Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Dear Reader,
As the impact of the deadly terror attacks on Paris continues to reverberate, our reporting this week includes Staff Writer Steve Lipman's interviews with French expats in New York, who were not surprised by the tragedy; Josh Mitnick writes from Tel Aviv on whether the carnage creates new sympathy for Israel; and our Editorial asks, "After Paris, Will Anything Change?"
French Expats Here: ‘We Saw This Coming’
‘Sense of fear’ but not surprise about carnage in Paris; ‘too early to tell’ about aliyah.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Interfaith leaders gather for a memorial service Sunday outside the Bataclan theater in Paris. Getty ImagesThey, perhaps more than others, saw it coming.
When the 60 or so French Jews who attend services at the West Side Sephardic Synagogue gathered to pray last Friday night, the scope of the carnage in Paris was still unfolding.
Rabbi Eitan Bendavid, spiritual leader of the congregation, said he noticed “a pervasive sense of fear” among his French-born congregants, most of whom still have relatives back in France, and often go home for family visits.
But, he said, he did not hear a sense of surprise among his congregants. “People in my community have been saying for a long time that they saw stuff like this coming.”
By “stuff like this,” he meant the wide-scale terrorist attacks against French targets.
In Paris itself, where word of the suspected ISIS-coordinated attacks at six venues quickly spread in the French capital, Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s office in the capital, heard similar sentiments in the Jewish community. Last week’s attacks in Paris “were confirmation of everything we feared,” she said.
In the 10 months since the terrorist attacks on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket and the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took a total of 19 lives, French Jews foresaw that while the Jewish community was an early target of fatal Islamist terror attacks, French society in general would be next, Rodan-Benzaquen said in a telephone interview. “It was not a question of if, it was a question of when and where.”
The Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were killed on Friday night, was Jewish-owned for some four decades until earlier this year, and frequently hosted Jewish events. Like the restaurant and sports stadium where attacks also took place last Friday, it was not a specifically Jewish target in what French President Francois Hollande called “an act of war by ISIS.”
Rodan-Benzaquen and Rabbi Bendavid and other Jews with roots in France reacted in like ways this week, even as France mourned its losses — some 130 people killed and more than 300 injured — and pledged more security protection for Jewish institutions, and declared war on the ISIS terrorists who took responsibility for Friday’s attacks.
People familiar with the French Jewish community said French Jews saw the latest acts of terrorism coming, expect the next terrorism there to be aimed at specifically Jewish targets, are concerned but are not rushing to make aliyah or to move immediately to the United States or other Western countries, and feel that non-Jewish French citizens finally share their worries about the threat of Islamist terrorism. Now, said Rodan-Benzaquen, more people in France have “the knowledge that the cancer is spreading. There is the perception that the entire nation understands … what the Jewish community is going through. We feel less solitude.”
“French citizens now understand that they, and not just Jews, are terror targets,” the Times of Israel website quoted David Khalfa, a political consultant in Paris, as saying this week. “It was an illusion [of safety for most people in France]; we lived in this illusion and now we are waking up — and it’s a nightmare.
“Now everyone is a target,” Khalfa said. “This time it’s not only about symbolic targets … it has changed the whole perspective of fighting terror.”
“Whether attacks are against policemen or soldiers, against freedom of expression, or against Jews, what is being systematically, violently attacked are French democratic and republican values,” Rodan-Benzaquen wrote in an op-ed essay this week. “The goal of Islamic fundamentalism is to divide society, create a clash of civilizations, strengthen extremists that pretend to fight against them, and turn Muslims of every democratic country that they target against the rest of the population.”
“The Jewish community feels that France is under attack; it’s no longer a uniquely Jewish problem,” said Brigitte Dayan, a journalist with Jewish-Moroccan roots who moved to Manhattan from Chicago a dozen years ago and is knowledgeable about the French Jewish community. She added, “One friend [in France] said she is thankful to have bought an apartment in Tel Aviv last year.
“There have been so many attacks, so many threats [on French Jews] over the past months and years, that … the only ones not surprised” that ISIS has painted a bigger bull’s-eye over France “were the French Jewish community. I don’t think this is the end of it,” Rodan-Benzaquen continued.
She believes that while “the fear very much remains” among French Jews, “the next attacks may be [against] another Jewish target” outside France. She said she did not hear the increased level of discussion about leaving France as she did in the aftermath of the Hyper Cacher attack. “It’s a constant talk for the past year; people ask themselves if they should be leaving.”
Rabbi Bendavid said his congregants told him that it’s too early for their relatives in France to immediately reassess their aliyah or emigration options.
Avi Mayer, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Israel’s aliyah activities, agreed that a spike in French aliyah following the latest attacks in Paris is not likely.
“In the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks in January, we saw a surge in the number of calls and inquiries from French Jews, and the number of new aliyah files opened in France tripled. We have not seen a similarly dramatic increase in aliyah-related inquiries in the wake of Friday’s attacks,” Mayer said.
The number of French Jews who made aliyah has steadily increased over the last few years, Mayer said, from 1,917 in 2012, to 3,293 in 2013, and 7,238 in 2014. “Aliyah numbers for this year are up by approximately 11 percent compared to this point last year,” indicating a 2015 figure of about 8,000, “and we expect the numbers to continue growing steadily for the foreseeable future,” he said. (Mayer’s figures, however, are contradicted by aliyah totals reported earlier this year, which indicated that French aliyah had slowed after an immediate increase in the months after the January terrorism in Paris, and that a decrease of nearly 20 percent this year was likely.)
El Al Israel Airlines announced that it would assist Israelis in France who wish to return home, offering a “special” $350 one-way fare and suspending revision charges for passengers who wish to change tickets bought for dates up to Nov. 29; Arkia Airlines announced a similar move.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an independent organization that promotes aliyah and supports Jewish life in many countries, announced this week that it is stepping up its work in France, is providing “emergency security aid to French-Jewish communal institutions,” and will bring “a special flight” of French Jews to Israel at the end of November.
“The first French Jews to move to Israel since Friday’s ISIS terrorist attacks arrived today [Monday]” with the support of IFCJ, the organization stated in a press release. “Two families landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport … met by IFCJ representatives.”
Meanwhile, Jewish communities here and in France took part in memorial and commemoration activities.
On Shabbat, Rabbi Bendavid led his West Side congregation in reciting two chapters of Psalms, one “to pray for the healing of all the people who have been affected by this devastating attack,” and one “to pray that our leaders will see the current situation with absolute clarity.” He said his congregation also said a prayer in French for the protection of France.
Many congregants, he said, added the French flag to their Facebook pages as a sign of solidarity.
In Paris, a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue near the Bataclan theater said Psalms “for the departed and for the safety of all French citizens,” the chabad.org website reported.
The Grand Synagogue of Paris held a prayer service-rally Sunday night, sponsored by the country’s chief rabbi and the Conference of European Rabbis that included political officials and rabbis. “We pray for all the injured to recover quickly. Our hearts are with them and their families,” the Grand Synagogue’s Rabbi Moshe Sebbag said.
Members of the Jewish and Islamic clergy took part Sunday in a memorial service outside the Bataclan concert hall, many of them laying bouquets of white roses at the site.
“Anyone who uses hate speech has no place in France and those places that preach hate are not places of prayer but are those of a sect,” Hassen Chalghoumi, president of Imams of France, said at the memorial service. “1.5 million people are hostages of Daesh [an Arabic acronym for ISIS], 1.5 million people are hostages of these barbarians who are sullying the name of Islam and Muslims. It’s time to say no to this barbarity.”
The memorial was the idea of Polish-Jewish author Marek Halter, who writes frequently about his family, which escaped the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
Representatives of prominent U.S. Jewish organizations also condemned Friday’s terrorism. “One of the most sickening forms of human violence one can imagine,” said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. “An outrageous, cowardly and premeditated assault not just on the people of France, but on all freedom loving people around the world,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.
“It’s high time to drop the evasive language too often used to describe the perpetrators of these heinous crimes and get specific,” David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement. “They are not just ‘violent extremists,’ though of course they are. They are not just ‘terrorists,’ though, of course, they are that as well. They are radical Islamists inspired by their interpretation of religion, however perverted it may be.
“Hoping the problem will one day go away is not a strategy, nor is tying the hands of, or eviscerating the budgets of, law enforcement, intelligence, and the military, nor is defending privacy rights at all costs, as some policy purists would do, even if it means endangering national security and personal safety,” Harris said. “Some judicious accommodations must be made in today’s democratic societies, or else the consequences could be profound. It won’t be easy, nor will it be quick. Yesterday’s tragic events in Paris should be another urgent wake-up call that, whether we live in France or elsewhere, our world needs, and is worth, defending.”
editor@jewishweek.orgIsrael News
Will Israel’s Terror Fight Gain Sympathy?
Guarded hope that new counterterrorism focus in Europe would lead to greater understanding on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor
Hundreds of Israelis attending a rally Saturday night at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv in solidarity with Paris. JTA
Tel Aviv — “We understand more than anyone else,” read the decoration on the memorial candle outside the French embassy here.
The red, white and blue of France’s tricolor flag lit up the Tel Aviv municipal building in Rabin Square as well as the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel stands “shoulder to shoulder” with France, and President Reuven Rivlin declared that “we stand united” in the fight against terrorism. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog added, “Evil knows no borders and only courageous and decisive cooperation among the family of nations will make it possible to eradicate it.”
Amid the shock and revulsion over the Paris terrorist attacks in Israel, there was guarded hope that the new focus on national security and counterterrorism in Europe would spur more understanding in a relationship that has become heated over the policy toward the Palestinians.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to experience this,” said Ron Ben Nun, a 29-year-old industrial designer, as she stopped to snap a picture of the memorial candles and flowers outside the embassy. “I would like to support them, so those who are rational can get over this problem of radical Islam together.”
But alongside expressions of sympathy and condolence, there was a healthy dose of official indignation toward Europeans who are seen by many as blinded by loyalty to upholding civil liberties at all costs, naive about the threats of Islamic extremism and biased against Israel’s handling of the Palestinian conflict.
Still outraged from a shooting attack in the West Bank that killed two Israelis, Netanyahu on Sunday called on the international community to be more forceful in condemning Palestinian terrorists. “We are not to blame for the terrorism directed against us, just as the French aren’t to blame for the terrorism against them,” the prime minister said.
Other Israeli politicians from the governing coalition were less diplomatic, saying that Europeans should spend less time criticizing Israel and more time cooperating with Israel in fighting Islamic extremism. The Israeli frustration was enhanced by the decision of the European Union last week to require that consumer products from Jewish settlements in the West Bank carry special labels noting their origin in the “Israeli settlements” rather than a “Made in Israel” sticker, a move that has stoked fears of a countrywide economic boycott.
“Europe needs to stop dealing with nonsense of labeling of Israeli products and automatic condemnation for every balcony built in Jerusalem,” said Science Minister Ofir Akunis in an interview with Israel Television. “We are under an Islamic fundamentalist terror offensive. Terror is terror is terror.”
Akunis added on Facebook, “Wake up and start fighting Islamic extremist terror.”
The Paris attacks and the French efforts at cracking down on Islamist militants gave Israeli government ministers a convenient window of opportunity on Tuesday to implement a decision from last month outlawing the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, an Israeli-Arab group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and, allegedly, Hamas. In an unprecedented step against a minority group, Israeli police raided the movement’s offices throughout the country, confiscating files and equipment.
“The Paris attack created the international and regional atmosphere that justifies and gives legitimacy to such an exceptional and severe move like this,” wrote Udi Segal, a political reporter for Channel 2 news.
Israeli politicians want to convince the world that Palestinian terrorism is one and the same with the global jihadist militants who struck in France, said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political journalist. “Israel wants the global community to see Palestinian terror as part of a global trend of terrorizing citizens,” she said. “They don’t want it to be seen as part of a 70-year-old conflict.”
That explains Israel’s diplomatic outrage after the Swedish foreign minister, answering a question about Islamic radicalism in Europe, linked it to the situation in Middle East, “where not least the Palestinians see that there is no future.” Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Swedish ambassador in protest, saying that “any link between ISIS terrorism and the Palestinian problem is baseless.”
Although the Paris attacks have become a seminal moment for Europe in grappling with fundamentalist Islamic violence, it’s unlikely that they will substantively change European policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Some in Israel may hope that the events in Paris will add to Europe’s understanding of the constraints involved in coping with Palestinian terrorism, and help ease pressure on Israel and mitigate the criticism voiced in this context by various EU institutions and member states,” wrote Oded Eran, a former ambassador to the EU, and Adam Hoffman, on the website of a Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, where both authors are researchers. “Similar events in the past, however, indicate that this will not occur, and that no significant change in the European attitude on this question can be expected.”
But even if France’s diplomatic position doesn’t change toward Israel, a French Jewish leader said he expected there to be better understanding of the need to combat Islamic extremism. “The French didn’t realize it until now; now they understand it’s not just Jews, or journalists, but a worldwide war that Islam wants to wage against all those who don’t believe in sharia and their way of life,” said Roger Cukierman, vice president of the World Jewish Congress and the president of the French council of Jewish institutions, in an interview with Israel Radio.
Unlike most of their countrymen, Cukierman told the radio that French Jews were used to dealing with terrorist attacks directed at their communities. “This isn’t something new to us. But now it’s not only us.”
In January, when French terrorists targeted a kosher supermarket, Israeli officials encouraged French Jews to consider Israel their true home and immigrate. Top officials at the Jewish Agency said they anticipated that annual French Jewish immigration could jump this year to 10,000 from 7,238 in 2014. The actual figure through the first 10 months of the year is 6,860, suggesting the initial forecast might have been overstated.
At a sushi restaurant in Tel Aviv, two recent young French immigrants predicted that the attacks wouldn’t change much for the Jewish community back home.
“We are always afraid in France. There’s security guards and we know there’s danger,” said Sophie Ben Haim, a 22-year-old student in a Hebrew-language studies course.
She and a friend, François Cohen, agreed that the French politics would become more hardline because of the fear of new attacks and suspicions toward the country’s Muslim community. Despite the new sense of shared threat from terrorism with their countrymen, French Jews will keep immigrating to Israel, they predicted.
“Jews don’t feel at home there,” Ben Haim said. “I don’t have things in common with French people. There’s no future in France. Here, there is a future.”
editor@jewishweek.orgEditorial
After Paris, Will Anything Change?The flags have been lowered to half-mast. The flowers pile up at the site of the killings. Vigils are held, tears are shed, and political leaders, shocked and angry, speak out against the violence and pledge war against the enemy.
But more than 14 years after 9/11, and a week after France’s bloody wake-up call, has the world changed its approach to radical Islam? Have we come to grips with the fact that we are dealing with a form of savagery and suicidal commitment that transcends nationalism?
Certainly the militants have changed in recent years. They have become increasingly emboldened, widening their reach in terms of land and people to conquer, and by spreading their message through social media. And they are, to our astonishment and dismay, succeeding in attracting disgruntled significant numbers of men and women to their violent ways through videos of beheadings.
Will the savage murders in Paris last Friday night change the way the world deals with Islamic militancy? More pointedly, will the White House and European governments view the Israel-Palestinian conflict in a new light — not as the pivotal issue in resolving Mideast crises but as part of a larger religious war between radical Islam and Western values? Or will they continue to view Islamic and Palestinian terror attacks as separate issues, unrelated?
The case is being made that, in effect, “We Are All Israelis Now,” an assertion that all those who cherish Western values of human rights and freedoms are under attack from Islamic fundamentalists, both Shia and Sunni, including Iran and ISIS, whose mission is to spread Islam and defeat non-Muslim infidels. There is truth to that, though we caution to maintain perspective at a time of great emotion, keeping in mind that the great majority of the 1.7 billion Muslims on the planet are peace-loving people, embarrassed and fearful when the radicals strike.
We must not conflate Muslims with ISIS. And knee-jerk efforts to severely restrict immigration policies — Jeb Bush suggests the U.S. only take in Christians — reflect our darkest impulses. A helpful gauge is to substitute “Jew” for “Muslim” in such discussions and measure our reactions.
(Gary Rosenblatt’s column this week describes a bold experiment in Jewish-Muslim dialogue that is particularly timely.)
As the government of France grapples with the struggle to balance personal freedoms with increased security for its citizens, it would do well to look to, and appreciate, how Israel has dealt with this dilemma for more than six decades. Rather than focus on which Israeli products are produced in the Jewish communities of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria, in biblical terms) and which from inside the Green Line, European leaders would be better served by seeking out advice from Israel on countering terrorism more effectively. Europeans should know by now that Israel is part of the solution, not the problem.
President Obama is under increased pressure for resisting a more muscular response to the ISIS attacks, which have grown bolder and more frequent. In recent days there were the suicide bombings in Beirut that killed more than 40 people, the downing of a plane of Russian tourists in Egypt, killing all 224 aboard, in addition to the Paris carnage. The president’s reluctance to launch another ground war in the Mideast is understandable. But he should heed the advice of his former special assistant on the Mideast, Ambassador Dennis Ross, who told us recently that “vacuums tend to be filled by the worst possible people.” American restraint in Syria is widely perceived as a sign of weakness, an invitation for more brazen attacks from our enemies. And there is cause-and-effect in having allowed the Syrian civil war to rage out of control (at the cost so far of some 200,000 citizens) and witnessing the stampede of Syrians seeking refuge, now in Europe.
It is true that there is no silver bullet to solve the roiling problem of Islamic fundamentalism. Defeating ISIS militarily will not be enough, though it is necessary. What is required, in the end, is a victory for the concept of Islam as a religion of tolerance as well as faith, one that must come from its adherents, confirming that we are all created in God’s image.
editor@jewishweek.orgMy column this week is all too timely: an in-depth report on a unique and controversial experiment, under wraps until now, in brutally honest Muslim-Jewish dialogue.Gary Rosenblatt
Where Muslims, Jews Clash — And Hug
A unique and controversial experiment, under wraps until now, offers American Muslim leaders a deeper understanding of Jewish identity and history.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattI spent the last weekend of October on the Upper West Side with more than 40 thoughtful, impressive women and men from across the country on an intellectual and spiritual journey.
We attended Friday evening Shabbat services at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. Over the next two days we studied passages from the Torah and Talmud, and read and discussed excerpts from the writings of Solomon Schechter, Louis D. Brandeis, David Ben-Gurion and Jacob Blaustein.
The other participants had toured Israel together, part of their serious, yearlong commitment to learn about the connections between and differences among American and Israeli Jews.
What was unusual about the weekend program was that the participants were neither Jewish nor Christian. They were American Muslims — a range of civic and thought leaders, all committed to the Palestinian cause (a number were activists when in college), and most have supported BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is anathema to the Jewish state.
Writing that last sentence, I anticipated skepticism, alarm and perhaps anger from some of you. You may well be questioning the motives of the group, made up of several imams as well as university professors, doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, etc. Surely there must be a pro-Palestinian objective here, a concern that these people are part of some kind of political front to infiltrate the Jewish community.
But if you think there is suspicion among Jews who learn of the Muslim Learning Initiative (MLI), as the group is known, imagine the reaction in the Muslim community on hearing of co-religionists taking part in a full-year fellowship program sponsored and hosted by the Shalom Hartman Institute, a proud Zionist educational organization based in Jerusalem as well as New York.
Indeed, the fact that you likely are first learning here of MLI, now in its third year, is because its participants have chosen to keep a decidedly low profile, for good reason. (I agreed not to mention their names unless they chose to speak to me on the record.)
When a member of the first cohort wrote an essay in Time magazine, “What a Muslim American Learned from Zionists,” criticizing the Muslim world for not facing the truth about the 4,000-year Jewish connection to Israel even as she condemned Israeli treatment of the Palestinians — she received death threats from her own community, accused of being a traitor to the cause.
She was not alone. Many of the other participants cited intense criticism from fellow Muslims or pro-Palestinian advocates, ranging from nasty blogs to being disinvited from events to physical threats.
By visiting Israel, and stepping across a BDS line, the MLI participants have outraged parts of their community in signaling to American Jews that there are serious partners in the Muslim community — partners ready to rethink the Muslim wholesale rejection of the Jewish narrative, even as they remain deeply critical of Israeli policies.
So why did the MLI participants risk their reputations to join the fellowship and, in effect, invite American Jews into a serious conversation? They each have their own personal reasons, but several cited longstanding commitment to the Palestinian cause coupled with frustration at the lack of progress, and a recognition of “the toxic hate,” as one woman put it, between Jews and Palestinians.
“We all have blood on our hands,” she said.
There was a shared curiosity about learning the Jewish narrative, a concern about the blatant anti-Semitism voiced by some in their community, and a desire to do something to break the bloody stalemate in the Holy Land.
Imam Abdullah
The primary impetus, though, was Imam Abdullah Antepli, the founding director of Duke University’s Center for Muslim Life, who handpicked the first cohort from among colleagues and others he knew. His credibility went a long way in convincing them to join MLI.
The imam was raised in a stridently anti-Semitic home in Turkey and came to believe that hatred of Jews was not consistent with authentic Islam. Several years ago Imam Abdullah, who came to the U.S. a dozen years ago at the age of 30, approached Yossi Klein Halevi, an author, journalist and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The imam, who explains that he is part of a majority of American Muslims opposed to violence and seeking their place in American society, said he wanted to create a program for American Muslim leaders to better understand American Jews and Israel with the hope of improving relations between emerging leaders of the two faiths.
At first skeptical, Halevi, who has a special interest in interfaith relations, came to believe in and share Imam Abdullah’s dream of closing the gap between Muslims and Jews through getting to know and understand each other. Halevi brought the idea to the Hartman administration, which wholeheartedly embraced it and launched MLI, an intensive program that includes four weeks of study at the institute in Jerusalem — two weeks at the outset of the program and two weeks at the end — and a series of lectures and programs in the U.S. during the course of the year.
“We are Siamese twins,” laughed Imam Abdullah as he and Halevi met with me, just before the recent weekend program began. “We are brothers from a different mother.”
The warm bond between the two men who direct MLI is palpable, and though their subject matter is serious, their conversation often is marked by laughter.
“We are like oxygen for each other,” said Halevi, who noted they each are trying to nurture conversation between mainstream Jews who support Israel and mainstream Muslims who support the Palestinians. “It’s not a zero-sum game,” Halevi said. “One can care about the other and still be loyal to one’s own community.”
The essence of the program, he added, is teaching about Jewish peoplehood and the Jewish connection to the land of Israel — “two core issues that much of the Muslim world doesn’t get about us. That’s what makes the program unique.”
Imam Abdullah noted that most MLI participants are seeking a relationship with American Jews because they see the Jewish community as both a role model for integrating into America and a potential ally against the exclusion of Muslim Americans from mainstream American society.
The weekend program took place in the midst of ongoing violence in Israel. Imam Abdullah said the Mideast tensions made Muslim-Jewish dialogue more difficult, but all the more important. And Halevi pointed out that even in the fall of 2014, when the MLI participants met in New York shortly after the bloody Gaza war, their discussions with the Hartman faculty were marked by “vehement disagreement, but no one raised their voice during those three days.”
