CT Jewish Ledger • October 9, 2020 • 21 Tishrei 5781

Friday, October 9, 2020 21 Tishrei 5781 Vol. 92 | No. 41 | ©2020 $1.00 | jewishledger.com

REMEMBERING

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JEWISH LEDGER

| OCTOBER 9, 2020

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INSIDE

this week

CONNECTICUT JEWISH LEDGER | SINCE 1929 | OCTOBER 9, 2020 | 21 TISHREI 5781

11 Briefs

17 Crossword

22 Bulletin Board

23 Torah Portion

24 Obituaries

Language Arts................................. 5 For a long time now, Jewish groups – even those critical of the President – have taken to calling out those whose rhetoric uses Nazi comparisons to attack Donald Trump.

But the times they appear to be changing.

Making History............................... 5 Elizabeth Rose took up her new post as head of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford just as the COVID-19 crisis hit. Sure, there’s a lot she can’t do just now. But there’s also a lot she can.

OPINION........................................... 10 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ snub of the Yitzchak Rabin memorial event means more than just hurt feelings. The star of “The Squad” is sending a message to pro-Israel Democrats: The party’s over.

25 Business and Professional Directory

26 Classified

Antisemitism on Campus...............................................18 Columbia U students pass an Israel boycott referendum… NYU is forced to incorporate Trump’s definition of antisemitism in its anti-discrimination policy…and 30 Jewish organizations call on 165 colleges to combat antisemitism.

Arts & Entertainment.......................................................20 “Tehran,” an Israeli thriller about a young Mossad agent in Iran, isn’t just your run-of-the-mill spy show. It’s breaking all sorts of new ground.

CANDLE LIGHTING SHABBAT & SHEMINI ATZERET

ON THE COVER:

Since the establishment of independent Ukraine, Jews are acknowledged as the victims of the massacre at Babi Yar, but attempts to create an official memorial that honors all victims and provides a framework to impart the message of “Never again” have repeatedly stalled. PAGE 14 jewishledger.com

FRIDAY, OCT. 9

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ANNOUNCING THE NEW VIRTUAL

We are thrilled to be partnering with the JCC Literary Consortium to bring you the Mandell JCC Book Festival In Your Living Room, a virtual series of author Zoom talks and Q&As. Kathy Binder & Kathy Fishman - Co-Chairs

Thursday, October 22 | 8:00 pm Judy Gold

Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians, We Are All In Trouble

Tuesday, November 10 | 1:00 pm A Two-Author Event Rachel Beanland

Florence Adler Swims Forever: A Novel

Kristin Harmel

Sunday, October 25 | 8:00 pm Harlan Coben

Book of Last Names: A Novel

Tuesday, October 27 | 8:00 pm Nancy Grace

My Dad, Yogi

The Boy From the Woods

Don’t be a Victim: Fighting Back against America’s Crime Wave

Thursday, October 29 | 8:00 pm Mike Leven

Can’t Do It Yourself: How Commitment to Others Leads to Personal Prosperity

Sunday, November 8 | 1:00 pm Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy Never Alone

Sunday, November 8 | 8:00 pm Joan Lunden

Why Did I Come Into This Room? A Candid Conversation About Aging

Monday, November 9 | 8:00 pm Esther Safran Foer

I Want You to Know We’re Still Here: A Post Holocaust Memoir

Tuesday, November 10 | 8:00 pm EST Dale Berra Wednesday, November 11 | 3:00 pm John Grisham

Monday, November 16 | 8:00 pm Ariel Sabar

Veritas: A Harvard Professor, A Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife

Wednesday, November 18 | 8:00 pm TWO-AUTHOR EVENT Michael Ian Black A Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son

Cleo Stiller

A Time for Mercy

Modern Manhood: Conversations About the Complicated World of Being a Good Man Today

Wednesday, November 11 | 8:00 pm Cameron Douglas

Thursday, November 19 | 8:00 pm Rachel Bloom

Thursday, November 12 | 8:00 pm Jim McCloskey and Philip Lerman

Friday, November 20 | 2:00 pm Transgender Day of Remembrance Mimi Lemay

Long Way Home

When the Truth is All You Have: A Memoir of Faith, Justice, and Freedom for the Wrongly Convicted

Saturday, November 14 | 8:00 pm Lawrence Wright The End of October: A Novel

Sunday, November 15 | 3:00 pm Raffi Berg

Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort

I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are

What We Will Become: A Mother, Son, and a Journey of Transformation

Sunday, November 22 | 1:00 pm FOR KIDS! Melissa Clark

Kid in the Kitchen: 100 Recipes and Tips for Young Home Cooks

Wednesday, December 2 | 7:30 pm Ina Garten Modern Comfort Food

WWW.MANDELLJCC.ORG/BOOKFESTIVAL

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JEWISH LEDGER

| OCTOBER 9, 2020

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UP FRONT

CONNECTICUT JEWISH LEDGER | SINCE 1929 | OCTOBER 9, 2020 | 21 TISHREI 5781

The new head of Hartford’s Jewish Historical Society reaches out to a broader audience

ELECTION 2020 Ahead of the election, growing numbers of US Jews consider leaving

BY STACEY DRESNER

W

EST HARTFORD – Just as Elizabeth Rose took on the role of executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford last spring, the Covid-19 pandemic began.

“My first job was really to cancel everything we had planned for the spring, but then we started to think about what we could do,” she says.

And that, it turns out, was a lot.

Many of the public programs the historical society presents lend themselves to online formats.

“We were able to partner with a couple other organizations… and then we began doing some of our own programs on Zoom so we actually had quite an active spring and summer and that’s worked out quite well,” says Rose.

The JHS’s recent Zoom offerings have included programs on Jewish labor organizers in the Hartford area, Beatrice Fox Auerbach, Auer Farm and their connection to Eleanor Roosevelt, and a spotlight on Hartford’s historic Jewish cemeteries with Hebrew Funeral Association director Leonard Holtz and Lisa Vaeth of the of Jewish Federation’s Association of Jewish Cemeteries.

And in conjunction with the The Emanuel Synagogue and Congregation Beth Israe, both of West Hartforl, and the Jewish Historical Society of Fairfield County, and in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, the JHSGS helped bring in Pamela Nadell, author of a new book on American Jewish women, which Rose said was “very well attended and appreciated.”

But Rose said another important task has been to inform the public about what the Jewish Historical Society really does through its email newsletter.

“So I’ve made each of those into kind of a little capsule of historical information and photographs, and interesting facts. We’ve highlighted oral history from our collection that we’re in the process of digitizing of which there are more than 1,000. People can go on that and listen to snippets of our oral histories. We’ve thrown in recipes and links to programs. So we are trying to make jewishledger.com

a strong connection to our members at a time when we can’t meet in person.”

For last few months, the historical society has also been working on two online exhibitions: One is “’Mapping Hartford Synagogues,” an interactive map that tells a mini-story about each local synagogue; the other is an online exhibit featuring the late entertainer Sophie Tucker, a native of Hartford.

Meet Elizabeth Rose Growing up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Elizabeth Rose took advantage of the rich historic resources in the Washington, D.C. “Both of my parents loved history and my mother was actually pursuing her PHD in history throughout my entire childhood so that certainly was formative,” she said. “My father worked in the Justice Department. Sometimes he would take me in with him and drop me off and I would go to the Museum of American History and just wander around. I especially loved the exhibit of the First Ladies’ gowns!” So that certainly had an impact on me.”

Rose says she gained a “very liberal, strong social justice orientation” from her Reform Jewish background attending

Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C., She went on to study history at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

“I became interested in learning more about Jewish women’s history,” she says.

In seeking out a research topic that was related to immigrant Jewish women, she says, “I was guided by an archivist towards a collection at a Jewish settlement house in Philadelphia that ran a day nursery for immigrant families…They kept records on each family that came to them for assistance in the day nursery so it was sort of the beginnings of social work. It was a really fascinating window onto the lives of immigrant families in Philadelphia during that time.”

In studying towards her graduate degree in history from Rutgers, she returned to that Jewish resettlement house archive and wrote her dissertation on daycare in Philadelphia using those records.

“The ‘discovery’ of women’s history was just really just emerging in the 1980s as a field and that was really exciting to me,” she recalls. “So that made me want to do it as a career.”

Rose got a job in the history department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville teaching Women’s Studies and U.S. History.

Then, in 1999, when her husband, Jack Dougherty, got a job at Trinity College as director of Trinity’s Educational Studies program they moved to West Hartford.

Rose also worked at Trinity for a few years teaching and running The Hartford Studies Project at Trinity, which helped faculty and students engage with the community in Hartford.

“We did a lot of public programs with organizations in the city to help document the history of the city and share it with the public,” she says.

She went on to work on a Federal grant contract at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). The Teaching American History Grant was intended to help K through 12 teachers improve their teaching of American history.

“It was providing professional

ELIZABETH ROSE

BY BEN SALES

(JTA) – By 11:42 a.m. on the morning after Donald Trump refused to condemn white supremacists during the presidential debate, Heather Segal had received four inquiries from Americans interested in moving to Canada. Two of them were Jewish.

Segal, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, knows there’s always a spike in inquiries during U.S. election years.

But in her 25 years of experience, it’s never been as big as it is now.

In 2016, she said, she received a couple dozen inquiries, total, from Americans looking to move to Canada.

This year, she gets six or seven inquiries every day. And most of them, she said, are from Jews.

“In my life, I have never seen what I’m seeing,” said Segal, who is herself Jewish. She said she hears the same fears from one Jewish American after another.

“What they echo to me: ‘We’ve seen this before,’” Segal said. “‘I’m not going to get stuck. I’m not going to get caught.

We know how this goes. There’s going to be a civil war. It’s going to be the end of democracy. I’m very concerned for our future. I don’t want to wait and see what happens. My grandparents left Poland in World War II.’” She added, “Whatever it is, honestly, it gives me pause. What do I hear? ‘I never thought that I would be looking for this. I’m well established in the United States. My family is here, my business is here. This is not something I ever thought would happen or that I even considered.’ That line is not one person saying it. I hear it several times a day.”

Americans vowing to move to Canada after the presidential election is almost a cliche. Among observant Jews, the same might be said of moving to Israel – where most Jews get automatic citizenship – if the wrong person takes office or if conditions change in the CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

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ELECTION 2020 Nazi comparisons have long been off-limits for American Jews. But not this year.

BY RON KAMPEAS

A SCREENGRAB FROM AN AD BY THE JEWISH DEMOCRATIC COUNCIL OF AMERICA RELEASED ON SEPT. 29, 2020. THE AD DRAWS PARALLELS BETWEEN THE RISE OF FASCISM IN GERMANY AND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY. (YOUTUBE)

(JTA) – Is it OK to compare Donald Trump to a Nazi?

In line with their longtime opposition to such rhetoric, antisemitism watchdog groups are speaking out against the use of Nazi comparisons to attack Trump and his administration.

But that bright line appears to be blurring for many with the president stepping up his efforts to discredit the election results in November and refusing to promise a peaceful transfer of power should he lose to Joe Biden.

The immediate flashpoint in the debate is a new 30-second ad released Tuesday, Sept. 29 by the Jewish Democratic Council of America that draws parallels between the rise of fascism in Germany and the Trump presidency.

In swift and strong rebukes, the antisemitism watchdogs condemned the ad as offensive. One came from the

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Anti-Defamation League, which has been anything but shy in calling out a range of Trump’s statements and actions.

However, some endorsed the ad, notably the prominent Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt and the ADL’s former longtime national director, Abraham Foxman, himself a Holocaust survivor.

They expressed sympathy for such concerns about the state of America under Trump.

On Tuesday night, the Jewish Democratic Council was playing up its ad, connecting its ominous message to Trump’s failure to condemn white supremacists in his first debate with Biden, the Democratic nominee. Instead, Trump appeared to instruct an extremist right-wing group, the Proud Boys, to “stand back and stand by.”

The condemnations of the ad were part of the longstanding effort of Jewish groups to make Nazi and Holocaust comparisons taboo. But a growing number of historians,

| OCTOBER 9, 2020

activists, politicians and journalists – many, but not all of them liberals or Democrats – have taken up the line that Trump and his administration are deploying rhetoric and breaking norms in a manner similar to the Nazis as they rose to power and took control of Germany.

The Jewish Democrats’ ad contrasts images from the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s with images from the nearly four years of the Trump presidency. They include neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Trump speaking at a rally and the massacre of 11 Jews in the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. A synagogue defaced with graffiti in the present day is presented alongside photos of graffitied Jewish shops in the ’30s.

Titled “Hate doesn’t stop itself, it must be stopped,” the ad implies that Trump is responsible for the antisemitism of the far right. It comes days after Biden said Trump is “sort of like Goebbels,” referencing the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

“You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge,” Biden said on MSNBC. The ADL did not directly weigh in on Biden’s Goebbels comment, but it did issue a sharp condemnation of the Jewish Democratic Council’s ad.

“This has no place in the presidential race and is deeply offensive to the memories of 6M+ Jews systematically exterminated during the Shoah,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO. “[T]he hate [and] extremism in this race is alarming and should be repudiated unambiguously.

Elected leaders who engage in lying, scapegoating, and routinely call for violence should be condemned, full stop. At the same time, we urge leaders & their surrogates to refrain from invoking the #Holocaust in the context of the current election. It is not the same. Stay focused on the issues.”

The American Jewish Committee and Simon Wiesenthal Center also called for the ad to be taken down.

The Jewish Democratic Council did not appear to be chastened by the condemnations from legacy groups. Its executive director, Halie Soifer, seized on Trump’s “Proud Boys moment” to reinforce the ad’s message.

