(JTA) – Two policemen standing guard at the Grand Synagogue in the center of the Tunisian capital of Tunis were stabbed on Thursday. 

It is not clear whether anyone was in the synagogue at the time of the attack, AFP reported.

The suspect, who was imprisoned in 2021 over a terrorism case and has since been released, wounded the officers but was overpowered. 

Interior ministry spokesman Fakher Bouzghaya told AFP that an investigation was underway. 

While the country’s current Jewish population is estimated at around a thousand, Tunisia once had a booming Jewish community of around 100,000. The population started dwindling after the nation won independence from France in 1956 and state-tolerated violence against Jews proliferated following Israel’s victory over its neighbors in the 1967 Six-Day War. 

The African country also hosts an annual pilgrimage to El Ghriba Synagogue in Riadh, a centuries-old synagogue in an island town where thousands of Jews once lived. Al-Qaeda terrorists set off an explosion outside the El Ghriba Synagogue in 2002, killing 20 people, including 14 German tourists.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Two officers stabbed outside Grand Synagogue in Tunisia appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) – When the results of the new population survey of Jewish Los Angeles came in, Rabbi Noah Farkas was stunned by the data on Jewish identity and affiliation. 

Like many community leaders, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles has long heard warnings about a decline in Jewish involvement and a gradual shrinking of the community. 

But the data told Farkas that the opposite was happening. 

Younger Jews in the Los Angeles area might be moving away from the denominations that dominated in previous generations, but they are more likely than their elders to be engaged in Jewish life. That includes discussing Jewish topics, studying Jewish texts and consuming Jewish media. Young people in the survey are also more likely to mark Shabbat. 

“What surprised me the absolute most is that a younger demographic is more engaged in Jewish life in almost every category than an older demographic,” Farkas told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview. “They might not be considered themselves Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, Orthodox Jews as denominational categories of identities seem to be fading, but they do Jewish activity by and large more than the people who are 55-plus. It was a total shocker to me.”

The Study of Jewish LA is the community’s first demographic survey in a generation. Spearheaded by the city’s Jewish federation and funded by an array of partners, the study was announced Wednesday and will be released in stages throughout the summer. 

With an estimated 565,000 Jews living in 294,000 households in the area, the community has grown by 9% since the last survey in 1997. The area has the second highest number of Jews in the United States after New York City. 

One particular focus of the study was on diversity of race, ethnicity, language and national origins. About half of Jewish households include someone, not necessarily Jewish, who was born abroad or whose parents were born abroad — chiefly from Latin America, Israel, Iran and the former Soviet Union. Nearly 20% identify as Sephardi or Mizrahi. About 6% identify as Jews of color, but for children the number is 9%, suggesting that the overall number will increase over time. 

“While L.A.’s Jewry has been less white and Ashkenazi than other cities for decades, the future of Jewish Los Angeles is even more diverse,” Farkas said. 

In line with Los Angeles’ overall geography, the Jewish community is spread out across a vast area. But in two areas where they are most concentrated, the western San Fernando Valley and West L.A., Jews make up about 25%of the population. 

Health and well-being were another focus of the study, with mental health services identified as “one of the most significant needs in the community,” especially among young adults. 

Meanwhile, a portion of the community is struggling financially, and an equal portion is wealthy. 

The study divides the population into five categories of financial well-being. While only 1% percent said they “cannot make ends meet,” an additional 18% are “just managing to make ends meet.” About 60% have “enough” or “extra” money, while a fifth of Los Angeles Jews said they were “well off.”

The study is intended to serve both a general audience and leaders in the community, according to Farkas. 

“We are providing tools to the Jewish community to know itself and to help institutions evaluate their work and think about who are our people, so we know how best to serve them,” he said. “In a data-driven world, we need good, relevant data to do this.” 

While this survey examined Los Angeles’ unique population, there were two other major recent efforts at documenting the Jewish community in the United States. The results of these kinds of demographic studies can have political and other broad ramifications, as demonstrated by the 2020 Pew research study on American Jews, which found an increase in the number of Jewish Republicans. A survey from the Jews of Color Initiative found that 80% of the Jews of color who participated have experienced discrimination in Jewish settings.

Carried out by a research team from the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University and NORC at the University of Chicago, the study was based on surveys with 3,767 households between June and September 2021. Researchers contacted a random sample of households in the Los Angeles area via mail, email and telephone. 

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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Many questions come to mind in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. How will the poor and disadvantaged in search of an abortion henceforth manage? (Too easy to answer: With even greater difficulty and duress than before.)