Imam Abdullah, Halevi and the Hartman Institute’s president, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, who joined us, emphasized that MLI is not an interfaith program; it’s an educational one, an attempt to foster personal relationships and deep dialogue among people whose political and perhaps religious views differ sharply.
“We never argue the facts in MLI,” the rabbi said. “We share what our understanding is. There are multiple facts, multiple injustices.” He told the participants the weekend was about “your learning our inner struggles and how to create boundaries. We have a covenant with you,” he said, a commitment to be open and honest.
‘We Don’t Hold Back’
What I witnessed, and took part in, over the three-day weekend — the first time all three MLI cohorts were together — was a model exercise in expressing honest, often painful, views with more than just civility. The MLI members and the handful of Hartman faculty were able to convey empathy and personal affection for each other without standing down an inch from their fervent beliefs. There were plenty of hugs and smiles in the room, though the conversation was intense at times. The level of trust was remarkable.
(At one point during the weekend the participants discussed their desire for the creation of a JLI, a parallel group of young Jewish leaders to learn about Muslim life. Hartman officials readily agreed and said it was up to a Muslim foundation or group to sponsor such a program. The participants noted that, unfortunately, their community is not as well organized as the Jewish community in undertaking such projects.)
The Hartman teachers candidly discussed challenges facing the Jewish community, here and in Israel. The MLI members often noted parallels in their own community, like the struggle for younger American Muslims to be accepted by the Muslim Establishment while resenting some of the policies and views of their elders.
The questions the MLI members asked of the Hartman scholars in sessions on the tension between loyalty and criticism and the future of the American Jewish relationship with Israel revealed an understanding of the issues that impressed the faculty.
“We don’t hold back, we expose our deepest struggles and yearnings” one teacher said, “and so do they.”
One MLI member, older than most, said he has learned how Jews feel about Jerusalem, how far back their ties go to the city. “The Jews pray every day to return to Jerusalem,” he said. “You can’t tell the Jews, ‘We’ll drive you out.’”
One woman told me she and others in the group had never realized that Zionism was more than a political term, one she had associated only with colonialism, not the yearning for an ancient homeland. And several participants said that prior to MLI, they thought Jewish ties to Israel go back only as far as the 1940s, as a political solution for settling homeless Holocaust refugees, rather than to Biblical times.
More Than Hummus
One participant said he joined MLI because he had grown tired of “toothless” Muslim-Jewish dialogue groups he had participated in, which he described as “hey, you eat hummus and we eat hummus.” But those discussions avoided hot-button issues like the Mideast conflict.
“I needed something more meaty, and I joined MLI because my community — and me personally — was stuck in a certain mindset, an absolutist narrative. We all tend to hear what we want to hear, not what we need to hear, and we advance our positions by putting the other guy in the gutter. Now I understand the Jewish longing for the land [of Israel]. As a pragmatist, I want to disempower anti-Semitism and anti-Islam attitudes.”
He said he is “totally invested” in the Hartman program, though his involvement greatly upsets his community. He said that this distrust stems in part from a lack of confidence in one’s own beliefs. “People tell me ‘the Jews are so smart, they’ll dupe you” into adapting their narrative.
But the participant also found that even sophisticated Jews lack knowledge of American Muslims. He said that in addressing a sophisticated American Jewish group he was disappointed but not surprised when the line of questions focused on whether most American Muslims are sympathetic to terrorists.
Parvez Ahmed, a professor of finance at the University of North Florida, said he appreciates MLI because it offers “a modest pathway towards improving Jewish-Muslim relations by creating a safe space for honest dialogue” and an opportunity “to mitigate the Islamophobia and anti-Semitism roiling our communities.” He asserted that “engagement is not appeasement, and dialogue is not capitulation,” adding: “If we remain in our silos we are part of the problem.”
Samar Kaukab, director of a research accelerator program at the University of Chicago, said the MLI experience has deepened her understanding of “the complexity of the American Jewish experience,” seeing how Jews relate to being deeply American and identifying with Israel. She said she has found similarities and differences in comparison to her own feelings about being “deeply American and relating to a global Muslim outlook.”
Having participated in previous interfaith dialogues, Kaukab said MLI goes deeper. Too often, in other efforts, “we Jews and Muslims situate ourselves on diametrically opposed spectrums and miss the stuff in the middle that speaks to who we really are as people and what we care about. The Hartman program allows us to trust each other and ask probing questions.”
Another participant, foreign policy expert Haroon Moghul, has written that he joined MLI to “be a more effective participant in critical American conversations” about Mideast policy, with a better understanding of America’s relationship with Israel. He credited Hartman for encouraging the participants to visit a number of Palestinian communities during their Israel trip and for the complete candor in its approach, well aware that the participants remain steadfast in their support for the Palestinian cause.
Still, everyone I spoke with described how the MLI experience has changed his or her way of thinking. Not in terms of political or religious views, necessarily, but in expanding one’s horizons, taking into account additional narratives, humanizing our adversaries.
When I got home after the MLI weekend I reread several recent issues of The Jewish Week, imagining how some of the people I’d met would read the articles and opinion columns dealing with the Mideast conflict.
It got me thinking about the dangers of generalizing and stereotyping. I wondered if and how I’d approach things differently now. And I realized that despite our locked-in Mideast narratives, developed over a lifetime, an authentic encounter and honest conversation has the potential to open our hearts and minds to hear — and perhaps make room for — “the other’s” truth.
Gary@jewishweek.org
All Too Timely
Editor’s Note: This column was written before last week’s tragic attacks in Paris by suspected Islamic terrorists. Its message — the positive influence of serious conversations between a group of American Muslim leaders and Jewish educators — is all the more important now. Imam Abdullah Antepli, the initiator of the program, denounced the Paris attacks as “barbaric, despicable savagery that serve as a painful reminder and urgent call for North American Jews and Muslims to engage in honest discussion, despite our political disagreements.” Yossi Klein Halevi, his Jewish counterpart at the sponsoring Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, added that the program “challenges both Muslims and Jews to avoid easy judgments and struggle with complexity.”
This piece is dedicated to the memory of the Paris victims and to the hope of more productive Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
gary@jewishweek.orgAlso this week, praise and anxiety over the Reform movement's equality move for transgender Jews; how UJA-Federation is helping struggling businesses in Jerusalem as the terror attacks there continue; pro-Palestinian student group at Hunter College hijacksfree-tuition rally; food and wine tips for Thanksgiving; and our Fall Literary Guide, focusing on WWII, the war still with us 70 years later.New York
Amid Celebration, Anxiety Remains For Transgender Reform Jews
URJ’s far-reaching equality move hailed, but ‘prejudices still exist.’
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Resolution promises progress for transgender Jews, but anxiety remains. Courtesy of Keshet
Ari Lev Fornari, a rabbi and prison chaplain, never heard the word “transgender” until his sophomore year of college.
“It didn’t come up in my childhood,” said Rabbi Fornari, who grew up attending Temple Beth-El, a Reform congregation in Great Neck, L.I. Though his community welcomed gay and lesbian members, the conversation hadn’t moved beyond those gender-static labels.
For Rabbi Fornari, who came out as transgender in 2005, the resolution passed at last week’s Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) Biennial affirming and advancing the movement’s commitment to full equality and inclusion for transgender Jews was cause for celebration.
The “Resolution on the Rights of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People” — which calls for shuls and camps to have gender-neutral bathrooms, encourages gender-neutral language, suggests training on gender issues for religious school staff and encourages advocating on behalf of the transgender community — is being heralded as the most far-reaching resolution in support of transgender rights of any major religious organization.
“Knowing that members of the transgender and gender-nonconforming communities are often singled out for discrimination and even violence, we are reminded of the Torah’s injunction, ‘do not stand idly while your neighbor bleeds,’” the resolution reads, quoting scripture several times.
Today, even the most conservative religious institutions are confronted with LBGT concerns. Over the weekend, the Church of Latter-day Saints, known for its opposition to gay marriage, lost more than 1,500 members over a new policy that prevents children of same sex couples from being baptized and declares members in gay marriages to be apostates subject to excommunication.
And while other religious bodies, including the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) have approved resolutions affirming equality for transgender people, none, say observers, go as far as the one offered by the Reform movement, which, with roughly 1.5 million members, represents about one-third of American Jews, by far the largest Jewish denomination.
Annette Marquis, LGBTQ program director at the UUA, clarified that while the Reform edict does go further than any other large religious organization’s resolution to date, this is partially because Jewish rituals are gender specific in a way that Unitarian rituals are not. For example, the bar or bat mitzvah ceremony, a complicated topic of conversation with regard to transgender teens, is not an issue for Unitarian Universalists, whose coming-of-age ceremony (which comes at age 15, not 13) is gender neutral, she said.
“Transgender is a harder thing for people to grasp than gay or lesbian because it challenges the basic construct of how we divide the world,” said Marquis, a lesbian who grew up in a strictly Catholic home. The UUA was among the first religions to ordain lesbian and gay ministers, doing so in 1979; the first openly transgender minister was ordained by the UUA in 1988. The next hurdle, the wide acceptance of transgender congregants within the Unitarian Universalist movement, is going to take “a lot of work, and a lot of time,” she said.
Reform transgender Jews are also aware of the work ahead. For Rabbi Fornari and other transgender Jews, excitement is tempered with caution. He described how he continues to experience “professional anxiety” as a leader in the community, despite being out for over a decade.
“The anxiety is about whether or not we can have an authentic connection and the ways in which people’s discomfort and fears and own anxiety is a barrier to our connection,” said Rabbi Fornari, 33, who lives in Boston with his partner and their 1-year-old child and directs the Boston-Area Jewish Education Program.
Rabbi Elliot Kukla, the first openly transgender person to be ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement’s seminary, said that while the resolution was “heartening,” deep-rooted prejudices still exist, even in the URJ.
“People still question me as a trans person in this world,” said Rabbi Kukla, 41, a spiritual leader at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center in San Francisco. Walking into a bathroom in an average URJ congregation, he continues to attract strange looks and stares, he said. Reform rabbis may now give sermons about the importance of welcoming transgender Jews, “but my presence,” he said, “still raises a lot of discomfort.”
While the visibility of transgender people has been increasing, rates of unemployment, poverty, suicide, discrimination and violence against them remain high, he said. According to a recent study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 41 percent of gender nonconforming people have attempted suicide, compared to 4.6 percent in the general U.S. population.
“The work of true inclusion is more than a sermon or a standing ovation at the biennial,” said Rabbi Kukla. “It’s a conversation about class and privilege.” While the recent coming out of former Olympic champion and television personality Caitlyn Jenner has captured public interest, many transgender people can’t afford the medical procedures and upkeep — like hormones and electrolysis — to present themselves “as they would like.” In fact, many who are struggling with unemployment can’t even afford synagogue membership, he said.
“We’re a lot more comfortable with a Caitlyn Jenner than with a transgender woman who’s 6 feet tall and still has stubble,” said Rabbi Kukla. “That’s the real test of inclusion. It’s a lot easier to welcome people who look just like us, and who conform to our expectations of gender.”
Rabbi Kukla also pointed out that the Jewish community has been much quicker to embrace transgender men (those who transition female to male) than the reverse. Several transgender men, including Rabbi Kukla, have moved into visible leadership positions within the Reform community, while the stigma in the other direction remains.
“In the Jewish sphere, becoming a man is still perceived as moving up in status, while becoming a woman is perceived as a step down,” he said. “A man in a dress is still seen as humiliating, while most can intellectually understand why a woman wants to become a man.” For Jews and non-Jews alike, referring to men as feminine is perpetually an insult, while referring to women as masculine is more often than not an accolade, he added. This “persistent sexism” continues to “infuse Reform Judaism, even though we’d prefer to believe otherwise,” he said.
Stephanie Bonvissuto, a transgender convert to Judaism, has found a spiritual home at her Reform temple in Stony Brook, L.I. Pursuing a dissertation in women and gender studies at Stony Brook University, the 51-year-old former Roman Catholic said her fellow Reform congregants never questioned her gender.
“I was welcomed into the women’s groups, including the synagogue sisterhood,” she said. At her conversion mikvah ceremony, the Reform rabbi presiding met Bonvissuto’s anxiety and embarrassment with reassurance.
“She said: ‘Look, you are a woman on the inside, so you’re a woman on the outside.’”
Still, Bonvissuto looks forward to the day when she will no longer be the “token” transgender person in synagogue.
“I just want to be another woman in the congregation,” she said, describing how frequent pronoun fumbles among fellow congregants result in profuse apologies and blushes. “I don’t want to be the spokesperson anymore.”
According to Rabbi Fornari, the transgender resolution’s most significant contribution is shifting the burden of responsibility from trans individuals to the institutions they attend.
“My experience is that it’s uncomfortable to ask for what we as trans people need,” he said, giving examples of having to repeatedly ask people to use the right pronoun and the lack of gender-neutral bathrooms. “These still feel like big asks. For the Reform movement to say now those things are universally expected — that’s huge. The burden no longer rests on just one voice.”
editor@jewishweek.org
New York
As Jerusalem Businesses Empty, UJA-Fed Steps In
New York charity offers loans for struggling venues as terrorism keeps customers at home.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Jerusalem businesses, have taken a financial hit since a spate of stabbings and other attacks in the last month.When participants in a UJA-Federation of New York mission entered a Jerusalem restaurant on November 9th for a pre-arranged meal, they found plenty of empty tables.
Other would-be diners had stayed away because of two nearly coinciding terrorist attacks in the city earlier in the day.
“The moment something happens, people don’t go out,” said Amir Sznajderman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, who was accompanying the UJA-Federation mission.
Business at the restaurant dropped by 50 percent in the last month because of the spate of Palestinian knife, gun and car attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers that terrorized the city.
“The owner said he had been in business 11 years and had never seen such a decline in business in such a short period of time,” Sznajderman said.
That proprietor is one of 70 business owners in Jerusalem who have thus far applied for emergency loan guarantees made available by UJA-Federation of New York. The organization has made such emergency loan guarantees available during prior times of conflict, according to Aliza Kurshan, executive vice president of Community Planning and Agency Resources, but they have been infrequent.
UJA-Federation allocated $200,000 on Oct. 27 to guarantee $1.4 million in emergency bank loans to struggling businesses, according to Eric Goldstein, UJA-Federation’s CEO.
“The wave of terror has significantly reduced revenues for many Jerusalem businesses that rely on foot traffic and walk-in customers,” Goldstein said in a UJA-Federation statement.
After the first wave of Palestinian attacks, Israeli authorities responded with a massive call-up of police and soldiers — deploying them on Jerusalem’s streets, along highways and in residential areas. Customers slowly began returning to Jerusalem stores as attacks in the city ended and moved to other parts of the country.
But on the day of the mission, two Palestinians, aged 12 and 14, stabbed and lightly wounded a 25-year-old Israeli security guard on the light rail in Jerusalem. And a Palestinian terrorist stabbed and lightly injured a man in an attack near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. Police shot and killed the terrorist, shot and wounded one of the youths and arrested his companion, who had been seized by other passengers.
Following those attacks, Sznajderman, who is director of economic development and loan funds for the Jewish Agency, said the restaurant owner told him that 50 percent of those who had reserved tables for that evening had cancelled.
“It takes time for business to recover, and every time something happens, business drops again,” he said.
Since the wave of Palestinian terror attacks began Oct. 1, there have been about 80 attacks throughout the country that have killed 11 Israelis and wounded about 200.
“Our office is in Jerusalem, I was born and raised in this city — and it was half empty [after the first wave of attacks last month],” Sznajderman said. “We were then approached by businesses in need and so we approached [UJA-Federation of New York] to see if something could be done. Our office has money for loan guarantees, but that money is dedicated to helping establish new businesses and helping others to grow. The businesses coming to us needed working capital loans.”
Michael Lustig, chair of UJA-Federation of New York’s committee Empowering and Promoting Inclusive Communities in Israel got the call.
“I knew anecdotally” about the problem, he said, noting that his sister had sent him a picture of Jerusalem’s normally bustling Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market three weeks ago. “It was a ghost town,” he said. He himself returned last week from Israel after a two-week visit.
After speaking with Sznajderman, Lustig said he immediately consulted with UJA-Federation of New York’s loan approval committee in Jerusalem and his New York-based committee.
“Within 24 hours, the decision was made to do this,” Lustig said. ”We had a crisis and we had to make a quick decision.”
Since then, of the 70 businesses that have filed applications, 20 have been approved to receive about $470,000 in loan guarantees.
Sznajderman said it takes about a week to review each application and that so far about 70 percent of those reviewed have been approved.
“We do it as quickly as possible and actually visit each business,” Sznajderman said. “We check their business plan and their financials and whatever else needs to be checked to make sure we are not giving money to a bad business. … I’ve spoken face-to-face with many businesses and they are showing us a 60 to 65 percent decrease in sales. The economic minister responsible for Jerusalem said that overall business is off 55 percent.
The loans have gone to established businesses — clothing stores, restaurants, tourist activities, wedding halls, candy stores and other stores that youngsters used to flock to after school.
“Kids are not walking the streets anymore,” he said.
Sznajderman stressed that applications are coming “from some very successful and well known businesses in the city. Without working capital they are stuck because they have to pay rent, salaries and pay for supplies — and some banks are not willing to give them credit without additional collateral.” She added that when the Jewish Agency employee handling the loan fund said calls to tell a business owner that the loan guarantees have been approved, she hears “sighs of relief” because they have been “suffocating.”
“We have so many pending applications that we will see within a week whether all of the loan guarantees have been fully utilized,” Sznajderman said. “The bank branch manager has complained that he can’t handle all the business. That’s a good complaint. … I do believe that if there is a need [for additional loan guarantees], New York will again stand up to help.”
editor@jewishweek.org
New York
Hunter College Condemns Anti-Semitic Chants
Chanting ‘Zionists out of CUNY,’ pro-Palestinian student group hijacks tuition-hike protest.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
“Zionists out of CUNY!” chanted students at the march. Via YouTube.comHunter College and Jewish organizations are condemning a pro-Palestinian student group that took over a student rally for free tuition by chanting “Zionists out of CUNY” and “Long live the intifada.”
The Nov. 12 rally outside the Upper East Side school — part of a national “Million Student March,” which advocates free tuition and cancellation of student debt — drew more than a hundred students, who chanted and listened to speeches on a variety of causes (Black Lives Matter, prison reform, communist revolution) for several hours before marching to the chancellor’s home, where police ordered the crowd to disperse.
Interspersed with such chants as “no tuition, open admission,” were the anti-Israel chants. As students spoke, a large Palestinian flag waved nearby and students held such signs as “Hunter students for Justice in Palestine” and “Divest CUNY Tuition from Israeli Apartheid.” A small group of students, including one wrapped in an Israeli flag, held a counter protest with one student holding a sign that said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Affordable Tuition, SJP doesn’t Speak for Me” and another with one calling for “Lower Tuition, not Terrorism against Israel.”
The group NYC Students for Justice in Palestine explained their reasoning for piggybacking their cause onto the free-tuition movement in a Facebook post the same day: “The Zionist administration invests in Israeli companies, companies that support the Israeli occupation, hosts birthright programs and study abroad programs in occupied Palestine, and reproduces settler-colonial ideology throughout CUNY through Zionist content of education. While CUNY aims to produce the next generation of professional Zionists, SJP aims to change the university to fight for all peoples liberation.”
The post was signed by NYC Students for Justice in Palestine and the group’s chapters at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, St. Joseph’s College, the College of Staten Island, John Jay College, the CUNY School of Law, Pace University-Pleasantville, New York University and Columbia.
In response to the chants, Hunter College student @becca wrote via Twitter, “Full-blown anti-Semitism allowed at my college. What’s next @Hunter_College?! I witnessed this and froze in fear,” and linked to a video of the chanting students that the Israel-advocacy organization StandWithUs posted on Facebook.
Another student, @The_Slavinator wrote “Is @Hunter_College condoning #antisemitism? Sure seems like it. Are they content to be deemed a #HotbedOfHate?”
Hunter College quickly condemned the statements, with Chancellor James B. Milliken stating Friday that CUNY is “a place of inclusion, not exclusion.” While “free speech, debate and the open exchange of ideas” are essential, he said, “intolerant, hateful and bigoted speech, while it may be legally protected, is anathema to our values.”
“Those voices,” he added, “stop rather than encourage the dialogue and real debate that makes us stronger.”
Other anti-Israel students also used the march to promote their agenda, with similar messages posted at Temple University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which commended the school for issuing a statement making clear that “invoking discriminatory language reeking of thinly veiled bigotry, prejudice, anti-Semitism or other behavior” is inconsistent with its mission.
UJA-Federation of New York also protested the rhetoric and praised the college’s swift action, saying that “Students of all backgrounds deserve a campus experience that is free from intolerance and prejudice” and urging “all parties involved to disavow hateful language against other students and take appropriate measures to ensure this does not happen again.”
amyclark@jewishweek.org
The Remix: Thanksgiving Deli Roll
There’s more than one way to make this classic make-ahead dish.
Amy Kritzer/JWThis is the next installment in our series The Remix, in which we seek to gently rework the more challenging dishes in the Jewish culinary canon. With a little bit of love, we’re convinced we can make any dish delicious, even ones that seem a bit bizarre to the modern palate.
I remember trying deli roll as a little kid at a family friend’s Shabbat dinner. Turkey, salami and mustard rolled in puff pastry and baked is definitely a kid- friendly dish. After all, my diet at the time consisted of turkey sandwiches and fruit snacks. I never forgot it, but it receded from my personal repertoire until it crossed my radar again. My first thought, of course, was how to Remix it for you.
Deli meats are tasty and all, but if you think about it, puff pastry is a blank canvas for amazingness. And Thanksgiving leftovers are no exception. In place of deli turkey, I’m using roasted turkey. And a mustard-spiked cranberry sauce in place of mustard. Maybe you want to add mashed potatoes (or stuffing!) and dip the whole thing in gravy? I definitely won’t stop you. Just make sure you use pareve puff pastry, or save your turkey for sandwiches and go dairy with brie and cranberry sauce instead. Either way, leftovers have never been so delicious.
Amy Kritzer is a food writer and recipe developer in Austin, Texas. She blogs at What Jews Wanna Eat.
Slideshow
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HideServings & Times
Yield:
12 piecesActive Time:
30 minTotal Time:
1 hr 15 minHideIngredients
For cranberry sauce:
1 12-oz bag fresh cranberries, picked through
¾ cup light brown sugar
1 tablespoon orange zest
2 tablespoons orange juice
2 tablespoons smooth Dijon mustard
For deli roll:
1 piece puff pastry (you can use homemade or 1/2 of a 17.3 oz package)
1 ½ cups shredded roasted turkey (you can also use deli turkey)
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, minced
1 egg, whisked
¼ cup salted pumpkin seeds
HideSteps
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
First, make the cranberry sauce. You can also mix mustard into leftover cranberry sauce if you have it! Combine cranberries, brown sugar, orange zest, and orange juice in a medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, then lower to medium low heat and cook uncovered until cranberries burst and sauce thickens, about 10-12 minutes. Stir in mustard and cool.