“Trump just refused to condemn white nationalism,” she said on Twitter, reposting

the ad. “He called on Proud Boys and others featured in this ad to ‘stand-up and standby’.” (Trump, in fact, said “Stand back and stand by.”)

Rep. Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who is a leader in the unofficial Jewish congressional caucus, said it was Trump who had pushed boundaries.

“Does the ad seem to push the boundaries? It does,” he said Wednesday.

“But last night Donald Trump once again obliterated the boundaries when he refused to condemn white supremacists.”

Soifer said in an interview that the ad is set to play on web platforms in swing states with substantial Jewish populations, including Florida, and a TV ad buy was being considered. In a text to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, she noted the expressions of joy that Trump’s “stand by” call elicited from white supremacists on social media.

“The president’s blatant refusal to condemn white supremacists – which has clearly incited the Proud Boys – underscores the importance of our message,” she said. “I hope those who are concerned by the president’s words last night understand that the urgent warning in our ad – that hate does not stop itself, it must be stopped – is both accurate and timely.”

In a sign of how disorienting the discourse has become, Greenblatt found himself condemning Trump on Twitter hours after he had condemned the Jewish Democratic Council for analogizing Trump’s presidency to the rise of fascism.

Trump “owes America an apology or an explanation,” the ADL leader said.

The ADL and the Wiesenthal Center stood by their statements condemning the ad after Trump’s Proud Boys episode on Tuesday. The Wiesenthal Center said it “is extremely disappointed and troubled that President Trump did not explicitly denounce white supremacists. He needs to.”

The Jewish Democratic Council did not exactly come empty-handed to the debate over whether invoking Nazi comparisons was legitimate when talking about Trump.

Lipstadt, the Holocaust historian, argued that in fact it was fine to compare 1930s Germany and what critics call Trump’s breaking of norms.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 23

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| OCTOBER 9, 2020

development for teachers so that they would have a stronger foundation in history and also just get excited about the different kinds of history that could be taugh,” she says. “We connected teachers with academic historians who are experts in their fields and provided books for them, and primary source materials and helped them come up with lesson plans that would work in their classrooms.”

While working at CCSU for five years, Rose receive her library degree from Southern Connecticut State University.

She was then appointed library director and archivist at the Fairfield Museum and History Center for eight years, working on exhibits on regional history including on varied subjects ranging from witchcraft to the Emancipation Proclamation to rockand-roll music in Fairfield County.

The commute to Fairfield and West Hartford was a long one and Rose began looking for a job closer to home.

Serving as president of the Connecticut League of History Organizations, Rose was familiar with the Jewish Historical Society, and she was impressed with the organization’s work.

“My first direct experience with the Jewish Historical Society happened just a year ago when we [my husband and I] went on the ‘Back to the Old Neighborhoods in Hartford’ bike tour. I was impressed with the relationships with the churches that used to be synagogues; how welcoming they

were to us,” Rose notes.

Rose was a perfect candidate for the position left open after the retirement of longtime executive director, Estelle Kafer.

Rose said one of the goals of the JHSGH is to collect and archive the stories of people in the local Jewish community – not just “prominent” individuals and not just those living in West Hartford – but Jews from all different backgrounds and from throughout the greater Harford area.

In addition, on Oct. 13 the JHSGH will present “Responding to COVID19: A Community Panel,” with local leaders reflecting on how they and their organizations have responded to the pandemic and how it is reshaping the greater Hartford Jewish community.

“We trying to document what it’s like to live in these times, during COVID and everything that’s going on this year,” Rose said.

Next year will be the Jewish Historical Society will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary.

“We hope that sometime next year we’ll be able to celebrate our anniversary, hopefully, in a physical space,” she said, noting the importance of history and its impact on us now, and the future generations of the Jewish community.

“History is one of our common bonds as a society,” she said. “In the case of Jewish history, it helps us to connect with our peoplehood.”

Leaving CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

United States.

This year feels different, say immigration lawyers and others who work in the small industry of Jews permanently crossing borders. Much of the drive to leave has to do with the prospect of President Trump winning reelection, potentially after a chaotic post-election period in which he or others dispute the results of the vote.

American Jews, lawyers and advocates say, are also chilled by a climate of rising extremism and antisemitism, some of it stoked or condoned by the president.

Last year saw the most antisemitic incidents in the U.S. since at least 1979, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The past two years have seen lethal attacks on Jews in Pittsburgh; Poway, California; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Monsey, New York, plus a string of assaults on Jews last year in Brooklyn. Amid a rise in extremist activity, Trump has repeatedly declined to condemn far-right groups.

Longtime Jewish leaders who are seen as moderate are now comparing this

moment in American politics to early 1930s Germany, when Hitler rose to power and the fate of the Jews in Europe began to be sealed. For members of a people who have never experienced lasting security under any government until the last century, the moment is awakening deep-seated anxiety about how to ensure their family’s safety if the worst comes to pass in the United States.

“There’s a lot that goes through my head while this is going on, about what was my family thinking as Hitler was rising to power?” said Sarah Morris, a lawyer in Colorado whose grandfather, originally from what was then Czechoslovakia, was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.

Morris is one of an increasing number of American Jews who are exploring finding a home outside the United States – whether in Canada, Israel or the European Union.

She is eligible for Canadian citizenship CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

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and submitted her application in August, spurred by fear of what could happen on and after Nov. 3.

It is, of course, too soon to tell if the presidential election and its aftermath spark a wave of Jews and other Americans moving abroad. Certainly, most people who vow to emigrate over election results ultimately do not.

But Morris’ story reflects the anxiety that is shaping many American Jews’ thinking right now.

She and her wife have discussed getting a mobile home, partly in case they decide to leave home at a moment’s notice for a prolonged period of time.

“You think about those kinds of questions: What would be the triggering point that would cause me to leave the country?” she said. “It’s really challenging to know exactly what that tipping point should be. And I think I have a different sort of understanding of that challenge that our ancestors probably had to go through in deciding whether or not to go.”

Other Canadian immigration lawyers are seeing the same pattern.

Joseph Young, another Jewish immigration lawyer in Toronto, usually gets about two inquiries per week about moving to Canada. That number has jumped recently to at least five. And though Jews make up approximately 2% of the U.S. population, he estimates that about 20% of his inquiries are from Jews.

Moving to Canada is not simple.

Applications for permanent residency are evaluated based on a points system that takes into account language fluency, age, profession and whether the applicant has previous connections to Canada, such as Canadian family or a Canadian academic degree. The process can take a year or more.

Another option available to some American Jews is also onerous: securing a European passport. A handful of European countries, owing to their histories of antisemitic persecution and expulsion, offer citizenship to Jews whose ancestors fled their borders. Austria widened its doors earlier this month.

On that front, too, interest appears to be on the rise. Hollander-Waas Jewish Heritage Services, an agency founded last year that helps Jews track down genealogical records and navigate the countries’ citizenship processes, is getting two to three inquiries about pursuing European citizenship per week, as opposed to one a month several months ago.

The founders, Caitlin Hollander and Michael Waas, have also both individually pursued European citizenship for themselves, for emotional and practical reasons. Hollander has obtained her German citizenship, while Waas is still in the process with Portugal, the homeland of his ancestors. The irony of potentially seeking refuge on the continent where the Holocaust and centuries of antisemitism were perpetrated does not escape them. jewishledger.com

Both, however, said the idea of having an option outside of America was compelling at a volatile time.

“If I can have another passport – a Jew can never have too many passports,” Hollander said. “It gives you that one little piece of freedom, one little piece of being able to travel freely without having to worry about one more visa, one more restriction, what new restrictions could exist.”

She added, “It’s reclaiming something that had been stolen, and saying this was mine. You can’t take this. And to me, at least, it’s righting a wrong that was done in 1938.”

Israel, of course, represents a global redress for the wrongs done in that year and the following decade. Almost any Jew in the world is eligible under the Law of Return, which gives Jews the ability to claim citizenship in the country if they move there.

Right now, the number of American Jews seeking to exercise that right is on the rise. Nefesh B’Nefesh, which facilitates Israeli immigration, has seen double or triple the number of applications opened from the U.S. every month from May through September compared to the previous year. The number of completed applications, indicating a sustained interest,C has also doubled or tripled every month.

Even September, which saw skyrocketing M COVID-19 case numbers in Israel, saw a Y 72% increase in completed applications CM compared to September 2019, to 523 people.

MY But a spokeswoman for the group, Yael Katsman, said most people completing the CY process had long been interested in moving CMY to Israel and felt able to make the leap after their workplaces went remote because of K the pandemic.

“The political unrest is not dominant at all,” she said.

That may be because Jews must actually move to Israel to gain citizenship, making it a perpetual and vital backup plan but not a first-line destination for Jews anxious about the political situation in America.

In contrast, citizenship programs for Jews in European countries don’t require applicants to live in the country. So for those who qualify, citizenship in Europe gives them a potential refuge while they see how things in the U.S. turn out.

“Especially this year, it’s been like, I need to have a backup beyond Israel because to have a Portuguese passport doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go and live in Portugal,” Waas said.

Hollander added, “It’s having multiple options, multiple routes, and that’s what a lot of people are realizing more and more.”

A move abroad appeals even to Jews who don’t fear direct, physical danger following the election but worry that another Trump term will transform the U.S. into a place that does not reflect their

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9/29/20

10:15 AM

18TH ANNUAL FALL SERIES

Contemporary Israeli Voices 2020 Thursday, October 22, 2020 8:00 PM Live online multi-media presentation with Q&A session with the audience

Acting and the Brain's Plasticity Renowned actress Ayelet Zurer has studied neuroplasticity and the process that occurs in the brain while actors take on different roles and personas. Zurer will speak about her acting in the movies Angels & Demons and Man of Steel, and the discipline required of actors in their commitment to their art.

Thursday, November 12, 2020 8:00 PM Live online multi-media presentation with Q&A session with the audience.

Why Hollywood Loves Israeli TV Shows Ron Leshem will deliver a presentation about the TV shows he is writing and producing, such as Valley of Tears, The Syrian Civil War and Euphoria. The presentation will include video clips from some of his TV shows.

Sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies Organized by Dalit Katz, Director To register for this virtual lecture, please visit our website at civ.site.wesleyan.edu Free Admission Open to the Public

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OCTOBER 9, 2020

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Opinion

AOC & Company want no part of liberal Israel and pro-Israel Democrats

EDITORIAL Stacey Dresner Massachusetts Editor staceyd@jewishledger.com • x3008 Tim Knecht Proofreader

BY JONATHAN S. TOBIN

(JNS) In the world of politics, celebrity and name recognition is priceless, so in that sense, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is among the richest members of Congress. In two years, the freshman went from being an unknown to being one of the most consequential members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

It’s true that as a newcomer, her influence on Capitol Hill with respect to advancing or blocking legislation is minimal. But in an era when Beltway gridlock has made the passage of landmark bills rare, AOC (as she is commonly known) has a different kind of influence that in many respects is far more consequential.

That is why pro-Israel Democrats who hoped to make common cause with her were dealt a devastating blow this past week.

By accepting and then rejecting an invitation to appear at a virtual event hosted

by Americans for Peace Now that honored the memory of Yitzhak Rabin, AOC sent a loud message to Jews who hoped that the increasingly influential activist wing of their party could be persuaded to line up with the Israeli left. If, as many claim, Ocasio-Cortez represents the future of the Democratic Party, then that is a future in which it will be aligned with the BDS movement and opposed even to Israelis who cling to forlorn hopes for a two-state solution.

AOC came into the House as just the most prominent member of “The Squad.”

The quartet of four young radicals who burst onto the scene in 2018 is composed of Ocasio-Cortez, and Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). While they have all managed to seize far more attention than would normally be possible for House backbenchers, AOC has become a popculture icon with a national following.

Establishment Democrats may still try to dismiss her significance. But the results of the 2020 primaries illustrated that AOC is a political powerhouse whose endorsements proved decisive in key races. It was her intervention on behalf of aging incumbent Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who had co-sponsored a radical “Green New Deal” program with the congresswoman that galvanized his campaign and easily fended 10

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off a challenge from the seemingly more popular and better-funded Rep. Joseph Kennedy III. AOC also helped make the difference in ensuring the primary defeat of Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, as well as one of the most stalwart defenders of the state of Israel in the House.

With respect to Israel, liberal Democrats assumed that AOC was willing to stake out a different position than her buddies.

Omar and Tlaib are the only members of Congress who support the anti-Semitic BDS movement. They had hoped to take AOC with them on a tour of “Palestine” that was canceled by the Israeli government’s refusal to grant them entry. Yet Ocasio-Cortez had never explicitly endorsed BDS. But the kerfuffle over the Rabin commemoration makes it clear that her sympathies are very much in sync with that of the anti-Israel movement.

Americans for Peace Now once represented a growing demographic of Jews who sympathized with Israelis who backed the peace process with the Palestinians. In the last decade, it has been supplanted by J Street, as well as by groups like Jewish Voices for Peace and IfNotNow, which brazenly oppose Zionism. Nevertheless, for the first time in a very long time, Peace Now made news last week.

AOC initially accepted the group’s invitation to help honor Rabin. However, once that became known, she received an avalanche of criticism from her allies on the intersectional left and immediately backed down. She later claimed that her hosts had misrepresented the nature of the event and withdrew from it.

To the party’s activist base, anything associated with Israel–even a program dedicated to the memory of a man who was assassinated by a right-wing extremist because of his efforts to make peace–is beyond the pale.

