstones in the cemetery include those of Marx E. Cohen Jr. (1839-1865) and Gustavus Poznanski Jr. (18421862), both killed in action during the war. (Officers and soldiers in the American Revolution and the War of 1812 are also buried in the cemetery.)

Ezra Cappell, a professor of Jewish studies and English at the College of Charleston, told JNS that the city, like much of the rest of the country, has been rethinking its history.

“South Carolina hasn’t always been on the forefront of racial understanding, being the last state in the union to remove the Confederate flag from its Capitol grounds,” he said.

See Jewish Charleston on page 10

Photo of Jewish Confederate soldier Theodore Belitzer in the museum of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston. Menachem Wecker

Cenotaph for Theodore Belitzer at the historic Coming Street Cemetery in Charleston. Menachem Wecker

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Bowman, Latimer clash over Israel in debate

By Andrew Bernard, JNS

With The Jewish Star

Anti-Israel Rep. Jamaal Bowman — a member of the left-wing congressional “Squad” — faced Westchester County executive George Latimer, his pro-Israel primary opponent, in a debate televised on News12 on Monday night. They interrupted each other and clashed repeatedly over a variety of issues.

Bowman, who unexpectedly unseated Rep. Eliot Engel, a veteran Israel-backer, four years ago, is facing his first significant challenge in the 16th CD, a diverse Westchester-based district that includes includes a piece of the north Bronx.

“My opponent is in the pocket and bought and paid for by AIPAC,” Bowman said. “AIPAC is funded by the same Republicans who supported insurrectionists.”

Latimer denied that and said that AIPAC supports members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Democratic leadership, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn. He said Bowman uses his seat to promote himself by needlessly weighing in on Israeli policies.

“When you work in a legislative body, you need to form coalitions with people,” Latimer said. “You need to have their respect. You need to talk to them as normal people. You can’t preach and scream at them on the steps of the Capitol.”

“He’s ineffective as a congressman,” Latimer said of Bowman.

Latimer has been endorsed by the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC.

The district is heavily blue, making the winner

of the Democratic primary on June 25 the presumptive winner in November.

Nearly half of Monday’s hour-long debate focused on questions about Israel, antisemitism and related issues, which prompted some of the sharpest exchanges between the two candidates. Those included accusations of lying and racial animus.

“Angry black man! Angry black man!” Bowman, who is black, said about Latimer’s claim that he preaches and screams at colleagues. “It’s the Southern strategy in the north.”

Since his defeat of Engel in the 2020 Democratic primary, Bowman has become one of the House’s staunchest critics of Israel.

“I align myself with Senator Chuck Schumer, Bowman said in Monday’s debate. “Benjamin Netanyahu should not be the leader of Israel at this time. It’s causing more harm to Israel than good.”

Bowman said that Israel’s actions in Gaza may be “proof of war crimes against the people of Gaza — 100,000 dead, the majority women and children. We have to speak out about that.”

“This issue of Israel means a lot to the people of the 16th district in a very personal, direct way,” Latimer said. “Hamas on Oct. 7 went over that border line viciously murdered people and created a horrible situation in which they took hostages.”

Beyond his strident views on Israel, Bowman’s attracted controversy for other comments and actions.

In 2023, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for falsely pulling a fire alarm at a Capitol office building in the lead-up to a spending vote. Bow-

man said on Monday that he pulled the fire alarm by mistake. Latimer said it was clear from video footage of the incident that he did so deliberately.

“If you lie about that, what else would he lie about?” Latimer asked.

Since Oct. 7, Bowman has described Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza as a “genocide” in which the US government is complicit. He has joined calls for an immediate ceasefire.

In November, he described claims that Hamas had committed rape as “propaganda.” Only in March, in comments to Politico, did Bowman condemned Hamas for committing rape on Oct. 7. He did not apologize for his previous statement, however.

In January, Bowman claimed at an event that he was a “bit starstruck” by Norman Finkelstein, an anti-Israel activist who is Jewish, who has accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust.

Bowman later apologized and said he was unaware of Finkelstein’s views, though at the event, he had said he watched Finkelstein’s videos “all the time on YouTube.”

Following that controversy, the left-wing, Israel-focused advocacy group J Street withdrew its endorsement of Bowman over his “framing and approach” to the conflict, even as it continued to back some of his fellow Israel critics in the Squad.

In Monday’s debate, Bowman stood by his record of support for anti-Israel protesters and opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The protests on college campuses are specifically related to US tax dollars and weapons go-

ing to Israel, as they bomb the civilians in Gaza, so we called for a permanent ceasefire very early on,” Bowman said. “My opponent is standing with Benjamin Netanyahu in continuing the onslaught of innocent civilians in Gaza.”

“I don’t stand with Benjamin Netanyahu,” Latimer resplied. “I stand with the hostage families.”

The moderator asked both candidates if they believed that the phrase “from the river to the sea” is hate speech or a call for the eradication of the State of Israel.

“I know some do. Others don’t,” Bowman said. “I do not.”

Latimer said that it is hate speech. “I think it’s clear that ‘from the river to the sea’ has meant specifically the eradication of the Jewish population from the land of Israel,” he said.

Latimer said that Palestinian leadership and not Netanyahu is an obstacle to a two-state solution, and he called President Joe Biden “an honest broker” in the latter.

“I think the Israeli people need to see that they have a partner for peace, and they don’t see a partner for peace right now,” he said.

“I think the intelligent position for a future legislator to take is to work through your legislative bodies and try to influence the president in that fashion, not to have 435 secretaries of state all commenting on every little nuance of this,” he added.

Per the most recent Federal Election Commission data, released on March 31, Latimer has raised more than $3.6 million, compared to more than $2.7 million for Bowman.

Hoenlein at YIW: Our grandkids will judge us

Continued from page 1

40 bodies that they picked up.”

Hoenlein said he began to understand “in ways that we could not before” what his grandparents experienced in 1943 when they were sent to concentration camps.

“This is not just about Israel and it’s not just about Jews,” he said. “We are bit players — this is about the future of the world. … Victory over Hamas is an essential not just for Israel’s survival, it’s a moral imperative, a security demand for the future of the world.”

“This is not a time for compromise or appeasement with such evil as we have witnessed,” he said, adding that although some have turned against the Jewish people and the Jewish state, most are still standing with us, waiting for us to lead.

“Every Arab leader says to me, in every conversation over the last six months: decimate them. Don’t listen to what we say, just kill them all. Because if not, we’re next — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE. Every ally of the United States, they know that they are next in line.”

Even in Iran, the people are with us, he said, reporting that when attendees at a soccer match were asked to pause for a moment of silence for Palestinian victims, “tens of

thousands started blowing horns and screaming ‘death to the dictator, death to the dictator.’ Their greatest disappointment is that nobody in the West cares.”

Meanwhile, “the blasphemous lies continue, and unfortunately too many in our own community, too many of our own young, believe them,” Hoenlein said,

“Teach our children … educate them about the problems because believe me, the kids from the best homes, in our best institutions, don’t know. We tested, they can’t answer. And when they have doubt, we have to worry.”

Forty-percent of young Americans don’t believe the truth about Oct. 7th, and 25% don’t believe the truth about the Holocaust, he said.

As for the charge that Israel is commiting acts of genocide in Gaza, Hoenlein asked how many people were in Gaza in 1967, when Israel occurpied the territory. Four-hundredthousand, he said; now there are 2.1 million.

“They’re really bad at genocide.”

Many young people and “falling victim to the lies [and] misrepresentations,” with big lies spreading “in nanoseconds on the internet.”

Hoenlein said he was inspired by the wounded IDF soldiers he met, most of whom told him that would like to rejoin the fight.

“We should stand up proudly, not hide our Jewish identity, not hide our Jewish symbols, not hide our affinity for Israel,” he said. And if President Biden reasserts his support for Israel, “The American people will stand with him.” Before Hoenlein spoke, those assembled heard testimony about hostages and about fighters in the IDF, and prayers were recited.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman praised his police department and criticized other officials.

“Some of our elected officials have betrayed us,” Blakeman said. “We must remember those who supported us in our darkest times, and those who have not.”

He contrasted Nassau County’s approach to anti-Israel protests with that seen elsewhere. There’s “a very different policy in other parts of the country,” he said. “If protesters want to come and exercise what they call the First Amendment right to free speech, we give them a place on the sidewalk. If they step off the sidewalk, our police officers will politely tell them to get back on the sidewalk. If they do not, they’re arrested. There are no tents, there’s no occupation, there’s no harassment, there’s no violence.

“This is a standard that we must hold throughout America.”

Malcolm Hoenlein at the Young Israel of Woodmere on Monday night. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star

Rep. Jamaal Bowman.

Screenshot from News12 debate

Westchester County Executive George Lattimer.

Screenshot from News12 debate

UN blames ‘fog of war’ for Gazan overcount

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

The United Nations now claims that “the fog of war” is to blame for a major overstatement of the number of Gazan children who have been killed in the war.

In mid-March, the UN Children’s Fund stated that 13,450 children had been killed in Gaza, citing figures from the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry. Catherine Russell, the director of UNICEF, said in a television interview on March 17 that those numbers were “staggering” and “really shocking.”

“We haven’t seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world,” Russell claimed at the time.

The statistic was cited frequently in the international press, leading to accusations that Israel had committed war crimes, including targeting babies and children intentionally.

Even Hamas has since admitted that those numbers turn out to be off by at least 40%. The United Nations revised its numbers last week, without providing an explanation.

“When it comes to Israel, it’s clear that the UN’s goal is not accuracy, but rather to immediately seize on any report, no matter how unsubstantiated or even manifestly false, in order to portray Israel as malevolent,” Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, told JNS.

“The right thing for the UN to do now would be to admit that their casualty count in Gaza is a complete failure,” Neuer added.

Last Wednesday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released updated casualty figures. Some 7,797 Gazan children had died in the war as of April 30, it said — a roughly 42% drop from the mid-March numbers.

It also revised its casually figures for women by nearly a half — from more than 9,500 to fewer than 5,000.

In a little-noticed change, OCHA differentiated in its new figures between “reported” and “identified” fatalities, including the 7,797 children figure in the “identified” category.

Using OCHA’s math, out of 10,158 reported but unidentified casualties, 5,653 (56%) would have to be children to add up to the figures published in mid-March. That would be far more than is indicated by the information the United Nations released last week, which claims that children make up 32% of the identified deaths in Gaza.

JNS asked Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN SecretaryGeneral António Guterres, at a press conference on Friday why the math doesn’t add up.

“The revisions are taken … you know, of course, in the fog of war, it’s difficult to come up with numbers,” Haq told JNS. “We get numbers from different sources on the ground, and then we try to cross check them. As we cross check them, we update the numbers, and we’ll continue to do that as that progresses.”

Salo Aizenberg, an independent scholar and author and

HonestReporting board member, told JNS that “It’s absolutely true that the fog of war makes it difficult to assess casualties, but this was the case from the beginning of the war.”

“It’s outrageous that only seven months later, the UN is questioning the Hamas-supplied casualty numbers,” he said.

In early April, the Gaza Health Ministry said it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claimed to have documented at the time. The ministry later said it did not have names for more than 10,000 of the Gazans it claimed were killed in the war.