Now, it’s deli roll time. Spread puff pastry on a clean surface and flatten a bit with a rolling pin. Spread half the cranberry sauce on the puff pastry, and then top evenly with a thin layer of shredded turkey. Sprinkle with rosemary.
Roll like a jelly roll from the short side, so the end result is longer. Secure the seam under the roll. Brush with egg wash and top with pumpkin seeds.
Roll like a jelly roll from the short side, so the end result is longer. Secure the seam under the roll. Brush with egg wash and top with pumpkin seeds.
HideWhat Wine Goes With Turkey Again?
Impress your guests with just the right white, red or rosé this Thanksgiving.
Joshua E. London
Special To The Jewish Week
When it comes to pairing wines with your Thanksgiving meal, one should keep in mind that there is no “perfect” pairing. The goal of pairing wine with food is balance; neither the food nor the wine should overpower each. General rules of thumb — like lighter foods with lighter wines, richer foods with richer, full-bodied wines — can be handy, but should not be thought of as absolute. The interplay of wine and food is necessarily subjective, but the differences among wine varietals and styles can seem dramatic.
With turkey, some prefer white wine, like an oaky Chardonnay or perhaps a lighter, dry Riesling, while others go for a hearty flavorful red like Syrah or Zinfandel, or the softer Pinot Noir. Some might even prefer to split the difference with a zippy rosé … and all the wines might be excellent with the exact same menu. Experience is the surest guide, so experiment liberally in advance. When in doubt, provide guests with multiple options. With all the fabulous wines out there for just such an occasion, here is a collection for your consideration:
White Wines:
Dalton, D, Pinot Gris, Unaoked, Galilee, Israel, 2014: Medium-bodied with aromas of melon, hay, peaches and grapefruit and flavors of green apple, stone fruits, mineral and loads of citrus, it has a lengthy finish that is accented with minerals, lemon and spice. Vibrant and refreshing.
(Available at Gotham Wines and Liquors, 2517 Broadway, Manhattan, [212] 932-0990, $16.18)
Pinks:
Dalton, Rosé, Upper Galilee, Israel, 2014: A blend of 53 percent Shiraz, 40 percent Cabernet, and 8 percent Barbera, this light-bodied, enjoyable rosé is a touch sweeter than the previous vintage, but is no less inviting with its nose of ripe strawberries and apricots, with slightly sweet flavors of cherry, strawberry, cranberry and watermelon; it has a lovely, balancing acidity to keep the whole crisp and refreshing.
(Available at Columbus Wines and Spirits, 730 Columbus Avenue, Manhattan, [212] 865-7070, $15.99)
Cantine del Borgo Reale, Rosé Puglia, Italy, 2014: This pleasing, straightforward and light-bodied rosé is floral on the nose with fruity notes of apricot, peach and ripe cherry, followed by flavors of sour cherry, nectarine, raspberry and a touch of cranberry. This is a simple quaffer, but well crafted, refreshing and a great value.
(Available at 36th Avenue Wines, 3014 36th Ave., Long Island City, Queens, [718] 361-6080, $15.99)
Hajdu Wines, Grenache Rosé, Clement Hills, California, 2014: This delightfully crisp light-to-medium-bodied 100 percent Grenache rosé offers strawberry, peach, citrus and banana aromas, followed by fruity yet restrained flavors of orange, lemon and strawberry. Charming, mouth-watering and vibrant. Like most Hajdu Wines, this does not disappoint.
(Available at hajduwines.com, $30)
Don Ernesto, Beret, Napa Valley, California, 2014: A beautiful, light-bodied 100 percent Syrah rosé has a nose of strawberry and cherry and perhaps a touch of apple. Dry, crisp and refreshing, yet with some real depth too. Fabulous all around, it matches any food and it’s dangerously easy to sip in great quantities.
(Available at hagafen.com 888-HAGAFEN, $24)
Reds:
Hagafen, Pinot Noir, 2013: A delicious wine offering dark fruit, raspberry and earthy aromas on a medium frame with savory flavors of black currants, strawberry, spice and notes of coffee and mild oak at the finish. Lovely Napa Pinot.
(Available at Skyview Wine and Liquor, 5681 Riverdale Ave., Riverdale, $37.99)
Pacifica, Evan’s Collection, Pinot Noir, Oregon, 2010: Opens with ripe cherry and oak scents that lead into flavors of black and red cherries, raspberry and plum with some mild smokiness along with mineral and herbal notes. Nicely balanced with good acidity and firm tannins, it gets better as it breathes, so consider decanting to smooth out the edges.
(Available at Columbus Wines and Spirits, 730 Columbus Ave., Manhattan, [212] 865-7070)
Hajdu Wines, Makom, Sonoma Coast, Pinot Noir, 2013: Medium bodied with a fruity and aromatic nose of strawberries, cranberries and plums, and an interesting if subtle vegetal lilt, leading to flavors of plum, strawberry and raspberry, with hints of leather and spice. Interesting and yummy.
(Available at hajduwines.com, $45)
Agua Dulce Zinfandel 2010: A powerful, explosive nose of fruit and spice, this medium-to-full-bodied Zin is complex, richly layered and well structured, with lovely dark fruit and spice notes, and a pleasing, lengthy finish.
(Available at kosherwine.com, [866]-567-4370, $29.99)
Dalton Alma, Shiraz-Grenache-Mourvedre (SGM), Galilee, Israel: This aromatic, Rhône-style Israeli blend offers appealing mocha and earthy red fruit aromas leading to supple, mildly spicy dark fruit flavors intermingled with anise, vanilla, pepper and tobacco. Smooth and well rounded.
(Available at Ambassador Wines, 1020 Second Ave., Manhattan, [212] 421-5078, $28.99)
Vignobles David, Les Masques, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France, 2012: This remarkable blend of 85 percent Grenache, 10 percent Mourvèdre, and 5 percent Syrah conjures up a complex bouquet of red and black fruits, lavender, cedar and stone, evolving into flavors of stone fruits, currants, cranberries, espresso, tobacco leaf, toasted oak and truffles, with a smidgen of citrus, dried mushroom, and lovely Mediterranean spices. With bracing acidity and rich, powdery tannins, this superb wine is very young and tight and will benefit from further aging, but is lovely now given plenty of time to breath.
(Available at Skyview Wines and Liquor, 5681 Riverdale Ave., Riverdale, [718] 601-8222, $80)
Agua Dulce Winery Syrah 2010 ($34): This wonderful syrah offers lovely dark fruits (black cherry), complex herbal notes (violet), rich oak and vibrant acidity balanced nicely with the well-integrated tannins. Drinking beautifully now, this is one to savor.
(Gotham Wines. 2517 Broadway, Manhattan, [212] 932-0990, $32.76)
Enjoy and give thanks!
Fall Literary Guide November 2015
Roosevelt and the Jews. Primo Levi, Reconsidered. The Art of the Steal. Family Secrets from the War
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Inside This Special Section
Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. A reminder that our website is always there for you with breaking news and exclusive videos, op-eds, features, blogs, advice columns, and more.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/?utm_source=November+18%2C+2015+WEDNESDAY+newsletter&utm_campaign=JWMG+&utm_medium=email
BETWEEN THE LINES Gary Rosenblatt
Where Muslims, Jews Clash — And Hug
A unique and controversial experiment, under wraps until now, offers American Muslim leaders a deeper understanding of Jewish identity and history.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattI spent the last weekend of October on the Upper West Side with more than 40 thoughtful, impressive women and men from across the country on an intellectual and spiritual journey.
We attended Friday evening Shabbat services at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. Over the next two days we studied passages from the Torah and Talmud, and read and discussed excerpts from the writings of Solomon Schechter, Louis D. Brandeis, David Ben-Gurion and Jacob Blaustein.
The other participants had toured Israel together, part of their serious, yearlong commitment to learn about the connections between and differences among American and Israeli Jews.
What was unusual about the weekend program was that the participants were neither Jewish nor Christian. They were American Muslims — a range of civic and thought leaders, all committed to the Palestinian cause (a number were activists when in college), and most have supported BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is anathema to the Jewish state.
Writing that last sentence, I anticipated skepticism, alarm and perhaps anger from some of you. You may well be questioning the motives of the group, made up of several imams as well as university professors, doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, etc. Surely there must be a pro-Palestinian objective here, a concern that these people are part of some kind of political front to infiltrate the Jewish community.
But if you think there is suspicion among Jews who learn of the Muslim Learning Initiative (MLI), as the group is known, imagine the reaction in the Muslim community on hearing of co-religionists taking part in a full-year fellowship program sponsored and hosted by the Shalom Hartman Institute, a proud Zionist educational organization based in Jerusalem as well as New York.
Indeed, the fact that you likely are first learning here of MLI, now in its third year, is because its participants have chosen to keep a decidedly low profile, for good reason. (I agreed not to mention their names unless they chose to speak to me on the record.)
When a member of the first cohort wrote an essay in Time magazine, “What a Muslim American Learned from Zionists,” criticizing the Muslim world for not facing the truth about the 4,000-year Jewish connection to Israel even as she condemned Israeli treatment of the Palestinians — she received death threats from her own community, accused of being a traitor to the cause.
She was not alone. Many of the other participants cited intense criticism from fellow Muslims or pro-Palestinian advocates, ranging from nasty blogs to being disinvited from events to physical threats.
By visiting Israel, and stepping across a BDS line, the MLI participants have outraged parts of their community in signaling to American Jews that there are serious partners in the Muslim community — partners ready to rethink the Muslim wholesale rejection of the Jewish narrative, even as they remain deeply critical of Israeli policies.
So why did the MLI participants risk their reputations to join the fellowship and, in effect, invite American Jews into a serious conversation? They each have their own personal reasons, but several cited longstanding commitment to the Palestinian cause coupled with frustration at the lack of progress, and a recognition of “the toxic hate,” as one woman put it, between Jews and Palestinians.
“We all have blood on our hands,” she said.
There was a shared curiosity about learning the Jewish narrative, a concern about the blatant anti-Semitism voiced by some in their community, and a desire to do something to break the bloody stalemate in the Holy Land.
Imam Abdullah
The primary impetus, though, was Imam Abdullah Antepli, the founding director of Duke University’s Center for Muslim Life, who handpicked the first cohort from among colleagues and others he knew. His credibility went a long way in convincing them to join MLI.
The imam was raised in a stridently anti-Semitic home in Turkey and came to believe that hatred of Jews was not consistent with authentic Islam. Several years ago Imam Abdullah, who came to the U.S. a dozen years ago at the age of 30, approached Yossi Klein Halevi, an author, journalist and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The imam, who explains that he is part of a majority of American Muslims opposed to violence and seeking their place in American society, said he wanted to create a program for American Muslim leaders to better understand American Jews and Israel with the hope of improving relations between emerging leaders of the two faiths.
At first skeptical, Halevi, who has a special interest in interfaith relations, came to believe in and share Imam Abdullah’s dream of closing the gap between Muslims and Jews through getting to know and understand each other. Halevi brought the idea to the Hartman administration, which wholeheartedly embraced it and launched MLI, an intensive program that includes four weeks of study at the institute in Jerusalem — two weeks at the outset of the program and two weeks at the end — and a series of lectures and programs in the U.S. during the course of the year.
“We are Siamese twins,” laughed Imam Abdullah as he and Halevi met with me, just before the recent weekend program began. “We are brothers from a different mother.”
The warm bond between the two men who direct MLI is palpable, and though their subject matter is serious, their conversation often is marked by laughter.
“We are like oxygen for each other,” said Halevi, who noted they each are trying to nurture conversation between mainstream Jews who support Israel and mainstream Muslims who support the Palestinians. “It’s not a zero-sum game,” Halevi said. “One can care about the other and still be loyal to one’s own community.”
The essence of the program, he added, is teaching about Jewish peoplehood and the Jewish connection to the land of Israel — “two core issues that much of the Muslim world doesn’t get about us. That’s what makes the program unique.”
Imam Abdullah noted that most MLI participants are seeking a relationship with American Jews because they see the Jewish community as both a role model for integrating into America and a potential ally against the exclusion of Muslim Americans from mainstream American society.
The weekend program took place in the midst of ongoing violence in Israel. Imam Abdullah said the Mideast tensions made Muslim-Jewish dialogue more difficult, but all the more important. And Halevi pointed out that even in the fall of 2014, when the MLI participants met in New York shortly after the bloody Gaza war, their discussions with the Hartman faculty were marked by “vehement disagreement, but no one raised their voice during those three days.”
Imam Abdullah, Halevi and the Hartman Institute’s president, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, who joined us, emphasized that MLI is not an interfaith program; it’s an educational one, an attempt to foster personal relationships and deep dialogue among people whose political and perhaps religious views differ sharply.
“We never argue the facts in MLI,” the rabbi said. “We share what our understanding is. There are multiple facts, multiple injustices.” He told the participants the weekend was about “your learning our inner struggles and how to create boundaries. We have a covenant with you,” he said, a commitment to be open and honest.
‘We Don’t Hold Back’
What I witnessed, and took part in, over the three-day weekend — the first time all three MLI cohorts were together — was a model exercise in expressing honest, often painful, views with more than just civility. The MLI members and the handful of Hartman faculty were able to convey empathy and personal affection for each other without standing down an inch from their fervent beliefs. There were plenty of hugs and smiles in the room, though the conversation was intense at times. The level of trust was remarkable.
(At one point during the weekend the participants discussed their desire for the creation of a JLI, a parallel group of young Jewish leaders to learn about Muslim life. Hartman officials readily agreed and said it was up to a Muslim foundation or group to sponsor such a program. The participants noted that, unfortunately, their community is not as well organized as the Jewish community in undertaking such projects.)
The Hartman teachers candidly discussed challenges facing the Jewish community, here and in Israel. The MLI members often noted parallels in their own community, like the struggle for younger American Muslims to be accepted by the Muslim Establishment while resenting some of the policies and views of their elders.
The questions the MLI members asked of the Hartman scholars in sessions on the tension between loyalty and criticism and the future of the American Jewish relationship with Israel revealed an understanding of the issues that impressed the faculty.
“We don’t hold back, we expose our deepest struggles and yearnings” one teacher said, “and so do they.”
One MLI member, older than most, said he has learned how Jews feel about Jerusalem, how far back their ties go to the city. “The Jews pray every day to return to Jerusalem,” he said. “You can’t tell the Jews, ‘We’ll drive you out.’”
One woman told me she and others in the group had never realized that Zionism was more than a political term, one she had associated only with colonialism, not the yearning for an ancient homeland. And several participants said that prior to MLI, they thought Jewish ties to Israel go back only as far as the 1940s, as a political solution for settling homeless Holocaust refugees, rather than to Biblical times.
More Than Hummus
One participant said he joined MLI because he had grown tired of “toothless” Muslim-Jewish dialogue groups he had participated in, which he described as “hey, you eat hummus and we eat hummus.” But those discussions avoided hot-button issues like the Mideast conflict.
“I needed something more meaty, and I joined MLI because my community — and me personally — was stuck in a certain mindset, an absolutist narrative. We all tend to hear what we want to hear, not what we need to hear, and we advance our positions by putting the other guy in the gutter. Now I understand the Jewish longing for the land [of Israel]. As a pragmatist, I want to disempower anti-Semitism and anti-Islam attitudes.”
He said he is “totally invested” in the Hartman program, though his involvement greatly upsets his community. He said that this distrust stems in part from a lack of confidence in one’s own beliefs. “People tell me ‘the Jews are so smart, they’ll dupe you” into adapting their narrative.
But the participant also found that even sophisticated Jews lack knowledge of American Muslims. He said that in addressing a sophisticated American Jewish group he was disappointed but not surprised when the line of questions focused on whether most American Muslims are sympathetic to terrorists.
Parvez Ahmed, a professor of finance at the University of North Florida, said he appreciates MLI because it offers “a modest pathway towards improving Jewish-Muslim relations by creating a safe space for honest dialogue” and an opportunity “to mitigate the Islamophobia and anti-Semitism roiling our communities.” He asserted that “engagement is not appeasement, and dialogue is not capitulation,” adding: “If we remain in our silos we are part of the problem.”
Samar Kaukab, director of a research accelerator program at the University of Chicago, said the MLI experience has deepened her understanding of “the complexity of the American Jewish experience,” seeing how Jews relate to being deeply American and identifying with Israel. She said she has found similarities and differences in comparison to her own feelings about being “deeply American and relating to a global Muslim outlook.”
Having participated in previous interfaith dialogues, Kaukab said MLI goes deeper. Too often, in other efforts, “we Jews and Muslims situate ourselves on diametrically opposed spectrums and miss the stuff in the middle that speaks to who we really are as people and what we care about. The Hartman program allows us to trust each other and ask probing questions.”
Another participant, foreign policy expert Haroon Moghul, has written that he joined MLI to “be a more effective participant in critical American conversations” about Mideast policy, with a better understanding of America’s relationship with Israel. He credited Hartman for encouraging the participants to visit a number of Palestinian communities during their Israel trip and for the complete candor in its approach, well aware that the participants remain steadfast in their support for the Palestinian cause.
Still, everyone I spoke with described how the MLI experience has changed his or her way of thinking. Not in terms of political or religious views, necessarily, but in expanding one’s horizons, taking into account additional narratives, humanizing our adversaries.
When I got home after the MLI weekend I reread several recent issues of The Jewish Week, imagining how some of the people I’d met would read the articles and opinion columns dealing with the Mideast conflict.
It got me thinking about the dangers of generalizing and stereotyping. I wondered if and how I’d approach things differently now. And I realized that despite our locked-in Mideast narratives, developed over a lifetime, an authentic encounter and honest conversation has the potential to open our hearts and minds to hear — and perhaps make room for — “the other’s” truth.
Gary@jewishweek.org
All Too Timely
Editor’s Note: This column was written before last week’s tragic attacks in Paris by suspected Islamic terrorists. Its message — the positive influence of serious conversations between a group of American Muslim leaders and Jewish educators — is all the more important now. Imam Abdullah Antepli, the initiator of the program, denounced the Paris attacks as “barbaric, despicable savagery that serve as a painful reminder and urgent call for North American Jews and Muslims to engage in honest discussion, despite our political disagreements.” Yossi Klein Halevi, his Jewish counterpart at the sponsoring Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, added that the program “challenges both Muslims and Jews to avoid easy judgments and struggle with complexity.”
This piece is dedicated to the memory of the Paris victims and to the hope of more productive Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
gary@jewishweek.org
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Musings
Armed For Chanukah
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David WolpeAs Israel prepares to cross the sea, Moses cries out to God, who responds, in Exodus 14:15, “Why cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.” Rashi reverses the meaning of the verse, suggesting God is saying, “Why cry out? It’s on me — tell the Israelites to go forward.” Rashi lived in an age (1040-1105) when Jews had little power and reliance on God was the only conceivable strategy. He understood the Passover story as one of total dependence, not human initiative.
Chanukah, which we celebrate next month, is a story of human struggle and triumph. Unlike the fleeing Israelites, the Maccabees took up arms and succeeded. Understandably, the modern State of Israel took the Maccabees as their model. In older Haggadot one sometimes finds the wicked child depicted as a soldier. The Passover paradigm is total reliance on God. Chanukah upholds human power alongside Divine encouragement and assurance.
We are blessed to live in a time with a modern State of Israel when Jews can defend themselves. This Chanukah we still cry out to God, but no longer wait to go forward.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book is “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press). Read More
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‘Sense of fear’ but not surprise about carnage in Paris; ‘too early to tell’ about aliyah.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Interfaith leaders gather for a memorial service Sunday outside the Bataclan theater in Paris. Getty ImagesThey, perhaps more than others, saw it coming.
When the 60 or so French Jews who attend services at the West Side Sephardic Synagogue gathered to pray last Friday night, the scope of the carnage in Paris was still unfolding.
Rabbi Eitan Bendavid, spiritual leader of the congregation, said he noticed “a pervasive sense of fear” among his French-born congregants, most of whom still have relatives back in France, and often go home for family visits.
But, he said, he did not hear a sense of surprise among his congregants. “People in my community have been saying for a long time that they saw stuff like this coming.”
By “stuff like this,” he meant the wide-scale terrorist attacks against French targets.
In Paris itself, where word of the suspected ISIS-coordinated attacks at six venues quickly spread in the French capital, Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s office in the capital, heard similar sentiments in the Jewish community. Last week’s attacks in Paris “were confirmation of everything we feared,” she said.
In the 10 months since the terrorist attacks on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket and the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took a total of 19 lives, French Jews foresaw that while the Jewish community was an early target of fatal Islamist terror attacks, French society in general would be next, Rodan-Benzaquen said in a telephone interview. “It was not a question of if, it was a question of when and where.”
The Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were killed on Friday night, was Jewish-owned for some four decades until earlier this year, and frequently hosted Jewish events. Like the restaurant and sports stadium where attacks also took place last Friday, it was not a specifically Jewish target in what French President Francois Hollande called “an act of war by ISIS.”
Rodan-Benzaquen and Rabbi Bendavid and other Jews with roots in France reacted in like ways this week, even as France mourned its losses — some 130 people killed and more than 300 injured — and pledged more security protection for Jewish institutions, and declared war on the ISIS terrorists who took responsibility for Friday’s attacks.
People familiar with the French Jewish community said French Jews saw the latest acts of terrorism coming, expect the next terrorism there to be aimed at specifically Jewish targets, are concerned but are not rushing to make aliyah or to move immediately to the United States or other Western countries, and feel that non-Jewish French citizens finally share their worries about the threat of Islamist terrorism. Now, said Rodan-Benzaquen, more people in France have “the knowledge that the cancer is spreading. There is the perception that the entire nation understands … what the Jewish community is going through. We feel less solitude.”
“French citizens now understand that they, and not just Jews, are terror targets,” the Times of Israel website quoted David Khalfa, a political consultant in Paris, as saying this week. “It was an illusion [of safety for most people in France]; we lived in this illusion and now we are waking up — and it’s a nightmare.
“Now everyone is a target,” Khalfa said. “This time it’s not only about symbolic targets … it has changed the whole perspective of fighting terror.”
“Whether attacks are against policemen or soldiers, against freedom of expression, or against Jews, what is being systematically, violently attacked are French democratic and republican values,” Rodan-Benzaquen wrote in an op-ed essay this week. “The goal of Islamic fundamentalism is to divide society, create a clash of civilizations, strengthen extremists that pretend to fight against them, and turn Muslims of every democratic country that they target against the rest of the population.”
“The Jewish community feels that France is under attack; it’s no longer a uniquely Jewish problem,” said Brigitte Dayan, a journalist with Jewish-Moroccan roots who moved to Manhattan from Chicago a dozen years ago and is knowledgeable about the French Jewish community. She added, “One friend [in France] said she is thankful to have bought an apartment in Tel Aviv last year.