BDS supporters smear Rabin, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for signing the Oslo Accords in 1993, as a war criminal because of his service during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and as Minister of Defense during the First Intifada, when he is supposed to have urged the troops under his command to “break the bones” of those

| OCTOBER 9, 2020

Vol. 92 No. 41 34 JHL Ledger LLC Publisher Henry M. Zachs Managing Partner Leslie Iarusso Associate Publisher Judie Jacobson Editor judiej@jewishledger.com • x3024 Hillary Sarrasin Digital Media Manager hillaryp@jewishledger.com

Palestinians committing violence.

Arguments about Rabin’s record are beside the point. Those who, like “The Squad” and their fellow travelers on the left, believe in intersectional canards about the Palestinian war on the Jewish state being morally equivalent to the struggle for civil rights in the United States see all Israelis as alike. If they think the one Jewish state on the planet has a right to exist or defend itself, in the eyes of the BDS movement, they are evil oppressors exercising “white privilege” over “indigenous people,” even if they are persons of color who are indigenous to the land of Israel.

AOC is someone who, as we have repeatedly seen these last two years, doesn’t blink an eye about defying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. That she thought it necessary to acquiesce to the demands of a Twitter mob–led in this instance by an anti-Zionist writer for the far-left Jewish Currents publication–speaks volumes not only about her ideology, but about the disciplined nature of the intersectional left when it comes to policing its adherents with respect to Israel. Her overt snub of liberal Jews sends a loud message that there is no place for them in the party base if they are not willing to renounce support for Israel’s right to exist.

This is yet another wake-up call for Jewish Democrats who may think Biden’s defeat of AOC ally Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), ensured that their party is going to remain solidly in the pro-Israel camp. AOC and her allies can no longer be dismissed as noisy non-entities. Unless and until they are explicitly repudiated by Biden, rather than appeased and coddled, they can be forgiven for thinking the future of the Democratic Party belongs to them.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS–Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_ tobin.

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Briefs In first, Israeli and Emirati singers release duet (Israel Hayom via JNS) In another sign of the warming ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, following the Sept.

15 signing of the Abraham Accords, singers from both countries came together for a first-of-its-kind duet. Appropriately titled “Hello, friend,” the duet – featuring Israel’s Elkana Martziano and the UAE’s Walid Aljassim – was the brainchild of the two singers’ musical managers and was released last week. Martziano is the winner of the third season of the Israeli version of “The Voice.” Aljassim has a huge following in the UAE, where he sings many of the country’s most beloved musical numbers. The song, written by Israeli hit-makers Doron Medalie and Henree, includes Hebrew, Arabic and English lyrics, and seeks to convey a message of peace between the two countries. The video was filmed partially in Israel and partially in Dubai.

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Trump condemns Proud Boys and white supremacists (JTA) – President Donald Trump, under fire for not unequivocally condemning white supremacists, notably the Proud Boys, did so in a friendly venue, chatting with Sean Hannity, the Fox News Channel host. “I’ve said it many times, let me be clear again, I condemn the KKK,” Trump said Thursday night, referring to the Ku Klux Klan. “I condemn all white supremacists. I condemn the Proud Boys,” referring to the extreme right quasi militia that has had affiliations with antisemitism and white supremacists.

The president said his condemnation would be ignored by the “fake” media.

Trump in the first presidential debate on Tuesday night with Joe Biden failed to condemn white supremacists when challenged by the moderator, Chris Wallace.

Pressed by Biden to denounce the Proud Boys, he told the group to “stand back and stand by.” The Proud Boys reveled in Trump’s statement, which they took not as condemnation but as instructions from a leader.

On multiple occasions during his campaign for the presidency and then while in office, Trump has appeared to encourage or absolve white supremacists, only to condemn them under pressure. Trump’s

phone interview with Hannity came just hours before the president announced that he and his wife had tested positive for the coronavirus.

In ‘The Keeper,’ a rabbi saves the soccer career of an ex-Nazi (JTA) – “The Keeper,” a film about the true story of a Nazi-turned-soccer-goalie whose career is saved by a rabbi, is proof that sometimes truth is very much stranger than fiction. Bert Trautmann (played by David Kross) was a Nazi soldier who was captured

by British forces towards the end of World War II. While a prisoner of war, he begins playing on a British soccer team, and his extraordinary talent gets him noticed.

When Manchester City, one of the most storied English teams, decides to draft him, Trautmann’s past gets drudged up.

Manchester had a large Jewish population at the time, and Trautmann’s career faces stiff opposition. In comes Orthodox Rabbi Alexander Altmann (Butz Ulrich Buse), who pens a letter to the paper urging his fellow Jews to forgive, even though his own parents and family members were killed by the Nazis. The film, which has won Jewish film festival awards from Atlanta to Seattle, opened last week at select theaters and video on demand.

Report: Palestinians continue to incite terrorism, violence in school curriculum (JNS) A Palestinian student in fourth grade opens his math book and is asked to count the number of martyrs in Palestinian uprisings based on an accompanying photograph of raised coffins at a mass funeral. A reading exercise with the letter “h” for first-graders includes the word shahid (“martyr”), placed in a list of other words that include hujum (“attack”) and harab (“run away”).

These are just some of the real examples taken from Palestinian textbooks used to teach children in schools run by the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, according to a recent study by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACTse).

IMPACT-se, a research and policy institute that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula through UNESCO-derived standards of peace and tolerance, has released an updated report on the new Palestinian school curriculum taught in P.A. and UNRWA schools in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem for the

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“Loving the Jews: Philosemitism and Judaizing in Contemporary Christianity” Rabbi David Sandmel, PhD, Director of Interfaith Affairs, Anti-Defamation League.

Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m. - free webinar Co-sponsored with Center for Catholic Studies

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| OCTOBER 9, 2020

2020-21 academic year and published in September 2020. The problem, according to the organization, is that these textbooks incite to terrorism and violence. IMPACTse CEO Marcus Sheff said, “It is disastrous that over 1 million Palestinian children are condemned to yet another year of sitting in P.A. and UNRWA schoolrooms being fed hate and incitement on a daily basis.”

While the Palestinians have agreed to change the curriculum, they have yet to deliver on their promises. The main findings of the report show that this year’s textbooks promote antisemitism, reject peace, and fail to discuss tolerance and coexistence.

The textbooks encourage martyrdom and jihad, insert violence into science and math exercises, glorify terror, spread dangerous libels, erase Israel from maps, dehumanize and demonize Israelis, and delegitimize Jewish self-determination and history.

In addition to the P.A., a new report from IMPACT-se has also found that Qatar – a key backer of the Palestinian terror group Hamas – has included incitement and antisemitism in its curriculum. IMPACT-se reviewed 238 textbooks for the calendar years 2016-20 using international standards based on UNESCO and U.N. declarations, in addition to other recommendations and documents on education for peace and tolerance. The institute determined that the Qatari curriculum “does not meet international standards, despite some improvements having been made in this last academic year.”

Some other Middle Eastern countries are now improving the content of their textbooks in terms of how they relate to Israel. A United Arab Emirates’ Islamicstudies textbook, published just two weeks after the announcement of a peace treaty between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, supports the peace initiative. In a first-ever review of a new set of UAE school textbooks published over the past two years in relation to peace tolerance and ethics education, IMPACT-se found encouraging lessons that promote peace.

Republicans accused of burying a bill targeting white supremacist terrorists (JTA) – Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, a Jewish Democrat, lambasted the Republican majority in the Senate for burying a bill that would expand capabilities targeting domestic white supremacist terrorists. “Senate Republicans just blocked a unanimous vote on a resolution condemning white supremacy,” Schatz said Thursday, Oct. 1 on Twitter. “It passed the House unanimously. They said that after 9 months of the legislation languishing that the committees of jurisdiction needed to look at it and consider their ‘equities.’”

The bill, originally introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Brad

Schneider, a Jewish Democrat from Illinois, authorized the creation of new offices and training within the Justice Department to tackle domestic terrorism. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, sought to advance the bill by unanimous consent but was blocked by Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican. The AntiDefamation League, which backs the bill, decried the delay, which could effectively kill the bill as this congressional session winds down. “The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act cannot wait,” the ADL said in a tweet. “It should be an uncontroversial priority to establish federal offices to address domestic terrorism and ensure federal employees are trained on the threat.

We urge @SenRonJohnson to immediately explain and to reconsider.”

In its preamble, the bill, approved in a unanimous voice vote last month in the House, cites a number of attacks carried out by white supremacists in recent years, including deadly assaults in synagogues in Pittsburgh and in Poway, California. The Trump administration has rolled back some tracking of white supremacists.

Separately on Thursday, the House passed a bill that would track foreign white supremacists groups. The bill was introduced by Max Rose, a Jewish Democrat from New York. “Researchers and experts have observed that the threat posed by violent white supremacist extremism is increasingly transnational in nature,” Rose said in a release. The legislation which now goes to the Senate requires a periodic Department of Homeland Security threat assessment.

California gov vetoes bill making ethnic studies a h.s. graduation requirement (JTA) – California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have made ethnic studies a requirement for graduation from high school in the state, saying the measure as written “still needs revision.”

In August 2019, the California State Board of Education rejected the proposed curriculum, which the California Legislative Jewish Caucus said “effectively erases the American Jewish experience,” “omits antisemitism,” “denigrates Jews” and “singles Israel out for condemnation.” The new draft clearly identifies antisemitism as a form of bigotry and removes mention of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Last month, 80 organizations, not all of them Jewish, signed a letter coordinated by the Amcha Initiative, which monitors 450 college campuses across the United States for antisemitism, calling on Newsom to veto the current legislation and recommend to state lawmakers “to establish legislation in the CA Education Code to ensure that stateapproved instructional materials are free from partisan or political biases, and that jewishledger.com

K-12 teachers are prohibited from using their classrooms for the purpose of onesided partisan advocacy or activism.”

Newsom said Wednesday, Sept. 30, that the bill “would require ethnic studies to be taught in high school at a time when there is much uncertainty about the appropriate K-12 model curriculum for ethnic studies.”

He added: “Last year, I expressed concern that the initial draft of the model curriculum was insufficiently balanced and inclusive and needed to be substantially amended. In my opinion, the latest draft, which is currently out for review, still needs revision.”

The bill would have required high schools to offer classes in ethnic studies beginning with the 2025-26 school year and made ethnic studies a graduation requirement by the 2029-30 term. In August, Newsom signed legislation requiring ethnic studies for California State University students. A 2016 law ordered the Board of Education to create a curriculum that would highlight the contributions of minorities in the development of California and the United States.

Helen Reddy, who sang the feminist anthem ‘I Am Woman,’ dies at 78 (JTA) – Singer Helen Reddy, a Grammy Award winner for the feminist anthem “I Am Woman” that soared to No. 1 in the early ’70s, has died. Reddy, who converted to Judaism before marrying her second husband, died Tuesday at the age of 78. She was diagnosed in 2017 with dementia, and since then had lived at the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Samuel Goldwyn Center for Behavioral Health in Woodland Hills, California. Her children confirmed her death in a post on Facebook.

Reddy was born in Melbourne, Australia, to performer parents, who took her on the road at the age of 4. She converted to Judaism prior to marrying her manager, Jeff Wald, in 1968 after moving to the United States, according to IMDb. Her first hit was a version of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from the Broadway rock musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

“I Am Woman” reached the top of the Billboard charts at the end of 1972, which led to the Grammy for best female pop vocal performance. Five years later, Reddy starred in the Disney children’s film “Pete’s Dragon.” She made guest appearances on several television shows and in the 1980s on stage.

In 2002 she retired from show business and returned to her native Australia to work as a practicing hypnotherapist and motivational speaker. She made a brief comeback in 2012, performing in several concerts, and sang “I Am Woman” in 2017 at the Los Angeles Women’s March.

In December 2000, at the release of her album titled “The Best Christmas Ever,” Reddy told the St. Louis Disptach that she jewishledger.com

had honored her Judaism by making sure that none of the songs mentioned Jesus.

French president Macron ‘ashamed of Lebanon’s political leaders’ (JNS) French President Emmanuel Macron criticized Lebanon’s leaders on Sunday, Sept. 27, for not putting the country’s interests first and respecting an agreement laid out by France to fix the crisis-ridden country. “I am ashamed of Lebanon’s political leaders. The leaders did not want, clearly and resolutely, to respect the commitments made to France and the international community. They decided to betray this commitment,” Macron said in Paris, reported Reuters. The French plan to form a new government would require moves to stamp out corruption and push new reforms in order to release billions of dollars of aid that the country desperately needs.

Macron also criticized Iran-backed Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah can’t be at the same time an army at war with Israel, an unrestrained militia against civilians in Syria and a respectable party in Lebanon. Is it really a political party or does it proceed just in a logic dictated by Iran, and its terrorist forces? I want us to see if in the next few weeks something is possible. I’m not naive,” said Macron, according to the report.

“The French initiative will persist. My commitment … will not falter,” he added.

Israel and Lebanon agree to US-mediated border talks (JNS) Israel and Lebanon announced on Thursday their intention to participate in U.S.-mediated talks, with the aim of settling their maritime border dispute. The dispute has been ongoing for decades, but became more urgent following naturalgas discoveries in the Mediterranean Sea. Washington has engaged in efforts to bring the two sides to the table ever since Israel requested U.S. assistance in the matter in 2011.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said the talks would be held under U.S. auspices at a UNIFIL base in the city of Naqoura, Ynet reported. Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz confirmed that the two sides would meet, according to the report, saying that “for the first time in 30 years, civil-political negotiations between Israel and Lebanon will take place.”