The ministry has not revealed publicly how it compiles its published information. No independent media exists in Gaza to try to verify it.

“For reporting Gaza deaths, there is no method and no standard of proof,” Neuer told JNS. “All the UN does is parrot figures supplied by Hamas, which is laundered and legitimized by the UN as the neutral-sounding ‘Gaza Ministry of Health,’ or ‘Government Media Office, when in fact both are run by the Hamas terrorist organization.”

“Now that the UN has suddenly reduced some of the figures by half, they’ve essentially admitted to have been feeding the media and the world completely false numbers,” he said.

As recently as last month, the Hamas-run government media office has repeated claims that 70% of the deceased were women and children.

Haq, the UN spokesman, told JNS that “Numbers get adjusted many times over the course of a conflict. Once a conflict is done, we’ll have the most accurate figures.”

But Aizenberg’s research has shown that “For many months, there have been obvious errors identified in the numbers pub-

lished daily by OCHA, which are ultimately based on Hamas reporting,” the scholar told JNS.

Aizenberg pointed to an immediate claim by Hamas of nearly 500 deaths in an Oct. 17 strike on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, which turned out to be a Palestinian rocket misfire and evidence suggests a drastically-lower death total. Still, Hamas hasn’t corrected its initial tally.

His analysis has also revealed that Hamas reported on certain days in the first months of the war that more women and children were killed than the total number of all fatalities.

“We’re just going with what we can absolutely confirm, which will always be the low end of what the numbers are,” Haq, the UN spokesman, told JNS on Friday.

Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at the University of Pennsylvania, published a statistical analysis two months ago that showed how Hamas faked casualty numbers.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy also released a report in January showing major discrepancies in the fatality reports, concluding they were most likely caused by manipulation.

“While it’s better late than never that the UN finally admits that the casualty numbers issued by Hamas for the last 200 days are not reliable, the false data has infiltrated everywhere,” Aizenberg told JNS.

He cited President Joe Biden’s claim in his March 7 State of the Union address that “more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.”

The State and Defense Departments have also used that statistic officially, apparently relying on Hamas data.

Neuer told JNS that “If UN officials continue to legitimize a Hamas-run system that has now proven itself to be completely false, they will be complicit with terrorist propaganda.”

The revised Hamas casualty numbers, taken together with Israel Defense Forces claims of terrorists killed — a distinction Hamas does not make — “demonstrate that the civilian/casualty rate in Gaza is likely 1:1 or lower, which would amount to the lowest ratio in the history of urban combat, starkly contradicting any notion of indiscriminate IDF attacks,” Aizenberg told JNS.

JNS asked Haq on Friday if UN figures can be considered reliable.

“You can consider them reliable from the fact that we’re continually checking them,” he said. “We’ll continue to do that over the course of the war. But the numbers, you know, ultimately have to be regularly checked so that we can be sure that what we’re putting out is valid.”

In Jan. 2014, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights announced it had stopped updating the death toll from Syria’s civil war, as it could no longer verify the sources of information.

P’stinians get novel UN rights for non-member

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

The UN General Assembly voted 143-9 on Friday to give the Palestinians unprecedented rights for a non-member observer state, though still did not grant Palestinians full UN membership.

The resolution, which the United Arab Emirates pushed and drew 25 abstentions in Friday’s vote, comes after Washington’s veto last month of a UN Security Council resolution that would have accepted the Palestinians long-dormant 2011 application for full membership in the global body.

“We voted against this resolution. We continue to believe in the power and promise of a two-state solution and an independent state for the Palestinian people,” John Kirby, White House national security communications advisor, told reporters on Friday.

The Biden administration believes “the best way to do that is through direct negotiation between the parties and not through a vote at the UN,” Kirby said.

A 2012 General Assembly vote granted the Palestinians nonmember observer status. There was once again a push for a reclassification of the Palestinians’ status in the wake of Israel’s counteroffensive after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

In addition to asking the Security Council to “reconsider the matter favorably,” the General Assembly resolution passed on Friday, which is widely expected to garner the necessary twothirds majority of the 193-member body, states that the so-called Palestinian state is “peace-loving,” a requirement of the charter.

An annex to the resolution also grants the Palestinians the right to be elected to General Assembly committees, to submit proposals and amendments, to raise procedural motions and to be seated among member states in alphabetical order.

Those are all privileges that the institution’s other non-member observers — the Holy See and the European Union — do not enjoy.

The Palestinians would still not have a General Assembly vote, nor would they be able to present candidacy for major UN organs, such as the Security Council, Economic and Social Council.

The resolution appears to leave the door open for a separate General Assembly resolution to allow for the election of the Palestinians to the UN Human Rights Council, which has a

long history of Israel criticism.

In addition to the United States and Israel, Argentina, Chechia, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Papua New Guinea voted against the resolution. Some of those states have recognized Palestinian statehood, which suggests that they may have had concerns about the irregular process of granting the Palestinians rights that have not previously applied to non-member observer states.

The United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Ukraine were among the notable abstentions.

Gilad Erdan, the Israeli UN ambassador, used a miniature portable shredder to destroy a copy of the UN Charter during his speech prior to the vote. He suggested that the General Assembly

was circumventing the institution’s founding principles in granting exceptional status to the Palestinians.

He said the General Assembly was voting to “advance the establishment of a Palestinian terror state, which will be led by the Hitler of our times.” Erdan held up a picture of “President Sinwar” and pointed to polls indicating Hamas would take control of Palestinian territories in Judea and Samaria should another national election be held.

“Soon-to-be-president Yahya Sinwar, tyrant of the state of Hamas, sponsored by the UN,” Erdan said.

He claimed that the Palestinian Authority’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour would be thrown off a roof should he return home after a Hamas takeover, similar to actions taken by Hamas against Fatah party rivals during a violent takeover of Gaza.

Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan shreds a page of the Charter of the United Nations as he addresses the General Assembly on May 10. Manuel Elías, UN

The General Assembly adopted a resolution determining that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations in accordance with Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations and should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations,” on May 10. Manuel Elías, UN

UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefs the press at the Rafah border crossing into Gaza, on March 23. Mark Garten, UN Photo

Jewish Charleston is bullish on its future…

Cappell led JNS on a downtown walking tour along King Street of formerly Jewish Charleston — this time architectural ghosts — where he pointed out names inscribed on building façades and on the floor outside shops, which used to be owned by Jews. Some, like Berlin’s and Dumas’s, still are.

At Charleston’s large Holocaust memorial in the city’s Marian Square, Cappell noted that a statue of John C. Calhoun, the former US vice president and a slavery apologist, used to stand nearby until it was removed in response to protests after the murder of George Floyd. The sculpture “literally cast a shadow over Charleston’s Holocaust memorial,” he told JNS.

“So, too, the Jewish community has been conducting a public reckoning of its own past,” Cappell said.

Cappell, who grew up in New York and has lived in Texas, calls Charleston’s Jewish community “warm, welcoming, historic and deeply engaged by all things Jewish.”

“With centuries of history behind it, the Jewish community in Charleston has much to be proud of, and today, the ‘Holy City’ boasts numerous thriving synagogues representing every major Jewish denomination.”

The professor noted that Jews are mentioned specifically in the 1669 Carolina Charter about “liberty of conscience,” and Jews were among the first to settle the region.

“Over the more than three centuries of its existence — from serving in the cause of revolution to holding political office and the creation of the downtown commercial district — the Jewish community has played a vital role in every aspect of Charleston’s growth and development,” he said.

Charleston Jews are uniquely aware and proud of the city’s Jewish history.

“Most New York Jews couldn’t tell you where

Shearith Israel is located or where Bob Dylan made his New York debut,” Cappell said. “But Charlestonians will happily tell you about each of the famous Jewish citizens buried in the historic Coming Street Cemetery or regale you with the story of how American Reform Judaism began in 19th-century Charleston.”

The more than 200-year-old Jewish Benevolent Society of Charleston is the oldest Jewish charitable society in the United States, he noted.

“That same animating spirit of tzedakah and helping all those within the community in need of assistance continues to animate so much of Jewish communal life in the city today,” he said.

“Clearly, in Charleston, our history is not simply something to be studied about in books, but a liv-

ing part of our daily life to be examined and experienced as we walk these ancient streets.”

Many Israelis live in Charleston and think of it “with its pristine beaches, inventive culinary scene and laidback seaside vibes as a distinctly American version of Tel Aviv,” he added.

At the College of Charleston, which is home to the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish studies program, there is an “extremely active and supportive” Hillel, according to Cappell. The college has a kosher meal plan for its more than 500 Jewish students, a kosher restaurant (Marty’s Place) and daily minyans near campus, he added.

“At a time when many Jewish college students feel isolated, vulnerable — even under siege — College of Charleston offers Jewish students a

warm, safe but intellectually challenging educational experience,” he said.

Swick told JNS that KKBE plans to undertake a strategic plan in the coming years, which will focus in part on climate change and the impact it will have on the synagogue given its geography.

About three-quarters of a mile away, the Charleston Museum, which bills itself as “America’s first museum,” recently celebrated its 250th anniversary. JNS looked closely at every object and every wall text and label in an anniversary exhibit at the museum and saw no mention of anything Jewish, despite the city’s rich Jewish history.

The museum did not contact KKBE to ask to borrow any Jewish objects for its show, Swick told JNS, noting that the synagogue lends its materials out regularly. “It’s a sin of omission,” he thinks.

After JNS left KKBE during one of the visits, a guide rode by in a horse and buggy packed with tourists. The guide pointed towards the synagogue and noted that it was a Jewish house of worship. But no sooner had the horse passed the building that he was already moving on to other topics.

Some Jewish New Yorkers don’t know where Dylan made his debut in the city, some guides rush past one of America’s most storied synagogues and the first US museum might overlook Charleston’s Jewish history.

But even though the Coming Street Cemetery only has five remaining reservations (one person was buried the day before JNS visited), it does its best to accommodate those who are aware of Jewish Charleston history and want to spend a lot longer on-site than the time it takes a horse to walk past.

“If you have a relative, and you come to us and you say, ‘I really want to be buried next to my great-grandfather, we will do our best to find a spot for you’,” Anita Rosenberg told JNS. “And that happens.”

Torah scrolls at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston. The rightmost Torah is from the Holocaust, and the leftmost one is from the American Revolution. Menachem Wecker

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WINE AND DINE

The kugel (all kinds!) go back a long time

Kosher Kitchen

Joni SchocKett Jewish Star columnist

have often wondered about the history of some of the foods that are commonly associated with Jewish cuisine. One thing I often wondered about when I was a kid was kugel.

My grandmother made a sweet kugel with cinnamon and sugar and noodles, and I loved it. One day she told me we were having kugel for dinner! I was about 4 and I conjured up pictures and tastes of that delicious cinnamon treat. She served dinner and there, in the middle of the table, was a dark brown dish with clearly identifiable pieces of darkened onion on the top. What was this? It certainly was not kugel!

My parents insisted that this was kugel, just a different kind. But I knew better. Kugel meant one thing and this was not it. So there I was — completely confused. How many other words had a totally different — and completely disappointing — meaning?

Obviously, I grew up and learned that there were many more kugels to explore, from noodle to potato to rice and spinach and more. Recently, I did some research on the history of the “kugel.” Where did it come from? Why is the same word used for both a sweet noodle mixture and a savory potato pudding? And how did a word that means ball come to mean a rectangular shaped delicacy with many different permutations!