What will the political repercussions be? (Too early to answer: It will galvanize the Democratic base, but it will also energize the Republican base.)

Why, when the draft by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked more than a month ago, was the final decision met with such shock? (Too difficult to answer. Perhaps it was a case of magical thinking, hoping that the five robed arsonists sitting on the bench would not set it, and the rest of the country, on fire.)

But a question perhaps more difficult to answer is “Who is the real gonif in this story?”

The story I have in mind involves the senior senator from Maine, Susan Collins. As most of America knows, Senator Collins, though a Republican, has long portrayed herself as a political moderate. One of the keys to that political identity has been her consistent support of a woman’s right to choose.

In 2018, when Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court balanced on a single vote, all eyes were on Senator Collins. Given the charges of sexual assault made against the nominee by Christine Blasey Ford, there was, of course, the question of Kavanaugh’s moral qualifications.

But there was also the question of whether Kavanaugh — who like every other prospect considered by Donald Trump, had been recommended by the anti-abortion Federalist Society — would try to overturn the right to abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade in 1973 and subsequently upheld in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. After meeting for two hours with Kavanaugh, Collins announced that the candidate’s “views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do so by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly.”

For the record, she made the same argument in the case of Trump’s first appointment to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch. When asked in an interview if she worried that Gorsuch would undermine Roe, Collins replied that she had no reason to. During “a very long discussion with Justice Gorsuch,” she observed, “he pointed out to me that he is a co-author of a whole book on precedent.”

Senator Collins clearly did not read the whole of this whole book on precedent. If she had, she would have known that Gorsuch was one of 13 authors, none of whom is identified with a specific chapter or section, including the all-important one on super-strong statutory precedent. Moreover, as legal scholar Hillel Levin has remarked, is that the text offers a descriptive, not normative account of precedent. In other words, this is what the court does, not what it should do. As an oft-mentioned candidate for the Supreme Court, Gorsuch might have good reason to merely describe and not prescribe.

All of this brings us to the question of who, in this sorry story, is the real gonif. Shortly after the Court’s decision was made public, Collins issued a statement: “This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon.”

At first glance, it seems that the real gonifs or shifty characters are Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. Or, for that matter, Amy Coney Barrett, who met with Collins after her nomination by Trump, telling her that she, too, respected precedent. While Collins ultimately voted against Barrett’s nomination, it was not because Collins doubted Barrett’s word, but ostensibly because Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who had infamously stalled Merrick Garland’s nomination for nearly a year, had rammed the Barrett nomination through in a month’s time.

Yet in this reading of events, Collins is also a gonif.

Not as a conniver, mind you. In his classic “The Joys of Yiddish,” Leo Rosten defines gonif in the way most of us use it. She or he is, Rosten declares, a “shady person.” But the word has, across time and space, meant so much more. The Yiddish scholar Lillian Feinsilver, author of “The Taste of Yiddish,” notes that while the word comes from the Hebrew for “thief,” it also came to mean a fool or sucker in the lingo of carnival hucksters. At the same time, it also came to be a term of reluctant respect, as in the phrase “American Gonif.”

Remarkably, Feinsilver suggests the word stretches as far back as medieval England. For example, in “The Canterbury Tales,” Chaucer refers to a well-to-do bungler as a “rich gnof.” This is remarkable, in part, if only because Jews had by then banished from England. But what is truly rich in our own Capitol Tales, where gonifs try to sell bridges, there are yet other gonifs who are all too happy to buy not one, but three. While the joke is on Collins, who is left holding these meaningless promises, the disaster falls squarely on those whose lives will be forever changed by this ruling.

The post In the wake of the Supreme Court abortion decision, will the real gonif please stand up? appeared first on The Forward.

In the hours after the Supreme Court issued its decision on Friday overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that enshrined a constitutional right to abortion, the explosion of opinions across the mediaverse was overwhelming. As we absorbed the news and scanned the ruling, a trio of female Forward journalists spent some time talking through the implications for Jewish women everywhere.

Jodi Rudoren is editor-in-chief of the Forward. Laura E. Adkins is the Forward’s opinion editor, and Nora Berman is the deputy opinion editor. 

Jodi Rudoren: So, we’re three Jewish women at different stages of life, especially in terms of family-planning: I’m a 51-year-old who has been pregnant twice, had two abortions — and am the mother of who will turn 15 in September, a boy and a girl. Which means from a personal perspective, I’m thinking mostly about what this ruling means for my kids, coming of age in a world without universal access to abortion. 