“Our goal is to bring an end to the dispute between Israel and Lebanon over the demarcation of the Exclusive Economic Zones, to assist in the development of natural resources for the benefit of all the peoples of the region,” he said. Berri emphasized, however, that agreement had only been reached on a framework for talks.

“This is a framework agreement and not a final one,” said Berri, according to Reuters.

While the United States would push for an agreement as soon as possible, he said, the agreement on a framework was reached prior to Washington’s move to impose sanctions on his aide and right-hand man, Ali Hassan Khalil. Khalil was sanctioned for corruption and financially supporting the Shi’ite Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, according to the report.

Calif. Jewish high school students ask district to take action against antisemitism (JTA) – Jewish students and their supporters have called on school officials in Northern California’s Marin County to take action against antisemitism at a local high school. More than 5,600 people have signed the Change.org petition addressed to the Tamalpais Union High School District and its superintendent, Tara Taupier.

Last month, an Instagram account associated with the Redwood High School in the city of Larkspur, 13 miles north of San Francisco, called on followers to identify Jewish high school students in Marin County. School officials later said that they believed they had identified the student running the Instagram account and provided the information to local law enforcement. The account was removed.

“Our safety is threatened by the list and the pictures posted by the student,” reads the petition signed by Redwood students.

“The list of Jewish students paired with the image of the swastika and the bullet produces an uncanny resemblance to the use of lists during the Nazi Regime. The idea of going back to school with a student whose beliefs align with those of Nazis is inconceivable.

“We believe the ‘action’ taken thus far by the administration has done nothing to make us feel secure and safe. This student has gotten away with offensive behavior for far too long and this recent escalation is a direct result of the lack of attention given by the district.”

The action taken so far, according to the petition, was an email from the district that “focused too much on the history of antiSemitism and the actions of the community rather than the action plan of the district.”

Seagram heiress sentenced to 6+ years in prison for involvement in sex cult (JTA) – Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman was sentenced to more than six years in prison for her involvement in a self-help organization that has been accused of being a sex cult. Bronfman, 41, was sentenced Wednesday, Sept. 30, in Brooklyn federal court for assisting the Nxivm group. She was not a member, but was estimated to

have spent at least $116 million to help the group. She pleaded guilty in April 2019 to harboring an undocumented immigrant for financial gain and committing credit card fraud on behalf of Keith Raniere, Nxivm’s leader. Prosecutors say some Nxivm members were forced to have sex with Raniere and were branded with his initials.

Bronfman was given a longer sentence than the five years requested by prosecutors. She was also fined $500,000.

“I am troubled by evidence suggesting that Ms. Bronfman repeatedly and consistently leveraged her wealth and social status as a means of intimidating, controlling, and punishing” Nxivm’s enemies, Judge Nicholas Garaufis said at the sentencing.

Bronfman and five others, including Raniere, were indicted in March 2018.

Raniere was found guilty of sex trafficking, forced labor and other felonies during a trial last year.

Her late father, Edgar Bronfman Sr., was a scion and longtime head of the Seagram’s Company, at one point the largest distiller of alcoholic beverages in the world. Bronfman was president of the World Jewish Congress for many years and was a major supporter of an array of Jewish causes, including the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, where he was a board member, and JTA’s partner site MyJewishLearning, which he founded in 2003.

Edgar Bronfman died in 2013 at age 84.

Major Satmar Hasidic leader critically ill with COVID-19 (JTA) – As COVID-19 test positivity rates continue to climb in Orthodox communities in New York, a major leader of the Satmar Hasidic sect was put on a ventilator Wednesday morning, Sept. 30, after becoming critically ill with COVID19. Flyers circulated online Wednesday morning calling for prayers for Mayer Rispler, a community leader in the Aronim faction of the Satmar community.

An accountant by trade, Rispler has long been one of the community’s most important leaders and a major donor to Satmar institutions. He has also served as a spokesperson for the community at times.

In April, after a large funeral prompted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to lash out at the community in a widely criticized tweet, Rispler defended the mayor and called for compliance with government health regulations. “We do not condone any behavior that puts people at risk and pledge to keep working alongside the brave men and women of the NYPD in addressing and eliminating any such occurrences,” Rispler wrote at the time.

Rispler is not the first major leader in the Satmar community to become gravely ill with COVID-19. Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum, head of the Aronim faction, reportedly tested positive for the virus in March.

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THE 79TH ANNIVERSARY OF BABI YAR

Preserving the memory of the thousands of Jews massacred in 1941 at the site in Ukraine that symbolizes the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ is fraught with controversy

BY JUDY LASH BALINT

(JNS) Over a two-day period, beginning on Sept. 29, 1941, almost the entire Jewish community of Kyiv was wiped out at a ravine on the outskirts of the city known as Babi Yar. The Nazis and their collaborators rounded up and shot the 34,000 Jews who had been unable to flee in advance of the Nazi onslaught two weeks earlier, and over the next two years tens of thousands of others, including political dissidents, Roma, psychiatric patients and Ukrainian nationalists faced death by shooting at the once bucolic site now known as Babi Yar in Ukraine.

This year, due to restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, the 79th anniversary of the Jewish massacre will be marked by an online broadcast featuring Jewish and Israeli leaders and the launch of an audio installation project at the site.

Battles over the appropriate way to preserve memory at Holocaust sites are nothing new; however, efforts to build a

A VIEW OF A MEMORIAL WITH A JEWISH MENORAH AT BABI YAR.

CREDIT: OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE.

14

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memorial and an educational center at the infamous Babi Yar have been particularly fraught with controversy.

This comes despite the fact that according to Dutch Holocaust researcher Karel Berkhoff, former chief historian for the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BY-HMC), “Babyn Yar has come to symbolize what has occasionally been referred to as the ‘Holocaust by bullets’: mass shootings of Jews in Eastern Europe, by contrast with the better known stationary gas chambers used at Auschwitz and other death camps. In the ‘eastern’ Holocaust, the vast majority of Jews were slain in mass shootings, near their homes and within a short span of time–days, weeks or at most months.”

During the decades when the area was under Soviet control, there was no mention of the Jewish victims at the huge, Socialist realism-style official statue that hovered over one corner of the vast ravine. All who perished there were described on the

plaques as “victims of fascism.”

Since the establishment of independent Ukraine, Jews are acknowledged, but attempts to create an appropriate official memorial that honors and respects all victims and provides a framework to impart the message of “Never again” have repeatedly stalled.

“There is a reason why every attempt to create a serious memorial at Babi Yar over the last 30 years has failed. There is a strong movement in Ukraine to disconnect Babi Yar entirely from the Holocaust, to claim that Babi Yar is an internal Ukrainian matter, and that Ukrainians should have the exclusive right to decide what a memorial project at Babi Yar should look like,” Izabella Tabarovsky, managing editor, Russia File and Kennan Focus Ukraine at the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C, explained to JNS. The latest effort to overcome this attitude came to life in 2016 with a Declaration of Intent to form the BYHMC, a non-governmental initiative now headed by former Soviet refusenik and humanrights activist Natan Sharansky and funded primarily by a consortium of Russian Jewish philanthropists.

Recently, the BYHMC launched a sophisticated online presence and held a design competition to build a multimilliondollar state-of-the-art center planned to be operational by 2026.

The Austrian architect firm, querkraft architekten, won the competition and has been charged with carrying out the project together with Austrian landscape designer Kieran Fraser.

Fraser’s initial plans include a reference to “integration of tombstones and memorial plates into the historical area of the jewish (sic) cemetery as an essential part of the proposed project.” Fraser told JNS that the design is not final, and BYHMC officials say that artistic director Ilya Khrzhanovsky is in charge of the final concept and is “in dialogue” with the Austrian architects.

Building on top of the pre-World War II Jewish and Karaite cemetery that lies immediately adjacent to the site of the 1941 mass killings has been one of the major

THE CURRENT APPEARANCE OF

CREDIT: WIKIMED

points of contention that have stalled previous attempts at creating a memorial at Babi Yar. But the map attached to the call for submissions to the design competition clearly shows that the cemetery was included.

Sharansky, chairman of the BYHMC Supervisory Board, assured JNS that under no circumstances would the center build anywhere near the old Jewish cemetery.

“We’re not going to dig even 20 to 30 meters away,” he stated. According to Sharansky, the issue of the boundaries of the cemetery and plans for construction are being “monitored by the highest international authorities in the Jewish world with regard to where it’s supposed to be built.”

‘If they don’t build it, we will have nothing here’ In remarks to the Kyiv Jewish Forum last week, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that the Babi Yar property belongs to the municipality and that he sees it “as my mission to implement this memorial.” As for the area designated for the creation of the Memorial Center, BYHMC representatives told JNS that it’s leased from the city of Kyiv.

Meylekh Sheykhet, director of the Ukrainian branch of the Washington-based Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union who lives in Lviv, has fought proposals to build at the site for years through the Ukrainian court system on the grounds that it violates Ukraine’s rigorous Laws on the Protection of Cultural Heritage, as well as Jewish law.

Sheykhet shared with JNS documents from the Chairman of the Scientific and

| OCTOBER 9, 2020 jewishledger.com

F A FORESTED BABI YAR RAVINE.

DIA COMMONS.

Methodological Council of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine that acknowledge the professional surveys of the site undertaken on behalf of the Union of Councils. Additional information that Sheykhet obtained from 1944 aerial photos from the U.S. National Archives where the cemetery fence is visible were passed on to the Ukrainian Ministry. The 2013 papers committed the ministry to investigate further, but Sheykhet says that still hasn’t happened, and therefore according to Ukrainian law, there’s no official approval for the site, which means nothing may be built there.

One Jewish member of Ukraine’s parliament who wanted further information on the Jewish cemetery issue told JNS she approached BYHMC staff last week and asked to see a map of the site and the building permit. “They told me it was confidential, and I would have to sign a five-year nondisclosure agreement if I wanted to see it. Of course, I refused,” Olga Vasylevska-Smaglyuk of the ruling SN Party related to JNS. Like most Ukrainian Jews, VasylevskaSmaglyuk had family members who perished during the Holocaust. While she is not in favor of any construction going ahead without permits, she is passionate about the need for a Ukrainian Holocaust memorial center. “I don’t care who builds it, and I don’t care about the politics,” she tells JNS. “The Ukrainian government will never build it. There’s no money and not too much interest. Russians give money here for all kind of things, and if they don’t build it, we will have nothing here.”

Izabella Tabarovsky agrees. “In the absence of anyone else’s interest in this matter (we American Jews, in particular, jewishledger.com

have completely failed in our duty toward these Holocaust martyrs), this project is our best hope – maybe our last hope – to turn Babi Yar into a kind of place of memory that the 2.7 million Jews murdered in Holocaust by bullets at sites across those territories deserve to have.”

Sharansky, who was born in 1948 in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, recalls being arrested on his way from Moscow to one of the annual clandestine and illegal memorial gatherings at Babi Yar in the mid-1970s. “Babi Yar is a powerful symbol of two things: the “Holocaust by bullets” and secondly, the awful crime of the Soviet regime and their big efforts to erase the memory” of the Jews who were killed.

“My childhood was spent just three miles from other Holocaust killing fields,” he tells JNS. “But we grew up knowing nothing about it.”

Sharansky relates that even as the independent Ukrainian government put a stop to the policy of silence surrounding Jewish victims of the Holocaust, “there has been no serious effort to create any memorials, due to bureaucratic and financial reasons,” he added.

“So, when the mayor of Kyiv [Vitali Klitschko] and one of the philanthropists approached me” to head the supervisory board of the BYHMC, “it was like closing a big circle in my life.”

Sharansky rejects the view of some critics that the BYHMC is a foreign body imposing on Ukraine. In the words of a May 2020 appeal to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed by 700 Ukrainian intellectuals and other Jewish activists, including Meylakh Sheykhet, “The authors call on President Zelensky “ … to take, in cooperation with civil society, real responsibility and direct control over the creation of a memorial complex at Babi Yar. This will prevent external destructive and manipulative influences.” The project should be “exclusively the prerogative of and under the control of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian civil society and should not be placed in the hands of foreign citizens or private structures.”

Acknowledging the critics, Sharansky asserts to JNS that “our funders are first, Jewish international businessmen. They are involved because of one reason. Not because they are connected to the Kremlin. They are from Ukraine and have families who were killed in the Holocaust, some in Babi Yar. Our board is filled with some of the most respected names.”

They include the first president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk; former President of Poland Alexander Kwasniewski; former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.); former Foreign Minister of Germany Joschka Fischer; and president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald S. Lauder.

“There’s no way some of this project will be hijacked by Moscow,” he adds. “There are those who attempt to undermine this

project and prove that it’s an imposition of Moscow on Ukraine. What nonsense.”

Sharansky does believe that the BYHMC should include Ukrainian government involvement, “but not be owned by the government.” He cites the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as examples of entities receiving government funding and input with no say over museum policy.

“We don’t want either the Moscow or the Ukrainian version of the Holocaust to dictate our policy.”

In his meetings with Zelensky, Sharansky says he has invited participation of government representatives to the BYHMC board and is waiting for someone to be appointed.

‘It should be dynamic, modern and tell a story’ Meanwhile, as the politics play out, the young and enthusiastic staff of Jews and non-Jews is busy formulating innovative programs to stimulate interest in the difficult task of preserving memory, honoring and remembering the victims, and fostering Holocaust education.