It turns out that this staple of Jewish cuisine has been around about as long as Jewish food has been identified as such and originally came from Germany. Kugel, which means “ball” in German, began life as a lowly flour and egg dumpling placed deep into the middle of the Sabbath staple, cholent, a mixture of meat and beans.

As the cholent simmered during the cooking process, and sat in steady heat over Shabbat, the low heat first cooked the dumpling, and then infused it with the flavors of the other ingredients. Eventually, people began placing the delicious mixture into its own cooking vessel and added things such as beef fat and chicken fat, vegetables and pieces of meat. Could it have been a precursor of kishke?

Then, in 1871, a kosher cookbook instructed its readers in the art of making noodles from flour and eggs. This dough could be used in place of the plain flour and water dough. In addition, the book then described another way to use the dough by rolling it thin, cutting the dough into long, thin strands and drying the strands. The book advised mixing the noodles with raisins, sugar, eggs, butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg, all of which sound very much like the modern kugels we know today.

As we have passed through the years and the Jewish people have spread out all over the globe, kugels have taken on many regional flavors. Over time, the potato kugel has become almost as popular as the lokshun or noodle kugel and there are now all kinds of vegetable, potato, rice, and noodle kugels that can easily become part of anyone’s cooking repertoire.

One of the nice things about kugels is that they are fairly easy to make, so they are good dishes for teaching budding young cooks. And who doesn’t love a delectable, warm kugel?

Almond Apricot Kugel (Pareve)

• 1 large can apricots, drained and cut into chunks

• 12 oz. medium egg noodles

• 1/2 stick butter or trans-fat free pareve

margarine

• 1/2 cup vanilla (unsweetened) almond milk or soy milk

• 6 extra large eggs

• 1/2 cup sugar depending on the sweetness of the fruit

• 1/2 tsp. almond extract

• Topping:

• 3 cups crushed cornflakes (about 5 or 6 cups before crushing)

• 1/2 cup sliced almonds, blanched or not

• 4 Tbsp. pareve margarine, melted

• 3 Tbsp. sugar

Cook the noodles al dente, remove to a colander, drain and set aside in a large bowl. Melt the margarine and mix with the noodles. Mix the eggs, sugar, almond or soy milk and almond extract together in a bowl. You can whisk it together or use an electric mix. Add the apricots to the eggs and mix. Add the egg mixture to the noodles and mix well.

Grease a glass 3-quart oblong baking dish and place the noodle mixture in the dish. Coarsely crush the cornflakes and mix with the sugar and almonds. Add the margarine and toss to coat. Cover the noodle mixture with the flakes and bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.

Sandy’s Mothers’ Kugel Souffle (Dairy)

This recipe is from a woman named Sandy Roper who won a kugel contest that I ran for a paper I used to write for. It won all the judges rave reviews over with the graham cracker crust topping! They all ran home to make it for their families and friends!

• 1-lb. wide egg noodles

• 6 extra large eggs

• 4 Tbsp. melted butter or margarine

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1 cup sour cream

• 1 lb. cottage cheese (small curd)

• 1/2 lb. farmer’s cheese

• 1/4 lb. cream cheese

• 1-1/2 cups whole milk

• 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• Optional: 1/4 cup (more to taste) dried cranberries, cherries, or snipped apricots

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cover a large, 10 to 12 inch, springform pan with foil. Spray with non-stick spray and set aside.

Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with foil, Set aside.

Cook the noodles as directed until al dente. Strain them and rinse with cold water. Set aside. Place the eggs in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the sugar and blend well on medium speed. Add the melted butter and blend well. Add the sour cream and cheeses and blend on medium high just until smooth. Reduce the speed and slowly add the milk. Mix well. If you like, add the dried fruit and mix by hand to evenly distribute. Remove the bowl from the mixer stand and add the noodles to the cheese mixture. Mix well with a large spoon.

Place the spring-form pan on the cookie sheet. Pour the cheese noodle mixture into the spring-form pan. Place in the oven and bake for 50 to 55 minutes. While it is baking, make the topping.

TOPPING:

• 1-1/2 sticks melted butter or margarine

• 1-1/4 cups slivered or sliced, blanched almonds

• 1-1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs

• 1 cup honey

• Cinnamon or apple pie spice to taste

Combine all in a saucepan or a bowl and stir until blended.

After 50 to 55 minutes, remove the baking

Almond Apple Kugel.

allrecipes.com

Sandy’s Mother’s Kugel Souffle.

Sweet or savory, kugel has deep Jewish roots…

Continued from page 14

sheet with the kugel from the oven and pour the topping evenly over the hot kugel. Place back into the oven for another 40 to 45 minutes. Check at 20 minutes. If the top is browning too quickly, cover lightly with foil and continue to bake. Remove from the oven and let cool. Cut around the outside of the kugel and remove the ring. Place the bottom of the spring-form pan on a pretty plate and serve. Serves 12 to 20. NOTE: You can cook this in a rectangular pan. Just decrease the cooking time a bit (maybe 10 minutes or so).

Mushroom Leek and Onion Kugel (Dairy)

• 12 oz. medium egg noodles

• 1 tsp. olive oil

• 1-1/2 sticks butter

• 1 red or Vidalia (sweet) onion cut into quarters and then into thin slices

• 3 to 4 garlic cloves

• 2 to 3 leeks, white part only, sliced

• 1-lb. assorted mushrooms, white button, baby Portobello, Cremini, etc.

• 2 Tbsp fresh parsley minced

• 2 to 4 Tbsp. freshly minced chives (don’t use dried for this)

• 1 cup ricotta cheese

• 1-1/2 cups cottage cheese, creamed or small curd

• 1 cup sour cream

• 5 extra large eggs

• 1 tsp salt

• 1/4 tsp. white pepper

• 1 cup bread crumbs or cornflake crumbs

Cook the noodles until al dente. Drain and toss with 1 tsp. olive oil. Set aside. Melt one stick of butter in a large frying pan. When melted, add the onions and garlic. Cook until translucent and add the leeks. Cook until the onions are golden. Add the mushrooms and stir until they begin to give off their juices. Cover and simmer for about 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and the parsley, salt, and pepper. Add the cottage cheese, ricotta cheese and sour cream, and mix until thoroughly blended. Add the noodles and mix well. Add the mushroom mixture and mix until completely blended.

Grease a 3 to 4-quart oblong glass baking dish. Pour in the noodle mixture. Melt the rest of the butter and mix it into the cornflake or breadcrumbs. Top the noodles with the crumb mixture and bake at 325 degrees until golden brown. Allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving.

VARIATIONS: Add one-half cup of white wine to the mushroom mixture while cooking. Reduce the liquid by half before adding to the noodles. Sprinkle parmesan cheese over the crumbs before baking.

Vegan, Organic, Gluten-Free Mushroom, Onion, Leek and Rice ‘Kugel’ (Pareve)

This is a variation of an old recipe that my mom used to make. I once overbought mushrooms and just decided to use them in the rice dish. Everyone loved it so that adaptation stayed in. I further adapted it by going organic for a pot luck dinner at a friend’s house. The dish had to be vegan and gluten-free. This is the recipe that has stayed. We called it “kugel” because I made it in the pan my kids associated with my kugel recipe.

• 4 fairly large onions, cut in half and thinly sliced

• 2 large leeks, white part only

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 3 10-oz. packages sliced mushrooms

• 2 to 4 cups organic mushroom, onion, or vegetable stock, or water

• 1-1/2 cups long grain white rice (You can also use brown rice, just pre-cook it longer.)

• 1/2 cup organic wild rice

• 2 Tbsp. canola or extra virgin olive oil

• salt and pepper to taste

OPTIONAL: 1/4 cup fresh chives, snipped

Wash the leeks and slice them in half lengthwise. Cut each half in thin, half-moon slices, and break them apart if they stick together. Place in a large bowl of water and swish to rinse. Let sit, remove to another bowl with a slotted spoon, and discard the water.

Cut the onions in half and thinly slice them into half-moon slices. Break them apart also. Clean the mushrooms and mince the garlic. Heat a large frying pan and add the oil. Add the onions and sauté until golden. Add the leeks and cook until completely softened, about 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms give off their juices and the juices just begin to evaporate. Add the garlic and mix well. Remove from heat.

Generously grease a glass or ceramic 3-quart baking dish. Set aside.

Meanwhile, parboil the rices in different pots until each is about halfway cooked a bit more for the wild rice. Drain. Place in a large bowl and add the mushroom mixture. Mix well. Add the minced chives and season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour into the casserole dish and spread evenly.

Add the water or stock (start with about 2 cups) to the pan in which the mushrooms were cooked and heat just to boiling to deglaze and get up any bits of remaining onion, garlic, and mushroom. Pour the liquid carefully over the rice, mix gently, and cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil.

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, checking several times to make sure that there is enough liquid. Add more boiling liquid, if needed. Uncover to brown for the last 5 to 10 minutes of cooking. Serves 8 to 12.

Jerusalem Kugel, Cheater Style (Pareve)

I make a quick version by using dark brown sugar instead of making caramel. The taste is a bit deeper than when made with the caramel, but this is much easier and now everyone prefers this version. Decrease the pepper for children.

2/3 cup canola oil plus 1 Tbsp.

• 1-1/4 cups dark brown sugar

• 4 extra-large eggs

• 1/2 to 1 tsp. salt, to taste

• 3/4 to 1 tsp. black pepper, more or less to taste

• 1-lb. fine egg noodles

Spray a glass baking pan with non-stick spray. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the noodles as directed. Drain and place the noodle back into the pot. Add a tablespoon of oil and mix well.

For a faster kugel, mix the oil with 1 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of white sugar. Mix well and heat, stirring until blended and the sugar is melted and bubbly. Follow the directions to complete the kugel.

Place the sugar and the oil in a medium, heavy saucepan. Heat over medium-low heat until the sugar melts and the mixture becomes bubbly. Stir constantly with a wooden or silicon spoon. Immediately pour the caramel over the noodles and stir to mix thoroughly. Sprinkle the salt and pepper over the noodles and mix well. Let cool for 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time and mix well.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees, 60 to 75 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Serve hot or warm. Serves 8 to 12.

Vegan, Organic, Gluten-Free Mushroom, Onion, Leek and Rice Kugel. bellyfull.net

Mushroom Leek and Onion Kugel.

immigrantstable.com

Jerusalem Kugel, “cheater style.” maadan.com

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 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

Wed June 5 / Iyyar 28

Yom Yerushalayim

Fri June 7 / Sivan 1

Bamidar

Candles: 8:06 • Havdalah: 9:15

Tue June 11 / 5 Sivan

Erev Shavuos

Candles: 8:08

There’s always been a duality to Jewish time

rabbi sir jonathan sacks zt”l

Alongside the holiness of place and person is the holiness of time, something parshat Emor charts in its deceptively simple list of festivals and holy days (Lev. 23:1-44).

Time plays an enormous part in Judaism. The first thing G-d declared holy was a day, Shabbat, at the conclusion of Creation. The first mitzvah given to the Jewish people as a whole, prior to the Exodus, was the command to sanctify time, by determining and applying the Jewish calendar (Ex. 12:1-2).