“There have been so many attacks, so many threats [on French Jews] over the past months and years, that … the only ones not surprised” that ISIS has painted a bigger bull’s-eye over France “were the French Jewish community. I don’t think this is the end of it,” Rodan-Benzaquen continued.
She believes that while “the fear very much remains” among French Jews, “the next attacks may be [against] another Jewish target” outside France. She said she did not hear the increased level of discussion about leaving France as she did in the aftermath of the Hyper Cacher attack. “It’s a constant talk for the past year; people ask themselves if they should be leaving.”
Rabbi Bendavid said his congregants told him that it’s too early for their relatives in France to immediately reassess their aliyah or emigration options.
Avi Mayer, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Israel’s aliyah activities, agreed that a spike in French aliyah following the latest attacks in Paris is not likely.
“In the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks in January, we saw a surge in the number of calls and inquiries from French Jews, and the number of new aliyah files opened in France tripled. We have not seen a similarly dramatic increase in aliyah-related inquiries in the wake of Friday’s attacks,” Mayer said.
The number of French Jews who made aliyah has steadily increased over the last few years, Mayer said, from 1,917 in 2012, to 3,293 in 2013, and 7,238 in 2014. “Aliyah numbers for this year are up by approximately 11 percent compared to this point last year,” indicating a 2015 figure of about 8,000, “and we expect the numbers to continue growing steadily for the foreseeable future,” he said. (Mayer’s figures, however, are contradicted by aliyah totals reported earlier this year, which indicated that French aliyah had slowed after an immediate increase in the months after the January terrorism in Paris, and that a decrease of nearly 20 percent this year was likely.)
El Al Israel Airlines announced that it would assist Israelis in France who wish to return home, offering a “special” $350 one-way fare and suspending revision charges for passengers who wish to change tickets bought for dates up to Nov. 29; Arkia Airlines announced a similar move.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an independent organization that promotes aliyah and supports Jewish life in many countries, announced this week that it is stepping up its work in France, is providing “emergency security aid to French-Jewish communal institutions,” and will bring “a special flight” of French Jews to Israel at the end of November.
“The first French Jews to move to Israel since Friday’s ISIS terrorist attacks arrived today [Monday]” with the support of IFCJ, the organization stated in a press release. “Two families landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport … met by IFCJ representatives.”
Meanwhile, Jewish communities here and in France took part in memorial and commemoration activities.
On Shabbat, Rabbi Bendavid led his West Side congregation in reciting two chapters of Psalms, one “to pray for the healing of all the people who have been affected by this devastating attack,” and one “to pray that our leaders will see the current situation with absolute clarity.” He said his congregation also said a prayer in French for the protection of France.
Many congregants, he said, added the French flag to their Facebook pages as a sign of solidarity.
In Paris, a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue near the Bataclan theater said Psalms “for the departed and for the safety of all French citizens,” the chabad.org website reported.
The Grand Synagogue of Paris held a prayer service-rally Sunday night, sponsored by the country’s chief rabbi and the Conference of European Rabbis that included political officials and rabbis. “We pray for all the injured to recover quickly. Our hearts are with them and their families,” the Grand Synagogue’s Rabbi Moshe Sebbag said.
Members of the Jewish and Islamic clergy took part Sunday in a memorial service outside the Bataclan concert hall, many of them laying bouquets of white roses at the site.
“Anyone who uses hate speech has no place in France and those places that preach hate are not places of prayer but are those of a sect,” Hassen Chalghoumi, president of Imams of France, said at the memorial service. “1.5 million people are hostages of Daesh [an Arabic acronym for ISIS], 1.5 million people are hostages of these barbarians who are sullying the name of Islam and Muslims. It’s time to say no to this barbarity.”
The memorial was the idea of Polish-Jewish author Marek Halter, who writes frequently about his family, which escaped the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
Representatives of prominent U.S. Jewish organizations also condemned Friday’s terrorism. “One of the most sickening forms of human violence one can imagine,” said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. “An outrageous, cowardly and premeditated assault not just on the people of France, but on all freedom loving people around the world,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.
“It’s high time to drop the evasive language too often used to describe the perpetrators of these heinous crimes and get specific,” David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement. “They are not just ‘violent extremists,’ though of course they are. They are not just ‘terrorists,’ though, of course, they are that as well. They are radical Islamists inspired by their interpretation of religion, however perverted it may be.
“Hoping the problem will one day go away is not a strategy, nor is tying the hands of, or eviscerating the budgets of, law enforcement, intelligence, and the military, nor is defending privacy rights at all costs, as some policy purists would do, even if it means endangering national security and personal safety,” Harris said. “Some judicious accommodations must be made in today’s democratic societies, or else the consequences could be profound. It won’t be easy, nor will it be quick. Yesterday’s tragic events in Paris should be another urgent wake-up call that, whether we live in France or elsewhere, our world needs, and is worth, defending.”
editor@jewishweek.orgIsrael News
Will Israel’s Terror Fight Gain Sympathy?
Guarded hope that new counterterrorism focus in Europe would lead to greater understanding on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor
Hundreds of Israelis attending a rally Saturday night at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv in solidarity with Paris. JTA
Tel Aviv — “We understand more than anyone else,” read the decoration on the memorial candle outside the French embassy here.
The red, white and blue of France’s tricolor flag lit up the Tel Aviv municipal building in Rabin Square as well as the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel stands “shoulder to shoulder” with France, and President Reuven Rivlin declared that “we stand united” in the fight against terrorism. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog added, “Evil knows no borders and only courageous and decisive cooperation among the family of nations will make it possible to eradicate it.”
Amid the shock and revulsion over the Paris terrorist attacks in Israel, there was guarded hope that the new focus on national security and counterterrorism in Europe would spur more understanding in a relationship that has become heated over the policy toward the Palestinians.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to experience this,” said Ron Ben Nun, a 29-year-old industrial designer, as she stopped to snap a picture of the memorial candles and flowers outside the embassy. “I would like to support them, so those who are rational can get over this problem of radical Islam together.”
But alongside expressions of sympathy and condolence, there was a healthy dose of official indignation toward Europeans who are seen by many as blinded by loyalty to upholding civil liberties at all costs, naive about the threats of Islamic extremism and biased against Israel’s handling of the Palestinian conflict.
Still outraged from a shooting attack in the West Bank that killed two Israelis, Netanyahu on Sunday called on the international community to be more forceful in condemning Palestinian terrorists. “We are not to blame for the terrorism directed against us, just as the French aren’t to blame for the terrorism against them,” the prime minister said.
Other Israeli politicians from the governing coalition were less diplomatic, saying that Europeans should spend less time criticizing Israel and more time cooperating with Israel in fighting Islamic extremism. The Israeli frustration was enhanced by the decision of the European Union last week to require that consumer products from Jewish settlements in the West Bank carry special labels noting their origin in the “Israeli settlements” rather than a “Made in Israel” sticker, a move that has stoked fears of a countrywide economic boycott.
“Europe needs to stop dealing with nonsense of labeling of Israeli products and automatic condemnation for every balcony built in Jerusalem,” said Science Minister Ofir Akunis in an interview with Israel Television. “We are under an Islamic fundamentalist terror offensive. Terror is terror is terror.”
Akunis added on Facebook, “Wake up and start fighting Islamic extremist terror.”
The Paris attacks and the French efforts at cracking down on Islamist militants gave Israeli government ministers a convenient window of opportunity on Tuesday to implement a decision from last month outlawing the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, an Israeli-Arab group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and, allegedly, Hamas. In an unprecedented step against a minority group, Israeli police raided the movement’s offices throughout the country, confiscating files and equipment.
“The Paris attack created the international and regional atmosphere that justifies and gives legitimacy to such an exceptional and severe move like this,” wrote Udi Segal, a political reporter for Channel 2 news.
Israeli politicians want to convince the world that Palestinian terrorism is one and the same with the global jihadist militants who struck in France, said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political journalist. “Israel wants the global community to see Palestinian terror as part of a global trend of terrorizing citizens,” she said. “They don’t want it to be seen as part of a 70-year-old conflict.”
That explains Israel’s diplomatic outrage after the Swedish foreign minister, answering a question about Islamic radicalism in Europe, linked it to the situation in Middle East, “where not least the Palestinians see that there is no future.” Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Swedish ambassador in protest, saying that “any link between ISIS terrorism and the Palestinian problem is baseless.”
Although the Paris attacks have become a seminal moment for Europe in grappling with fundamentalist Islamic violence, it’s unlikely that they will substantively change European policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Some in Israel may hope that the events in Paris will add to Europe’s understanding of the constraints involved in coping with Palestinian terrorism, and help ease pressure on Israel and mitigate the criticism voiced in this context by various EU institutions and member states,” wrote Oded Eran, a former ambassador to the EU, and Adam Hoffman, on the website of a Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, where both authors are researchers. “Similar events in the past, however, indicate that this will not occur, and that no significant change in the European attitude on this question can be expected.”
But even if France’s diplomatic position doesn’t change toward Israel, a French Jewish leader said he expected there to be better understanding of the need to combat Islamic extremism. “The French didn’t realize it until now; now they understand it’s not just Jews, or journalists, but a worldwide war that Islam wants to wage against all those who don’t believe in sharia and their way of life,” said Roger Cukierman, vice president of the World Jewish Congress and the president of the French council of Jewish institutions, in an interview with Israel Radio.
Unlike most of their countrymen, Cukierman told the radio that French Jews were used to dealing with terrorist attacks directed at their communities. “This isn’t something new to us. But now it’s not only us.”
In January, when French terrorists targeted a kosher supermarket, Israeli officials encouraged French Jews to consider Israel their true home and immigrate. Top officials at the Jewish Agency said they anticipated that annual French Jewish immigration could jump this year to 10,000 from 7,238 in 2014. The actual figure through the first 10 months of the year is 6,860, suggesting the initial forecast might have been overstated.
At a sushi restaurant in Tel Aviv, two recent young French immigrants predicted that the attacks wouldn’t change much for the Jewish community back home.
“We are always afraid in France. There’s security guards and we know there’s danger,” said Sophie Ben Haim, a 22-year-old student in a Hebrew-language studies course.
She and a friend, François Cohen, agreed that the French politics would become more hardline because of the fear of new attacks and suspicions toward the country’s Muslim community. Despite the new sense of shared threat from terrorism with their countrymen, French Jews will keep immigrating to Israel, they predicted.
“Jews don’t feel at home there,” Ben Haim said. “I don’t have things in common with French people. There’s no future in France. Here, there is a future.”
editor@jewishweek.orgEditorial
After Paris, Will Anything Change?The flags have been lowered to half-mast. The flowers pile up at the site of the killings. Vigils are held, tears are shed, and political leaders, shocked and angry, speak out against the violence and pledge war against the enemy.
But more than 14 years after 9/11, and a week after France’s bloody wake-up call, has the world changed its approach to radical Islam? Have we come to grips with the fact that we are dealing with a form of savagery and suicidal commitment that transcends nationalism?
Certainly the militants have changed in recent years. They have become increasingly emboldened, widening their reach in terms of land and people to conquer, and by spreading their message through social media. And they are, to our astonishment and dismay, succeeding in attracting disgruntled significant numbers of men and women to their violent ways through videos of beheadings.
Will the savage murders in Paris last Friday night change the way the world deals with Islamic militancy? More pointedly, will the White House and European governments view the Israel-Palestinian conflict in a new light — not as the pivotal issue in resolving Mideast crises but as part of a larger religious war between radical Islam and Western values? Or will they continue to view Islamic and Palestinian terror attacks as separate issues, unrelated?
The case is being made that, in effect, “We Are All Israelis Now,” an assertion that all those who cherish Western values of human rights and freedoms are under attack from Islamic fundamentalists, both Shia and Sunni, including Iran and ISIS, whose mission is to spread Islam and defeat non-Muslim infidels. There is truth to that, though we caution to maintain perspective at a time of great emotion, keeping in mind that the great majority of the 1.7 billion Muslims on the planet are peace-loving people, embarrassed and fearful when the radicals strike.
We must not conflate Muslims with ISIS. And knee-jerk efforts to severely restrict immigration policies — Jeb Bush suggests the U.S. only take in Christians — reflect our darkest impulses. A helpful gauge is to substitute “Jew” for “Muslim” in such discussions and measure our reactions.
(Gary Rosenblatt’s column this week describes a bold experiment in Jewish-Muslim dialogue that is particularly timely.)
As the government of France grapples with the struggle to balance personal freedoms with increased security for its citizens, it would do well to look to, and appreciate, how Israel has dealt with this dilemma for more than six decades. Rather than focus on which Israeli products are produced in the Jewish communities of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria, in biblical terms) and which from inside the Green Line, European leaders would be better served by seeking out advice from Israel on countering terrorism more effectively. Europeans should know by now that Israel is part of the solution, not the problem.
President Obama is under increased pressure for resisting a more muscular response to the ISIS attacks, which have grown bolder and more frequent. In recent days there were the suicide bombings in Beirut that killed more than 40 people, the downing of a plane of Russian tourists in Egypt, killing all 224 aboard, in addition to the Paris carnage. The president’s reluctance to launch another ground war in the Mideast is understandable. But he should heed the advice of his former special assistant on the Mideast, Ambassador Dennis Ross, who told us recently that “vacuums tend to be filled by the worst possible people.” American restraint in Syria is widely perceived as a sign of weakness, an invitation for more brazen attacks from our enemies. And there is cause-and-effect in having allowed the Syrian civil war to rage out of control (at the cost so far of some 200,000 citizens) and witnessing the stampede of Syrians seeking refuge, now in Europe.
It is true that there is no silver bullet to solve the roiling problem of Islamic fundamentalism. Defeating ISIS militarily will not be enough, though it is necessary. What is required, in the end, is a victory for the concept of Islam as a religion of tolerance as well as faith, one that must come from its adherents, confirming that we are all created in God’s image.
editor@jewishweek.orgMy column this week is all too timely: an in-depth report on a unique and controversial experiment, under wraps until now, in brutally honest Muslim-Jewish dialogue.Gary Rosenblatt
Where Muslims, Jews Clash — And Hug
A unique and controversial experiment, under wraps until now, offers American Muslim leaders a deeper understanding of Jewish identity and history.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattI spent the last weekend of October on the Upper West Side with more than 40 thoughtful, impressive women and men from across the country on an intellectual and spiritual journey.
We attended Friday evening Shabbat services at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. Over the next two days we studied passages from the Torah and Talmud, and read and discussed excerpts from the writings of Solomon Schechter, Louis D. Brandeis, David Ben-Gurion and Jacob Blaustein.
The other participants had toured Israel together, part of their serious, yearlong commitment to learn about the connections between and differences among American and Israeli Jews.
What was unusual about the weekend program was that the participants were neither Jewish nor Christian. They were American Muslims — a range of civic and thought leaders, all committed to the Palestinian cause (a number were activists when in college), and most have supported BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is anathema to the Jewish state.
Writing that last sentence, I anticipated skepticism, alarm and perhaps anger from some of you. You may well be questioning the motives of the group, made up of several imams as well as university professors, doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, etc. Surely there must be a pro-Palestinian objective here, a concern that these people are part of some kind of political front to infiltrate the Jewish community.
But if you think there is suspicion among Jews who learn of the Muslim Learning Initiative (MLI), as the group is known, imagine the reaction in the Muslim community on hearing of co-religionists taking part in a full-year fellowship program sponsored and hosted by the Shalom Hartman Institute, a proud Zionist educational organization based in Jerusalem as well as New York.
Indeed, the fact that you likely are first learning here of MLI, now in its third year, is because its participants have chosen to keep a decidedly low profile, for good reason. (I agreed not to mention their names unless they chose to speak to me on the record.)
When a member of the first cohort wrote an essay in Time magazine, “What a Muslim American Learned from Zionists,” criticizing the Muslim world for not facing the truth about the 4,000-year Jewish connection to Israel even as she condemned Israeli treatment of the Palestinians — she received death threats from her own community, accused of being a traitor to the cause.
She was not alone. Many of the other participants cited intense criticism from fellow Muslims or pro-Palestinian advocates, ranging from nasty blogs to being disinvited from events to physical threats.
By visiting Israel, and stepping across a BDS line, the MLI participants have outraged parts of their community in signaling to American Jews that there are serious partners in the Muslim community — partners ready to rethink the Muslim wholesale rejection of the Jewish narrative, even as they remain deeply critical of Israeli policies.
So why did the MLI participants risk their reputations to join the fellowship and, in effect, invite American Jews into a serious conversation? They each have their own personal reasons, but several cited longstanding commitment to the Palestinian cause coupled with frustration at the lack of progress, and a recognition of “the toxic hate,” as one woman put it, between Jews and Palestinians.
“We all have blood on our hands,” she said.
There was a shared curiosity about learning the Jewish narrative, a concern about the blatant anti-Semitism voiced by some in their community, and a desire to do something to break the bloody stalemate in the Holy Land.
Imam Abdullah
The primary impetus, though, was Imam Abdullah Antepli, the founding director of Duke University’s Center for Muslim Life, who handpicked the first cohort from among colleagues and others he knew. His credibility went a long way in convincing them to join MLI.
The imam was raised in a stridently anti-Semitic home in Turkey and came to believe that hatred of Jews was not consistent with authentic Islam. Several years ago Imam Abdullah, who came to the U.S. a dozen years ago at the age of 30, approached Yossi Klein Halevi, an author, journalist and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The imam, who explains that he is part of a majority of American Muslims opposed to violence and seeking their place in American society, said he wanted to create a program for American Muslim leaders to better understand American Jews and Israel with the hope of improving relations between emerging leaders of the two faiths.
At first skeptical, Halevi, who has a special interest in interfaith relations, came to believe in and share Imam Abdullah’s dream of closing the gap between Muslims and Jews through getting to know and understand each other. Halevi brought the idea to the Hartman administration, which wholeheartedly embraced it and launched MLI, an intensive program that includes four weeks of study at the institute in Jerusalem — two weeks at the outset of the program and two weeks at the end — and a series of lectures and programs in the U.S. during the course of the year.
“We are Siamese twins,” laughed Imam Abdullah as he and Halevi met with me, just before the recent weekend program began. “We are brothers from a different mother.”
The warm bond between the two men who direct MLI is palpable, and though their subject matter is serious, their conversation often is marked by laughter.
“We are like oxygen for each other,” said Halevi, who noted they each are trying to nurture conversation between mainstream Jews who support Israel and mainstream Muslims who support the Palestinians. “It’s not a zero-sum game,” Halevi said. “One can care about the other and still be loyal to one’s own community.”
The essence of the program, he added, is teaching about Jewish peoplehood and the Jewish connection to the land of Israel — “two core issues that much of the Muslim world doesn’t get about us. That’s what makes the program unique.”
Imam Abdullah noted that most MLI participants are seeking a relationship with American Jews because they see the Jewish community as both a role model for integrating into America and a potential ally against the exclusion of Muslim Americans from mainstream American society.
The weekend program took place in the midst of ongoing violence in Israel. Imam Abdullah said the Mideast tensions made Muslim-Jewish dialogue more difficult, but all the more important. And Halevi pointed out that even in the fall of 2014, when the MLI participants met in New York shortly after the bloody Gaza war, their discussions with the Hartman faculty were marked by “vehement disagreement, but no one raised their voice during those three days.”
Imam Abdullah, Halevi and the Hartman Institute’s president, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, who joined us, emphasized that MLI is not an interfaith program; it’s an educational one, an attempt to foster personal relationships and deep dialogue among people whose political and perhaps religious views differ sharply.
“We never argue the facts in MLI,” the rabbi said. “We share what our understanding is. There are multiple facts, multiple injustices.” He told the participants the weekend was about “your learning our inner struggles and how to create boundaries. We have a covenant with you,” he said, a commitment to be open and honest.
‘We Don’t Hold Back’
What I witnessed, and took part in, over the three-day weekend — the first time all three MLI cohorts were together — was a model exercise in expressing honest, often painful, views with more than just civility. The MLI members and the handful of Hartman faculty were able to convey empathy and personal affection for each other without standing down an inch from their fervent beliefs. There were plenty of hugs and smiles in the room, though the conversation was intense at times. The level of trust was remarkable.
(At one point during the weekend the participants discussed their desire for the creation of a JLI, a parallel group of young Jewish leaders to learn about Muslim life. Hartman officials readily agreed and said it was up to a Muslim foundation or group to sponsor such a program. The participants noted that, unfortunately, their community is not as well organized as the Jewish community in undertaking such projects.)
The Hartman teachers candidly discussed challenges facing the Jewish community, here and in Israel. The MLI members often noted parallels in their own community, like the struggle for younger American Muslims to be accepted by the Muslim Establishment while resenting some of the policies and views of their elders.
The questions the MLI members asked of the Hartman scholars in sessions on the tension between loyalty and criticism and the future of the American Jewish relationship with Israel revealed an understanding of the issues that impressed the faculty.
“We don’t hold back, we expose our deepest struggles and yearnings” one teacher said, “and so do they.”
One MLI member, older than most, said he has learned how Jews feel about Jerusalem, how far back their ties go to the city. “The Jews pray every day to return to Jerusalem,” he said. “You can’t tell the Jews, ‘We’ll drive you out.’”
One woman told me she and others in the group had never realized that Zionism was more than a political term, one she had associated only with colonialism, not the yearning for an ancient homeland. And several participants said that prior to MLI, they thought Jewish ties to Israel go back only as far as the 1940s, as a political solution for settling homeless Holocaust refugees, rather than to Biblical times.
More Than Hummus
One participant said he joined MLI because he had grown tired of “toothless” Muslim-Jewish dialogue groups he had participated in, which he described as “hey, you eat hummus and we eat hummus.” But those discussions avoided hot-button issues like the Mideast conflict.
“I needed something more meaty, and I joined MLI because my community — and me personally — was stuck in a certain mindset, an absolutist narrative. We all tend to hear what we want to hear, not what we need to hear, and we advance our positions by putting the other guy in the gutter. Now I understand the Jewish longing for the land [of Israel]. As a pragmatist, I want to disempower anti-Semitism and anti-Islam attitudes.”
He said he is “totally invested” in the Hartman program, though his involvement greatly upsets his community. He said that this distrust stems in part from a lack of confidence in one’s own beliefs. “People tell me ‘the Jews are so smart, they’ll dupe you” into adapting their narrative.
But the participant also found that even sophisticated Jews lack knowledge of American Muslims. He said that in addressing a sophisticated American Jewish group he was disappointed but not surprised when the line of questions focused on whether most American Muslims are sympathetic to terrorists.
Parvez Ahmed, a professor of finance at the University of North Florida, said he appreciates MLI because it offers “a modest pathway towards improving Jewish-Muslim relations by creating a safe space for honest dialogue” and an opportunity “to mitigate the Islamophobia and anti-Semitism roiling our communities.” He asserted that “engagement is not appeasement, and dialogue is not capitulation,” adding: “If we remain in our silos we are part of the problem.”