Under the direction of artistic director, Ilya Khrzhanovskyi, who created controversy when some plans for radical ideas that were never approved were leaked, the team has initiated projects such as Letters to the Righteous, an effort to reach out to help ease the isolation of the thirty surviving Ukrainians who took part in hiding Jews during the Shoah.

“We are building a museum in order to preserve the memory of the tragic events and the lessons learned from them for decades to come. It should be

dynamic, modern and tell a story,” says Khrzhanovskyi. “Our task is to convey this story to people living now, so that they feel that this story concerns them. This is important for everyone who lives in Ukraine. This story is not only about how many Jews were killed by the Nazis. It is about humanism, about the events that took place in this country and about which the whole world knows. I believe that this museum will become the hallmark of Kyiv and Ukraine all over the world.”

With a background in theater and film, Nadia Pizharskaya, who manages the Righteous Generation project, is also working on the audio installation that will be rolled out for the anniversary on Sept. 29 and will then become part of the permanent exhibit of the BYHMC. In a Zoom interview, Nadia told JNS, “It’s taking place in the alley; not on our land. We picked it because it’s the quietest, cleanest, best-lit place – and then we found out it’s the Jewish cemetery. We didn’t know it beforehand. On each lamp post there will be a different soundtrack, and because it’s the cemetery we won’t be allowed to use any music, so we’ll be reading the names of the victims. Kaddish will also be heard. On the next part of the alley, where the TV tower built by the Soviets is on the right-hand side, they took the gravestone of the nearest rabbi and just put it there to remind people that there used to be a cemetery there.”

Nadia, who is not Jewish, says she frequently walks through the area, which is used as a public park, and notes that “the first gravestone you come to is where all the dogs are pissing. People just don’t care.

That’s why I want to do this project, just to make them aware.”

DESIGN FOR THE BABI YAR MEMORIAL CENTER. CREDIT: BYHMC/QUERKRAFT.

JEWISH LEDGER

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OCTOBER 9, 2020

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| OCTOBER 9, 2020

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hen Covid-19 hit Connecticut’s communities, many residents were faced financial troubles with medical bills, unemployment, and food insecurity. The Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, along with the Jewish Foundation of Greater New Haven, responded by supporting the most vulnerable. Through their COVID-19 Response/Maimonides Fund, the Jewish Federation and Jewish Foundation worked with the local Jewish organizations and synagogues to provide critical aid to many families and individuals in need.

As of Oct. 1, this fund has distributed $281,600 in emergency grants to many local Jewish organizations and synagogues.

According to Jewish community leaders working directly with people in need, the emergency grants could not have come at a better time.

Elizabeth Davenport, LMSW, at Jewish Family Services of Greater New Haven (JFS) said “Our clients are dealing with a number of anxieties, including limited access to food, fear of getting sick, and being worried about their loved ones.”

Her colleague, Rachel Scolnic Dobin, LMSW, adds “People were laid off, or had their hours significantly reduced, and are dealing with a multitude of issues connected to unemployment. We have many new emergencies for those facing 100% loss of income who don’t know where to turn.”

With the grant from COVID-19 Response/Maimonides Fund, say Davenport and Dobin, JFS provided 197 additional mental health sessions, many of which were to isolated seniors, as well as community members with disabilities. Through their out-reach program, they provided 763 hours of case management services to more than 250 individuals and their food pantry has served 500 families.

Senior citizens were hit especially hard in the pandemic.

Jennifer Bayer, development/

community relations director at The Towers, said that many of the 320 senior adults, average age 86, living in the New Haven residence for seniors, “are already disproportionately affected by COVID due to their age and the congregate housing setting.”

“Many of our seniors, whose average annual income is $15,000, already have trouble paying for and preparing healthy meals – getting groceries is difficult for many of them on a good day, let alone in time of crisis.”

Thanks to support from the COVID-19 Response/Maimonides Fund, The Towers was able to deliver three meals a day, seven days a week, regardless of ability to pay, to each of their 320 seniors. This eliminated the residents’ needs to shop and reduce their contact with the outside world during the pandemic.

The Towers also received emergency grants from the COVID-19 Response/ Maimonides Fund to purchase PPE for staff, as well as iPads that can be loaned to residents for telehealth and virtual family meetings, says Bayer.

Additional emergency grants from the fund have been made to Southern Connecticut Hebrew Academy and Ezra Academy for PPE to allow them to open; to the Jewish Community Alliance for Refugee Resettlement (JCARR) to assist refugees who have lost their jobs; as well as to numerous synagogues, at rabbis’ requests to assist individuals and families in need of food, rent and utility monies, and other issues related to unemployment.

For now, the Greater New Haven’s Jewish Federation and Jewish Foundation continue to see ongoing and increasing needs in our community for mental health services as well as requests for assistance with food and rent. The COVID19 Response/Maimonides Fund Grants Committee, together with the Boards of the Jewish Federation and Jewish Foundation, are assessing next steps to continue to meet those needs.

Find us online: jewishledger.com jewishledger.com

Alan Lazowski to be honored by US Holocaust Memorial Museum

THE KOSHER CROSSWORD OCT. 9, 2020 “Baby Buys”

By: Yoni Glatt

Difficulty Level: Manageable

Curbside pick up and local home delivery available!

A

lan Lazowski of Hartford will be honored by The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, Oct. 14 at the “What You Do Matters” 2020 New York Tribute Virtual Event. Fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg will serve as the event emcee.

Lazowski, who was honored at the New York Tribute Event in 2016, is among a group of past honorees who will be recognized at this year’s event.

The son of Holocaust survivors Rabbi Philip and Ruth Lazowski, who also live in the Hartford area, Alan Lazowski is a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum founder, former member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, and member of the Museum’s Strategic Advancement Committee. He is chairman and CEO of LAZ Parking, the third largest parking company in the United States. .

Lazowski’s children are members of the Museum’s NY Next Generation Board, chaired the Museum’s annual fundraiser.

Hundreds of supporters of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum from across the Northeast region are expected to attend the New York virtual event, which will also feature 100-year-old Benjamin Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor, as well celebrity readings from the Museum’s collections.

Participants will learn about how the Museum has adjusted to these extraordinary times by bringing Holocaust education and awareness to audiences virtually, and how the critical lessons of the Holocaust–lessons about the fragility of freedom, the nature of hate and the consequences of indifference–remain vital.

Fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg will talk about her personal story of resilience. Born just 18 months after her mother was liberated from Auschwitz, von Furstenberg says her mother instilled a profound value in her that “fear is not an option,” which has informed her life choices.

She honors her mother’s “resolve, resilience and hope” three months before the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

This is a free, online event. The link will be provided to those who register.

For more information, call (212) 983.0825 or email northeast@ ushmm.org.

ANSWERS TO OCT. 2 CROSSWORD

jewishledger.com

SHABBAT DINNER TRADITIONAL DAIRY LUNCHEON DELI SANDWICH PLATTER DINNER MENU

Across 1. Karaoke bar equipment 5. “Yuck!”

8. Like many a used playroom 13. The most common Biblical man in crosswords 14. One doing stretches?

16. Harvard and Yale, e.g.

17. “Not great, but ___ do” 18. Pot starter 19. Its capital is Katmandu 20. Baby buy for Gene Simmons?

23. Computer port 24. “Toy Story” piggy bank 25. Mrs., in Seville 28. Sun, in Seville 30. Type or sort 33. Baby buy for Omri Casspi?

35. Device whose use might allow a supervillain to quip “Nice of you to drop in!”

38. Political satirist Bill who’s quick in Israel?

39. Nerve-fiber network that’s an anagram of “tree” 40. Baby buy for King David?

43. “Depeche ___” 44. Roles in “Frankenstein” movies not in the Novel 46. Stunning 48. Baby buy for Albert Einstein?

51. Bond rating 52. “Saving Private Ryan” craft, for short 53. Minnesota twins?

54. Amount of medicine 56. Not always so friendly neighbor of Isr. 58. Baby buy for Shifrah and Puah?

63. Place for books 66. Clothing designer Marc 67. Israel has a Light one 68. One, of the better recent Star Wars movies?

69. Lipton selection 70. Killer whale 71. King David used one immediately after using a 40-Across 72. Palindromic body part 73. “Shalom”, in Melbourne

Down 1. Controversial Kahane 2. “That’s all there ___ it” 3. Apps that do math on smartphones 4. Mopes about 5. Panache or flair 6. Chicken option 7. Apple option 8. Least amount 9. Suffix for “when” and “what” 10. Have a bit of kiddush 11. Israel borders one 12. Armani competitor, briefly 15. Detox facility 21. “Same as above,” in footnotes 22. I love, in Rome

25. Overseers of local education 26. Norman of “The Walking Dead” 27. Apprehend 28. Time of conflict 29. Home of Crater Lake National Park 31. ___ Angeles, California 32. Nidre preceder 34. Identify 36. Wavy ‘80s do 37. Manipulate dishonestly 41. One of the sisters who made a land request in the Bible 42. The ___ AKA The Vilna Gaon 45. Mucinex relative 47. Israel’s Atari who won

Eurovision in 1979 49. Not a powerful toss 50. At this point 55. Host 57. Important fruit in Tishrei 58. Memories of a whirlwind trip, maybe 59. Give the thumbs-up 60. Body part with an appropriate homonym 61. Costa ___ 62. Leave rolling in the aisles 63. HS elders 64. Question a magician won’t answer 65. Villain in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”

JEWISH LEDGER

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OCTOBER 9, 2020

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ANTISEMITISM ON CAMPUS Columbia U students pass Israel boycott referendum

BY HANNAH DREYFUS

(NY Jewish Week via JTA) – Students at Columbia University have passed a referendum to boycott and divest from companies that “profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s acts towards Palestinians.”

The news was released to the Columbia student body via email Sept. 29. According to the vote results shared with The Jewish Week, 61% of undergraduates who weighed in (1,081 votes) voted in favor of the referendum, 27% (485 votes) voted against it, and 11% (205 votes) abstained.

Columbia University president Lee Bollinger released a statement emphasizing that the university “should not change its investment policies on the basis of particular views about a complex policy issue, especially when there is no consensus across the University community about that issue.” Bollinger, who earlier this year published a statement tying the movement to boycott Israel to the current rise in antisemitism, clarified that “questions about possible divestment of endowment funds are not decided by referendum” but rather through a process involving the university’s advisory committee.

Romy Ronen, a junior in the joint degree program of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University and the vice president of Students Support Israel on campus, called the vote, a “symbolic loss.”

“What the vote has accomplished is making the majority of pro-Israel students on campus feel unsafe, victimized and disappointed,” said Ronen. “It makes it feel normalized to boycott and divest from the only Jewish state, a place a lot of us call home.”

Members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a collaborative student group that includes Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia/ Barnard Jewish Voice for Peace, posted an announcement with the voting results on its Facebook page. “We are so excited to announce that our divestment referendum has passed with majority student support at Columbia College!” read the post.

The referendum follows several previous attempts by Palestinian groups on campus to bring a BDS vote to the student body.

An advertisement encouraging Columbia students to “vote no” to the BDS referendum ran Sept. 20 in the Columbia Daily Spectator, a week before the vote.

The advertisement, sponsored by Students Support Israel, said, “Vote NO to hate! Vote NO to keep Jewish student safe on campus.”

Hours after publication, the Daily Spectator published an apology for running the advertisement. The apology was signed 18

JEWISH LEDGER

by the publication’s editor-in-chief Karen Xia, managing editor Shubham Saharan and vice president Isabel Jauregui.

“The message, which referenced the Columbia University Apartheid Divest referendum, was clearly inappropriate and did not meet our standards for distribution,” the statement said.

“We deeply apologize for giving this advertisement space on our platform and are immediately reviewing our internal processes to ensure that publication of such material will never happen again. Neither The Columbia Spectator nor Spectator Publishing Company endorses Students Supporting Israel and Columbia or its products, services or views.”

The referendum vote follows a federal complaint filed in December 2019 against Columbia University accusing the school of antisemitic discrimination. The case was the first filed since President Trump’s executive order on combating antisemitism, which grants Jewish students the same protections as other minority groups.

In the complaint, student Jonathan Karten alleges “pervasive and ongoing” discrimination against Jewish students by other students and faculty at the school.

It asks the U.S. Education Department to investigate and consider pulling all federal funding from the university.

In settlement with US Education Dept., NYU to revise its discrimination policy (JNS) New York University has reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) following a complaint filed on behalf of a student that cited multiple antisemitic incidents on campus, the first agreement since President Donald Trump signed an executive order last December that designated antisemitism as a form of discrimination under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Terrence Nolan, NYU’s senior vice president, general counsel and secretary, signed the agreement, as did Timothy Blanchard, director of the Education Department’s New York office.

The agreement – highlighted in a Sept.

25 letter from Blanchard to attorneys Joel Siegal and Neal Sher, who filed the complaint on behalf of current alumnus Adela Cojab – requires the university, by Sept. 30, to revise its “Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy” to “include a statement that the university prohibits discrimination on the bases of shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics, including antisemitism” in accordance with the executive order, which requires U.S. government agencies to consider the

| OCTOBER 9, 2020

widely-accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. The “Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy” has yet to be updated to include antisemitism as a form of discrimination.

It also requires the university to “take appropriate action to address and ameliorate discrimination and harassment based on shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics, including antisemitism that involves student clubs; issue a statement by the president of the university that the university does not tolerate acts of discrimination or harassment on the basis of shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics, including antisemitism.”

The university pledged to take disciplinary action against students who violated the policy.