The Prophets were the first people in history to see G-d in history, seeing time itself as the arena of the Divine-human encounter. Virtually every other religion and civilization before and since has identified G-d, reality, and truth with timelessness.

Isaiah Berlin used to quote Alexander Herzen who said about the Slavs that they had no history, only geography. The Jews, he said, had the reverse: a great deal of history but all too little geography. Much time, but little space.

So time in Judaism is an essential medium of the spiritual life. But there is one feature of the Jewish approach to time that has received less attention than it should: the duality that runs through its entire temporal structure.

Take, for instance, the calendar as a whole. Christianity uses a solar calendar, Islam a lunar one. Judaism uses both. We count time both by the monthly cycle of the moon and the seasonal cycle of the sun.

Then consider the day. Days normally have one identifiable beginning, whether this is at nightfall or daybreak or — as in the West — somewhere between. For calendar purposes, the Jewish day begins at nightfall (“And it was evening and it was morning, one day”). But if we look at the structure of the prayers — the morning prayer instituted by Abraham, afternoon by Isaac, evening by Jacob — there is a sense in which the worship of the day starts in the morning, not the night before.

Years, too, usually have one fixed beginning — the “new year.” In Judaism, according to the Mishnah (Rosh Hashana 1:1), there are no less than four “new years.” The first of Ellul is the new year for the tithing of animals. The fifteenth of Shvat (or, according to Bet Shammai, the first of Shvat) is the new year for trees. These are specific and subsidiary dates, but the other two are more fundamental.

Time in Judaism is an essential medium of the spiritual life.

According to the Torah, the first month of the year is Nissan. This was the day the earth became dry after the Flood (Gen. 8:13). It was the day the Israelites received their first command as a people (Ex. 12:2). One year later it was the day the Tabernacle was dedicated and the service of the Priests inaugurated (Ex. 40:2). But the festival we call the New Year, Rosh Hashana, falls six months later.

Holy time itself comes in two forms, as Emor makes clear. There is Shabbat and there are the festivals, and the two are announced separately. Shabbat was sanctified by G-d at the beginning of time for all time. The festivals are sanctified by the Jewish people to whom was given the authority and responsibility for fixing the calendar.

Hence the difference in the blessings we say. On Shabbat we praise G-d who “sanctifies Shabbat.” On the festivals we praise G-d who sanctifies “Israel and the holy times” — meaning, it is G-d who sanctifies Israel but Israel who sanctifies the holy times, determining on which days the festivals fall.

Even within the festivals there is a dual cycle. One is formed by the three pilgrimage festivals: Pesach, Shavuot, and Succot. These are days that represent the key historic moments at the dawn of Jewish time — the Exodus, the giving of the Torah, and the forty years of desert wandering. They are festivals of history.

The other is formed by the number seven and the concept of holiness: the seventh day, Shabbat; the seventh month, Tishri, with its three festivals of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Succot; the seventh year, Shemittah; and the Jubilee marking the completion of seven seven-year cycles.

These times (with the exception of Succot that belongs to both cycles) have less to do with history than with what, for want of a better word, we might call metaphysics and jurisprudence, ultimate truths about the universe, the human condition, and the laws, both natural and moral, under which we live.

Each is about creation (Shabbat, a reminder of it, Rosh Hashana the anniversary of it), Divine sovereignty, justice, and judgment, together with the human condition of life, death, mortality. So on Yom Kippur we face justice and judgment. On Succot/Shemini Atzeret we pray for rain, celebrate nature (bringing together the lulav, etrog, hadassim, and aravot as the arba minim — the four species — is the only mitzvah we do with unprocessed natural objects), and we read the book of Kohelet, Tanach’s most profound meditation on mortality.

In the seventh and Jubilee years we acknowledge G-d’s ultimate ownership of the land of Israel and the Children of Israel. Hence we let slaves go free, release debts, let the land rest, and restore most property to its original owners. All of these have to do not with G-d’s interventions into history but with His role as Creator and owner of the universe.

One way of seeing the difference between the first cycle and the second is to compare the prayers on Pesach, Shavuot, and Succot with

those of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The Amidah of Pesach, Shavuot, and Succot begins with the phrase “You chose us from all the peoples.” The emphasis is on Jewish particularity.

By contrast, the Amidah for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur begins by speaking of “all You have made, all You have created.” The emphasis is on universality: about the judgment that affects all of creation, everything that lives.

Even Succot has a marked universalist thrust with its seventy sacrificial bulls representing the “seventy nations.” According to Zechariah 14, it is the festival that will one day be celebrated by all the nations.

Why the duality? Because G-d is both the G-d of nature and of culture. He is the G-d of everyone in general, and of the people of the covenant in particular. He is the Author of both scientific law (cause) and religious-ethical law (command).

We encounter G-d in both cyclical time, which represents the movement of the planets, and linear-historical time, which represents the events and evolution of the nation of which we are a part. This very duality gives rise to two

kinds of religious leader: the Prophet and the Priest, and the different consciousness of time each represents.

Since the ancient Greeks, people have searched for a single principle that would explain everything, or the single point Archimedes sought at which to move the world, or the unique perspective (what philosophers call “the view from nowhere”) from which to see truth in all its objectivity.

Judaism tells us there is no such point. Reality is more complicated than that. There is not even a single concept of time. At the very least we need two perspectives to be able to see reality in three dimensions, and that applies to time as well as space. Jewish time has two rhythms at once.

Judaism is to the spirit what Niels Bohr’s complementarity theory is to quantum physics. In physics light is both a wave and a particle. In Judaism time is both historical and natural. Unexpected, counter-intuitive, certainly. But glorious in its refusal to simplify the rich complexity of time: the ticking clock, the growing plant, the ageing body, and the ever-deepening mind.

‘Chesed shel emet’ and the unburied corpse

Rabbi DR. tzvi

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Union

Dead. Unburied. Abandoned. Forgotten. What can be a worse fate?

I once read a very moving novel about the events immediately preceding World War I and the fate of those who were caught up in the chaos of the opening days of that war. The author, a Jew, was Joseph Roth, and the name of the book is The Radetzky March.

I was drawn to this book because it deals, in part, with the Jews of Galicia and the effect that World War I had upon them. Both my paternal and maternal great-grandparents were caught up in the events of those times, and I wished to learn more about those events, if only from a fictional account.

I found the book informative and troubling, but the single event recorded in it that had the most impact on me was a description of the novel’s hero, a combatant in the initial outbreak of the battle and gunfire. At one point, as he was fleeing for safety, he encountered the corpse of

one of his fellows. Rather than pass this corpse by in his flight, he chose to drag the corpse to a nearby graveyard, dig a shallow grave with his bayonet, and bury the poor man.

Although the hero of this story was not a Jew, he was acting in accordance with a supreme Jewish value. At great personal risk, he buried a met mitzvah, an abandoned corpse with no one else present to bury it. Our Torah insists that giving such a corpse the dignity of a proper burial is a mitzvah, one which takes priority over almost any other good deed.

The source for this great mitzvah is in this week’s Torah portion, Emor, where we read of the strict prohibition upon kohanim, members of the priestly caste, to come into contact with the dead. Exceptions are made for the kohen’s parents, children, siblings, and spouse.

And an exception is made for the met mitzvah. Should the kohen encounter an abandoned corpse, and no one else is available to bury it, he is commanded to ignore the prohibition against contact with the dead, and he must bury that corpse himself.

This is the meaning of the phrase in the very first verse of our parsha, “he shall not defile himself for any dead person among his people” (Leviticus 21:1). Paraphrasing Rashi’s

words here: “When the dead man is among his people, the kohen cannot defile himself, but when the dead man is not among his people, i.e., there is no one else to bury him, then the prohibition does not apply.”

Our tradition is unusually sensitive to the sanctity of the human body. In life, certainly. But even in death. A proper Jewish burial is the last chesed shel emet (kindness of truth) that one can perform for another.

It is this important Jewish value which has led Jewish communities throughout the ages to do all that they could to recover the bodies of those of our brethren who perished in prisons, on battlefields, or in tragic natural disasters.

I must note a poignant incident in our history, an incident which culminated in the recovery of two metei mitzvah. Part of the narrative of these two heroes is recounted in the book The Deed by Gerold Frank. It is the story of two boys who gave their lives to assassinate a high British official, based in Egypt, whose policies threatened to block Jewish immigration into what was then Palestine. Their names were Eliahu Bet Zouri and Eliahu Hakim.

They acted under the orders of the high command of the Stern Group. They succeeded in assassinating the official, but were tried and

hanged for their efforts. They were buried near Cairo in 1945. But they were never forgotten. In 1975, the State of Israel exchanged 20 Arab prisoners for the bodies of these two young men and reburied them in hero’s graves upon Mount Herzl.

In recovering their bodies and eventually affording them an appropriate Jewish burial, the Israeli government was adhering to the teaching of this week’s Torah portion. They saw to it that these metei mitzvah were buried properly. Even at this moment, the remains of several Israel soldiers are unrecovered and are held by our enemies. We hope and pray that even in these uncertain times, and perhaps especially in these times, our efforts to reclaim the bodies of these heroes will be successful. These soldiers are metei mitzvah in every sense of that phrase. They performed great mitzvot in their military service, and bringing them home for a proper burial is the least we can do to honor their memories.

And so, this week again, as so often in our study of the parsha, we discovered a value of paramount importance, a priority mitzvah, buried between the lines, nay between the words, of a simple phrase. This week, that phrase is in the very first verse of Parshat Emor.

We must always make every moment count

It was our first masah, our first forced march. We were barely two weeks in the army and Itzik, a sadistic little first sergeant who had made it his mission to break us into soldiers, owned us for the night.

We were based in a miserable little hole not far from the Mediterranean — which meant there were lots of sand dunes for them to run us through. We soon discovered that running in sand dunes is an exercise in futility. For every two steps forward you end up taking one step back, and the weight of the sand pulling against every foot is an ever-growing agony.

In addition to our regular gear, I was carrying a 20-liter jerry can on my back, and this dead weight added to the pain. I still remember the misery on my closest buddy Pinny’s face, when we reached the top of that dune, with the illusion that we had somehow made it, and there, stretched out before us as far as the eye could see, was an endless sea of sand dunes just

waiting for that sadistic drill sergeant to march us through.

Hours later, we came full circle and could see the main base gate ahead of us. As we drew closer, our first march seemingly under our belts, we actually began to sing! And just as we were feet away from entering the base, tents and showers almost within our grasp, Itzik screamed out two terrible words that I will remember forever: “Yeminah. P’nei!” “Right. Turn!”

We turned along the outside of the base, exactly where we had started our ordeal hours earlier, and proceeded to do the entire thing all over again.

I don’t recall a single experience in my entire army career that came close to matching the utter despair of that moment, as we realized we had no idea where we were going, how long it would be till we got there, and the depressing fact that Sergeant Itzik, the sadist, could play with us as long as he liked.

Often in life, it seems like we are just running up and down sand dunes, and we find ourselves wondering: Where are we going, and how did we end up in this seemingly pointless, endless journey?

We try to set goals for ourselves, and then seem to lose track of how to get where we

thought we were headed, wondering what our goals really are, why we bother setting them, and whether the ones we have are really so worthwhile after all?

Does Judaism offer a recipe for how to keep life on track?