Samar Kaukab, director of a research accelerator program at the University of Chicago, said the MLI experience has deepened her understanding of “the complexity of the American Jewish experience,” seeing how Jews relate to being deeply American and identifying with Israel. She said she has found similarities and differences in comparison to her own feelings about being “deeply American and relating to a global Muslim outlook.”
Having participated in previous interfaith dialogues, Kaukab said MLI goes deeper. Too often, in other efforts, “we Jews and Muslims situate ourselves on diametrically opposed spectrums and miss the stuff in the middle that speaks to who we really are as people and what we care about. The Hartman program allows us to trust each other and ask probing questions.”
Another participant, foreign policy expert Haroon Moghul, has written that he joined MLI to “be a more effective participant in critical American conversations” about Mideast policy, with a better understanding of America’s relationship with Israel. He credited Hartman for encouraging the participants to visit a number of Palestinian communities during their Israel trip and for the complete candor in its approach, well aware that the participants remain steadfast in their support for the Palestinian cause.
Still, everyone I spoke with described how the MLI experience has changed his or her way of thinking. Not in terms of political or religious views, necessarily, but in expanding one’s horizons, taking into account additional narratives, humanizing our adversaries.
When I got home after the MLI weekend I reread several recent issues of The Jewish Week, imagining how some of the people I’d met would read the articles and opinion columns dealing with the Mideast conflict.
It got me thinking about the dangers of generalizing and stereotyping. I wondered if and how I’d approach things differently now. And I realized that despite our locked-in Mideast narratives, developed over a lifetime, an authentic encounter and honest conversation has the potential to open our hearts and minds to hear — and perhaps make room for — “the other’s” truth.
Gary@jewishweek.org
All Too Timely
Editor’s Note: This column was written before last week’s tragic attacks in Paris by suspected Islamic terrorists. Its message — the positive influence of serious conversations between a group of American Muslim leaders and Jewish educators — is all the more important now. Imam Abdullah Antepli, the initiator of the program, denounced the Paris attacks as “barbaric, despicable savagery that serve as a painful reminder and urgent call for North American Jews and Muslims to engage in honest discussion, despite our political disagreements.” Yossi Klein Halevi, his Jewish counterpart at the sponsoring Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, added that the program “challenges both Muslims and Jews to avoid easy judgments and struggle with complexity.”
This piece is dedicated to the memory of the Paris victims and to the hope of more productive Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
gary@jewishweek.orgAlso this week, praise and anxiety over the Reform movement's equality move for transgender Jews; how UJA-Federation is helping struggling businesses in Jerusalem as the terror attacks there continue; pro-Palestinian student group at Hunter College hijacksfree-tuition rally; food and wine tips for Thanksgiving; and our Fall Literary Guide, focusing on WWII, the war still with us 70 years later.New York
Amid Celebration, Anxiety Remains For Transgender Reform Jews
URJ’s far-reaching equality move hailed, but ‘prejudices still exist.’
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Resolution promises progress for transgender Jews, but anxiety remains. Courtesy of Keshet
Ari Lev Fornari, a rabbi and prison chaplain, never heard the word “transgender” until his sophomore year of college.
“It didn’t come up in my childhood,” said Rabbi Fornari, who grew up attending Temple Beth-El, a Reform congregation in Great Neck, L.I. Though his community welcomed gay and lesbian members, the conversation hadn’t moved beyond those gender-static labels.
For Rabbi Fornari, who came out as transgender in 2005, the resolution passed at last week’s Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) Biennial affirming and advancing the movement’s commitment to full equality and inclusion for transgender Jews was cause for celebration.
The “Resolution on the Rights of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People” — which calls for shuls and camps to have gender-neutral bathrooms, encourages gender-neutral language, suggests training on gender issues for religious school staff and encourages advocating on behalf of the transgender community — is being heralded as the most far-reaching resolution in support of transgender rights of any major religious organization.
“Knowing that members of the transgender and gender-nonconforming communities are often singled out for discrimination and even violence, we are reminded of the Torah’s injunction, ‘do not stand idly while your neighbor bleeds,’” the resolution reads, quoting scripture several times.
Today, even the most conservative religious institutions are confronted with LBGT concerns. Over the weekend, the Church of Latter-day Saints, known for its opposition to gay marriage, lost more than 1,500 members over a new policy that prevents children of same sex couples from being baptized and declares members in gay marriages to be apostates subject to excommunication.
And while other religious bodies, including the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) have approved resolutions affirming equality for transgender people, none, say observers, go as far as the one offered by the Reform movement, which, with roughly 1.5 million members, represents about one-third of American Jews, by far the largest Jewish denomination.
Annette Marquis, LGBTQ program director at the UUA, clarified that while the Reform edict does go further than any other large religious organization’s resolution to date, this is partially because Jewish rituals are gender specific in a way that Unitarian rituals are not. For example, the bar or bat mitzvah ceremony, a complicated topic of conversation with regard to transgender teens, is not an issue for Unitarian Universalists, whose coming-of-age ceremony (which comes at age 15, not 13) is gender neutral, she said.
“Transgender is a harder thing for people to grasp than gay or lesbian because it challenges the basic construct of how we divide the world,” said Marquis, a lesbian who grew up in a strictly Catholic home. The UUA was among the first religions to ordain lesbian and gay ministers, doing so in 1979; the first openly transgender minister was ordained by the UUA in 1988. The next hurdle, the wide acceptance of transgender congregants within the Unitarian Universalist movement, is going to take “a lot of work, and a lot of time,” she said.
Reform transgender Jews are also aware of the work ahead. For Rabbi Fornari and other transgender Jews, excitement is tempered with caution. He described how he continues to experience “professional anxiety” as a leader in the community, despite being out for over a decade.
“The anxiety is about whether or not we can have an authentic connection and the ways in which people’s discomfort and fears and own anxiety is a barrier to our connection,” said Rabbi Fornari, 33, who lives in Boston with his partner and their 1-year-old child and directs the Boston-Area Jewish Education Program.
Rabbi Elliot Kukla, the first openly transgender person to be ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement’s seminary, said that while the resolution was “heartening,” deep-rooted prejudices still exist, even in the URJ.
“People still question me as a trans person in this world,” said Rabbi Kukla, 41, a spiritual leader at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center in San Francisco. Walking into a bathroom in an average URJ congregation, he continues to attract strange looks and stares, he said. Reform rabbis may now give sermons about the importance of welcoming transgender Jews, “but my presence,” he said, “still raises a lot of discomfort.”
While the visibility of transgender people has been increasing, rates of unemployment, poverty, suicide, discrimination and violence against them remain high, he said. According to a recent study by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 41 percent of gender nonconforming people have attempted suicide, compared to 4.6 percent in the general U.S. population.
“The work of true inclusion is more than a sermon or a standing ovation at the biennial,” said Rabbi Kukla. “It’s a conversation about class and privilege.” While the recent coming out of former Olympic champion and television personality Caitlyn Jenner has captured public interest, many transgender people can’t afford the medical procedures and upkeep — like hormones and electrolysis — to present themselves “as they would like.” In fact, many who are struggling with unemployment can’t even afford synagogue membership, he said.
“We’re a lot more comfortable with a Caitlyn Jenner than with a transgender woman who’s 6 feet tall and still has stubble,” said Rabbi Kukla. “That’s the real test of inclusion. It’s a lot easier to welcome people who look just like us, and who conform to our expectations of gender.”
Rabbi Kukla also pointed out that the Jewish community has been much quicker to embrace transgender men (those who transition female to male) than the reverse. Several transgender men, including Rabbi Kukla, have moved into visible leadership positions within the Reform community, while the stigma in the other direction remains.
“In the Jewish sphere, becoming a man is still perceived as moving up in status, while becoming a woman is perceived as a step down,” he said. “A man in a dress is still seen as humiliating, while most can intellectually understand why a woman wants to become a man.” For Jews and non-Jews alike, referring to men as feminine is perpetually an insult, while referring to women as masculine is more often than not an accolade, he added. This “persistent sexism” continues to “infuse Reform Judaism, even though we’d prefer to believe otherwise,” he said.
Stephanie Bonvissuto, a transgender convert to Judaism, has found a spiritual home at her Reform temple in Stony Brook, L.I. Pursuing a dissertation in women and gender studies at Stony Brook University, the 51-year-old former Roman Catholic said her fellow Reform congregants never questioned her gender.
“I was welcomed into the women’s groups, including the synagogue sisterhood,” she said. At her conversion mikvah ceremony, the Reform rabbi presiding met Bonvissuto’s anxiety and embarrassment with reassurance.
“She said: ‘Look, you are a woman on the inside, so you’re a woman on the outside.’”
Still, Bonvissuto looks forward to the day when she will no longer be the “token” transgender person in synagogue.
“I just want to be another woman in the congregation,” she said, describing how frequent pronoun fumbles among fellow congregants result in profuse apologies and blushes. “I don’t want to be the spokesperson anymore.”
According to Rabbi Fornari, the transgender resolution’s most significant contribution is shifting the burden of responsibility from trans individuals to the institutions they attend.
“My experience is that it’s uncomfortable to ask for what we as trans people need,” he said, giving examples of having to repeatedly ask people to use the right pronoun and the lack of gender-neutral bathrooms. “These still feel like big asks. For the Reform movement to say now those things are universally expected — that’s huge. The burden no longer rests on just one voice.”
editor@jewishweek.org
New York
As Jerusalem Businesses Empty, UJA-Fed Steps In
New York charity offers loans for struggling venues as terrorism keeps customers at home.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Jerusalem businesses, have taken a financial hit since a spate of stabbings and other attacks in the last month.When participants in a UJA-Federation of New York mission entered a Jerusalem restaurant on November 9th for a pre-arranged meal, they found plenty of empty tables.
Other would-be diners had stayed away because of two nearly coinciding terrorist attacks in the city earlier in the day.
“The moment something happens, people don’t go out,” said Amir Sznajderman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, who was accompanying the UJA-Federation mission.
Business at the restaurant dropped by 50 percent in the last month because of the spate of Palestinian knife, gun and car attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers that terrorized the city.
“The owner said he had been in business 11 years and had never seen such a decline in business in such a short period of time,” Sznajderman said.
That proprietor is one of 70 business owners in Jerusalem who have thus far applied for emergency loan guarantees made available by UJA-Federation of New York. The organization has made such emergency loan guarantees available during prior times of conflict, according to Aliza Kurshan, executive vice president of Community Planning and Agency Resources, but they have been infrequent.
UJA-Federation allocated $200,000 on Oct. 27 to guarantee $1.4 million in emergency bank loans to struggling businesses, according to Eric Goldstein, UJA-Federation’s CEO.
“The wave of terror has significantly reduced revenues for many Jerusalem businesses that rely on foot traffic and walk-in customers,” Goldstein said in a UJA-Federation statement.
After the first wave of Palestinian attacks, Israeli authorities responded with a massive call-up of police and soldiers — deploying them on Jerusalem’s streets, along highways and in residential areas. Customers slowly began returning to Jerusalem stores as attacks in the city ended and moved to other parts of the country.
But on the day of the mission, two Palestinians, aged 12 and 14, stabbed and lightly wounded a 25-year-old Israeli security guard on the light rail in Jerusalem. And a Palestinian terrorist stabbed and lightly injured a man in an attack near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. Police shot and killed the terrorist, shot and wounded one of the youths and arrested his companion, who had been seized by other passengers.
Following those attacks, Sznajderman, who is director of economic development and loan funds for the Jewish Agency, said the restaurant owner told him that 50 percent of those who had reserved tables for that evening had cancelled.
“It takes time for business to recover, and every time something happens, business drops again,” he said.
Since the wave of Palestinian terror attacks began Oct. 1, there have been about 80 attacks throughout the country that have killed 11 Israelis and wounded about 200.
“Our office is in Jerusalem, I was born and raised in this city — and it was half empty [after the first wave of attacks last month],” Sznajderman said. “We were then approached by businesses in need and so we approached [UJA-Federation of New York] to see if something could be done. Our office has money for loan guarantees, but that money is dedicated to helping establish new businesses and helping others to grow. The businesses coming to us needed working capital loans.”
Michael Lustig, chair of UJA-Federation of New York’s committee Empowering and Promoting Inclusive Communities in Israel got the call.
“I knew anecdotally” about the problem, he said, noting that his sister had sent him a picture of Jerusalem’s normally bustling Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market three weeks ago. “It was a ghost town,” he said. He himself returned last week from Israel after a two-week visit.
After speaking with Sznajderman, Lustig said he immediately consulted with UJA-Federation of New York’s loan approval committee in Jerusalem and his New York-based committee.
“Within 24 hours, the decision was made to do this,” Lustig said. ”We had a crisis and we had to make a quick decision.”
Since then, of the 70 businesses that have filed applications, 20 have been approved to receive about $470,000 in loan guarantees.
Sznajderman said it takes about a week to review each application and that so far about 70 percent of those reviewed have been approved.
“We do it as quickly as possible and actually visit each business,” Sznajderman said. “We check their business plan and their financials and whatever else needs to be checked to make sure we are not giving money to a bad business. … I’ve spoken face-to-face with many businesses and they are showing us a 60 to 65 percent decrease in sales. The economic minister responsible for Jerusalem said that overall business is off 55 percent.
The loans have gone to established businesses — clothing stores, restaurants, tourist activities, wedding halls, candy stores and other stores that youngsters used to flock to after school.
“Kids are not walking the streets anymore,” he said.
Sznajderman stressed that applications are coming “from some very successful and well known businesses in the city. Without working capital they are stuck because they have to pay rent, salaries and pay for supplies — and some banks are not willing to give them credit without additional collateral.” She added that when the Jewish Agency employee handling the loan fund said calls to tell a business owner that the loan guarantees have been approved, she hears “sighs of relief” because they have been “suffocating.”
“We have so many pending applications that we will see within a week whether all of the loan guarantees have been fully utilized,” Sznajderman said. “The bank branch manager has complained that he can’t handle all the business. That’s a good complaint. … I do believe that if there is a need [for additional loan guarantees], New York will again stand up to help.”
editor@jewishweek.org
New York
Hunter College Condemns Anti-Semitic Chants
Chanting ‘Zionists out of CUNY,’ pro-Palestinian student group hijacks tuition-hike protest.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
“Zionists out of CUNY!” chanted students at the march. Via YouTube.comHunter College and Jewish organizations are condemning a pro-Palestinian student group that took over a student rally for free tuition by chanting “Zionists out of CUNY” and “Long live the intifada.”
The Nov. 12 rally outside the Upper East Side school — part of a national “Million Student March,” which advocates free tuition and cancellation of student debt — drew more than a hundred students, who chanted and listened to speeches on a variety of causes (Black Lives Matter, prison reform, communist revolution) for several hours before marching to the chancellor’s home, where police ordered the crowd to disperse.
Interspersed with such chants as “no tuition, open admission,” were the anti-Israel chants. As students spoke, a large Palestinian flag waved nearby and students held such signs as “Hunter students for Justice in Palestine” and “Divest CUNY Tuition from Israeli Apartheid.” A small group of students, including one wrapped in an Israeli flag, held a counter protest with one student holding a sign that said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Affordable Tuition, SJP doesn’t Speak for Me” and another with one calling for “Lower Tuition, not Terrorism against Israel.”
The group NYC Students for Justice in Palestine explained their reasoning for piggybacking their cause onto the free-tuition movement in a Facebook post the same day: “The Zionist administration invests in Israeli companies, companies that support the Israeli occupation, hosts birthright programs and study abroad programs in occupied Palestine, and reproduces settler-colonial ideology throughout CUNY through Zionist content of education. While CUNY aims to produce the next generation of professional Zionists, SJP aims to change the university to fight for all peoples liberation.”
The post was signed by NYC Students for Justice in Palestine and the group’s chapters at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, St. Joseph’s College, the College of Staten Island, John Jay College, the CUNY School of Law, Pace University-Pleasantville, New York University and Columbia.
In response to the chants, Hunter College student @becca wrote via Twitter, “Full-blown anti-Semitism allowed at my college. What’s next @Hunter_College?! I witnessed this and froze in fear,” and linked to a video of the chanting students that the Israel-advocacy organization StandWithUs posted on Facebook.
Another student, @The_Slavinator wrote “Is @Hunter_College condoning #antisemitism? Sure seems like it. Are they content to be deemed a #HotbedOfHate?”
Hunter College quickly condemned the statements, with Chancellor James B. Milliken stating Friday that CUNY is “a place of inclusion, not exclusion.” While “free speech, debate and the open exchange of ideas” are essential, he said, “intolerant, hateful and bigoted speech, while it may be legally protected, is anathema to our values.”
“Those voices,” he added, “stop rather than encourage the dialogue and real debate that makes us stronger.”
Other anti-Israel students also used the march to promote their agenda, with similar messages posted at Temple University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which commended the school for issuing a statement making clear that “invoking discriminatory language reeking of thinly veiled bigotry, prejudice, anti-Semitism or other behavior” is inconsistent with its mission.
UJA-Federation of New York also protested the rhetoric and praised the college’s swift action, saying that “Students of all backgrounds deserve a campus experience that is free from intolerance and prejudice” and urging “all parties involved to disavow hateful language against other students and take appropriate measures to ensure this does not happen again.”
amyclark@jewishweek.org
The Remix: Thanksgiving Deli Roll
There’s more than one way to make this classic make-ahead dish.
Amy Kritzer/JWThis is the next installment in our series The Remix, in which we seek to gently rework the more challenging dishes in the Jewish culinary canon. With a little bit of love, we’re convinced we can make any dish delicious, even ones that seem a bit bizarre to the modern palate.
I remember trying deli roll as a little kid at a family friend’s Shabbat dinner. Turkey, salami and mustard rolled in puff pastry and baked is definitely a kid- friendly dish. After all, my diet at the time consisted of turkey sandwiches and fruit snacks. I never forgot it, but it receded from my personal repertoire until it crossed my radar again. My first thought, of course, was how to Remix it for you.
Deli meats are tasty and all, but if you think about it, puff pastry is a blank canvas for amazingness. And Thanksgiving leftovers are no exception. In place of deli turkey, I’m using roasted turkey. And a mustard-spiked cranberry sauce in place of mustard. Maybe you want to add mashed potatoes (or stuffing!) and dip the whole thing in gravy? I definitely won’t stop you. Just make sure you use pareve puff pastry, or save your turkey for sandwiches and go dairy with brie and cranberry sauce instead. Either way, leftovers have never been so delicious.
Amy Kritzer is a food writer and recipe developer in Austin, Texas. She blogs at What Jews Wanna Eat.
Slideshow
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HideServings & Times
Yield:
12 piecesActive Time:
30 minTotal Time:
1 hr 15 minHideIngredients
For cranberry sauce:
1 12-oz bag fresh cranberries, picked through
¾ cup light brown sugar
1 tablespoon orange zest
2 tablespoons orange juice
2 tablespoons smooth Dijon mustard
For deli roll:
1 piece puff pastry (you can use homemade or 1/2 of a 17.3 oz package)
1 ½ cups shredded roasted turkey (you can also use deli turkey)
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, minced
1 egg, whisked
¼ cup salted pumpkin seeds
HideSteps
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
First, make the cranberry sauce. You can also mix mustard into leftover cranberry sauce if you have it! Combine cranberries, brown sugar, orange zest, and orange juice in a medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, then lower to medium low heat and cook uncovered until cranberries burst and sauce thickens, about 10-12 minutes. Stir in mustard and cool.
Now, it’s deli roll time. Spread puff pastry on a clean surface and flatten a bit with a rolling pin. Spread half the cranberry sauce on the puff pastry, and then top evenly with a thin layer of shredded turkey. Sprinkle with rosemary.
Roll like a jelly roll from the short side, so the end result is longer. Secure the seam under the roll. Brush with egg wash and top with pumpkin seeds.
Roll like a jelly roll from the short side, so the end result is longer. Secure the seam under the roll. Brush with egg wash and top with pumpkin seeds.
HideWhat Wine Goes With Turkey Again?
Impress your guests with just the right white, red or rosé this Thanksgiving.
Joshua E. London
Special To The Jewish Week
When it comes to pairing wines with your Thanksgiving meal, one should keep in mind that there is no “perfect” pairing. The goal of pairing wine with food is balance; neither the food nor the wine should overpower each. General rules of thumb — like lighter foods with lighter wines, richer foods with richer, full-bodied wines — can be handy, but should not be thought of as absolute. The interplay of wine and food is necessarily subjective, but the differences among wine varietals and styles can seem dramatic.
With turkey, some prefer white wine, like an oaky Chardonnay or perhaps a lighter, dry Riesling, while others go for a hearty flavorful red like Syrah or Zinfandel, or the softer Pinot Noir. Some might even prefer to split the difference with a zippy rosé … and all the wines might be excellent with the exact same menu. Experience is the surest guide, so experiment liberally in advance. When in doubt, provide guests with multiple options. With all the fabulous wines out there for just such an occasion, here is a collection for your consideration:
White Wines:
Dalton, D, Pinot Gris, Unaoked, Galilee, Israel, 2014: Medium-bodied with aromas of melon, hay, peaches and grapefruit and flavors of green apple, stone fruits, mineral and loads of citrus, it has a lengthy finish that is accented with minerals, lemon and spice. Vibrant and refreshing.
(Available at Gotham Wines and Liquors, 2517 Broadway, Manhattan, [212] 932-0990, $16.18)
Pinks:
Dalton, Rosé, Upper Galilee, Israel, 2014: A blend of 53 percent Shiraz, 40 percent Cabernet, and 8 percent Barbera, this light-bodied, enjoyable rosé is a touch sweeter than the previous vintage, but is no less inviting with its nose of ripe strawberries and apricots, with slightly sweet flavors of cherry, strawberry, cranberry and watermelon; it has a lovely, balancing acidity to keep the whole crisp and refreshing.
(Available at Columbus Wines and Spirits, 730 Columbus Avenue, Manhattan, [212] 865-7070, $15.99)
Cantine del Borgo Reale, Rosé Puglia, Italy, 2014: This pleasing, straightforward and light-bodied rosé is floral on the nose with fruity notes of apricot, peach and ripe cherry, followed by flavors of sour cherry, nectarine, raspberry and a touch of cranberry. This is a simple quaffer, but well crafted, refreshing and a great value.
(Available at 36th Avenue Wines, 3014 36th Ave., Long Island City, Queens, [718] 361-6080, $15.99)
Hajdu Wines, Grenache Rosé, Clement Hills, California, 2014: This delightfully crisp light-to-medium-bodied 100 percent Grenache rosé offers strawberry, peach, citrus and banana aromas, followed by fruity yet restrained flavors of orange, lemon and strawberry. Charming, mouth-watering and vibrant. Like most Hajdu Wines, this does not disappoint.
(Available at hajduwines.com, $30)
Don Ernesto, Beret, Napa Valley, California, 2014: A beautiful, light-bodied 100 percent Syrah rosé has a nose of strawberry and cherry and perhaps a touch of apple. Dry, crisp and refreshing, yet with some real depth too. Fabulous all around, it matches any food and it’s dangerously easy to sip in great quantities.