Will a state’s abortion laws now be one of the considerations as they choose where to go to college? How should this change my conversations with them about sex and birth control (and might either of you want to have those conversations for me)? What do I tell them when they ask about the Supreme Court’s mandate to be apolitical?

But you’re two millennial women — Nora, married for six years and contemplating starting a family; Laura, not yet married and not interested in having children right now. 

Nora, you’re from a blue state where abortion-access is likely to continue, Vermont; Laura, you’re from Missouri, where abortion is, as of today, prohibited, without even exceptions for rape or incest. 

What’s the first thing you’re thinking about as you absorb the news?

Nora Berman: On a personal level, I’m having a really hard time squaring the fact that such an immensely intimate decision would be no longer in my control, but up to the state. It feels so intrinsically wrong. 

I also think that blue states like New York and New Jersey, where the three of us live, should immediately follow in Connecticut’s example, and pass legislation that bars local agencies from cooperating with out-of-state abortion prosecutions. There will be many, many people traveling to our states to get abortions, and our legislatures need to act immediately to protect them. That is a really clear step one, in my opinion. 

Laura E. Adkins: I’m pro-choice, but I wouldn’t say I’m “pro abortion” — I think it’s a sad decision many women have to make, and I don’t think it’s one most people make lightly. If you’re against late-term abortions, know that now, instead of being able to end an abortion early and with medication, many women will end up having later and later-term abortions because it will take so much time for them to find appropriate care.

In the end, this is only going to make abortions worse: I can’t stop thinking about how pre-Roe, rabbis, pastors and priests had to form an underground network to help young women in some of the most vulnerable states. 

Already, now, abortion-rights advocates waste thousands of dollars helping women travel to obtain services, when just a few years ago they could have been treated by a healthcare provider they know and trust. 

Berman: I think the biggest thing I’m grappling with is this line in the decision: “Our opinion is not based on any view about if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth.” It means, basically, that the justices are not concerning themselves with the rights of a fetus after it’s born. But the decision spends a tremendous amount of energy on the rights of an unborn fetus. It’s chilling. And lets politicians off the hook. 

Rudoren: What do you mean, lets politicians off the hook? By returning the issue to the states, isn’t that putting it directly into the hands of state and local politicians/policymakers?

Berman: On a technical level, yes. The court is reversing Roe and abdicating a federal responsibility, in a sense, to ensure the right to abortion and leaving it up to the states. Yet back in the real world, having a child is a not a medically-neutral decision in the U.S. We rank the highest in maternal mortality of developed countries, and our government does not provide access to prenatal care, childcare, health insurance and other crucial elements that support having a healthy birth and child, despite the court’s claims to the contrary. 

Whose religious freedom?

Rudoren: We’ve already seen at least one lawsuit, in Florida, with Jews challenging new restrictions on abortion based on a religious-freedom argument, since Jewish law allows abortion in many cases and requires it in some. I’m wondering if this could open up some new divide among religious groups, like with Jews on one side and conservative Christians on another?

Rudoren: I mean, religion is such a huge force in American political life, and conservatives/Republicans have basically owned it, but is there some play for Democrats/liberals to try to reclaim a piece of the religious argument here?

Adkins: Well, the vast majority of American Jews live in states whose legislatures and statehouses are controlled by Democrats, so it won’t be an issue for most of our readers for the foreseeable future. 

Rudoren: Umm, 657,000 Jews live in Florida, which passed a law in April that bans most abortions after 15 weeks (though many of them may be post-menopausal….). Another 434,000 live in Pennsylvania — if Doug Mastriano, a Christian nationalist, beats Josh Shapiro, the (Jewish) attorney general in this fall’s governor’s race, abortion could soon be radically limited there, too. 

Some 176,000 live in Texas, where abortion is currently banned after six weeks, and 128,000 more in Georgia, where legal challenges of a six-week ban were pending the Supreme Court ruling. (I got these population numbers from this nifty website, by the way, and The New York Times has a great state-by-state breakdown of abortion laws.)

Adkins: You’re right — I said most, not all! Far be it from me to forget flyover country. I also think it’s important to note that there are certainly Jews, mostly Orthodox ones, who are part of the anti-abortion movement and welcome the decision. Though when the draft ruling was released, even the Orthodox Union said it was “unable to mourn or welcome the decision.” 