Consider the Jewish ritual we are now in

the midst of, the counting of the Omer.

Beginning with the second night of Passover, we count the days leading up to the festival of Shavuot, which commemorates the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

Every evening for seven weeks, we recite the blessing thanking G-d for the mitzvah of the counting of the Omer, and proceed to count. The Omer was actually a sacrifice of barley (it was the beginning of the harvest of the grain) offered up in the Temple on the second day of Passover. In fact, the source for this mitzvah appears in this week’s parsha, Emor:

“And you shall count for yourselves, from the day after Shabbat, from the day you bring the waved Omer offering, seven complete weeks.” (Leviticus 23:15)

The mitzvah of the Omer is all about counting; we are counting days and weeks, but we are really counting time.

What does it mean to count a day? We live in

an age where the smart phones and post-it notes have turned our days into a list of ‘to do’s. We think a day is a project list, but, in truth, we have lost sight of what a day is really meant to be.

There is an expression that has found its way into our lexicon today: “Time is money.” Is this really what a day is? Judaism suggests that nothing could be further from the truth.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe once said that time is life. A day is a piece of life, but do we really see this? When we fall into bed at the end of another long day, do we really feel we have lived a piece of life, or have life’s endless trivialities and mundane details actually prevented us from really living?

We long for purpose and meaning, yet life somehow seems to get in the way of living! How do we get over all the sand dunes, without getting so caught up in the hill above us and the weight on our backs, that we completely lose sight of where we are headed and how to get there?

A beautiful mishnah in Pirkei Avot says that if a person, in the midst of learning Torah, happens across a beautiful tree and interrupts study to exclaim “How beautiful is this tree,” “his life is forfeit.”

In other words, allegorically, for interrupt-

See Freedman on page 22

‘The Accidental Zionist’ by Rabbi Ian Pear

This week’s book, “The Accidental Zionist” by Rabbi Ian Pear (New Song Publishers, 2008) is an informal, somewhat irreverent book, zany at times about subjects that are dead serious. To put a smile on the face of an impending disaster takes some doing, and in this Rabbi Pear succeeds.

The premise of the book is that we, the Jewish people, are in deep trouble. (Surprise! When aren’t we in trouble? — In good times we have trouble and in bad times we have tzores What’s new about that?)

In this book we are presented with a series of challenges that reflect the views of a rabbi (a proud YU grad and a ba’al teshuva) who takes his religious beliefs very seriously. Rabbi Pear

has degrees in law from NYU’s School of Law and in international relations from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

What I found most endearing about this book was the sharp focus the author places on his deep devotion to the religious component of the State of Israel’s purpose for existence. Without our belief in the divine origin of our claim to Eretz Yisrael, all else is worthless.

A godless nationalism, however phrased in eloquent secular terms, is not relevant to our people’s quest for a homeland in the Land of Israel. Rabbi Pear places this divine claim as the predicate for all that comes in train when it involves the safety, security and wellbeing of Israel.

our historic claims to Israel. In addition, Rabbi Pear clearly defines how halacha-based ethical monotheism, and an ethical behavior and lifestyle, is at the essence of the Jewish people’s purpose as an agent of G-d’s rule on earth.

Israel is the base for such a message to go forth to all mankind. There is no other purpose for both our existence as a separate nation among the nations of this world and for Israel’s existence as an “Am Segulah,” a treasured, chosen nation.

arguments that when presented by others seem forced or embarrassingly clumsy at best.

Toward the conclusion of this book, the author quotes one of America’s premier Jewish theologians, Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovitz, of blessed memory, who said the following that should serve as the capstone to this review. He states as follows:

This predicate transcends religious denominational divisions, particularly that of the Mesorati (Conservative) movement in Israel that shares the same belief in the divine origin of

Despite a powerful military, a high-tech economy and a magnificent higher educational system, Rabbi Pear opines that we are only defined by higher spiritual criteria. And how right he is, with no apologies and no misgivings.

While at times a bit much, his personal anecdotes make their points obvious to even the most casual of readers. This helps to strengthen

The concept of Israel as a holy nation [should] not only not conflict with the universalism of Israel’s prophets, but actually lead to it as its own logical completion. The idea of a holy nation is not to be confused with that of nationalism. The goal of nationalism is to serve the nation; a holy nation serves G-d. The law of nationalism is national self-interest: the law of a holy nation is the will of G-d. In nationalistic ideology, the nation is an end in itself; the holy nation is a means to an end.

No one else could have said this better than Rav Berkovitz, and Rabbi Ian Pear knew this, and had the grace to share his words with us. Originally published in 2009.

From heart of Jerusalem Rabbi binny FReeDMan Jewish Star columnist

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Liberal media still in denial on post-Oct. 7 antisemitism

Seven months of an unprecedented surge in antisemitism that has turned American college campuses and even K-12 schools into hostile environments for Jews has changed a lot of minds about the issue. The willingness of much of the political left to downplay or even justify the atrocities of Oct. 7 — and then to flip the narrative about the war that Hamas started to one in which the victims of terrorism are somehow the real villains of the story — has shocked even many political liberals into rethinking their assumptions about where the real danger lies.

But not the New York Times.

As two lengthy news features published in the paper this week confirmed, the flagship of liberal journalism in the United States hasn’t let events or the reality of a post-Oct. 7 world interfere with their ideological or political agendas.

In one story, the newspaper devoted the time of four reporters to take a deep dive into contemporary antisemitism. But the result of what is described as their extensive research is that they have come to the conclusion that the real culprits are not the people who seek the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet, legitimize a genocidal terrorist movement as justified “resistance” or attempt to allow those responsible for the mass murder of 1,200 people to get away with it. Instead, the Times believes that the problem rests with (surprise!) Republicans who are rallying in support of a beleaguered State of Israel and who are opposed to the deluge of Jew-hatred on display in the American public square since the current war began.

In another, the paper reported a congressional hearing about the growing problem of antisemitism in K-12 schools throughout the country as primarily one about how those in charge of these institutions scored points against members of Congress who care about the issue.

These are just two prominent exam-

ples out of many that could be pointed to that show how the Times and other liberal media outlets manipulate coverage of this issue to promote their own partisan agendas. They are worth noting precisely because they illustrate how ideological agendas work to present a distorted picture of a crisis that serves primarily to deflect attention from the real cause.

In this case, that means denying or downplaying the fact that the principal engines of antisemitism in 2024 America are left-wing ideologies like critical race theory and intersectionality, which grant a permission slip to Jew-hatred.

The pervasive influence of these toxic ideas in American education has helped to indoctrinate largely ignorant students to parrot what earlier generations might have easily understood to be Soviet-era Marxist propaganda about Zionism being racism and Israel being an “apartheid state” against which all “resistance” — even the orgy of rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction that Palestinians carried on Oct. 7 — can be justified.

These ideologies have mainstreamed a belief that the world is divided into two perpetually warring groups: white oppressors and people of color who are their victims. And it is only through belief in the orthodoxies of this new secular religion can one conclude that Israel — the democratic nation that was attacked — is a genocidal “white” oppressor (even though the majority of Israeli Jews are people of color since they trace their origins to the Middle East or North Africa) and that the real genocidal terrorists of Hamas and their Palestinian supporters are victims deserving of sympathy and support.

Moreover, only by subscribing to these ideas can the denomination of normative Jewish beliefs and the harassment of Jewish students up to and including violence be treated as reasonable expressions of free speech.

Everyone knows that if this sort of treatment were directed at other minorities such as African-Americans, Hispanics or Asians, rather than being defended, it would be

The

This

Times canceled

This is an excerpt from an article published this week in Algemeiner.com by Ira Stoll, The Algemeiner’s presscriticism columnist.

A longtime New York newspaper editor has publicly canceled his New York Times subscription after 60 years, citing “consistent misrepresentations” about Israel that are “dangerous” and “debilitating toward the quest for truth.”

The veteran journalist, Ed Weintrob, was previously the editor of the Brooklyn Paper and is now the editor and publisher of The Jewish Star newspaper on Long Island. Weintrob is hardly a knee-jerk critic of the New York Times — in fact, when much of the Jewish community was up in arms against the Times for its investigative criticism of Jewish schools, Weintrob fronted a defense of the Times coverage by Jonathan Tobin, headlining it, “Tobin: Even lying Times got this right.”

In a May 3 social media post, Weintrob posted a screenshot of the cancellation form on the New York Times website, with the box ticked that listed as a reason, “I have concerns about the New York Times’ coverage.”

In the explanation field on the form, Weintrob wrote, “A lifelong subscriber (and a journalist for nearly 50 years) I’ve approached the cancel button many times but never hit the trigger. The NYT, while not perfect, could usually be relied on to seemingly attempt honest coverage of key issues.”

The editor went on to tell the Times: “Your consistent misrepresentations toward Israel are at best cartoonish, at worst dangerous, and in all events debilitating to the quest for truth.”

To his social media audience, Weintrob explained, “Pushing that ‘cancel’ button was hard, but doing it was long overdue. … It’s a cold-turkey break to a 60 year addiction (yes, I’ve been reading the NY Times print edition that long).”

Weintrob has plenty of company in deciding he no longer wants the print New York Times in his home. On May 8, the New York Times Company announced that print subscription revenues had declined, notwithstanding price increases, and that the number of print subscribers had dropped to 640,000 in the first quarter of 2024 from 710,000 in the first quarter of 2023, a nearly ten percent decline in a single year.

The paper has seen some digital growth, but newsonly digital subscriptions have also dropped off, leaving it unclear whether the company’s customers are paying for New York Times news and opinion or for the word games, cooking recipe library, and “Athletic” sports publication.

Remaining Times readers looking for evidence of Weintrob’s claims of a departure from the truth will have no problem finding it in the Times. … I’d probably join Weintrob and cancel too, if I didn’t need to read the darn thing for this press criticism column.

JONATHAN S. TObiN JNS Editor-in-Chief

Anti-Israel protesters gather in front of the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, site of the opening plenary of the Jewish National Fund-USA annual conference on Nov. 30, 2023. Carin M. Smilk

What Biden did not say about antisemitism

Global Focuss BEN COHEN

President Joe Biden’s speech on May 7 at the US Capitol, during which he eloquently revisited Nazi Germany’s journey from racial laws discriminating against Jews to outright genocide, demonstrating the parallels with today’s febrile situation along the way, struck all the right notes.

And that, perhaps, was the problem.

While I applauded pretty much every word that I heard, what frustrated me was that there was nothing new. True, it’s reassuring that an American president understands what the Holocaust was, how it was carried out and how it still continues to impact Jewish communities. As Biden said, “[B]y the time the war ended, 6 million Jews — one out of every three Jews in the entire world — were murdered.”

Nearly 80 years on from the victory over Nazi Germany, and despite the existence of a Jewish state and an unprecedented flowering of Jewish communities in many of the world’s democracies, there are still fewer Jews now than there were before Hitler embarked on his program of slaughter. And as Biden’s speech indicated, what was in relative terms a post-war “Golden Age” is now over.

That was why I’d hoped I would hear something new, something different. But in the end, even if Biden spoke movingly, his words were safe and, for most Americans, non-controversial.