(Available at hagafen.com 888-HAGAFEN, $24)
Reds:
Hagafen, Pinot Noir, 2013: A delicious wine offering dark fruit, raspberry and earthy aromas on a medium frame with savory flavors of black currants, strawberry, spice and notes of coffee and mild oak at the finish. Lovely Napa Pinot.
(Available at Skyview Wine and Liquor, 5681 Riverdale Ave., Riverdale, $37.99)
Pacifica, Evan’s Collection, Pinot Noir, Oregon, 2010: Opens with ripe cherry and oak scents that lead into flavors of black and red cherries, raspberry and plum with some mild smokiness along with mineral and herbal notes. Nicely balanced with good acidity and firm tannins, it gets better as it breathes, so consider decanting to smooth out the edges.
(Available at Columbus Wines and Spirits, 730 Columbus Ave., Manhattan, [212] 865-7070)
Hajdu Wines, Makom, Sonoma Coast, Pinot Noir, 2013: Medium bodied with a fruity and aromatic nose of strawberries, cranberries and plums, and an interesting if subtle vegetal lilt, leading to flavors of plum, strawberry and raspberry, with hints of leather and spice. Interesting and yummy.
(Available at hajduwines.com, $45)
Agua Dulce Zinfandel 2010: A powerful, explosive nose of fruit and spice, this medium-to-full-bodied Zin is complex, richly layered and well structured, with lovely dark fruit and spice notes, and a pleasing, lengthy finish.
(Available at kosherwine.com, [866]-567-4370, $29.99)
Dalton Alma, Shiraz-Grenache-Mourvedre (SGM), Galilee, Israel: This aromatic, Rhône-style Israeli blend offers appealing mocha and earthy red fruit aromas leading to supple, mildly spicy dark fruit flavors intermingled with anise, vanilla, pepper and tobacco. Smooth and well rounded.
(Available at Ambassador Wines, 1020 Second Ave., Manhattan, [212] 421-5078, $28.99)
Vignobles David, Les Masques, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France, 2012: This remarkable blend of 85 percent Grenache, 10 percent Mourvèdre, and 5 percent Syrah conjures up a complex bouquet of red and black fruits, lavender, cedar and stone, evolving into flavors of stone fruits, currants, cranberries, espresso, tobacco leaf, toasted oak and truffles, with a smidgen of citrus, dried mushroom, and lovely Mediterranean spices. With bracing acidity and rich, powdery tannins, this superb wine is very young and tight and will benefit from further aging, but is lovely now given plenty of time to breath.
(Available at Skyview Wines and Liquor, 5681 Riverdale Ave., Riverdale, [718] 601-8222, $80)
Agua Dulce Winery Syrah 2010 ($34): This wonderful syrah offers lovely dark fruits (black cherry), complex herbal notes (violet), rich oak and vibrant acidity balanced nicely with the well-integrated tannins. Drinking beautifully now, this is one to savor.
(Gotham Wines. 2517 Broadway, Manhattan, [212] 932-0990, $32.76)
Enjoy and give thanks!
Fall Literary Guide November 2015
Roosevelt and the Jews. Primo Levi, Reconsidered. The Art of the Steal. Family Secrets from the War
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Inside This Special Section
Enjoy the read,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. A reminder that our website is always there for you with breaking news and exclusive videos, op-eds, features, blogs, advice columns, and more.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/?utm_source=November+18%2C+2015+WEDNESDAY+newsletter&utm_campaign=JWMG+&utm_medium=email
BETWEEN THE LINES Gary Rosenblatt
Where Muslims, Jews Clash — And Hug
A unique and controversial experiment, under wraps until now, offers American Muslim leaders a deeper understanding of Jewish identity and history.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher
Gary RosenblattI spent the last weekend of October on the Upper West Side with more than 40 thoughtful, impressive women and men from across the country on an intellectual and spiritual journey.
We attended Friday evening Shabbat services at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. Over the next two days we studied passages from the Torah and Talmud, and read and discussed excerpts from the writings of Solomon Schechter, Louis D. Brandeis, David Ben-Gurion and Jacob Blaustein.
The other participants had toured Israel together, part of their serious, yearlong commitment to learn about the connections between and differences among American and Israeli Jews.
What was unusual about the weekend program was that the participants were neither Jewish nor Christian. They were American Muslims — a range of civic and thought leaders, all committed to the Palestinian cause (a number were activists when in college), and most have supported BDS, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is anathema to the Jewish state.
Writing that last sentence, I anticipated skepticism, alarm and perhaps anger from some of you. You may well be questioning the motives of the group, made up of several imams as well as university professors, doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, etc. Surely there must be a pro-Palestinian objective here, a concern that these people are part of some kind of political front to infiltrate the Jewish community.
But if you think there is suspicion among Jews who learn of the Muslim Learning Initiative (MLI), as the group is known, imagine the reaction in the Muslim community on hearing of co-religionists taking part in a full-year fellowship program sponsored and hosted by the Shalom Hartman Institute, a proud Zionist educational organization based in Jerusalem as well as New York.
Indeed, the fact that you likely are first learning here of MLI, now in its third year, is because its participants have chosen to keep a decidedly low profile, for good reason. (I agreed not to mention their names unless they chose to speak to me on the record.)
When a member of the first cohort wrote an essay in Time magazine, “What a Muslim American Learned from Zionists,” criticizing the Muslim world for not facing the truth about the 4,000-year Jewish connection to Israel even as she condemned Israeli treatment of the Palestinians — she received death threats from her own community, accused of being a traitor to the cause.
She was not alone. Many of the other participants cited intense criticism from fellow Muslims or pro-Palestinian advocates, ranging from nasty blogs to being disinvited from events to physical threats.
By visiting Israel, and stepping across a BDS line, the MLI participants have outraged parts of their community in signaling to American Jews that there are serious partners in the Muslim community — partners ready to rethink the Muslim wholesale rejection of the Jewish narrative, even as they remain deeply critical of Israeli policies.
So why did the MLI participants risk their reputations to join the fellowship and, in effect, invite American Jews into a serious conversation? They each have their own personal reasons, but several cited longstanding commitment to the Palestinian cause coupled with frustration at the lack of progress, and a recognition of “the toxic hate,” as one woman put it, between Jews and Palestinians.
“We all have blood on our hands,” she said.
There was a shared curiosity about learning the Jewish narrative, a concern about the blatant anti-Semitism voiced by some in their community, and a desire to do something to break the bloody stalemate in the Holy Land.
Imam Abdullah
The primary impetus, though, was Imam Abdullah Antepli, the founding director of Duke University’s Center for Muslim Life, who handpicked the first cohort from among colleagues and others he knew. His credibility went a long way in convincing them to join MLI.
The imam was raised in a stridently anti-Semitic home in Turkey and came to believe that hatred of Jews was not consistent with authentic Islam. Several years ago Imam Abdullah, who came to the U.S. a dozen years ago at the age of 30, approached Yossi Klein Halevi, an author, journalist and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The imam, who explains that he is part of a majority of American Muslims opposed to violence and seeking their place in American society, said he wanted to create a program for American Muslim leaders to better understand American Jews and Israel with the hope of improving relations between emerging leaders of the two faiths.
At first skeptical, Halevi, who has a special interest in interfaith relations, came to believe in and share Imam Abdullah’s dream of closing the gap between Muslims and Jews through getting to know and understand each other. Halevi brought the idea to the Hartman administration, which wholeheartedly embraced it and launched MLI, an intensive program that includes four weeks of study at the institute in Jerusalem — two weeks at the outset of the program and two weeks at the end — and a series of lectures and programs in the U.S. during the course of the year.
“We are Siamese twins,” laughed Imam Abdullah as he and Halevi met with me, just before the recent weekend program began. “We are brothers from a different mother.”
The warm bond between the two men who direct MLI is palpable, and though their subject matter is serious, their conversation often is marked by laughter.
“We are like oxygen for each other,” said Halevi, who noted they each are trying to nurture conversation between mainstream Jews who support Israel and mainstream Muslims who support the Palestinians. “It’s not a zero-sum game,” Halevi said. “One can care about the other and still be loyal to one’s own community.”
The essence of the program, he added, is teaching about Jewish peoplehood and the Jewish connection to the land of Israel — “two core issues that much of the Muslim world doesn’t get about us. That’s what makes the program unique.”
Imam Abdullah noted that most MLI participants are seeking a relationship with American Jews because they see the Jewish community as both a role model for integrating into America and a potential ally against the exclusion of Muslim Americans from mainstream American society.
The weekend program took place in the midst of ongoing violence in Israel. Imam Abdullah said the Mideast tensions made Muslim-Jewish dialogue more difficult, but all the more important. And Halevi pointed out that even in the fall of 2014, when the MLI participants met in New York shortly after the bloody Gaza war, their discussions with the Hartman faculty were marked by “vehement disagreement, but no one raised their voice during those three days.”
Imam Abdullah, Halevi and the Hartman Institute’s president, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, who joined us, emphasized that MLI is not an interfaith program; it’s an educational one, an attempt to foster personal relationships and deep dialogue among people whose political and perhaps religious views differ sharply.
“We never argue the facts in MLI,” the rabbi said. “We share what our understanding is. There are multiple facts, multiple injustices.” He told the participants the weekend was about “your learning our inner struggles and how to create boundaries. We have a covenant with you,” he said, a commitment to be open and honest.
‘We Don’t Hold Back’
What I witnessed, and took part in, over the three-day weekend — the first time all three MLI cohorts were together — was a model exercise in expressing honest, often painful, views with more than just civility. The MLI members and the handful of Hartman faculty were able to convey empathy and personal affection for each other without standing down an inch from their fervent beliefs. There were plenty of hugs and smiles in the room, though the conversation was intense at times. The level of trust was remarkable.
(At one point during the weekend the participants discussed their desire for the creation of a JLI, a parallel group of young Jewish leaders to learn about Muslim life. Hartman officials readily agreed and said it was up to a Muslim foundation or group to sponsor such a program. The participants noted that, unfortunately, their community is not as well organized as the Jewish community in undertaking such projects.)
The Hartman teachers candidly discussed challenges facing the Jewish community, here and in Israel. The MLI members often noted parallels in their own community, like the struggle for younger American Muslims to be accepted by the Muslim Establishment while resenting some of the policies and views of their elders.
The questions the MLI members asked of the Hartman scholars in sessions on the tension between loyalty and criticism and the future of the American Jewish relationship with Israel revealed an understanding of the issues that impressed the faculty.
“We don’t hold back, we expose our deepest struggles and yearnings” one teacher said, “and so do they.”
One MLI member, older than most, said he has learned how Jews feel about Jerusalem, how far back their ties go to the city. “The Jews pray every day to return to Jerusalem,” he said. “You can’t tell the Jews, ‘We’ll drive you out.’”
One woman told me she and others in the group had never realized that Zionism was more than a political term, one she had associated only with colonialism, not the yearning for an ancient homeland. And several participants said that prior to MLI, they thought Jewish ties to Israel go back only as far as the 1940s, as a political solution for settling homeless Holocaust refugees, rather than to Biblical times.
More Than Hummus
One participant said he joined MLI because he had grown tired of “toothless” Muslim-Jewish dialogue groups he had participated in, which he described as “hey, you eat hummus and we eat hummus.” But those discussions avoided hot-button issues like the Mideast conflict.
“I needed something more meaty, and I joined MLI because my community — and me personally — was stuck in a certain mindset, an absolutist narrative. We all tend to hear what we want to hear, not what we need to hear, and we advance our positions by putting the other guy in the gutter. Now I understand the Jewish longing for the land [of Israel]. As a pragmatist, I want to disempower anti-Semitism and anti-Islam attitudes.”
He said he is “totally invested” in the Hartman program, though his involvement greatly upsets his community. He said that this distrust stems in part from a lack of confidence in one’s own beliefs. “People tell me ‘the Jews are so smart, they’ll dupe you” into adapting their narrative.
But the participant also found that even sophisticated Jews lack knowledge of American Muslims. He said that in addressing a sophisticated American Jewish group he was disappointed but not surprised when the line of questions focused on whether most American Muslims are sympathetic to terrorists.
Parvez Ahmed, a professor of finance at the University of North Florida, said he appreciates MLI because it offers “a modest pathway towards improving Jewish-Muslim relations by creating a safe space for honest dialogue” and an opportunity “to mitigate the Islamophobia and anti-Semitism roiling our communities.” He asserted that “engagement is not appeasement, and dialogue is not capitulation,” adding: “If we remain in our silos we are part of the problem.”
Samar Kaukab, director of a research accelerator program at the University of Chicago, said the MLI experience has deepened her understanding of “the complexity of the American Jewish experience,” seeing how Jews relate to being deeply American and identifying with Israel. She said she has found similarities and differences in comparison to her own feelings about being “deeply American and relating to a global Muslim outlook.”
Having participated in previous interfaith dialogues, Kaukab said MLI goes deeper. Too often, in other efforts, “we Jews and Muslims situate ourselves on diametrically opposed spectrums and miss the stuff in the middle that speaks to who we really are as people and what we care about. The Hartman program allows us to trust each other and ask probing questions.”
Another participant, foreign policy expert Haroon Moghul, has written that he joined MLI to “be a more effective participant in critical American conversations” about Mideast policy, with a better understanding of America’s relationship with Israel. He credited Hartman for encouraging the participants to visit a number of Palestinian communities during their Israel trip and for the complete candor in its approach, well aware that the participants remain steadfast in their support for the Palestinian cause.
Still, everyone I spoke with described how the MLI experience has changed his or her way of thinking. Not in terms of political or religious views, necessarily, but in expanding one’s horizons, taking into account additional narratives, humanizing our adversaries.
When I got home after the MLI weekend I reread several recent issues of The Jewish Week, imagining how some of the people I’d met would read the articles and opinion columns dealing with the Mideast conflict.
It got me thinking about the dangers of generalizing and stereotyping. I wondered if and how I’d approach things differently now. And I realized that despite our locked-in Mideast narratives, developed over a lifetime, an authentic encounter and honest conversation has the potential to open our hearts and minds to hear — and perhaps make room for — “the other’s” truth.
Gary@jewishweek.org
All Too Timely
Editor’s Note: This column was written before last week’s tragic attacks in Paris by suspected Islamic terrorists. Its message — the positive influence of serious conversations between a group of American Muslim leaders and Jewish educators — is all the more important now. Imam Abdullah Antepli, the initiator of the program, denounced the Paris attacks as “barbaric, despicable savagery that serve as a painful reminder and urgent call for North American Jews and Muslims to engage in honest discussion, despite our political disagreements.” Yossi Klein Halevi, his Jewish counterpart at the sponsoring Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, added that the program “challenges both Muslims and Jews to avoid easy judgments and struggle with complexity.”
This piece is dedicated to the memory of the Paris victims and to the hope of more productive Muslim-Jewish dialogue.
gary@jewishweek.org
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MusingsArmed For Chanukah
Rabbi David Wolpe
Rabbi David WolpeAs Israel prepares to cross the sea, Moses cries out to God, who responds, in Exodus 14:15, “Why cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.” Rashi reverses the meaning of the verse, suggesting God is saying, “Why cry out? It’s on me — tell the Israelites to go forward.” Rashi lived in an age (1040-1105) when Jews had little power and reliance on God was the only conceivable strategy. He understood the Passover story as one of total dependence, not human initiative.
Chanukah, which we celebrate next month, is a story of human struggle and triumph. Unlike the fleeing Israelites, the Maccabees took up arms and succeeded. Understandably, the modern State of Israel took the Maccabees as their model. In older Haggadot one sometimes finds the wicked child depicted as a soldier. The Passover paradigm is total reliance on God. Chanukah upholds human power alongside Divine encouragement and assurance.
We are blessed to live in a time with a modern State of Israel when Jews can defend themselves. This Chanukah we still cry out to God, but no longer wait to go forward.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book is “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press). Read More
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French Expats Here: ‘We Saw This Coming’
‘Sense of fear’ but not surprise about carnage in Paris; ‘too early to tell’ about aliyah.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Interfaith leaders gather for a memorial service Sunday outside the Bataclan theater in Paris. Getty ImagesThey, perhaps more than others, saw it coming.
When the 60 or so French Jews who attend services at the West Side Sephardic Synagogue gathered to pray last Friday night, the scope of the carnage in Paris was still unfolding.
Rabbi Eitan Bendavid, spiritual leader of the congregation, said he noticed “a pervasive sense of fear” among his French-born congregants, most of whom still have relatives back in France, and often go home for family visits.
But, he said, he did not hear a sense of surprise among his congregants. “People in my community have been saying for a long time that they saw stuff like this coming.”
By “stuff like this,” he meant the wide-scale terrorist attacks against French targets.
In Paris itself, where word of the suspected ISIS-coordinated attacks at six venues quickly spread in the French capital, Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s office in the capital, heard similar sentiments in the Jewish community. Last week’s attacks in Paris “were confirmation of everything we feared,” she said.
In the 10 months since the terrorist attacks on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket and the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took a total of 19 lives, French Jews foresaw that while the Jewish community was an early target of fatal Islamist terror attacks, French society in general would be next, Rodan-Benzaquen said in a telephone interview. “It was not a question of if, it was a question of when and where.”
The Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were killed on Friday night, was Jewish-owned for some four decades until earlier this year, and frequently hosted Jewish events. Like the restaurant and sports stadium where attacks also took place last Friday, it was not a specifically Jewish target in what French President Francois Hollande called “an act of war by ISIS.”
Rodan-Benzaquen and Rabbi Bendavid and other Jews with roots in France reacted in like ways this week, even as France mourned its losses — some 130 people killed and more than 300 injured — and pledged more security protection for Jewish institutions, and declared war on the ISIS terrorists who took responsibility for Friday’s attacks.
People familiar with the French Jewish community said French Jews saw the latest acts of terrorism coming, expect the next terrorism there to be aimed at specifically Jewish targets, are concerned but are not rushing to make aliyah or to move immediately to the United States or other Western countries, and feel that non-Jewish French citizens finally share their worries about the threat of Islamist terrorism. Now, said Rodan-Benzaquen, more people in France have “the knowledge that the cancer is spreading. There is the perception that the entire nation understands … what the Jewish community is going through. We feel less solitude.”
“French citizens now understand that they, and not just Jews, are terror targets,” the Times of Israel website quoted David Khalfa, a political consultant in Paris, as saying this week. “It was an illusion [of safety for most people in France]; we lived in this illusion and now we are waking up — and it’s a nightmare.
“Now everyone is a target,” Khalfa said. “This time it’s not only about symbolic targets … it has changed the whole perspective of fighting terror.”
“Whether attacks are against policemen or soldiers, against freedom of expression, or against Jews, what is being systematically, violently attacked are French democratic and republican values,” Rodan-Benzaquen wrote in an op-ed essay this week. “The goal of Islamic fundamentalism is to divide society, create a clash of civilizations, strengthen extremists that pretend to fight against them, and turn Muslims of every democratic country that they target against the rest of the population.”
“The Jewish community feels that France is under attack; it’s no longer a uniquely Jewish problem,” said Brigitte Dayan, a journalist with Jewish-Moroccan roots who moved to Manhattan from Chicago a dozen years ago and is knowledgeable about the French Jewish community. She added, “One friend [in France] said she is thankful to have bought an apartment in Tel Aviv last year.
“There have been so many attacks, so many threats [on French Jews] over the past months and years, that … the only ones not surprised” that ISIS has painted a bigger bull’s-eye over France “were the French Jewish community. I don’t think this is the end of it,” Rodan-Benzaquen continued.
She believes that while “the fear very much remains” among French Jews, “the next attacks may be [against] another Jewish target” outside France. She said she did not hear the increased level of discussion about leaving France as she did in the aftermath of the Hyper Cacher attack. “It’s a constant talk for the past year; people ask themselves if they should be leaving.”
Rabbi Bendavid said his congregants told him that it’s too early for their relatives in France to immediately reassess their aliyah or emigration options.
Avi Mayer, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Israel’s aliyah activities, agreed that a spike in French aliyah following the latest attacks in Paris is not likely.
“In the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks in January, we saw a surge in the number of calls and inquiries from French Jews, and the number of new aliyah files opened in France tripled. We have not seen a similarly dramatic increase in aliyah-related inquiries in the wake of Friday’s attacks,” Mayer said.
The number of French Jews who made aliyah has steadily increased over the last few years, Mayer said, from 1,917 in 2012, to 3,293 in 2013, and 7,238 in 2014. “Aliyah numbers for this year are up by approximately 11 percent compared to this point last year,” indicating a 2015 figure of about 8,000, “and we expect the numbers to continue growing steadily for the foreseeable future,” he said. (Mayer’s figures, however, are contradicted by aliyah totals reported earlier this year, which indicated that French aliyah had slowed after an immediate increase in the months after the January terrorism in Paris, and that a decrease of nearly 20 percent this year was likely.)
El Al Israel Airlines announced that it would assist Israelis in France who wish to return home, offering a “special” $350 one-way fare and suspending revision charges for passengers who wish to change tickets bought for dates up to Nov. 29; Arkia Airlines announced a similar move.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an independent organization that promotes aliyah and supports Jewish life in many countries, announced this week that it is stepping up its work in France, is providing “emergency security aid to French-Jewish communal institutions,” and will bring “a special flight” of French Jews to Israel at the end of November.
“The first French Jews to move to Israel since Friday’s ISIS terrorist attacks arrived today [Monday]” with the support of IFCJ, the organization stated in a press release. “Two families landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport … met by IFCJ representatives.”
Meanwhile, Jewish communities here and in France took part in memorial and commemoration activities.
On Shabbat, Rabbi Bendavid led his West Side congregation in reciting two chapters of Psalms, one “to pray for the healing of all the people who have been affected by this devastating attack,” and one “to pray that our leaders will see the current situation with absolute clarity.” He said his congregation also said a prayer in French for the protection of France.
Many congregants, he said, added the French flag to their Facebook pages as a sign of solidarity.
In Paris, a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue near the Bataclan theater said Psalms “for the departed and for the safety of all French citizens,” the chabad.org website reported.
The Grand Synagogue of Paris held a prayer service-rally Sunday night, sponsored by the country’s chief rabbi and the Conference of European Rabbis that included political officials and rabbis. “We pray for all the injured to recover quickly. Our hearts are with them and their families,” the Grand Synagogue’s Rabbi Moshe Sebbag said.
Members of the Jewish and Islamic clergy took part Sunday in a memorial service outside the Bataclan concert hall, many of them laying bouquets of white roses at the site.
“Anyone who uses hate speech has no place in France and those places that preach hate are not places of prayer but are those of a sect,” Hassen Chalghoumi, president of Imams of France, said at the memorial service. “1.5 million people are hostages of Daesh [an Arabic acronym for ISIS], 1.5 million people are hostages of these barbarians who are sullying the name of Islam and Muslims. It’s time to say no to this barbarity.”