But look, Jews and Muslims have a very different understanding of religion than the evangelical Christians responsible for the past 50 years of undermining abortion rights. 

Of course, restricting access to abortion when a woman’s rabbi requires or permits her to obtain one violates the religious liberty of Jewish women. But the bigger issue is that when religion is allowed a voice on the court, the rights of those who don’t follow that same religious tradition are trampled on. 

We’re blessed with a rich, interpretive tradition that values the sanity of a mother as much as the rights of her unborn child.

Berman: Right! When I read that part of the decision that said “the court surveyed more than 700 years of Anglo-American common-law tradition,” my first thought was that they didn’t read the Talmud! 

Rudoren: Laura, what does the Talmud have to say about abortion?

Adkins: Jewish law has nuanced answers to big questions, and as much as folks may try, the answer to “what does Jewish law say about abortion” is really, “it depends on who is asking and who is answering.” 

Adkins: We have to remember that we’re talking about a very old corpus of texts that is in some cases very progressive — many rabbis say the Talmud not only permits but in some cases requires the use of birth control — and is in many ways insulting to the modern mind. If someone causes a pregnant woman to miscarry, for example, he owes her husband restitution — it’s treated as a property damage case, not a murder case.

In Jewish law, a fetus is “mere water” until 40 days after conception, a very different understanding of when life begins than the Catholic or evangelical one.

The RBG factor

Rudoren: It’s hard not to think, today, WWRD — what would Ruth do — or, more accurately, what if Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had retired during President Obama’s term rather than remaining on the bench until her death in 2020. 

Though today’s decision was 6-3, maybe Chief Justice John Roberts — who voted with the majority but said he would have stopped short of overturning Roe outright — might have acted differently if Ginsburg was replaced by a liberal Obama appointee rather than by Amy Coney Barrett. 

Is this going to forever mar RBG’s legacy for the legions of young Jewish women inspired by her?

Adkins: It certainly has for me. I have photos of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on my dresser and on my fridge, and she was really a hero for me — especially her commitment to working within the system to change things in a way that would be more effective than radical acts from outside of it. But I do think, when it mattered the most, her ego got the better of her. 

I cannot say for certain why she made that choice, but there’s no question that it is no small part of why the court has tilted so far to the right, and will have devastating consequences. 

Berman: I am feeling less angry right now toward RBG’s ego than I am furious about the complacency that Democratic leadership, President Biden included, displayed over the last 30 years regarding Roe. 

Biden did not say the word “abortion” until he had been in the Oval Office more than a year, long past the time when we knew that a Roe reversal was a very real possibility. The anti-abortion movement was focused, and worked not only harder, but smarter than abortion-rights advocates and politicians. I think that is something to think about. 

‘We don’t live in the abstract’

Rudoren: I was struck by this line from the dissent: “We believe in a Constitution that puts some issues off limits to majority rule.” 

My daughter said to me Thursday, when she heard about the court putting up barricades for security, “Maybe if they know people are going to be upset about their rulings, they shouldn’t rule that way.” And I said: No, no, the whole point is that they’re not supposed to focus on public opinion/reaction, that’s how they’re different from the other branches of government, they’re supposed to be free of politics. 

Isn’t that an even bigger impact of this ruling? Like, beyond abortion, there’s this idea here that when there’s division in the country, the Supreme Court is going to punt?

Adkins: You know, in the abstract, I’m actually sympathetic to the argument that calling the right to abortion a constitutionally enshrined right was a bit of a stretch. But we don’t live in the abstract, and the court’s assertion that the justices should not consider the impact of overturning 50 years of precedent when making their decision, is totally evangelical. 

Berman: There are plenty of  reasons why a right to an abortion is not present in the Constitution, or showing up in the hundreds of years of colonial and English history that was cited: namely, because women were considered chattel and not people, let alone deserving of any reproductive rights. 

I think the macro question that the court is ultimately avoiding is: how do we protect the rights of marginalized people whose needs did not exist in the minds of the framers? If the law is supposed to be a living, breathing polity that addresses the needs of the people, it seems the court must address societal shifts from a constitutional jurisprudence perspective.

If we are looking to the Constitution to explicitly tell us that Beanie Feldstein and her (female) fiancee can get married, or that trans people deserve to make medical decisions about their own bodies, we’re looking in the wrong place. 

Rudoren: Back when the draft ruling was first leaked, I heard something really powerful from Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for The New York TImes. He pointed out that the court does overrule its own precedent — importantly, in cases like Brown v. Board of Education, which threw out the bogus concept from Plessy v. Ferguson that something can be “separate but equal” when it comes to race. 