Much of the closing part of his speech was given to a memoir of Tom Lantos, the late California congressional representative and a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who once worked on Biden’s staff. Lantos’s story is certainly in-

spiring, but an affectionate review of his life isn’t going to explain or deter the antisemitic wave we are facing.

On the pro-Hamas protests that have roiled US campuses, again Biden correctly depicted the slogans and signs on display as “despicable.”

Yet there was precious little detail in the speech about how to confront this problem, save for acknowledgement of truths that are widely recognized, at least among Jews (“We know hate never goes away, it only hides”), and a few bland clichés (“We also know what stops hate. One thing: all of us.”)

Any plaudits that Biden earned from American Jews were quickly lost in the days that followed the speech. As Israeli troops prepared for an assault on Rafah, the last bastion of Hamas in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip, Biden announced a suspension of key weapons deliveries to the Israel Defense Forces in a bid to force a ceasefire.

For many Jews, including the huge number who say they would never vote for Donald Trump under any circumstances, Biden’s decision to hand the Hamas rapists and murderers an operational advantage felt like the worst betrayal.

Contrasting his speech at the Capitol with the subsequent interview he gave to CNN’s Erin Burnett, it was tempting to conclude that the kinds of Jews that Biden identifies with are those who stoically accept their fate while believing that there is sufficient goodness among the wider population to alleviate their plight. But fighting back? Seeking to destroy irredeemable enemies before they destroy us? That, it would seem, is a step too far.

What could Biden have said that he didn’t say on the day? What aspects of the current surge of antisemitism would have convinced a besieged Jewish community that the leader of the free world is not just an ally, but someone who fundamentally grasps the nature of contemporary threats on multiple fronts?

There was something of a clue in the middle

of his speech, when Biden referred to the “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the earth.”

It was this observation that needed expanding because it gets to the heart of the issue. For while the basic impulse here hasn’t changed over the centuries, the difference today lies with the bearers of this message. Pockets of antisemitism remain on the far right and among certain Christians, but that problem can be contained. The existential threat now emanates from Red-Green alliance of Islamists and the far left — this was what Biden should have identified. But he didn’t.

For this coalition, the existence of a Jewish state is the vehicle through which the “ancient desire” described by Biden manifests. Hence, the presentation is different.

Whereas Jews were once portrayed as obstacles to spiritual redemption — a cursed people whose existence, as St. Augustine famously argued, is an example of what happens when Jesus is rejected — in our contemporary secular world, Jews are obstacles to the realization of national and social justice, universalist goals that have been fatally compromised by Jewish particularism. Yet again, Jews are scorning both the messenger and the message, so yet again, they must suffer for it.

In the pro-Hamas encampments that have sprung up on college campuses across the United States, as well as in Europe and Australia, ancient cries of “Death to the Jews” and other epithets have been heard, but these have been over-

See Cohen on page 22

There’s a real difference between East, West

Long ago, I was held captive in Kabul as a young bride. When I managed to get out, I understood in my bones that the West and the East are very different places. Other Americans do not understand this.

Although I loved many things about the Muslim world — the awe-inspiring mountains, the ancient bazaars, the ceremonial aspects of dining, rose petals in the pudding, the biblical barefoot nomads tinkling as they walked together with their sheep and camels — I saw that the East was very wild. It was rife with unending blood feuds, vigilante (in)justice, illiteracy, poverty, disease, cruelty and above all hatred. Hatred of infidels, especially Jews, Christians and Hazaras who are Shiite, not Sunni Muslims. Hatred of women. Hatred of servants. Hatred of daughters-in-law. Hatred of their own political dissidents and free-thinkers. Hatred of Americans. But respect for Nazi Germany and German products.

One cannot blame any of this on imperialism or colonialism. These customs were all indigenous. It is crucial to understand this.

Why? Because this is the neighborhood in which Israel lives. The Jewish state has weathered every storm. We are an eternal people and will always survive. But the cost in blood has been high. The IDF is now fighting brilliantly. The Israelis are miraculously resilient. But many of us in the Diaspora are traumatized. We are in free fall. How could it come to this? Where can Diaspora Jews run to now? Must we start thinking like this? How can we help Israel to survive such hatred and its many

military challenges?

The situation is now beyond surreal. Swarms of angry radicalized and indoctrinated Arabs, Muslims and American students are attacking Jews and Israel all over the world. The attacks are coordinated, much like the planes of 9/11. They are all well-funded and well-planned, just like Oct. 7.

Israel’s contestant in the Eurovision contest in Sweden was booed during her dress rehearsal. Well, that’s Islamist Malmo for you. There’s a reason it’s known as the rape capital of Europe. Jewish students are being physically and verbally attacked at hundreds of American universities. There are no consequences. Students whose parents have paid good money and have worked hard

to graduate will have no graduation ceremonies.

In the early 21st century, I wrote that, for Jews and the West, it was already one minute before midnight. I kept saying so more and more insistently after 9/11 and as all the Muslim intifadas unfolded in Israel and all over Europe. Synagogue bombings, plane hijackings, kidnappings, stabbings, car-rammings, human bombs that blew up Israeli civilians.

But actually, I was late to the party of doomsayers.

I have written about the French novelist Jean Raspail before. Has anyone read his haunting and apocalyptic dystopian novel “The Camp of the Saints?”

In 1973, Raspail predicted the Palestinian-

style intifada that now rages in southern and northern Israel, Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and in France, England, Scandinavia, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Austria.

In 1975, Raspail published his novel in America, where it was compared to Camus’s “The Plague” and Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels.”

The book imagines a flotilla of millions of immigrants traveling from the Ganges to France. They are starving “wretches, overwhelmed by misery.”

Raspail wrote, “I literally saw them, I saw the major problem they presented, a problem absolutely insoluble by our present moral standards. To let them in would destroy us. To reject them would destroy them.”

An all-powerful, politically correct intelligentsia swiftly joins compassionate French Christians in ecstatically welcoming the mass invasion that annihilates France. The French priests, intellectuals and student activists who want to embrace and assist the implacably angry new arrivals are repaid with death and terror: The immigrants loot everything in sight; they murder for new apartments; France is run into the ground. Raw and relentless, the novel is every bit as brilliant as Orwell’s 1984.

Raspail dared to ask the hard questions: Are we our brothers’ keepers? Must the West share all its resources with a barbarous East, even if it means our own demise? What will the consequences be for the West (specifically for France) if it welcomes profoundly hostile immigrants who do not wish to assimilate and whose own cultural and religious practices sanction violence, illiteracy and gender and religious apartheid?

Raspail was accused of being a racist and a fascist. In 1982, in an epilogue to an edition of his book, Raspail recalled the wrath he incurred: “What I was saying was terrible. I waited patiently to be burnt at the stake.”

President Joe Biden delivers the keynote address at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony at the US Capitol on May 7. Adam Schultz, White House

PHyllis CHEslEr

Jewish vote, up for grabs, may decide election

caroline glick

Israel Hayom

Afew weeks ago, Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, senior rabbi at the Steven Wise Free Synagogue in New York, delivered a shocking sermon. Standing at his pulpit, Hirsch voiced a stern warning to Democrats.

Noting that he is someone “who is finely attuned to American Jewish sentiment,” Hirsch told Democratic elected officials: “Do not take American Jews for granted.”

Hirsch explained, “I have spoken to many American Jews in the past few months who have surprised me with their anxiety about developments in the Democratic Party, and their perception that it is becoming increasingly hostile to Israel, and tolerant of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in its own ranks.”

“Be careful,” Hirsch warned. “The results of the upcoming election do not only depend on Michigan.”

Many dismissed his remarks with a shrug. For decades, Republicans have asked conservative Jews to explain how it is that American Jews vote for Democrat Party candidates even though Republicans are so much more supportive of Israel. The question comes so frequently that most conservative Jews answer it in their sleep.

First, most American Jews see themselves first and foremost as Democrats or liberals, not as Jews; they love Israel, but it’s not really a voting issue for them. And second, the Jewish vote doesn’t matter because most American Jews live in deep blue states that will never tilt Republican.

The Muslim vote, on the other hand, is always in contention.

For the past decade or so, Muslim Americans have demanded that Democratic candidates earn their votes in every electoral cycle by adopting hostile positions on Israel and opposition to tough counterterror laws. Beginning in 2006, anti-Israel activists from the Marxist-Islamic bloc have repeatedly ousted pro-Israel Democrats from office and replaced them with virulent opponents of the Jewish state.

Ahead of the 2024 elections, the Marxist-Islamist alliance in Michigan has been insisting that Biden’s re-election is dependent on their votes. And so they used the Democratic primary on Feb. 27 to try and demonstrate their power.

Led by Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the alliance’s “uncommitted” campaign called for Israel haters to vote “uncommitted” in the primaries to show the White House that US support for Israel will cost Biden the swing state of Michigan.

In the event, the “uncommitted” campaign was a dud. Biden won 81.1% of the vote. The “uncommitted” ballots comprised a mere 13.2% of the ballots. While the media, Tlaib and her cronies presented 13.2% as a major accomplishment, it was a failure. Around 10% of Michigan Democrats habitually vote “uncommitted” in presidential primaries. Ahead of the 2012 elections, 11% of Michigan Democrats voted “uncommitted” against then-President Barack Obama.

Yet rather than recognize that Biden’s troubles in Michigan have more to do with his energy policies and his electric-car mandate, which have adversely affected the auto industry, than with his tepid support for Israel, Biden and his advisers

The White House and its supporters are using Muslims in Michigan to justify a slew of deeply hostile policies against Israel. Will that matter come November?

have maintained faith in the claim that his presidential hopes depend on Dearborn’s Hamas-supporting imams.

The White House and its supporters use the Muslim vote in Michigan to justify a slew of deeply hostile policies that the administration has adopted against Israel. Administration apologists in the media have also used Michigan’s Muslim voters to explain the administration’s refusal to take any effective action to protect the civil rights of American Jews on college campuses. And, of course, they also insisted that Trump’s advantage in most of the Michigan presidential polls owes to the Muslim vote.

This brings us back to Hirsch’s warning. Is the Jewish vote really in danger for Democrats?

And does it matter?

There haven’t been any public polls taken of Jewish voter sentiment since November, when Biden was widely viewed as the greatest friend Israel had ever had in Washington. But anecdotal evidence is piling up that the Jewish vote is in contention like it hasn’t been in more than 40 years. Moreover, American Jewish voters may well turn out to be the demographic that determines the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

The Jewish Electorate Institute’s poll of Jewish voters in November showed that the intensity of concern about antisemitism had increased sharply since the previous poll in June 2023. Moreover, American Jews were increasingly anxious about antisemitism. Given that the antisemitic onslaught against American Jews has grown exponentially since November, it can be assumed that the numbers are even higher now.

Moreover, perhaps buoyed by this week’s Harvard-Harris poll that showed massive majorities of Americans supporting Israel and its war aims, including its planned conquest of Hamas’s final outpost of Rafah, establishment American Jews are beginning to openly criticize the Biden administration’s hostile policies towards Israel.

On Thursday, Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote a long post on X sharply criticizing the Biden administration’s refusal to support Israel’s planned operation in Rafah. The Washington Institute has long been viewed as AIPAC’s think tank, and its views are perceived as representative of the liberal American Jewish establishment. It is hard to think of any instance where its senior leaders have openly rejected a Democratic administration’s positions on Israel.