The settlement is the result of an investigation the Education Department opened into NYU in November in the aftermath of antisemitic incidents, such as two members of anti-Israel groups at NYU who were arrested for actions at an Israeli Independence Day party in April 2018 that included setting an Israeli flag on fire and also assaulting a celebrant who was singing Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah.”

In December 2018, a student tweeted that he wanted “all Zionists to die,” which led to the closure of NYU’s Hillel for nearly 48 hours. NYU informed OCR of complaints of additional antisemitic incidents from the 2017-18 and 2019-20 academic years.

“We are pleased that the U.S. Department of Education has decided to end its review without finding any wrongdoing by NYU. NYU has long been understood as a place that is welcoming to and supportive of members of the Jewish community,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman told Jewish Insider. “For that reason, the university has gladly agreed to several steps that would bolster our longstanding commitment to opposing and responding to antisemitism.”

Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said in a statement that the agreement confirms the importance of the Executive Order.

“This is an extraordinary development, a victory for all Jews and a defeat of antiSemitism that will undoubtedly improve the climate on NYU’s campus,” she said.

“Other universities that are serious about combating anti-Semitism should follow suit and similarly incorporate the IHRA working definition into their university policies.”

30 Jewish organizations call on 165 colleges to combat antisemitism

sent a letter to 165 colleges and university presidents across the United States, calling on them to address antisemitism on their own campus.

“Many Jewish students are feeling harassed, afraid to express their Jewish identity – including their support for Israel – and afraid for their emotional well-being and physical safety. Several of us wrote to you in September 2014 because we anticipated a frightening backlash against Jews on campus due to the Hamas war against Israel in the summer of 2014,” stated the Sept. 30 letter. “Back then, we urged you to take the necessary steps to protect your Jewish students, as you would surely do if any other vulnerable minority group on your campus was being targeted. … Such steps were required under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,” continued the letter, alluding to the executive order signed

by President Trump last December that designated Judaism as a nationality under that law, which applies to institutions that receive federal funding.

“Antisemitism on our college campuses has been equally alarming, particularly because the antisemites are finding new ways to target and persecute Jews,” stated the organizations. “There are still incidents of antisemitic vandalism on campus, with mezuzahs being ripped off of students’ doors in their residence halls, and swastikas defacing campus property.

“In addition, Jewish students are under siege from antisemitism related to Israel and Zionism,” they continued. “This form of antisemitism masquerades as legitimate political discourse, but in fact, it is yet another expression of Jew-hatred, causing Jewish students to feel harassed, threatened and even afraid for their safety.”

The letter cites incidents of antisemitism in higher education and how campuses can address hatred towards Jews.

Finally, the organizations state that while they “appreciate that college campuses should encourage free and open debate and the robust exchange of ideas” and “support these principles,” no one “should tolerate a campus where students and student groups flagrantly disregard university rules and policies–supported by university funds, no less–without consequences.”

“None of us should support faculty using their podiums to promote their personal, political anti-Israel agendas. None of us should tolerate a campus climate of fear or disrespect, which can seriously impair the physical and psychological health of students and create conditions that negatively affect their learning and their ability to achieve their full potential.”

(JNS) Thirty organizations, led by the Zionist Organization of America, have jewishledger.com

Welcome to the Voting for the 6th Annual 2020 Best of West Hartford!

2020

Each category includes this year’s finalists (a composite from the past 5 years) as well as space to write in your personal favorites... even a new category to include who you love that we missed! Go online and vote, and remember to share, share and share some more! Businesses are counting on your support and we know of several that are determined to retain their “best” title, so don’t be shy about sharing this contest everywhere!

Thanks for taking the time to vote!

2020

Voting closes October 12 at midnight

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JEWISH LEDGER

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OCTOBER 9, 2020

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ‘Tehran’ is a groundbreaking Israeli spy show about immigrant identity

BY LIO ZALTZMAN

(JTA) – It all started in 2014, with an e-mail that arrived in Dana Eden’s inbox with the subject line: “Tehran.”

“I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, that’s an amazing title,’” said Eden. “That’s a show I would really want to see, I hope that what’s written inside will be as good as the title is.”

What was inside were three possible opening scenes to “Tehran,” a thriller about a young Israeli Mossad agent in Iran. Eden would go on to create the show for Israel’s KAN11 broadcaster along with Maor Cohen and Moshe Zonder, a head writer for the Israeli hit “Fauda.” The show debuted on KAN earlier this year and the first three episodes became available to global audiences on Friday, Sept. 25, on Apple TV+.

easily master the Iranian tongue. But Farsi took her by surprise.

“The pronunciation of Farsi is so different than Hebrew, or Arabic, I had really to change things in my mouth in order to say those words,” Sultan said.

The show is unparalleled in its production values for an Israeli series. The crew re-modeled entire streets and houses in Athens to look like the Iranian capital.

Iranian refugees flew in from all over Europe to take part as extras.

“We also had an Iranian immigrant into Israel, he was in charge of authenticity on set, that it will look Iranian and authentic,” said Eden, who like most Israelis has never been to Iran. “And also he was in charge of the language, [ensuring] that [the cast] speak Farsi in an authentic way.”

The cast features Navid Negahban, who has appeared in “Homeland,” “Legion,” and “Aladdin,” and Shaun Toub, who has been in “Homeland,” “Snowpiercer,” and “Iron Man.” Toub plays Faraz, a top Iranian intelligence agent who is the cat to Tamar’s

mouse.

Toub is an Iranian Jew, but he said he didn’t draw on his personal experience for the role. “As an actor, I am blessed to say that I really approach a character in a way that I really take Shaun Toub, myself, out of it,” Toub said.

Still, he says Faraz was an incredible role to play. And he has been surprised by how many Iranians have enjoyed the show.

“I have been at the business for 33 years, and I’ve been waiting and hoping that that one day, there will be characters, as Persians and Iranians, that show [our] complexity as humans, you know, as doctors, as engineers, and not just terrorists,” he said.

Sultan, a 28-year-old rising Israeli star, says she was also drawn to Tamar’s complex, flawed character.

“She’s not, you know, the cliche of another Mossad Israeli superhero saving the world,” Sultan said. “She’s a real person.

She carries so many colors. And she’s so strong, physically and emotionally, but she’s

also afraid and insecure and makes mistakes.”

Zonder said the story is only superficially about the war between the Mossad and the Iranian nuclear program.

Its core is a tale of identity, immigration and family roots.

“The most moving reactions were from the people that families came from Iran,” Zonder said. “All of their lives, they were ashamed of their parents, and grandmother and grandfather, ashamed of their heritage.

And after seeing the show, they become proud of it.”

He added: “And they’re ashamed of themselves – of being ashamed for all those years.”

At the end, Eden says, her message for Jewish audiences is “to be proud.”

“We’re all immigrants. And wherever your homeland is, be proud of it and feel con-nected to it. And don’t lose your roots.

Always feel Jewish. And don’t ignore your past. Embrace it,” she said.

Bette Midler shines as an angry Jew in HBO’s ‘Coastal Elites’

BY CURT SCHLEIER NIV SULTAN AS TAMIR RABINYAN IN “TEHRAN.” (APPLE TV+)

“Tehran” revolves around protagonist Tamar Rabinyan, a Mossad agent played by Niv Sultan. Rabinyan is in Iran for her first mission – to hack into an Iranian nuclear reac-tor and help facilitate an Israeli Air Force attack on the site. When her mission fails, Tamar is stuck in Iran with intelligence officers on her tail.

But while the spy story of “Tehran” is suspenseful and captivating, it’s the human as-pect of the show, the way it explores the identity of Iranian immigrants to Israel and how they struggle to feel a sense of belonging, that is most compelling. Tamar immi-grated with her family to Israel as a child and her Mossad operator is of Persian back-ground as well.

Eden says “Tehran” tries to answer painful questions about Iranian Jews’ lived experi-ence.

“What do you do when you immigrate from a country and your homeland becomes your enemy country?” Eden said. “Where is your home? Where is your loyalty? Where do you put yourself?”

Sultan learned Farsi for the show. She thought that as the daughter of an Arabicspeaking Moroccan immigrant, she could 20

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(JTA) – HBO debuted playwright Paul Rudnick’s “socially distanced satire” film “Coastal Elites” last week – and the star of the show is Bette Midler, whose Jewish character symbolizes the divide between America’s liberal cities and its heartland.

The film is built on five remotely filmed monologues from characters based in either New York or Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Midler plays Miriam Nessler, a retired New York City school teacher who may be the quintessential coastal elite. And one who is unapologetically Jewish, who also gets arrested for taking a red Make America Great Again hat off of a pedestrian on the street and running away with it.

“He’s wearing jeans and a windbreaker, and the hat – the red hat. You know the one. The MAGA hat. In New York City, two blocks from the Public Theater,” Nessler says of the hat-wearer. “It’s like me going to Nebraska, wearing a yarmulke, waving a rainbow flag while reading a book!”

Despite her words, Nessler doesn’t quite look down at the rest of the country.

But the truth is that she is by selfdefinition “a liberal Jewish woman. On the census, where it says religion, I don’t put down Jewish. I put down the New York

| OCTOBER 9, 2020

Times.”

To clarify, the print edition.

“Reading the Times online is like having sex with a robot. It’s cleaner and faster, but you can tell the difference. New York Times online is for gentiles,” Nessler says.

The other characters are Mark Hesterman (played by Jewish actor Dan Levy), a gay actor auditioning to play the first gay super hero in a big movie; Callie Josephson (Isa Rae), a wealthy black woman who went to private school with Ivanka Trump; Clarissa Montgomery (Sarah Paulson), a woman who creates meditation videos; and Sharynn Tarrows (Kaitlyn Dever), a nurse from Wyoming who comes to New York to help during the pandemic.

Besides the very funny jokes, at the center of “Coastal Elites” is a sense of wariness, an unease because after all this time, after all the news, there is a national divide over something where there should be unity.

Rudnick noticed about a year ago that “everybody I knew on every side of the political divide was in a permanent state of anger and heart break over the future of the country.” “Coastal Elites” is the result of that feeling.

He was raised in a Jewish household, attended Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah, but it was primarily “cultural Jewish. We’d focus on the Jewish traditions, education and culture and civic responsibility.” At dinner the family would discuss what was in the Times that morning and on that night. His parents, he says, “were very good liberals and also deeply curious. And they emphasized real engagement in life.”

Rudnick, who has written other screenplays, plays, and novels, says he is “grateful for that great Jewish comic tradition, a way of speaking that’s wry and skeptical and loving, all at the same time, which is nuts and doesn’t make any sense at all.”

BETTE MIDLER IN “COASTAL ELITES”

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21

BULLETIN BOARD Conversation on Yiddish Children’s Literature Today, Oct. 7

7 - 8:30 p.m. Pre-registration required. To register or get more information, go to bit. ly/JCRC5thDistrict1014.

On Wednesday, Oct. 7 at 1 p.m., YIVO will host Yiddish Children’s Literature Today, a virtual conversation between Miriam Udel, Naomi Seidman, and Jennifer Young, moderated by Rokhl Kafrissen of Tablet Magazine.

The publication of Miriam Udel’s new book of translated Yiddish children’s literature, Honey on the Page, is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the history of Yiddish children’s literature, a subset of Jewish children’s literature, and to examine the role it can play for children today.

For more Information visit: vivo.org/ Yiddish-Childrens-literature-today.

Congregation Beth Israel fall events

Responding to COVID-19: A Community Panel, Oct. 13 On Tuesday, Oct.13 at 7 p.m. on Zoom, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford will host a panel of local leaders who will discuss how their organizations have responded to the COVID-19 crisis, and reflect on how the pandemic is reshaping Jewish life in our area. Panelists include: Dr. Anat Bergner of Hartford Hospital Rabbi Tuvia Brander of Young Israel of West Hartford, Katie Hanley of Jewish Family Services, Andrea Kasper of Solomon Schechter Day School, and David Waren of Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford.

Register at https://jhsgh.org/panel/ to receive a link to the program. For more information, contact the Jewish Historical Society at jhsgh@jewishhartford.org.

Red Cross Blood Drive Sunday, Oct. 18 To be held at Congregation Beth Israel, 701 Farmington Avenue in West Hartford.

Donors will be screened outside before they enter. Donor tables will be spaced at least 10 feet apart. Sign up at redcrossblood.org.

Kreplach & Dim Sum – Yes, There are Jews in China Sunday, Oct. 18, 5 p.m.

Vocalist-storyteller Robyn Helzner will perform and share her remarkable and uplifting story about serving as cantor for the United Jewish Congregation of Hong Kong.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, continues to host virtual programs. All events take place at 2 p.m. Suggested donation for each event is $10. For more information or to sign up, visit mjhnyc.org/events.

The Bennett Center for Judaic Studies of Fairfield University will present“Speaking in a Political Voice: Jews and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage,” a lecture by Judith Rosenbaum, PhD, historian and CEO of Jewish Women’s Archive. The free webinar celebrates the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Registration required at fairfield.edu/ bennettprograms. For questions, contact bennettcenter@fairfield.edu or (203) 2544000, ext.2066.

Virtual candidate forum, Oct. 14 In advance of the November election, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford will host a community-wide 5th Congressional District Virtual Candidate Forum, to be presented via Zoom on Wednesday, Oct. 14,

JEWISH LEDGER

Introduction to Judaism Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m. starting Oct. 14 The course curriculum includes basic Hebrew, Jewish history, liturgy, holidays and life cycle events, as well as the Jewish perspective on spirituality, values and community. Taught by reform rabbis of Greater Hartford. For more information, contact Wendy Berg at wberg@cbict.org, (860) 233-8215.