But Adam, who is a friend, noted that the justices have only ever done this in the direction of granting more rights — it’s a reflection of our progress as a society. As Nora said, this constitution was written by people who considered women to be property, and now it is being interpreted, at least in part, by women. So that’s what’s so shocking here, what’s unprecedented — the idea of a ruling that reverses a 49-year precedent in order to give us fewer rights.

The post ‘We don’t live in the abstract’: 3 Jewish women on the fall of Roe v. Wade appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) – The United Nations Human Rights Office concluded that a Palestinian-American journalist was killed by Israeli security forces last month, and said Israel’s failure to conduct a criminal investigation into her death was “deeply disturbing.”

In response, the Israel Defense Forces called the UN probe “biased” and reiterated its call for the Palestinian Authority to hand over the bullet that killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in early May.

The UN issued its determination Friday after inspecting photos, video and audio from the scene of the Jenin refugee camp where Abu Akleh was killed (including material from the Israeli military), interviewing eyewitnesses and consulting experts. The office also reconstructed what it said was a timeline of the shooting. 

“We find that the shots that killed Abu Akleh came from Israeli security forces,” spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said. She added that no evidence could corroborate Israel’s claim that armed Palestinian militants had also been firing at the scene and could be responsible for her death. 

The New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press also conducted separate investigations and determined she was likely killed by Israeli military.

Going a step further than those media outlets, the UN also believed the shots were “seemingly well-aimed bullets” — a significant claim, as Abu Akleh was wearing clothing clearly identifying her as a journalist at the time she was shot. The P.A., Al Jazeera and CNN have all claimed that Abu Akleh was intentionally targeted by Israeli forces. 

The UN’s determination came only a day after 24 Senate Democrats urged President Biden to involve the U.S. in an independent investigation of Abu Akleh’s killing, citing global press freedom concerns and the journalist’s status as an American citizen among their reasoning. Abu Akleh’s brother has also called for the U.S. to be involved in an investigation.

The Senate letter, and several previous letters from U.S. legislators also calling for some form of an investigation, reflected a growing international pressure on Israel to address Abu Akleh’s death, which has ignited further tensions in the region and beyond.

The IDF has so far resisted calls to open a criminal investigation into the matter, and Israel has maintained it cannot conclude its own investigation until the P.A. hands over the bullet. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Defense Minister Benny Gantz have previously rejected out of hand any suggestion that Israeli forces could have intentionally targeted a journalist.

Israel has long claimed that it receives biased treatment at the hands of the UN Human Rights Council, and out of solidarity to Israel the U.S. had resisted joining the council for years until the Obama administration (it then left the council under the Trump administration citing anti-Israel bias).

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post UN concludes Israeli military killed Palestinian journalist, as Israel continues to fight the claim appeared first on The Forward.

As the Louisiana legislature considered legislation in 1990 that would effectively ban abortion in the state, Rabbi Robert Loewy made the drive from his home in the suburbs of New Orleans to the capitol in Baton Rouge.

The state’s Jewish community was unified in opposition to the bill, echoing the liberal politics of most of its members. Loewy was there to represent the New Orleans Jewish Federation and thought he had a trump card that would sway the religious lawmakers pushing the abortion ban: his own faith.

Jews, Loewy explained to a House committee, do not believe that life begins at conception as the bill’s sponsor had claimed, but that a fetus gradually acquires more rights as it develops.

“There is a moral and ethical basis for a woman to undergo an abortion,” Loewy told legislators.

J.J. Goldberg, a former editor of the Forward, recounted the episode in his 1994 book “Jewish Power,” and described it as a watershed moment in the community’s abortion advocacy.

“The case for abortion as a matter of Jewish religious freedom is a powerful one,” Goldberg wrote. “But it had never before been made in a public forum.”

That argument is now a relatively common one, and it became more widespread in early May after Politico published a leaked Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade, which in 1973 established a constitutional right to abortion. On Friday, the court overturned Roe in a 6-3 ruling.

At the Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice in May, speaker after speaker invoked the Jewish imperative to abortion in cases where the mother’s health was at risk. “Whose religious freedom are you trying to protect?” Sheila Katz, chief of the National Council of Jewish Women, asked of those who are seeking to outlaw abortion. “Not ours.”

A synagogue in south Florida earlier this month sued to block legislation that would ban abortions after 15 weeks, arguing that it violated the state constitution’s right to freedom of religion.