Satloff wrote that “the current US position on Gaza is backwards.” He then explained that the administration’s opposition to Israel’s planned operation in Rafah is “a lose-lose-lose-lose proposition.

It has the unintended effect of keeping the hostages in captivity. It isn’t achieving a ceasefire that would open the door to an Arab role in Gaza. It runs out the clock on the potential for a SaudiIsrael-US blockbuster deal. And unless the [administration] thinks that Rafah will never hap-

pen, it likely extends the Gaza conflict into the summer and perhaps autumn, which the White House should see as disastrous for POTUS’s reelection chances.”

As one Washington insider quipped, “If Satloff is advocating in public what is subtly but clearly a sharp break from the administration over Hamas and Rafah, then it is a strong sign the political winds have shifted in the Jewish establishment and bodes very ill ultimately for the Democrats.”

Other anecdotal evidence is less cerebral. Reports are multiplying daily of young, middle-aged and older Jewish Democratic voters who never considered voting for Republicans announcing to their families or whispering to their lone Republican associate that they are voting for Trump, or will stay home or vote for independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., but will never vote for Biden.

So if the Jewish vote is in contention like never before, if liberal Jews join conservative Jews in voting “as Jews” rather than as Democrats or liberals in November, will it matter?

According to Richard Baehr, co-founder and former political correspondent for American Thinker, not only does the Jewish vote matter, it could easily be decisive.

It is true that New York and California have the largest Jewish communities, and they remain firmly in the Democratic column. But four swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona — may well be decided by their large Jewish communities.

Baehr explains that the Jewish vote in all four states is larger than the margins of victory in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential races. In 2020, Baehr notes, the final margin of victory in Pennsylvania was 80,000 votes. It was 33,000 in Nevada, 10,000 in Arizona and 12,000 in Georgia. According to the World Population Review, in 2022, Pennsylvania’s Jewish population stood at 434,165. Georgia’s numbered 141,020. There were 123,725 Jewish Americans in Arizona and 79,800 in Nevada.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter won 71% of the Jewish vote in his race against incumbent Gerald Ford. In 1979, Carter mediated the peace accord between Israel and Egypt. Despite his peacemaker role, Carter’s rhetoric and policies overall were hostile — he facilitated the passage of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council, he flirted with Palestinian terrorists, and he generally accused Israel of being responsible for the pathologies of the Arab world.

So in the 1980 election, large numbers of American Jews walked away from him. Carter’s share of the Jewish vote plunged to 45%. Independent candidate John Anderson won 15% of the Jewish vote, and Ronald Reagan won 39% of the Jewish vote — and the presidency.

As more than 100 university campuses across the country are aflame with anti-Israel and anti-Zionist fervor, and Jew-hatred has now become mainstream in Democratic politics, Jews

are reconsidering many of their basic assumptions about their position in America generally and the Democratic Party specifically.

After refusing to come out with a full-throated condemnation of the onslaught against Jewish students and faculty for weeks, on Thursday, Biden made a statement on the events on US campuses and again failed to give an unqualified denunciation of the trampling of the basic civil and educational rights of Jewish students and faculty, and the delegitimization of the State of Israel. And he could not say the word “antisemitism” without saying “Islamophobia” in the next sentence, even though Jews aren’t harassing Muslims and Muslims are waging a massive campaign against Jews.

The real problem is that Biden is propagating blood libels against Israel directly by accusing Israel of excessive killing of civilians in Gaza and accusing Israel of preventing innocent civilians from receiving adequate food and medicine. These are slanderous claims, and they are fueling the assaults on the campuses. Biden could stop them tomorrow simply by telling the truth. Instead, he is doubling down.

With even dovish, Netanyahu-hating generals now beginning to acknowledge that the administration is siding with Hamas against Israel in the war, and Jewish establishment figures openly denouncing the administration’s anti-Israel policies, it is obvious that it would be foolish for Democrats to take Jewish voters for granted. And it would be equally foolish for Republicans to dismiss the importance of their votes.

The data show that Jews are a big enough demographic to move four swing states away from Biden. Both statistical and anecdotal data make clear that Rabbi Hirsch was correct. Democrats don’t just have a problem with Jews; they have a problem with Jewish voters.

There is a profound opening here for Trump and for Republicans more generally. If Trump forcefully and consistently condemns the antisemitism on campuses, in corporate boardrooms — wherever it is found — and if he stands forthrightly with Israel and denounces Biden for standing with Hamas and trying to overthrow the Israeli government, with his record as president, he may convince many Jews that were never considered even vague prospects for Republicans to vote for him. This is true for Senate races as well.

The Jews of America are frightened by what they are seeing and experiencing. They are frightened for Israel’s future, and they are frightened about their future in America. Until now, they had taken their civil rights and equality before the law for granted.

Until now, they had taken their equality of opportunity for granted. None of this is true any longer. The fear may make them quiet. But it isn’t paralyzing them. They won’t show up at Trump rallies, and they won’t wear MAGA hats. But they will vote. And when they vote, they will be voting as Jews.

Former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and President Donald Trump on the campaign trail in 2020. Trump and Biden campaigns via Facebook

Dr. Phil’s Bibi interview delivers moral clarity

It’s not surprising that the press had a field day following Dr. Phil’s interview last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Until recently, the iconic TV psychologist, who on April 1 launched the multi-platform media brand Merit Street, was known mainly for his on-screen assistance to people with a variety of problems, from marital infidelity and parenting to eating disorders and drug abuse.

Furthermore, the “Dr. Phil Primetime” one-on-one came on the heels of President Joe Biden’s decision to withhold munitions from Israel over the IDF’s Rafah operation. It also preceded Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism — of particular weight this year — and the 76th anniversary of the modern Jewish state’s establishment.

It was therefore inevitable that the media at home and abroad would scour the conversation for sexy headlines. Two elements of the nearly hour-long exchange ostensibly fit the click-bait category.

One was Netanyahu’s “accepting some responsibility” for the country’s having been

Until now, he was known for helping people confront marital infidelity, eating disorders and drug abuse.

caught off guard by Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion.

“We can get into this discussion and we will, but right now, we have to win,” he told Dr. Phil.

“There were failures, obviously. … The government’s first responsibility is to protect the people. That’s the ultimate, enveloping responsibility, and the people weren’t protected. We have to admit that.”

The other was his response to Washington’s arms embargo.

“I’ve known Joe Biden for more than 40 years,” he said. “We’ve had our disagreements; we’ve been able to overcome them. I hope we can overcome them now. But we will do what we have to do to protect our country, our future, and

that means we will defeat Hamas, including in Rafah. We have no other choice.”

Dr. Phil’s performance was highly noteworthy for its moral clarity. Unapologetic proIsrael voices are as rare in Hollywood as they are among journalists and academics, after all. No wonder his words weren’t highlighted by reporters.

Still, his introduction to the sit-down with Netanyahu perfectly encapsulated a view of the Gaza war that everyone, including Israelis, would do well to hear and internalize.

“Tonight, I stand in the city of Jerusalem, the holiest place in the world, sacred to Judaism, Christianity and, much later in history, to Islam,”

he began. “This is also center stage for a war started when the terrorist organization Hamas perpetrated a brutal massacre against primarily Israeli citizens.

“This murderous attack saw the most Jews slaughtered in a single day since the Holocaust. Approximately 1,200 killed, including many women, children and elderly — all unarmed — as well as over 4,000 wounded. Approximately 250 civilians were kidnapped and, as evidenced by video, beaten, brutalized and thrown into inhospitable imprisonment, to say the least. It’s believed that there are still 132 hostages currently in Hamas captivity, although it is unknown how many are actually alive.”

He went on, “This war is between Israel, the Jewish homeland, and Hamas, a terrorist group that has taken over the territory known as the Gaza Strip, which Israel gave up, in a goodwill effort for peace, in 2005 — occupied by Palestinians, many of whom willingly harbor the terrorists, or at least are sympathizers. Others are clearly trapped in a bad situation.”

He continued, “This unprovoked Oct. 7 genocide, and Israel’s predictable response, is also dividing the world, as evidenced by the out-of-control protests seen on too many college campuses across America. I was present on the UCLA campus recently, speaking with Jewish students and Israeli Jewish students throughout the day and through the takedown of the pro-Palestinian encampment late into the night. Masquerading as exercising their right to free speech, these UCLA protesters, along with others on campuses across the nation, have resorted to threats, intimidation and physical assault to suppress pro-Israeli counterparts.”

Finally, he pointed out that he was conducting the interview with Netanyahu “at perhaps the most critical time in this conflict — a conflict with implications the world over.”

He sure got that right. And neither he nor Netanyahu disappointed in emphasizing that fact.

Here’s the network behind campus antisemitism

Antisemitic violence and intimidation continue at encampments and protests at universities across the United States. At the same time, debates on free speech, hate speech and threats of retribution have paralyzed many university administrators.

But a key aspect of the campus dynamics has been largely overlooked: administrators, faculty, donors and policymakers.

The antisemitic events on campus are not spontaneous protests for human rights or peace. They are an orchestrated effort backed up by a network of NGOs. Many of these NGOs have a long history of antisemitism, incitement to violence and ties to terrorism — as my organization NGO Monitor’s ongoing research has documented.

The terror-supporting NGOs include Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Within Our Lifetime (WOL), the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Samidoun. While these groups say they stand for human rights and justice, they have all expressed support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

In the wake of the massacre, SJP published a statement referring to the violence as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” Going further, SJP appeared to encourage further massacres. It claimed, “This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”

JVP refers to Palestinian terrorism as “resistance” and promotes antisemitic tropes. These included a cartoon that depicted Israeli soldiers joyously drinking the blood of dead Palestinians. To avoid being labeled antisemitic, JVP uses the word “Jewish” in its name. Yet its stated goal is creating “a wedge” within the American Jewish community. It hopes this will aid in its campaign to eliminate US economic, military and political support for Israel.

The list of similar statements by the NGOs behind the campus unrest is endless, as our recent report documents.

Leaders of some of these NGOs also engage in pro-terrorist incitement. For example, Abdullah Akl, a WOL organizer who serves as the director of advocacy and civic engagement for the Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors have found “was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” During an April 2024 protest, Akl led a chant calling on Abu Obaida, Hamas’s “military” spokesman, to bomb Tel Aviv.

rect ties to the terror group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Akl is not alone. Samidoun founder and leader Khaled Barakat and his wife Charlotte Kates spoke at the March 2024 “Resistance 101” event at Columbia University. Barakat told Columbia student activists, “Your work is so important to the resistance in Gaza.” Kates claimed, “There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas.” Germany rejected Barakat’s request for an extension of his residency permit, citing his antisemitism and di-

Tellingly, these NGOs are not transparent about their funding sources, internal structure or links with other NGOs and organizations. For example, instead of filing for non-profit status and issuing its own financial statements, National SJP uses the WESPAC Foundation — a Westchester, New York-based organization registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — as its sponsor. This obscures the scale and sources of SJP’s income and paid employees. Likewise, none of SJP’s numerous campus branches are independently registered. This allows them to hide their donors and finances,

including any foreign government support. For their part, only about one-third of JVP’s funding sources, which includes the immensely rich Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Open Society Policy Center, can be identified through public records.