Museum of Jewish Heritage upcoming virtual programs

Jews & the fight for women’s suffrage, Oct. 14

22

Events listed are virtual and hosted by Congregation Beth Israel unless otherwise noted. For details on viewing via Zoom , visit cbict.org/calendar.

Resistance In Belarus: The Bielski Partisans And Today Thursday, Oct. 8 During the Holocaust, the Bielski Brothers formed the largest partisan detachment in Nazi-occupied Europe. Aron Bell (born Aron Bielski) was the youngest of four brothers who famously started a Jewish rescue movement through partisan communities hiding in the woods of German-occupied western Belorussia (now Belarus). In this program, Aron Bell, his wife Henryka, and niece Assi Weinstein (née Bielski) will be joined by Tamara Vershitskaya, a researcher and curator of the Jewish Resistance Museum, for a discussion of the

| OCTOBER 9, 2020

Bielski Partisans and their enduring legacy.

Moderated by Tablet Magazine European culture correspondent Vladislav Davidzon, who was recently awarded a fellowship at the Atlantic Council for his coverage of the 2020 Belarusian protests.

NYU Bronfman and The iCenter offers certificate program for teens EdVenture, a new online certificate program in adaptive innovation, offers high school seniors the right entrepreneurial tools, credentials, and community to succeed. A partnership between the NYU Bronfman Center and The iCenter for Israel Education, and led by Dr. Nir Tsuk, founder of NYU’s Institute for Impact and Intrapreneurship, EdVenture follows a similar curriculum as NYU’s innovation courses, with special adaptations for high school students. Participants will gain skills in entrepreneurship and innovation, build an entrepreneurial connection to Israel, navigate current challenges and shape the solution, meet similarly passionate students – as they earn a certificate from the NYU Bronfman Center.

EdVenture consists of eight online 90-minute workshops over four weeks, which are held in groups of up to 30 high school seniors (some exceptional high school juniors may also be selected).

Applications are available at www. edventure.academy until Oct. 7. The program launches Oct. 14.

Registration open for book club exploring great works of modern Jewish literature The Yiddish Book Center has opened registration for its 2021 Great Jewish Books Book Club, which offers readers around the world a unique opportunity to read and discuss great works of modern Jewish literature together in real time. The Book Club sends four books over the course of a year, focusing on Yiddish literature.

(All selections are in English.) Book Club members read selections together. The idea is to have people across the country, and around the world, reading the same book at more or less the same time – and meeting up to talk about it online.

The four books offer a range of genres, themes, and diversity in the authors and backgrounds of the works.

Deadline to register for the book club is Nov. 29. A one-year membership is $78 (includes four books and shipping within the US). Gift memberships may be purchased.

For more information and to register online, visit register.yiddishbookcenter.org.

Applications for program to educate teens about Israel due Oct. 25 The Center for Israel Education’s (CIE) engagement with Jewish pre-collegiate teachers is hosting its fourth Teen Israel Leadership Institute (TILI) in November, with others in the months ahead. In partnership with Emory University Institute for the Study for Modern Israel, TILI will run over two Sundays, Nov. 8 and 15, from 1 to 4 p.m. ET. Applications from teens across the country are welcome. Space is limited.

Interactive, innovative and online, the sessions offer Jewish 10th- to 12th-graders educational activities and experiences that acquaint and deepen knowledge about Israel’s place in Jewish history and enable them to answer how Jews sought, made and are sustaining a state. Topics include Israel’s changing borders, the connection between Jewish identity and Israel, Israel in the media, Israeli culture and politics, and what to expect about Israel on college campuses. After the institute, each participant must deliver an Israel learning program for a community, synagogue, school or youth group.

Applications are due Oct. 25.

Participants pay a $54 fee for the program.

Students who complete the program will earn the CIE Teen Israel Leadership Institute Certificate in Israel Education.

For information, contact Michele Freesman at michele.freesman@israeled. org.

Kosherfest cancels 2020 event Diversified Communications, organizer of Kosherfest, on Sept. 30 announced that due to ongoing health and safety issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become necessary to cancel the 2020 edition that was planned for November of 2020.

Said Christine Salmon, event director, Diversified Communications, “Despite some re-opening measures nationally and locally, there are still far too many uncertainties about the impact that COVID-19 will have on travel and mass gatherings this November. Accordingly, it is impossible to hold a live event that would provide a valuable experience for our customers,” event organizers said in a statement.

The next Kosherfets is still planned for Nov. 9 - 10, 2021 in November.

For more information: info@kosherfest. com.

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TORAHPortion

Election 2020 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

Lipstadt, who has been tapped by administrations of both parties for her Holocaust-related expertise, also stressed that the ad made use of images of Nazi Germany but not of the Holocaust itself.

“I would say in the attacks we’re seeing on the press, the courts, academic institutions, elected officials and even, and most chillingly, the electoral process, that this deserves comparison,” she said in a videoconference hosted Tuesday by the Jewish Democratic Council. “It’s again showing how the public’s hatred can be whipped up against Jews. Had the ad contained imagery of the Shoah, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Likening a political opponent to Nazis has long been a taboo that some leading Jewish institutions and organizations have sought to enforce: The Holocaust was unprecedented and unmatched since in the breadth of its horror and its ambition, the total destruction of the Jews. Comparisons, the argument went, diminished the Holocaust and deprived its lessons of the potency to prevent its recurrence.

Lipstadt has taken that stance in the past.

“When you take these terrible moments in our history, and you use it for contemporary purposes in order to fulfill your political objectives, you mangle history, you trample on it,” she told Haaretz in 2011.

But in the current era, Lipstadt said, the key to acceptable Holocaust comparisons is precision and nuance.

“I do think certain comparisons are fitting,” said Lipstadt. “It’s certainly not 1938,” when Nazis led the Kristallnacht pogroms throughout Germany. “It’s not even September 1935, and the Nuremberg

Laws” institutionalizing racist policies.

“What it well might be is December 1932, Hitler comes to power on Jan. 30, 1933 – it might be Jan. 15, 1933.”

Foxman, the former ADL director, has long spoken out against Nazi comparisons.

“Germany did have institutions and they did have democracy and it did fall apart so, yeah, it’s not Germany, and it’s not Nazism, but our antennas are quivering,” Foxman told JTA. Soifer, the Jewish Democratic Council’s leader, defended the ad’s tone.

“We’re not calling Donald Trump a Nazi,” she said. “We are warning against the ominous parallel of the rise of Nazism and the use of hatred for political purposes and the numerous signs that Donald Trump is doing the same.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition condemned the ad.

“The rule in debate is that if your only argument is to call your opponent a Nazi, you have no argument at all,” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said in a statement.

Brooks on Twitter called on Lipstadt to address the ad. Lipstadt directly replied in the Zoom call, saying Trump was emulating Goebbels in repeating a lie until his followers had internalized it.

Foxman said the intensification of hatred, including the rise of antisemitic attacks and attacks on other minorities, did not have to rise to the level of Nazism to set off alarms.

“There is serious hate out there which is reminiscent of the hate that we lived through, part of our history,” he said.

“Jewish antennas quiver – it doesn’t have to be Nazism to worry us that hate is out there, and hate is not being challenged.”

Leaving CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

values.

Jeremy, an educator in Pennsylvania who has focused his energies on teaching immigrants and underprivileged students, has found himself recently searching Canadian job boards and researching the cost of living in different Canadian cities.

He said Canada is appealing because life there seems relatively similar to the U.S., but that the country appears to care more for marginalized groups, which is important to him as a Jew. “I knew from a young age that I’m different because I’m Jewish,” said Jeremy, who did not give his last name due to concerns regarding privacy and job security.

“That makes us able to understand certain things, to live certain fears that we have or that pretty close ancestors of ours have jewishledger.com

had in this country or in other countries.

That very directly relates to how I feel about immigration. That very explicitly relates to how I feel about systemic racism.”

Segal, the Canadian immigration lawyer, said the rising number of people seeking to leave the U.S. is “devastating to see,” despite the uptick in potential business for her. She’s always looked at the United States as an inspiration. Now she views it with fear and concern.

“It saddens me because, you know, I love America and what it stands for and what it’s accomplished,” she said. “I keep saying to myself, what is going on in America? Because I see a lot of fear and I feel like we’re at this stage [where], the fear, we don’t know what it’s going to bring.”

Simchat Torah

BY SHLOMO RISKIN

“And no human knows of [Moses’] burial place even to this day.“ (Deut. 34:6)

A

mid the great joy of Shemini Atzeret-Simĥat Torah, emanating from the biblical commandment “and you shall thoroughly rejoice” (Deut. 16:15), a curious dialectic between celebration and solemnity nevertheless exists. This is palpable especially in Israel, when the dancing and festive readings from the end of Deuteronomy and beginning of Genesis are followed shortly thereafter by the recitation of the Yizkor memorial prayers.

Perhaps the duality of the day stems from the fact that we conclude Deuteronomy with the death of Moses, about whom the Bible testifies: “And there has not arisen a prophet again in Israel similar to Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deut. 34:10). From the perspective of Moses’ death, the fundamental joy of Simĥat Torah appears somewhat of an anomaly. How can a day on which we read of this great loss also serve as one of the most festive days of the Jewish calendar year?

I believe the answer is to be found in the verse, “and no human knows of [Moses’] burial place even to this day” (Deut. 34:6). Many explain correctly that this has prevented the creation of a Mosaic shrine and a cult of Moses worship. I would like to add to this an additional understanding, based on the following vignette – which I heard from one of my mentors, Rabbi Moshe Besdin – that sheds profound light on the reason why the greatest of our prophets is denied a known gravesite.

A small impoverished town in Poland, with a limited number of Jewish families who were all very pious but ignorant of the holy texts, was in need of a rabbi.

The parnass (community leader) was dispatched to the famous Volozhin Yeshiva to search for a candidate, but after being turned down by the most promising students, he became desperate.

He finally approached a serious but other-worldly student with the bold request: “Come to be our town rabbi.

We are a famous town: Rabbi Akiva, the Rambam and the Vilna Gaon are all buried in our community.” The student, adept at Talmud but ignorant of Jewish history, imagined that a town with a history of such illustrious scholarly leadership must still have at least a quorum of Torah scholars; He thanked

God for his good fortune and immediately left with the parnass.

After a few weeks it became clear that no-one in town possessed even rudimentary Torah knowledge. The devastated young rabbi asked the parnass to take him to the cemetery. “At least I can contemplate your former glory at the gravesites of Rabbi Akiva, the Rambam, and Vilna Gaon!”

“You didn’t understand me,” responded the parnass. “In Volozhin, the students cited these great rabbis, and debated their legal arguments and discussions, as if they were walking among them. Rabbi Akiva argues, the Rambam decides, the Vilna Gaon rules.

In your yeshiva, they are truly alive. In our town, no one has ever heard of what they wrote. In our town, they are dead and buried.”

When the Torah tells us that no one knows of the location of Moses’ gravesite, it is because for the Jewish people, Moses never died. We publicly read and privately contemplate his teachings on a daily basis. The greatest proof of his continuing presence in our lives is the fact that we conclude his Divine revelation only to immediately begin to read his words once again as we start the biblical cycle anew.

Therefore, on Simchat Torah, the day on which we read of Moses’ physical passing, we should wholeheartedly rejoice in the eternity of his teachings, emblemized by one of the signature songs of Simchat Torah: “Moshe emet, v’Torato emet!” – “Moses is truth, and his Torah is truth!”

We can similarly understand the seemingly incongruous tradition of reciting the memorial Yizkor prayers on festivals. But in fact, the practice perfectly captures the essence of the day. In those precious moments quietly reflecting on our deceased loved ones, we are offered a unique opportunity to consider the ways in which their qualities and love of Judaism continue to impact us. Indeed, there are few sources of more profound happiness than the realization that our loved ones live on through us, our children, and our descendants. They live on – and so are not gone and buried – just as Moshe Rabbenu lives on, and is not buried and covered over as long as we still read and learn his Torah!

JEWISH LEDGER

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OBITUARIES The Ledger prints a basic obituary free of charge. Free obituaries are edited to fit the newspaper’s style. Obituaries that those submitting would like to run “as is,” as well as accompanying photos, may be printed for a charge. For more information: ­judiej@jewishledger.com, 860.231.2424.

BIXON Marion Bixon, 92, of Bridgeport, has died. She was the widow of the late Henry Bixon. Born in New York City, she was the daughter of the late Harry and Ethel Labowitz. She was predeceased by her brother Bob and his wife Ruth of San Diego, Calif. She is survived by her son Harvey Bixon of Hamden; her niece Susan Barasch and her husband Richard Elliot of North Carolina; her nephews, Raymond Lane and his wife Susan Silver of California, Carol Klorman, Harry Leginsky and Maury Pepper of Greater New Haven, and Ned Leginsky of Maryland.

GROSS Cynthia M. Gross, 99, of West Hartford, formerly of Jersey City, N.J. and New York, N.Y., died Sept. 26. She was the widow of Robert (“Bob”) Gross. She was born in Hartford. She is survived her three sons and numerous grandchildren, relatives and friends.

JOHNSON Sylvia (Fisher) Johnson, 95, of Milford, formerly of Hamden and Orange, died Sept.

29. She was the widow of Jerry Johnson.

Born in Havana, Cuba, she was the daughter of the late Hyman and Lena Fisher. She is survived by her chilren Gary Johnson and

his wife Beverly of Milford, and Jordan Johnson and his wife Lynn of Wolcott; her grandchildren, Brook and Henry, Terra and Keith; and her great-grandchildren, Noella and Sailee. She was also predeceased by her brothers Joseph and Meyer Fisher, and her grandson Brent William. Cherished Grandmother of Brooke and Henry, Terra and Keith and the late Brent William.