The memorial was the idea of Polish-Jewish author Marek Halter, who writes frequently about his family, which escaped the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
Representatives of prominent U.S. Jewish organizations also condemned Friday’s terrorism. “One of the most sickening forms of human violence one can imagine,” said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. “An outrageous, cowardly and premeditated assault not just on the people of France, but on all freedom loving people around the world,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.
“It’s high time to drop the evasive language too often used to describe the perpetrators of these heinous crimes and get specific,” David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement. “They are not just ‘violent extremists,’ though of course they are. They are not just ‘terrorists,’ though, of course, they are that as well. They are radical Islamists inspired by their interpretation of religion, however perverted it may be.
“Hoping the problem will one day go away is not a strategy, nor is tying the hands of, or eviscerating the budgets of, law enforcement, intelligence, and the military, nor is defending privacy rights at all costs, as some policy purists would do, even if it means endangering national security and personal safety,” Harris said. “Some judicious accommodations must be made in today’s democratic societies, or else the consequences could be profound. It won’t be easy, nor will it be quick. Yesterday’s tragic events in Paris should be another urgent wake-up call that, whether we live in France or elsewhere, our world needs, and is worth, defending.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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Israel News
Will Israel’s Terror Fight Gain Sympathy?
Guarded hope that new counterterrorism focus in Europe would lead to greater understanding on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor
Hundreds of Israelis attending a rally Saturday night at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv in solidarity with Paris. JTA
Tel Aviv — “We understand more than anyone else,” read the decoration on the memorial candle outside the French embassy here.
The red, white and blue of France’s tricolor flag lit up the Tel Aviv municipal building in Rabin Square as well as the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel stands “shoulder to shoulder” with France, and President Reuven Rivlin declared that “we stand united” in the fight against terrorism. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog added, “Evil knows no borders and only courageous and decisive cooperation among the family of nations will make it possible to eradicate it.”
Amid the shock and revulsion over the Paris terrorist attacks in Israel, there was guarded hope that the new focus on national security and counterterrorism in Europe would spur more understanding in a relationship that has become heated over the policy toward the Palestinians.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to experience this,” said Ron Ben Nun, a 29-year-old industrial designer, as she stopped to snap a picture of the memorial candles and flowers outside the embassy. “I would like to support them, so those who are rational can get over this problem of radical Islam together.”
But alongside expressions of sympathy and condolence, there was a healthy dose of official indignation toward Europeans who are seen by many as blinded by loyalty to upholding civil liberties at all costs, naive about the threats of Islamic extremism and biased against Israel’s handling of the Palestinian conflict.
Still outraged from a shooting attack in the West Bank that killed two Israelis, Netanyahu on Sunday called on the international community to be more forceful in condemning Palestinian terrorists. “We are not to blame for the terrorism directed against us, just as the French aren’t to blame for the terrorism against them,” the prime minister said.
Other Israeli politicians from the governing coalition were less diplomatic, saying that Europeans should spend less time criticizing Israel and more time cooperating with Israel in fighting Islamic extremism. The Israeli frustration was enhanced by the decision of the European Union last week to require that consumer products from Jewish settlements in the West Bank carry special labels noting their origin in the “Israeli settlements” rather than a “Made in Israel” sticker, a move that has stoked fears of a countrywide economic boycott.
“Europe needs to stop dealing with nonsense of labeling of Israeli products and automatic condemnation for every balcony built in Jerusalem,” said Science Minister Ofir Akunis in an interview with Israel Television. “We are under an Islamic fundamentalist terror offensive. Terror is terror is terror.”
Akunis added on Facebook, “Wake up and start fighting Islamic extremist terror.”
The Paris attacks and the French efforts at cracking down on Islamist militants gave Israeli government ministers a convenient window of opportunity on Tuesday to implement a decision from last month outlawing the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, an Israeli-Arab group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and, allegedly, Hamas. In an unprecedented step against a minority group, Israeli police raided the movement’s offices throughout the country, confiscating files and equipment.
“The Paris attack created the international and regional atmosphere that justifies and gives legitimacy to such an exceptional and severe move like this,” wrote Udi Segal, a political reporter for Channel 2 news.
Israeli politicians want to convince the world that Palestinian terrorism is one and the same with the global jihadist militants who struck in France, said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political journalist. “Israel wants the global community to see Palestinian terror as part of a global trend of terrorizing citizens,” she said. “They don’t want it to be seen as part of a 70-year-old conflict.”
That explains Israel’s diplomatic outrage after the Swedish foreign minister, answering a question about Islamic radicalism in Europe, linked it to the situation in Middle East, “where not least the Palestinians see that there is no future.” Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Swedish ambassador in protest, saying that “any link between ISIS terrorism and the Palestinian problem is baseless.”
Although the Paris attacks have become a seminal moment for Europe in grappling with fundamentalist Islamic violence, it’s unlikely that they will substantively change European policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Some in Israel may hope that the events in Paris will add to Europe’s understanding of the constraints involved in coping with Palestinian terrorism, and help ease pressure on Israel and mitigate the criticism voiced in this context by various EU institutions and member states,” wrote Oded Eran, a former ambassador to the EU, and Adam Hoffman, on the website of a Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, where both authors are researchers. “Similar events in the past, however, indicate that this will not occur, and that no significant change in the European attitude on this question can be expected.”
But even if France’s diplomatic position doesn’t change toward Israel, a French Jewish leader said he expected there to be better understanding of the need to combat Islamic extremism. “The French didn’t realize it until now; now they understand it’s not just Jews, or journalists, but a worldwide war that Islam wants to wage against all those who don’t believe in sharia and their way of life,” said Roger Cukierman, vice president of the World Jewish Congress and the president of the French council of Jewish institutions, in an interview with Israel Radio.
Unlike most of their countrymen, Cukierman told the radio that French Jews were used to dealing with terrorist attacks directed at their communities. “This isn’t something new to us. But now it’s not only us.”
In January, when French terrorists targeted a kosher supermarket, Israeli officials encouraged French Jews to consider Israel their true home and immigrate. Top officials at the Jewish Agency said they anticipated that annual French Jewish immigration could jump this year to 10,000 from 7,238 in 2014. The actual figure through the first 10 months of the year is 6,860, suggesting the initial forecast might have been overstated.
At a sushi restaurant in Tel Aviv, two recent young French immigrants predicted that the attacks wouldn’t change much for the Jewish community back home.
“We are always afraid in France. There’s security guards and we know there’s danger,” said Sophie Ben Haim, a 22-year-old student in a Hebrew-language studies course.
She and a friend, François Cohen, agreed that the French politics would become more hardline because of the fear of new attacks and suspicions toward the country’s Muslim community. Despite the new sense of shared threat from terrorism with their countrymen, French Jews will keep immigrating to Israel, they predicted.
“Jews don’t feel at home there,” Ben Haim said. “I don’t have things in common with French people. There’s no future in France. Here, there is a future.”
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More New York
Hunter College Condemns Anti-Semitic Chants
Chanting ‘Zionists out of CUNY,’ pro-Palestinian student group hijacks tuition-hike protest.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
“Zionists out of CUNY!” chanted students at the march. Via YouTube.comHunter College and Jewish organizations are condemning a pro-Palestinian student group that took over a student rally for free tuition by chanting “Zionists out of CUNY” and “Long live the intifada.”
The Nov. 12 rally outside the Upper East Side school — part of a national “Million Student March,” which advocates free tuition and cancellation of student debt — drew more than a hundred students, who chanted and listened to speeches on a variety of causes (Black Lives Matter, prison reform, communist revolution) for several hours before marching to the chancellor’s home, where police ordered the crowd to disperse.
Interspersed with such chants as “no tuition, open admission,” were the anti-Israel chants. As students spoke, a large Palestinian flag waved nearby and students held such signs as “Hunter students for Justice in Palestine” and “Divest CUNY Tuition from Israeli Apartheid.” A small group of students, including one wrapped in an Israeli flag, held a counter protest with one student holding a sign that said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Affordable Tuition, SJP doesn’t Speak for Me” and another with one calling for “Lower Tuition, not Terrorism against Israel.”
The group NYC Students for Justice in Palestine explained their reasoning for piggybacking their cause onto the free-tuition movement in a Facebook post the same day: “The Zionist administration invests in Israeli companies, companies that support the Israeli occupation, hosts birthright programs and study abroad programs in occupied Palestine, and reproduces settler-colonial ideology throughout CUNY through Zionist content of education. While CUNY aims to produce the next generation of professional Zionists, SJP aims to change the university to fight for all peoples liberation.”
The post was signed by NYC Students for Justice in Palestine and the group’s chapters at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, St. Joseph’s College, the College of Staten Island, John Jay College, the CUNY School of Law, Pace University-Pleasantville, New York University and Columbia.
In response to the chants, Hunter College student @becca wrote via Twitter, “Full-blown anti-Semitism allowed at my college. What’s next @Hunter_College?! I witnessed this and froze in fear,” and linked to a video of the chanting students that the Israel-advocacy organization StandWithUs posted on Facebook.
Another student, @The_Slavinator wrote “Is @Hunter_College condoning #antisemitism? Sure seems like it. Are they content to be deemed a #HotbedOfHate?”
Hunter College quickly condemned the statements, with Chancellor James B. Milliken stating Friday that CUNY is “a place of inclusion, not exclusion.” While “free speech, debate and the open exchange of ideas” are essential, he said, “intolerant, hateful and bigoted speech, while it may be legally protected, is anathema to our values.”
“Those voices,” he added, “stop rather than encourage the dialogue and real debate that makes us stronger.”
Other anti-Israel students also used the march to promote their agenda, with similar messages posted at Temple University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which commended the school for issuing a statement making clear that “invoking discriminatory language reeking of thinly veiled bigotry, prejudice, anti-Semitism or other behavior” is inconsistent with its mission.
UJA-Federation of New York also protested the rhetoric and praised the college’s swift action, saying that “Students of all backgrounds deserve a campus experience that is free from intolerance and prejudice” and urging “all parties involved to disavow hateful language against other students and take appropriate measures to ensure this does not happen again.”
amyclark@jewishweek.orgRead More New York
As Jerusalem Businesses Empty, UJA-Fed Steps In
New York charity offers loans for struggling venues as terrorism keeps customers at home.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Jerusalem businesses, have taken a financial hit since a spate of stabbings and other attacks in the last month.When participants in a UJA-Federation of New York mission entered a Jerusalem restaurant on November 9th for a pre-arranged meal, they found plenty of empty tables.
Other would-be diners had stayed away because of two nearly coinciding terrorist attacks in the city earlier in the day.
“The moment something happens, people don’t go out,” said Amir Sznajderman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, who was accompanying the UJA-Federation mission.
Business at the restaurant dropped by 50 percent in the last month because of the spate of Palestinian knife, gun and car attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers that terrorized the city.
“The owner said he had been in business 11 years and had never seen such a decline in business in such a short period of time,” Sznajderman said.
That proprietor is one of 70 business owners in Jerusalem who have thus far applied for emergency loan guarantees made available by UJA-Federation of New York. The organization has made such emergency loan guarantees available during prior times of conflict, according to Aliza Kurshan, executive vice president of Community Planning and Agency Resources, but they have been infrequent.
UJA-Federation allocated $200,000 on Oct. 27 to guarantee $1.4 million in emergency bank loans to struggling businesses, according to Eric Goldstein, UJA-Federation’s CEO.
“The wave of terror has significantly reduced revenues for many Jerusalem businesses that rely on foot traffic and walk-in customers,” Goldstein said in a UJA-Federation statement.
After the first wave of Palestinian attacks, Israeli authorities responded with a massive call-up of police and soldiers — deploying them on Jerusalem’s streets, along highways and in residential areas. Customers slowly began returning to Jerusalem stores as attacks in the city ended and moved to other parts of the country.
But on the day of the mission, two Palestinians, aged 12 and 14, stabbed and lightly wounded a 25-year-old Israeli security guard on the light rail in Jerusalem. And a Palestinian terrorist stabbed and lightly injured a man in an attack near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. Police shot and killed the terrorist, shot and wounded one of the youths and arrested his companion, who had been seized by other passengers.
Following those attacks, Sznajderman, who is director of economic development and loan funds for the Jewish Agency, said the restaurant owner told him that 50 percent of those who had reserved tables for that evening had cancelled.
“It takes time for business to recover, and every time something happens, business drops again,” he said.
Since the wave of Palestinian terror attacks began Oct. 1, there have been about 80 attacks throughout the country that have killed 11 Israelis and wounded about 200.
“Our office is in Jerusalem, I was born and raised in this city — and it was half empty [after the first wave of attacks last month],” Sznajderman said. “We were then approached by businesses in need and so we approached [UJA-Federation of New York] to see if something could be done. Our office has money for loan guarantees, but that money is dedicated to helping establish new businesses and helping others to grow. The businesses coming to us needed working capital loans.”
Michael Lustig, chair of UJA-Federation of New York’s committee Empowering and Promoting Inclusive Communities in Israel got the call.
“I knew anecdotally” about the problem, he said, noting that his sister had sent him a picture of Jerusalem’s normally bustling Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market three weeks ago. “It was a ghost town,” he said. He himself returned last week from Israel after a two-week visit.
After speaking with Sznajderman, Lustig said he immediately consulted with UJA-Federation of New York’s loan approval committee in Jerusalem and his New York-based committee.
“Within 24 hours, the decision was made to do this,” Lustig said. ”We had a crisis and we had to make a quick decision.”
Since then, of the 70 businesses that have filed applications, 20 have been approved to receive about $470,000 in loan guarantees.
Sznajderman said it takes about a week to review each application and that so far about 70 percent of those reviewed have been approved.
“We do it as quickly as possible and actually visit each business,” Sznajderman said. “We check their business plan and their financials and whatever else needs to be checked to make sure we are not giving money to a bad business. … I’ve spoken face-to-face with many businesses and they are showing us a 60 to 65 percent decrease in sales. The economic minister responsible for Jerusalem said that overall business is off 55 percent.
The loans have gone to established businesses — clothing stores, restaurants, tourist activities, wedding halls, candy stores and other stores that youngsters used to flock to after school.
“Kids are not walking the streets anymore,” he said.
Sznajderman stressed that applications are coming “from some very successful and well known businesses in the city. Without working capital they are stuck because they have to pay rent, salaries and pay for supplies — and some banks are not willing to give them credit without additional collateral.” She added that when the Jewish Agency employee handling the loan fund said calls to tell a business owner that the loan guarantees have been approved, she hears “sighs of relief” because they have been “suffocating.”
“We have so many pending applications that we will see within a week whether all of the loan guarantees have been fully utilized,” Sznajderman said. “The bank branch manager has complained that he can’t handle all the business. That’s a good complaint. … I do believe that if there is a need [for additional loan guarantees], New York will again stand up to help.”
editor@jewishweek.orgRead More
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The Jewish Week
Kayla Pournazarian
I have a standing appointment at a threading salon every other Thursday at 3 o’clock sharp. I have a habit of biting my nails until they are sore, so my mother schedules a manicure for me every two weeks. My hair is chemically straightened and requires being flat ironed once a week. The public eye has never seen my form in sweatpants nor do I ever wish them to. I have never felt disdain towards the countless refinements that make me feel pretty. I feel polished, sophisticated and powerful.
Being feminine never struck me as a disadvantage as a child. Not once, did anyone tell me that I could not do something because of my yellow smocked dress and black, curly pigtails. But as I exchanged my pleated corduroy skirts for chiffon blouses, that mentality changed. No longer was I allowed to pursue a career or life that I genuinely liked, but rather what was in alignment for me as a Jewish girl. It was instilled in me as a child by my Persian society that a lady must be “delicate, soft and feminine, with ample time to create a family” but never to be “too smart or overpowering” because I would lose my femininity. But why couldn’t I be both? I never understood why strength, intelligence and affluence were synonymous with masculine identity.
I am not the only Jewish girl caught in a society where a woman must choose between her exterior beauty and her accomplishments. In fact, Hedy Lamarr experienced the same predicament. She was a woman known for her exotic beauty and defined by her relationships, but never acknowledged for creating innovations for the modern world. Lamarr was never taken seriously for her accomplishments in science, despite the fact that she helped America defeat Nazism in World War II with her invention. (She helped invent a communications technology that made it impossible for the enemies to intercept classified radio messages.) To the rest of the world, she was simply a pretty face. Lamarr was well aware of this social construct claiming, “Any girl can be glamorous. All [she] has to do is stand still and look stupid.” Lamarr understood the norm of her society although she opposed it. Beauty and idiocy are not the same, similar to how intellect and masculinity are not equal. However, the idea that a striking woman who cared about her appearance was actually capable of such ingenuity was unfathomable in the 1930s, and still today.
Although I am still in high school, and I do not yet know what I want to do as a career, a few things I am certain of. Years from now when I stand in my synagogue grasping my daughters while singing “L’dor V’dor,” I will pass down what I have learned from Hedy Lamarr. To never underestimate a beautiful face and to remember, never abandon your pink lipstick and hair bows to get ahead in the world. Rather, use them as your ammunition to destroy the stereotypes.
Read MoreChez Marianne in the Le Marais district of Paris. Wikimedia Commons
TRAVEL
A French Kiss
Hilary Danailova
Travel Writer
Paris, the shimmering City of Light, is under siege as I write this. For many Americans, the coordinated terrorist attacks that paralyzed the city felt like a punch in the gut — a sensation all the more sickening because Paris is among the most familiar and beloved of foreign destinations.
For lovers, Paris is the capital of romance; for bibliophiles, it is a mecca of literature; and for Jews, it a touchstone of European Jewish civilization, the Continental counterpart to New York’s Jewish cosmopolitanism. While there are no reports of a specifically anti-Semitic dimension to last weekend’s massacre — though it has been pointed out that the Bataclan theater, site of the most deaths, has had Jewish owners — the second Paris terrorist attack in less than a year, with the first having targeted a kosher supermarket, puts Jews everywhere on edge.
I am in Paris at least once a year, mostly passing through en route to other parts of Europe. However brief, my sojourn is always a pleasure. The pleasures of Paris, in fact, collectively epitomize the kind of society — progressive, pluralistic, unabashedly hedonistic — that provokes the terrorists’ twisted rage.
So this is a column to celebrate those pleasures, highlighting corners of Paris that exemplify this delightful cosmopolitanism.
The very soul of modern France — enshrined in an inclusive policy of liberté, egalité, fraternité — is an existential rebuke to the kind of petty sectarianism that poisons so much of the world. Every French citizen is by definition equally French, the way every native-born American is equally American. While obviously more complicated in practice, the liberal-minded diversity fostered by this policy results in a cultural dynamism unique to open societies.
I feel this dynamism in the halls of the Centre Pompidou, Paris’s great modern art museum, where there is always something unexpected on view. Right now, for example, the Pompidou features a retrospective of the Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, who fused the disparate currents of early 20th-century painting with elements of his Afro-Chinese heritage, along with an exhibit of photographs of Cuba by the French New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda.
I love to explore the city’s characteristic lanes surrounding the Pompidou — popping into tiny patisseries, browsing through dusty booksellers, and savoring the lingering flavors of old Paris preserved in these mom-and-pop businesses. Amid skyrocketing real-estate prices, such businesses continue to exist because of heavy regulations favoring the preservation of cultural and retail traditions — a civic commitment that sets Paris apart.
For me, the spirit of Paris is evident in the sprawling diversity of its Right Bank. You start amid the institutional grandeur of the Louvre, the gardens of the Tuileries and the haute shopping of Rue Rivoli; wend through quarters full of cafés and museums; and end up in the lively residential districts that personify modern-day Paris.
Jewish life goes well beyond the clichés of the increasingly gay, increasingly hipster Marais, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a place more exuberantly expressive of the values that ISIS abhors. Like the neighborhoods in every great city, the Marais retains its ethnic character while absorbing new currents, from the spices of North Africa to the accents of Russian newcomers.
A bit further north is Belleville. Historically a working-class Jewish district, Belleville today is more diverse than ever — home to artist ateliers, immigrants from around the Mediterranean rim, a small Chinatown, Sephardic Jewish families, and a spectacular hilltop park with views over the city.
Paris has museums dedicated to wine, perfume, Jewish history, eroticism, hunting, Medieval Europe, magic, Victor Hugo — and of course, art representing virtually every period, genre, and origin. When the Musée du Quai Branly opened a few years back, its focus on indigenous art of Oceania, Africa, and Asia was seen as a gesture both corrective and inclusive — an acknowledgment that this most aesthetic of global cities should engage a more global aesthetic.
Thinking over my recent experiences in Paris, I realized all of the Parisians I know personally are ethnic and cultural hybrids. They include my Mexican-Jewish-American cousin, who married an aerospace engineer from Lorraine; her French-born high-school friend from Dallas; a colleague from Barcelona who grew up in an upwardly mobile Moroccan-Parisian immigrant family; and an Israeli composer, a classmate from Columbia, who married a French-American Jew.
This human mélange — more than any museum or monument — is the most beguiling aspect of Paris, as it is of New York, and there are no words for the tragedy of the loss of so many cosmopolites in the attack. They, and their collective human energy, are the reason we will return to Paris — as we return to Israel, to Madrid, to London, and to so many other urban centers that will always feel a little more vulnerable now.
editor@jewishweek.org
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Featured on NYBLUEPRINT
Adam Sandler Reveals "The Hanukkah Song: Part 4"
Maya Klausner
Editor
There are many signs that Chanukah is in the air: the lighting of the menorah, the spinning of the dreidel, the eating of the latkes … But the festival of lights has not officially arrived until Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” has been played. And played. And played.
Now a holiday anthem, Sandler first wrote and performed the song in 1994 at his alma mater, Saturday Night Live. Since then, Sandler’s song has undergone a number of modifications: specifically four including its latest iteration, which debuted this past weekend. Over the years, while the melody has remained the same, the lyrics have been revised to include topical, trending tidbits.
The original song makes references to O.J. Simpson, Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford, who were all topping the headlines at the time … though for different reasons.
Now a holiday anthem, Sandler first wrote and performed the song in 1994 at his alma mater, Saturday Night Live. Since then, Sandler’s song has undergone a number of modifications: specifically four including its latest iteration, which debuted this past weekend. Over the years, while the melody has remained the same, the lyrics have been revised to include topical, trending tidbits.
The original song makes references to O.J. Simpson, Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford, who were all topping the headlines at the time … though for different reasons.
In 1999 Sandler updated the song adding in a slew of that year’s hottest names, including hilarious nods to Lenny Kravitz, Winona Ryder and Courtney Love.
In 2004, Sandler released ‘Part 3’ which made mention of two of the decades most seminal sitcoms, ‘Friends’ and ‘Will & Grace’ as well a name with less obvious comedy attached to it: Osama Bin Laden.
His most recent version was unveiled on Saturday night in Carnegie Hall at Judd Apatow’s stand-up special in New York City. Sandler debuted the new tune as surprise guest.
One of the new lyrics is in lieu of Santa Claus, Jews have “two jolly fat guys: ice cream’s Ben and Jerry.” Another new line is, “We might not have a cartoon with a reindeer that can talk/but we also don’t have polio thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk.”