Clearly, measures requiring these NGOs to disclose all of their funding sources and terror links are essential. This will go a long way towards preventing the spread of the campus intimidation and antisemitism for which they are responsible.

Gerald M. Steinberg is president of NGO Monitor and a professor of politics at Bar-Ilan University. A web of shady NGOs

Dr. Phil McGraw interviewing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on May 9. Screenshot, YouTube

Anti-Israel extremists set up a protest encampment on the campus of Columbia University in New York on April 22. Lev Radin, Shutterstock

Ruthie BluM

Freedman

Continued from page 17

ing his Torah study to admire a tree, he has lost the right to live! What is wrong with admiring the beauty of nature, even in the midst of Torah study? After all, isn’t such a person admiring the beauty that G-d created the world?

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch suggests if seeing a beautiful tree is an interruption of a person’s Torah study, then he is missing the entire point. The beauty of nature is not an interruption of my relationship with G-d; it is an integral part of it.

Changing our children’s diapers, doing the laundry, and cooking dinner are not chores that prevent me from living; they are gifts which are an essential part of the beauty of life.

And this is the secret of the Omer.

The Omer is an offering of barley, the coarsest of grains. Raw barley is actually animal fodder, and it is symbolic of all the seemingly mundane parts of daily living, which seem, at first glance, to be a distraction from the joy of life. The challenge of the Omer, is to learn how to see all of my ‘barley,’ all the chores and details which seem so insignificant, as much a part of the meaning of life as the mountain views we love to escape to.

Perhaps this is why we count the Omer immediately after the Exodus from Egypt, on Passover. The question, now that we were given the gift of time, was what we were going to do with it. Freedom was not the goal, it was a challenge, and the festival of Pesach represents that challenge. It was not the end of the journey; it was, rather, a beginning.

Hence, the day after the start of Pesach, we begin counting the Omer. As if to say, in the midst of the headiness that must have accompanied the incredible events surrounding the Exodus from Egypt, understand that life is not just the splitting of the Red Sea. It is also all the seemingly insignificant details represented by the barley, the animal fodder the Jews had to feed their cattle every day, even in the midst of the Exodus from Egypt.

May Hashem bless us that soon, all of us, as a people and as a world, may merit to see beauty in all that we do, and in everyone we are with. Make every moment count.

Tobin...

Continued from page 18 treated as racism and punished accordingly.

But for the Times and its dogged reporters, the pro-Hamas disruptions of campus life are, like the Black Lives Matter riots of the summer of 2020 that the paper also justified, “mostly peaceful.”

Open calls for the destruction of the Jewish state — the “from the river to the sea” mantra (something that could only be achieved by genocide) and “globalize the intifada” (supporting international terror against Jews) — are parsed as mere expressions of sympathy for Palestin-

ians. For the Times, the entire discussion about the woke delegitimization of Israel and Jewish rights is a distraction from what they are really interested in — the claim that Republicans and conservatives are the real antisemites.

With masses of students, professors and professional agitators rallying in support of Hamas in the wake of the brutal killing of 1,200 men, women and children on Oct. 7 and venting their hatred against any Jews in reach, one need not dig deep to find evidence of open antisemitism in contemporary America. But the Times’ outrage is still directed at their traditional targets: the same Republican Party that has become virtual lockstep supporters of Israel and opponents of antisemitism.

Though the Gray Lady has a long history of discomfort with Zionism and downplaying antisemitism that stretches back to its noncoverage of the Holocaust, it has played a particularly important role in seeking to legitimize the movement to destroy Israel in recent years. This is seen not just on its editorial pages, where anti-Zionist and antisemitic opinion pieces, even those that call for Israel’s destruction, have become commonplace.

It has also been seen in their open advocacy in their news section for woke ideology and the intersectional framework associated with critical race theory. A straight line can be drawn from the paper’s publication of its fraudulent “1619 Project” in 2019, which put forward a narrative about America being an irredeemably racist nation, and its coverage of the current surge in antisemitism.

Partisanship also plays a significant role in shaping the coverage of antisemitism. The paper’s story, titled “How Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes Despite Declaring Support for Israel,” is a classic example of this kind of misdirection.

Of course, there is evidence of antisemitism on the right.

The embrace by right-wing talkers with large audiences, like Candace Owens, of antisemitic tropes and the decision of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to platform Israel-haters on his show that can be seen on X is deeply troubling.

But the Times story doesn’t even mention them. That’s not surprising because to do so would be to understand that in contemporary political discourse, most antisemitic rhetoric is couched in attacks on Israel and its supporters — something that undermines the left far more than the overwhelmingly pro-Israel right. Instead, they return to familiar refrains of Democrats in recent years.

They resurrect the false claim that former President Donald Trump characterized those who attended the August 2017 “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., as “very fine people.” Yet they ignore the way that President Joe Biden treats those who oppose Palestinian claims of victimhood as morally equivalent to antisemites. And they minimize the constant drumbeat of antisemitic incitement from members of the left-wing congressional “Squad” such as Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

The article also claims that Trump’s complaints about Jews who don’t support him not

caring about Israel are evidence of antisemitism. It may be both foolish and evidence of ignorance about the way most liberal Jews don’t prioritize support for the Jewish state when they vote. But it isn’t antisemitic.

Their main interest, however, is in recycling the Democratic talking point that any criticism of George Soros — the Hungarian-born billionaire who is the single largest donor to Democratic candidates and leftist causes through his Open Society Foundation — is antisemitic. They also assail anyone who speaks of “globalists” as engaging in antisemitic tropes that “mainstream anti-Jewish rhetoric.”

The claim about Soros is simply a partisan talking point. Soros is Jewish but has always eschewed any expression of Jewish identity or support for Jewish causes or Israel. If conservatives focus on his influence, it is because it is so pervasive since his foundation has given away more money than any other such group in the world.

By itself, his campaign to elect soft-on-crime prosecutors in cities throughout the United States has done as much damage to this country as that of any contemporary individual. And though the Times seeks to downplay it, his foundation has also been a major source of funding for groups that are helping to organize the pro-Hamas and antisemitic protests, as well as those in Israel that work to support terrorists and their apologists.

At this point, criticizing Soros is not only not antisemitic, it is likely to be a sign of opposition to antisemitism.

As for the use of terms like “globalists,” it does bear a resemblance to Stalinist antisemitic tropes about “cosmopolitans” who were fated to be liquidated in purges.

But in the third decade of the 21st century, it is a reference to the debate about economic and political efforts to globalize the economy, much to the detriment of the working class, as well as to “green new deal” programs that would destroy the American economy and undermine individual rights. Such globalists are left-wing elites and corporate giants entirely unrelated to Jewish interests. To claim that it is an antisemitic trope does nothing about actual antisemitism but does serve to silence legitimate concerns and dissent against fashionable ideas the Times and leftwing Democrats champion.

The paper does note the absurd claims about the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act put forward by Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.) about its criminalizing belief in the New Testament. But while those 20 Republicans who agreed with her deserve criticism, the paper characterized the 70 Democrats who think that Title VI protections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act shouldn’t apply to Jews as commendable supporters of the First Amendment rights of antisemites.

As far as the authors of the piece go, the significance of Oct. 7 lies primarily in giving it “an opening” to Republicans. The article thinks that there is something unholy about the way that the GOP has paraded its support for Israel and sought to contrast it with the behavior of the left-wing base of the Democrats who have turned out in the streets on behalf of the Hamas murderers.

The notion of Oct. 7 being a pretext for Republican political maneuvers was also the basis of another article published the same day in the Times titled, “How Public School Leaders Upstaged Republicans and the Ivy League: Mixing it up a bit, schools leaders showed, can go far toward neutralizing a Congress with a craving to make a point.”

The conceit of this piece was that the congressional testimony of leaders of school districts in New York and Berkeley, Calif., where documented instances of woke indoctrination in K-12 schools are abundant triumphed over the efforts of oafish Republicans to portray them as antisemites.

The hearing wasn’t as successful as the one held by the same committee in December, during which three elite university presidents claimed that it depended on “the context” as to whether calls for Jewish genocide violated their school’s rules.

It’s true that most of the questioning this time wasn’t as sharp or informed as it was at the previous hearing. But the problem, about which organizations like the Jewish public interest law firm The Deborah Project have done extensive work, is real.

The Times’ main preoccupation now, as in December, is to castigate those GOP members, like Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who are focused on exposing the links between woke ideology and the surge in antisemitism as political opportunists and denying the reality of the Jew-hatred they are trying to expose.

Both articles say little about the real challenges of confronting contemporary antisemitism and a lot about the lengths to which ideologues will go to deflect attention from left-wing vitriol. Honest liberals and conservatives need to be able to confront the hate that comes from those on their side of the political aisle — something that few of us in a politically bifurcated hyperpartisan society seem capable of doing these days. In the meantime, the disgraceful efforts of the publication that once claimed to be the country’s newspaper of record to downplay evidence of real antisemitism in favor of partisan talking points about their foes illustrates the equally dismal state of contemporary journalism.

Cohen...

Continued from page 19

shadowed by sloganeering deemed progressive and enlightened: “Free Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea,” “Globalize the Intifada” and so on.

The immediate targets are not largely defenseless Jewish communities but the denizens of a nation-state armed to the teeth. Jews outside the territory of Israel who denounce the Jewish state are, for the time being anyway, welcome allies, but the remainder — 90%, more or less, of the world’s Jews — are beyond the pale for as long as they support the State of Israel.

What Hamas and its Western allies are asking us to endorse is — in the memorable phrase of the 2006 conference in Tehran staged by the Iranian regime — the vision of a “World Without Zionism.”

“Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury, any Islamic leader who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world,” the then-president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared at the time. For the enemies of the Jews, therefore, this is a zero-sum game: us or them. And that idea has now been globalized, resulting in the transfer of Iranian regime slogans to our campuses and, increasingly, our city streets, our workplaces and all the other locations where we gather to get on with our lives.

That is the challenge that Biden should have addressed.

Chesler...

Continued from page 19

As events unfolded, some European leaders and thinkers began to read his work — secretly, to be sure. Over time, Raspail wrote, “I, the accursed writer, was transformed into a prophetic writer.”

But this prophet’s vision was forgotten — just as Bat Ye’or and Oriana Fallaci’s work has been defamed and forgotten.

While Raspail was initially published by Scribners, a major American publisher, subsequent American editions of his novel were printed by different and smaller presses: Grosset and Dunlop, then the Institute for Western Values, followed by the American Immigration Control Foundation. The 1995 edition was published by the relatively obscure Social Contract Press of Petoskey, Michigan.

Raspail saw what was coming but was powerless to prevent it. He was mocked and scorned — then grudgingly acknowledged. But his challenge has not been heeded. Some have embraced it as science fiction. I suggest that its true genre is that of prophecy and that Raspail’s “vision” has come true in our lifetime.

Can someone buy some copies of this book (now long out of print) and send it to ranking members of the Democratic Party? Please?

Phyllis Chesler is an 83-year-old American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita.

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Employees are trained by the best in the business, in a supportive, collegial and kosher environment. F/T positions offer competitive competition (salary and commission $40K$90K) plus Jewish holidays, vacation, health insurance, 401k and more. Flexible or P/T schedules may be arranged.

Send a brief cover note and resume to Jobs@TheJewish Star.com. In subject line, put SALES