Massachusetts court chief Ralph Gants remembered as a giant of justice

KUSHNER Steven Kushner, 63, of Granby, die Sept.

26. He was the husband of Helaine SmithKushner. Raised in Randolph, Mass., he was the son of Stanley and Lillian Kushner.

In addition to his wife and his mother, he is survived by his sons, Jason Kushner of Glastonbury, and Zachary Kushner of Longmeadow, Mass.; his brothers, Michael Kushner of Morristown, N.J., and Richard Kushner of Jacksonville, Fla.; his motherin-law, Joan Smith of Avon; and other family members and friends.

BOSTON (JTA) – Flags across Massachusetts were lowered to half-staff last week in honor of Ralph Gants, the first Jewish chief justice of the state’s highest court, whose death at 65 shocked the state’s legal community. Judges, lawyers, political figures and community leaders remembered Gants as a legal giant, passionate in his dedication to equal justice and steeped in compassion for people from all walks of life.

“He spent his entire 40-year legal career dedicated to justice and the integrity of law,” Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said Tuesday, Sept. 15.

Gants’ death was announced on Monday, Sept. 14 by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 10 days after he was hospitalized following a heart attack.

Gants had anticipated resuming his duties, initially on a limited basis, according to a statement he released. The cause of death has not yet been disclosed. Courthouses across the state closed Friday, Sept. 18 in Gants’ honor.

Speaking emotionally about Gants, Baker described Gants as an exceptional leader who “led the court with honor and distinction.”

Gants was renowned for his intelligence and his humility. He pressed for prison reform and fair sentencing, among other issues. A report from Harvard Law School on racial disparities in the Massachusetts legal system released earlier this month was undertaken at Gants’ request.

RAPOPORT Jerome (Jerry) Rapoport, 82, of Stamford, Conn. and Jupiter, Fla., died Sept. 19. He was the husband of Susan Rapoport. Born in New York, N.Y., he was the son of the late Anna and Harry Rapoport of New York City and Long Beach, NY.

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In a 2015 speech to the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Gants invoked his Jewish heritage, noting that his ancestors and those of other immigrant groups were at one time unwelcome in the United States.

“I am here to assure you that you do not stand alone,” Gants said.

“That kind of gesture and heartfelt statement to people he knew were vulnerable or targeted, that is so the essence of Ralph Gants,” said Jeffrey Robbins, a Boston lawyer who served as chair of the New England Anti-Defamation League and was close with Gants. Gants spoke at many New England ADL programs and several years ago made his first visit to Israel, leading a delegation of Massachusetts judges to meet with their Israeli counterparts.

Gants was born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1954. After graduating Harvard and its law school, he worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston. After some years in private practice, he was appointed to the state’s Superior Court. In 2009, Gants was named an appointed associate justice at the Supreme Judicial Court and was elevated to the top position by then Gov. Deval Patrick in 2014.

He is survived by his wife, Deborah Ramirez, and two children.

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References available, and negotiable rates. Call Sandy 860-460-3051.

REAL ESTATE

For lease- Boca Raton, FL. Fully furnished 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo with kosher kitchen in beautiful Century Village. First floor, parking, pool & club house. Call Mike 561-654-4221.

WANTED TO BUY

Third Generation Jeweler - Gold & Diamond Buyer - Is Buying All Gold Jewelry - Sterling Silver Flatware Sets - Diamonds Over 2 Carats - Fast Payment Contact - mitchellrosin@gmail. com.

Collector looking to purchase coins and currency, silver, copper, and gold. No collection is too small. Will travel. Call 860951-5191 paprfred@aol.com.

TUTOR

Accounting & Math Tutor Retired College Accounting Teacher Will Tutor at Your Home - Call For Appointment 860-402-1201.

FOR SALE

Motorized KD Smart Chair rarely used - excellent condition - Call or text 203-710-0615.

CHAUFFEUR, WEST HARTFORD will drive you to New York, Boston, New England tristate area. Reasonable rates.

References. Call Jeff 860-7124115.

Have something to sell?

Have something to rent?

Have a service to promote?

Reach our highly qualified readers by placing your display classified ad in our digital issue with a LIVE link to your website!

Contact Leslie 860.231.2424 or leslie@jewishledger.com jewishledger.com

CT SYNAGOGUE DIRECTORY To join our synagogue directories, contact Howard Meyerowitz at (860) 231-2424 x3035 or howardm@jewishledger.com.

BLOOMFIELD B’nai Tikvoh-Sholom/ Neshama Center for Lifelong Learning Conservative Rabbi Debra Cantor (860) 243-3576 office@BTSonline.org www.btsonline.org BRIDGEPORT Congregation B’nai Israel Reform Rabbi Evan Schultz (203) 336-1858 info@cbibpt.org www.cbibpt.org Congregation Rodeph Sholom Conservative (203) 334-0159 Rabbi Richard Eisenberg, Cantor Niema Hirsch info@rodephsholom.com www.rodephsholom.com Jewish Senior Services Traditional Rabbi Stephen Shulman (203) 396-1001 sshulman@jseniors.org www.jseniors.org CHESHIRE Temple Beth David Reform Rabbi Micah Ellenson (203) 272-0037 office@TBDCheshire.org www.TBDCheshire.org CHESTER Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek Reform Rabbi Marci Bellows (860) 526-8920 rabbibellows@cbsrz.org www.cbsrz.org

COLCHESTER Congregation Ahavath Achim Conservative Rabbi Kenneth Alter (860) 537-2809 secretary@congregationahavathachim.org EAST HARTFORD Temple Beth Tefilah Conservative Rabbi Yisroel Snyder (860) 569-0670 templebetht@yahoo.com FAIRFIELD Congregation Ahavath Achim Orthodox (203) 372-6529 office@ahavathachim.org www.ahavathachim.org Congregation Beth El, Fairfield Conservative Rabbi Marcelo Kormis (203) 374-5544 office@bethelfairfield.org www.bethelfairfield.org GLASTONBURY Congregation Kol Haverim Reform Rabbi Dr. Kari Tuling (860) 633-3966 office@kolhaverim.org www.kolhaverim.org GREENWICH Greenwich Reform Synagogue Reform Rabbi Jordie Gerson (203) 629-0018 hadaselias@grs.org www.grs.org

Temple Sholom Conservative Rabbi Mitchell M. Hurvitz Rabbi Chaya Bender Cantor Sandy Bernstein (203) 869-7191 info@templesholom.com www.templesholom.com HAMDEN Temple Beth Sholom Conservative Rabbi Benjamin Edidin Scolnic (203) 288-7748 tbsoffice@tbshamden.com www.tbshamden.com MADISON Temple Beth Tikvah Reform Rabbi Stacy Offner (203) 245-7028 office@tbtshoreline.org www.tbtshoreline.org MANCHESTER Beth Sholom B’nai Israel Conservative Rabbi Randall Konigsburg (860) 643-9563 Rabbenu@myshul.org programming@myshul.org www.myshul.org MIDDLETOWN Adath Israel Conservative Spiritual Leaders: Rabbi Marshal Press Rabbi Michael Kohn (860) 346-4709 office@adathisraelct.org www.adathisraelct.org

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NEW HAVEN The Towers Conservative Ruth Greenblatt, Spiritual Leader (203) 772-1816 rebecca@towerone.org www.towerone.org Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel Conservative Rabbi Jon-Jay Tilsen (203) 389-2108 office@BEKI.org www.BEKI.org

ORANGE Chabad of Orange/ Woodbridge Chabad Rabbi Sheya Hecht (203) 795-5261 info@chabadow.org www.chabadow.org

Orchard Street ShulCongregation Beth Israel Orthodox Rabbi Mendy Hech t 973-723-9070 www.orchardstreetshul.org

Congregation Or Shalom Conservative Rabbi Alvin Wainhaus (203) 799-2341 info@orshalomct.org www.orshalomct.org

NEW LONDON Ahavath Chesed Synagogue Orthodox Rabbi Avrohom Sternberg 860-442-3234 Ahavath.chesed@att.net

RIDGEFIELD Congregation Shir Shalom of Westchester and Fairfield Counties Reform Rabbi David Reiner Cantor Debora Katchko-Gray (203) 438-6589 office@ourshirshalom.org

Congregation Beth El Conservative Rabbi Rachel Safman (860) 442-0418 office@bethel-nl.org bethel-nl.org NEWINGTON Temple Sinai Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Bennett (860) 561-1055 templesinaict@gmail.com www.sinaict.org NEWTOWN Congregation Adath Israel Conservative Rabbi Barukh Schectman (203) 426-5188 office@congadathisrael.org www.congadathisrael.org NORWALK Beth Israel Synagogue – Chabad of Westport/ Norwalk Orthodox-Chabad Rabbi Yehoshua S. Hecht (203) 866-0534 info@bethisraelchabad.org bethisraelchabad.org Congregation Beth El-Norwalk Conservative Rabbi Ita Paskind (203) 838-2710 Jody@congbethel.org www.congbethel.org

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Temple Shalom Reform Rabbi Mark Lipson (203) 866-0148 admin@templeshalomweb.org www.templeshalomweb.org

SIMSBURY Chabad of the Farmington Valley Chabad Rabbi Mendel Samuels (860) 658-4903 chabadsimsbury@gmail.com www.chabadotvalley.org Farmington Valley Jewish Congregation, Emek Shalom Reform Rabbi Rebekah Goldman Mag (860) 658-1075 admin@fvjc.org www.fvjc.org SOUTH WINDSOR Temple Beth Hillel of South Windsor Reform Rabbi Jeffrey Glickman (860) 282-8466 tbhrabbi@gmail.com www.tbhsw.org SOUTHINGTON Gishrei Shalom Jewish Congregation Reform Rabbi Alana Wasserman (860) 276-9113 President@gsjc.org www.gsjc.org

TRUMBULL Congregation B’nai Torah Conservative Rabbi Colin Brodie (203) 268-6940 office@bnaitorahct.org www.bnaitorahct.org

Congregation P’nai Or Jewish Renewal Shabbat Services Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener (860) 561-5905 pnaiorct@gmail.com www.jewishrenewalct.org

WALLINGFORD Beth Israel Synagogue Conservative Rabbi Bruce Alpert (203) 269-5983 richardcaplan@sbcglobal.net www.bethisrael/wallingford. org

Kehilat Chaverim of Greater Hartford Chavurah Adm. - Marcey Ginsburg Munoz (860) 951-6877 info@ kehilatchaverim.org www.kehilatchaverim.org

WASHINGTON Greater Washington Coalition Rabbi James Greene (860) 868-2434 admin@jewishlifect.org www.jewishlife.org WATERFORD Temple Emanu - El Reform Rabbi Marc Ekstrand Rabbi Emeritus Aaron Rosenberg (860) 443-3005 office@tewaterfrord.org www.tewaterford.org WEST HARTFORD Beth David Synagogue Orthodox Rabbi Yitzchok Adler (860) 236-1241 office@bethdavidwh.org www.bethdavidwh.org Beth El Temple Conservative Rabbi James Rosen Rabbi Ilana Garber (860) 233-9696 hsowalsky@bethelwh.org www.bethelwesthartford.org Chabad House of Greater Hartford Rabbi Joseph Gopin Rabbi Shaya Gopin, Director of Education (860) 232-1116 info@chabadhartford.com www.chabadhartford.com

The Emanuel Synagogue Conservative Rabbi David J. Small (860) 236-1275 communications@emanuelsynagogue.org www.emanuelsynagogue.org United Synagogues of Greater Hartford Orthodox Rabbi Eli Ostrozynsk i synagogue voice mail (860) 586-8067 Rabbi’s mobile (718) 6794446 ostro770@hotmail.com www.usgh.org Young Israel of West Hartford Orthodox Rabbi Tuvia Brander (860) 233-3084 info@youngisraelwh.org www.youngisraelwh.org WETHERSFIELD Temple Beth Torah Unaffiliated Rabbi Seth Riemer (860) 828-3377 tbt.w.ct@gmail.com templebethtorahwethersfield. org WOODBRIDGE Congregation B’nai Jacob Conservative Rabbi Rona Shapiro (203) 389-2111 info@bnaijacob.org www.bnaijacob.org

Congregation Beth Israel Reform Rabbi Michael Pincus Rabbi Andi Fliegel Cantor Stephanie Kupfer (860) 233-8215 bethisrael@cbict.org www.cbict.org

JEWISH LEDGER

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OCTOBER 9, 2020

27

Landing Wednesday 10/13...

Dinners You Just order, heat and eat!

READY THE SAME DAY!* Because life happens...

FOOD FLY ON THE

Bistro Meals For 1 - Starting At $8.99 Dinners for 4 - Starting At $39.95 Sandwiches - Starting At $9.99 & Up Sushi Platters - Starting At $40.00 Sushi A La Carte - Starting At $6.49 Pizza Meal Deals - Starting At $23.95 Beverages & Desserts

Order By 12 - Ready By 5 www.crownmarketonline.com/sameday *For items On The SAMEDAY menu only.

Excludes: meat department, grocery and any other items not specifically listed.

The Crown Market 2471 Albany Ave West Hartford, CT 06117

860.236.1965

www.crownmarketonline.com HKC supervises the Bakery, Five o’clock Shop, Butcher Department and Catering.

We’re not JUST kosher...we’re DELICIOUS! 28

JEWISH LEDGER

| OCTOBER 9, 2020

jewishledger.com