“The Hanukkah Song Part 4” plays off of the original line, “When you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree…” with some new names, “….here’s the fourth list of people who are Jewish, just like Jesus, Olaf, Punky Brewster, Judd Apatow, Scott Rudin, and me!”
We’re hoping Sandler plans to write a version for each of the candles on the menorah. Much like the miraculous bit of oil that blazed for eight days, Sandler’s “Hannukah Song” continues to burn brightly 22 years later.
Read More
One of the new lyrics is in lieu of Santa Claus, Jews have “two jolly fat guys: ice cream’s Ben and Jerry.” Another new line is, “We might not have a cartoon with a reindeer that can talk/but we also don’t have polio thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk.”
“The Hanukkah Song Part 4” plays off of the original line, “When you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree…” with some new names, “….here’s the fourth list of people who are Jewish, just like Jesus, Olaf, Punky Brewster, Judd Apatow, Scott Rudin, and me!”
We’re hoping Sandler plans to write a version for each of the candles on the menorah. Much like the miraculous bit of oil that blazed for eight days, Sandler’s “Hannukah Song” continues to burn brightly 22 years later.
Read More
TOP STORIES
International
French Expats Here: ‘We Saw This Coming’
‘Sense of fear’ but not surprise about carnage in Paris; ‘too early to tell’ about aliyah.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
Interfaith leaders gather for a memorial service Sunday outside the Bataclan theater in Paris. Getty ImagesThey, perhaps more than others, saw it coming.
When the 60 or so French Jews who attend services at the West Side Sephardic Synagogue gathered to pray last Friday night, the scope of the carnage in Paris was still unfolding.
Rabbi Eitan Bendavid, spiritual leader of the congregation, said he noticed “a pervasive sense of fear” among his French-born congregants, most of whom still have relatives back in France, and often go home for family visits.
But, he said, he did not hear a sense of surprise among his congregants. “People in my community have been saying for a long time that they saw stuff like this coming.”
By “stuff like this,” he meant the wide-scale terrorist attacks against French targets.
In Paris itself, where word of the suspected ISIS-coordinated attacks at six venues quickly spread in the French capital, Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s office in the capital, heard similar sentiments in the Jewish community. Last week’s attacks in Paris “were confirmation of everything we feared,” she said.
In the 10 months since the terrorist attacks on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket and the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which took a total of 19 lives, French Jews foresaw that while the Jewish community was an early target of fatal Islamist terror attacks, French society in general would be next, Rodan-Benzaquen said in a telephone interview. “It was not a question of if, it was a question of when and where.”
The Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were killed on Friday night, was Jewish-owned for some four decades until earlier this year, and frequently hosted Jewish events. Like the restaurant and sports stadium where attacks also took place last Friday, it was not a specifically Jewish target in what French President Francois Hollande called “an act of war by ISIS.”
Rodan-Benzaquen and Rabbi Bendavid and other Jews with roots in France reacted in like ways this week, even as France mourned its losses — some 130 people killed and more than 300 injured — and pledged more security protection for Jewish institutions, and declared war on the ISIS terrorists who took responsibility for Friday’s attacks.
People familiar with the French Jewish community said French Jews saw the latest acts of terrorism coming, expect the next terrorism there to be aimed at specifically Jewish targets, are concerned but are not rushing to make aliyah or to move immediately to the United States or other Western countries, and feel that non-Jewish French citizens finally share their worries about the threat of Islamist terrorism. Now, said Rodan-Benzaquen, more people in France have “the knowledge that the cancer is spreading. There is the perception that the entire nation understands … what the Jewish community is going through. We feel less solitude.”
“French citizens now understand that they, and not just Jews, are terror targets,” the Times of Israel website quoted David Khalfa, a political consultant in Paris, as saying this week. “It was an illusion [of safety for most people in France]; we lived in this illusion and now we are waking up — and it’s a nightmare.
“Now everyone is a target,” Khalfa said. “This time it’s not only about symbolic targets … it has changed the whole perspective of fighting terror.”
“Whether attacks are against policemen or soldiers, against freedom of expression, or against Jews, what is being systematically, violently attacked are French democratic and republican values,” Rodan-Benzaquen wrote in an op-ed essay this week. “The goal of Islamic fundamentalism is to divide society, create a clash of civilizations, strengthen extremists that pretend to fight against them, and turn Muslims of every democratic country that they target against the rest of the population.”
“The Jewish community feels that France is under attack; it’s no longer a uniquely Jewish problem,” said Brigitte Dayan, a journalist with Jewish-Moroccan roots who moved to Manhattan from Chicago a dozen years ago and is knowledgeable about the French Jewish community. She added, “One friend [in France] said she is thankful to have bought an apartment in Tel Aviv last year.
“There have been so many attacks, so many threats [on French Jews] over the past months and years, that … the only ones not surprised” that ISIS has painted a bigger bull’s-eye over France “were the French Jewish community. I don’t think this is the end of it,” Rodan-Benzaquen continued.
She believes that while “the fear very much remains” among French Jews, “the next attacks may be [against] another Jewish target” outside France. She said she did not hear the increased level of discussion about leaving France as she did in the aftermath of the Hyper Cacher attack. “It’s a constant talk for the past year; people ask themselves if they should be leaving.”
Rabbi Bendavid said his congregants told him that it’s too early for their relatives in France to immediately reassess their aliyah or emigration options.
Avi Mayer, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Israel’s aliyah activities, agreed that a spike in French aliyah following the latest attacks in Paris is not likely.
“In the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks in January, we saw a surge in the number of calls and inquiries from French Jews, and the number of new aliyah files opened in France tripled. We have not seen a similarly dramatic increase in aliyah-related inquiries in the wake of Friday’s attacks,” Mayer said.
The number of French Jews who made aliyah has steadily increased over the last few years, Mayer said, from 1,917 in 2012, to 3,293 in 2013, and 7,238 in 2014. “Aliyah numbers for this year are up by approximately 11 percent compared to this point last year,” indicating a 2015 figure of about 8,000, “and we expect the numbers to continue growing steadily for the foreseeable future,” he said. (Mayer’s figures, however, are contradicted by aliyah totals reported earlier this year, which indicated that French aliyah had slowed after an immediate increase in the months after the January terrorism in Paris, and that a decrease of nearly 20 percent this year was likely.)
El Al Israel Airlines announced that it would assist Israelis in France who wish to return home, offering a “special” $350 one-way fare and suspending revision charges for passengers who wish to change tickets bought for dates up to Nov. 29; Arkia Airlines announced a similar move.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an independent organization that promotes aliyah and supports Jewish life in many countries, announced this week that it is stepping up its work in France, is providing “emergency security aid to French-Jewish communal institutions,” and will bring “a special flight” of French Jews to Israel at the end of November.
“The first French Jews to move to Israel since Friday’s ISIS terrorist attacks arrived today [Monday]” with the support of IFCJ, the organization stated in a press release. “Two families landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport … met by IFCJ representatives.”
Meanwhile, Jewish communities here and in France took part in memorial and commemoration activities.
On Shabbat, Rabbi Bendavid led his West Side congregation in reciting two chapters of Psalms, one “to pray for the healing of all the people who have been affected by this devastating attack,” and one “to pray that our leaders will see the current situation with absolute clarity.” He said his congregation also said a prayer in French for the protection of France.
Many congregants, he said, added the French flag to their Facebook pages as a sign of solidarity.
In Paris, a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue near the Bataclan theater said Psalms “for the departed and for the safety of all French citizens,” the chabad.org website reported.
The Grand Synagogue of Paris held a prayer service-rally Sunday night, sponsored by the country’s chief rabbi and the Conference of European Rabbis that included political officials and rabbis. “We pray for all the injured to recover quickly. Our hearts are with them and their families,” the Grand Synagogue’s Rabbi Moshe Sebbag said.
Members of the Jewish and Islamic clergy took part Sunday in a memorial service outside the Bataclan concert hall, many of them laying bouquets of white roses at the site.
“Anyone who uses hate speech has no place in France and those places that preach hate are not places of prayer but are those of a sect,” Hassen Chalghoumi, president of Imams of France, said at the memorial service. “1.5 million people are hostages of Daesh [an Arabic acronym for ISIS], 1.5 million people are hostages of these barbarians who are sullying the name of Islam and Muslims. It’s time to say no to this barbarity.”
The memorial was the idea of Polish-Jewish author Marek Halter, who writes frequently about his family, which escaped the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
Representatives of prominent U.S. Jewish organizations also condemned Friday’s terrorism. “One of the most sickening forms of human violence one can imagine,” said Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. “An outrageous, cowardly and premeditated assault not just on the people of France, but on all freedom loving people around the world,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.
“It’s high time to drop the evasive language too often used to describe the perpetrators of these heinous crimes and get specific,” David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement. “They are not just ‘violent extremists,’ though of course they are. They are not just ‘terrorists,’ though, of course, they are that as well. They are radical Islamists inspired by their interpretation of religion, however perverted it may be.
“Hoping the problem will one day go away is not a strategy, nor is tying the hands of, or eviscerating the budgets of, law enforcement, intelligence, and the military, nor is defending privacy rights at all costs, as some policy purists would do, even if it means endangering national security and personal safety,” Harris said. “Some judicious accommodations must be made in today’s democratic societies, or else the consequences could be profound. It won’t be easy, nor will it be quick. Yesterday’s tragic events in Paris should be another urgent wake-up call that, whether we live in France or elsewhere, our world needs, and is worth, defending.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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Israel News
Will Israel’s Terror Fight Gain Sympathy?
Guarded hope that new counterterrorism focus in Europe would lead to greater understanding on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
Joshua Mitnick
Contributing Editor
Hundreds of Israelis attending a rally Saturday night at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv in solidarity with Paris. JTA
Tel Aviv — “We understand more than anyone else,” read the decoration on the memorial candle outside the French embassy here.
The red, white and blue of France’s tricolor flag lit up the Tel Aviv municipal building in Rabin Square as well as the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel stands “shoulder to shoulder” with France, and President Reuven Rivlin declared that “we stand united” in the fight against terrorism. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog added, “Evil knows no borders and only courageous and decisive cooperation among the family of nations will make it possible to eradicate it.”
Amid the shock and revulsion over the Paris terrorist attacks in Israel, there was guarded hope that the new focus on national security and counterterrorism in Europe would spur more understanding in a relationship that has become heated over the policy toward the Palestinians.
“I wouldn’t want anyone to experience this,” said Ron Ben Nun, a 29-year-old industrial designer, as she stopped to snap a picture of the memorial candles and flowers outside the embassy. “I would like to support them, so those who are rational can get over this problem of radical Islam together.”
But alongside expressions of sympathy and condolence, there was a healthy dose of official indignation toward Europeans who are seen by many as blinded by loyalty to upholding civil liberties at all costs, naive about the threats of Islamic extremism and biased against Israel’s handling of the Palestinian conflict.
Still outraged from a shooting attack in the West Bank that killed two Israelis, Netanyahu on Sunday called on the international community to be more forceful in condemning Palestinian terrorists. “We are not to blame for the terrorism directed against us, just as the French aren’t to blame for the terrorism against them,” the prime minister said.
Other Israeli politicians from the governing coalition were less diplomatic, saying that Europeans should spend less time criticizing Israel and more time cooperating with Israel in fighting Islamic extremism. The Israeli frustration was enhanced by the decision of the European Union last week to require that consumer products from Jewish settlements in the West Bank carry special labels noting their origin in the “Israeli settlements” rather than a “Made in Israel” sticker, a move that has stoked fears of a countrywide economic boycott.
“Europe needs to stop dealing with nonsense of labeling of Israeli products and automatic condemnation for every balcony built in Jerusalem,” said Science Minister Ofir Akunis in an interview with Israel Television. “We are under an Islamic fundamentalist terror offensive. Terror is terror is terror.”
Akunis added on Facebook, “Wake up and start fighting Islamic extremist terror.”
The Paris attacks and the French efforts at cracking down on Islamist militants gave Israeli government ministers a convenient window of opportunity on Tuesday to implement a decision from last month outlawing the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, an Israeli-Arab group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and, allegedly, Hamas. In an unprecedented step against a minority group, Israeli police raided the movement’s offices throughout the country, confiscating files and equipment.
“The Paris attack created the international and regional atmosphere that justifies and gives legitimacy to such an exceptional and severe move like this,” wrote Udi Segal, a political reporter for Channel 2 news.
Israeli politicians want to convince the world that Palestinian terrorism is one and the same with the global jihadist militants who struck in France, said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political journalist. “Israel wants the global community to see Palestinian terror as part of a global trend of terrorizing citizens,” she said. “They don’t want it to be seen as part of a 70-year-old conflict.”
That explains Israel’s diplomatic outrage after the Swedish foreign minister, answering a question about Islamic radicalism in Europe, linked it to the situation in Middle East, “where not least the Palestinians see that there is no future.” Israel’s foreign ministry summoned the Swedish ambassador in protest, saying that “any link between ISIS terrorism and the Palestinian problem is baseless.”
Although the Paris attacks have become a seminal moment for Europe in grappling with fundamentalist Islamic violence, it’s unlikely that they will substantively change European policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Some in Israel may hope that the events in Paris will add to Europe’s understanding of the constraints involved in coping with Palestinian terrorism, and help ease pressure on Israel and mitigate the criticism voiced in this context by various EU institutions and member states,” wrote Oded Eran, a former ambassador to the EU, and Adam Hoffman, on the website of a Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, where both authors are researchers. “Similar events in the past, however, indicate that this will not occur, and that no significant change in the European attitude on this question can be expected.”
But even if France’s diplomatic position doesn’t change toward Israel, a French Jewish leader said he expected there to be better understanding of the need to combat Islamic extremism. “The French didn’t realize it until now; now they understand it’s not just Jews, or journalists, but a worldwide war that Islam wants to wage against all those who don’t believe in sharia and their way of life,” said Roger Cukierman, vice president of the World Jewish Congress and the president of the French council of Jewish institutions, in an interview with Israel Radio.
Unlike most of their countrymen, Cukierman told the radio that French Jews were used to dealing with terrorist attacks directed at their communities. “This isn’t something new to us. But now it’s not only us.”
In January, when French terrorists targeted a kosher supermarket, Israeli officials encouraged French Jews to consider Israel their true home and immigrate. Top officials at the Jewish Agency said they anticipated that annual French Jewish immigration could jump this year to 10,000 from 7,238 in 2014. The actual figure through the first 10 months of the year is 6,860, suggesting the initial forecast might have been overstated.
At a sushi restaurant in Tel Aviv, two recent young French immigrants predicted that the attacks wouldn’t change much for the Jewish community back home.
“We are always afraid in France. There’s security guards and we know there’s danger,” said Sophie Ben Haim, a 22-year-old student in a Hebrew-language studies course.
She and a friend, François Cohen, agreed that the French politics would become more hardline because of the fear of new attacks and suspicions toward the country’s Muslim community. Despite the new sense of shared threat from terrorism with their countrymen, French Jews will keep immigrating to Israel, they predicted.
“Jews don’t feel at home there,” Ben Haim said. “I don’t have things in common with French people. There’s no future in France. Here, there is a future.”
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New YorkHunter College Condemns Anti-Semitic Chants
Chanting ‘Zionists out of CUNY,’ pro-Palestinian student group hijacks tuition-hike protest.
Amy Sara Clark
Deputy Managing Editor
“Zionists out of CUNY!” chanted students at the march. Via YouTube.comHunter College and Jewish organizations are condemning a pro-Palestinian student group that took over a student rally for free tuition by chanting “Zionists out of CUNY” and “Long live the intifada.”
The Nov. 12 rally outside the Upper East Side school — part of a national “Million Student March,” which advocates free tuition and cancellation of student debt — drew more than a hundred students, who chanted and listened to speeches on a variety of causes (Black Lives Matter, prison reform, communist revolution) for several hours before marching to the chancellor’s home, where police ordered the crowd to disperse.
Interspersed with such chants as “no tuition, open admission,” were the anti-Israel chants. As students spoke, a large Palestinian flag waved nearby and students held such signs as “Hunter students for Justice in Palestine” and “Divest CUNY Tuition from Israeli Apartheid.” A small group of students, including one wrapped in an Israeli flag, held a counter protest with one student holding a sign that said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Affordable Tuition, SJP doesn’t Speak for Me” and another with one calling for “Lower Tuition, not Terrorism against Israel.”
The group NYC Students for Justice in Palestine explained their reasoning for piggybacking their cause onto the free-tuition movement in a Facebook post the same day: “The Zionist administration invests in Israeli companies, companies that support the Israeli occupation, hosts birthright programs and study abroad programs in occupied Palestine, and reproduces settler-colonial ideology throughout CUNY through Zionist content of education. While CUNY aims to produce the next generation of professional Zionists, SJP aims to change the university to fight for all peoples liberation.”
The post was signed by NYC Students for Justice in Palestine and the group’s chapters at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, St. Joseph’s College, the College of Staten Island, John Jay College, the CUNY School of Law, Pace University-Pleasantville, New York University and Columbia.
In response to the chants, Hunter College student @becca wrote via Twitter, “Full-blown anti-Semitism allowed at my college. What’s next @Hunter_College?! I witnessed this and froze in fear,” and linked to a video of the chanting students that the Israel-advocacy organization StandWithUs posted on Facebook.
Another student, @The_Slavinator wrote “Is @Hunter_College condoning #antisemitism? Sure seems like it. Are they content to be deemed a #HotbedOfHate?”
Hunter College quickly condemned the statements, with Chancellor James B. Milliken stating Friday that CUNY is “a place of inclusion, not exclusion.” While “free speech, debate and the open exchange of ideas” are essential, he said, “intolerant, hateful and bigoted speech, while it may be legally protected, is anathema to our values.”
“Those voices,” he added, “stop rather than encourage the dialogue and real debate that makes us stronger.”
Other anti-Israel students also used the march to promote their agenda, with similar messages posted at Temple University and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which commended the school for issuing a statement making clear that “invoking discriminatory language reeking of thinly veiled bigotry, prejudice, anti-Semitism or other behavior” is inconsistent with its mission.
UJA-Federation of New York also protested the rhetoric and praised the college’s swift action, saying that “Students of all backgrounds deserve a campus experience that is free from intolerance and prejudice” and urging “all parties involved to disavow hateful language against other students and take appropriate measures to ensure this does not happen again.”
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New YorkAs Jerusalem Businesses Empty, UJA-Fed Steps In
New York charity offers loans for struggling venues as terrorism keeps customers at home.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Jerusalem businesses, have taken a financial hit since a spate of stabbings and other attacks in the last month.When participants in a UJA-Federation of New York mission entered a Jerusalem restaurant on November 9th for a pre-arranged meal, they found plenty of empty tables.
Other would-be diners had stayed away because of two nearly coinciding terrorist attacks in the city earlier in the day.
“The moment something happens, people don’t go out,” said Amir Sznajderman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, who was accompanying the UJA-Federation mission.
Business at the restaurant dropped by 50 percent in the last month because of the spate of Palestinian knife, gun and car attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers that terrorized the city.
“The owner said he had been in business 11 years and had never seen such a decline in business in such a short period of time,” Sznajderman said.
That proprietor is one of 70 business owners in Jerusalem who have thus far applied for emergency loan guarantees made available by UJA-Federation of New York. The organization has made such emergency loan guarantees available during prior times of conflict, according to Aliza Kurshan, executive vice president of Community Planning and Agency Resources, but they have been infrequent.
UJA-Federation allocated $200,000 on Oct. 27 to guarantee $1.4 million in emergency bank loans to struggling businesses, according to Eric Goldstein, UJA-Federation’s CEO.
“The wave of terror has significantly reduced revenues for many Jerusalem businesses that rely on foot traffic and walk-in customers,” Goldstein said in a UJA-Federation statement.
After the first wave of Palestinian attacks, Israeli authorities responded with a massive call-up of police and soldiers — deploying them on Jerusalem’s streets, along highways and in residential areas. Customers slowly began returning to Jerusalem stores as attacks in the city ended and moved to other parts of the country.
But on the day of the mission, two Palestinians, aged 12 and 14, stabbed and lightly wounded a 25-year-old Israeli security guard on the light rail in Jerusalem. And a Palestinian terrorist stabbed and lightly injured a man in an attack near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. Police shot and killed the terrorist, shot and wounded one of the youths and arrested his companion, who had been seized by other passengers.
Following those attacks, Sznajderman, who is director of economic development and loan funds for the Jewish Agency, said the restaurant owner told him that 50 percent of those who had reserved tables for that evening had cancelled.
“It takes time for business to recover, and every time something happens, business drops again,” he said.
Since the wave of Palestinian terror attacks began Oct. 1, there have been about 80 attacks throughout the country that have killed 11 Israelis and wounded about 200.
“Our office is in Jerusalem, I was born and raised in this city — and it was half empty [after the first wave of attacks last month],” Sznajderman said. “We were then approached by businesses in need and so we approached [UJA-Federation of New York] to see if something could be done. Our office has money for loan guarantees, but that money is dedicated to helping establish new businesses and helping others to grow. The businesses coming to us needed working capital loans.”
Michael Lustig, chair of UJA-Federation of New York’s committee Empowering and Promoting Inclusive Communities in Israel got the call.
“I knew anecdotally” about the problem, he said, noting that his sister had sent him a picture of Jerusalem’s normally bustling Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market three weeks ago. “It was a ghost town,” he said. He himself returned last week from Israel after a two-week visit.
After speaking with Sznajderman, Lustig said he immediately consulted with UJA-Federation of New York’s loan approval committee in Jerusalem and his New York-based committee.
“Within 24 hours, the decision was made to do this,” Lustig said. ”We had a crisis and we had to make a quick decision.”
Since then, of the 70 businesses that have filed applications, 20 have been approved to receive about $470,000 in loan guarantees.
Sznajderman said it takes about a week to review each application and that so far about 70 percent of those reviewed have been approved.
“We do it as quickly as possible and actually visit each business,” Sznajderman said. “We check their business plan and their financials and whatever else needs to be checked to make sure we are not giving money to a bad business. … I’ve spoken face-to-face with many businesses and they are showing us a 60 to 65 percent decrease in sales. The economic minister responsible for Jerusalem said that overall business is off 55 percent.
The loans have gone to established businesses — clothing stores, restaurants, tourist activities, wedding halls, candy stores and other stores that youngsters used to flock to after school.
“Kids are not walking the streets anymore,” he said.
Sznajderman stressed that applications are coming “from some very successful and well known businesses in the city. Without working capital they are stuck because they have to pay rent, salaries and pay for supplies — and some banks are not willing to give them credit without additional collateral.” She added that when the Jewish Agency employee handling the loan fund said calls to tell a business owner that the loan guarantees have been approved, she hears “sighs of relief” because they have been “suffocating.”
“We have so many pending applications that we will see within a week whether all of the loan guarantees have been fully utilized,” Sznajderman said. “The bank branch manager has complained that he can’t handle all the business. That’s a good complaint. … I do believe that if there is a need [for additional loan guarantees], New York will again stand up to help.”
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