Rabbi Barry Silver brought the lawsuit on behalf of Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, which he leads, and said that his goal was not just to send a message but to carve out protections for Jews in states where abortion is outlawed.

“It’s not just to make a point or something,” Silver said in an interview. “It’s deadly serious.”

But Loewy’s experience appealing to conservatives who sought to ban abortion 32 years ago may be instructive for the Jewish leaders making the same argument today.

The ‘rabbi roast’

Though Loewy’s synagogue, Congregation Gates of Prayer, was located near the liberal bubble of New Orleans, it sits in a conservative Congressional district that better reflects the rest of the state. At the time he testified on the abortion bill, his state representative was David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan.

Well aware of the legislature’s conservative nature — especially on abortion — Loewy still thought his testimony might persuade some lawmakers by using language they could understand.

“I was actually trying to say, if you believe it’s important to have religion in the public sphere you need to listen to one of the oldest religions,” Loewy recounted in an interview this week. “Probably naively I thought it would have an influence on votes.”

Loewy, by most accounts, did not.

Rep. Louis “Woody” Jenkins, who was sponsoring the measure, mocked Loewy’s testimony about the Jewish tradition that babies who die before eight days should not receive a funeral.

“We just heard from one crazy religion that doesn’t even think babies are people after they’re born,” Jenkins told reporters after the hearing.

When Loewy returned to the capitol a few days later to speak to another committee, lawmakers were prepared. Sen. Mike Cross — “the irony of his name was not lost on me,” Loewy said — interrupted the rabbi to ask if Judaism also permitted marijuana use and prostitution.

Loewy said that the Torah did not consider killing a fetus to be murder and tried to cite Exodus 21:22.

“That’s not in my Bible,” Cross snapped.

The incident became known as the “rabbi roast,” a term coined by a reporter at the time. The community backed off the religious argument, figuring that the reaction from hostile lawmakers was motivated by ignorance and intolerance of advocates for abortion rights — not of Jews qua Jews.

Goldberg described local Jews as chastened by the reaction to the religious pitch for abortion access. “In framing the bill as an assault on their religious freedom,” he wrote, “the Jewish community’s leaders may have gone one step too far.”

“They were holding up Jewish rights as a shield for a separate issue, on the assumption that their opponents had too much respect for religious freedom, and for Jews, to press the attack,” Goldberg recounted. “As they found out, that was a mistake.”

Loewy said that his days testifying against the bill, which passed the legislature but would eventually be vetoed by the governor, would represent the high-water mark of his advocacy on the issue. The fierce backlash to his argument aside, abortion rights was a losing issue in a state with a huge base of conservative voters and the strong influence of the Catholic Church, which is opposed to birth control and abortion.

“There are some fights that are just not worth having,” Loewy said.

‘A different faith narrative’

While Loewy’s approach may not have resonated in Louisiana in 1990, other Jewish leaders remain optimistic that the religious case for abortion rights is a compelling one. After NCJW sent hundreds of rabbis to lobby Congress earlier this year in support of a bill that would protect access to abortion nationally, Katz said that the legislation picked up 36 new sponsors.

“It really showed us that there was power in rabbis and spiritual leaders and faith leaders showing up to say this was a religious freedom issue,” Katz said. Her organization is also considering legal challenges to abortion bans and said that women who are impacted by those laws could reach out to NCJW.

While Katz emphasized the importance of challenging the idea that religion is anti-abortion, the legal question of whether outlawing abortion violates the religious freedom of Jews remains an open question.

Josh Blackman, a conservative constitutional scholar, wrote a blog post Monday arguing that liberal Jews, like those who belong to Silver’s Florida synagogue, have a weak legal case when it comes to abortion because they do not follow other forms of halacha, or Jewish law.

“If virtually every other facet of halacha is not binding on members of this congregation, how could it be that this one teaching on abortion is binding — so binding, that a state’s prohibition of that teaching actually substantially burdens the free exercise of religion?” Blackman wrote.

Blackman’s blog post made waves on social media. Rabbi David Saperstein, a longtime leader in the Reform movement who spent decades working on religious freedom issues, said it missed a key point. The law typically requires only that a plaintiff’s beliefs are sincere — meaning judges would be unlikely to parse the difference between Reform and Orthodox Jews.

Saperstein said the larger challenge for Jews suing over abortion bans would be that the government could successfully argue that it had a legitimate societal interest in passing these laws that even sincere religious beliefs cannot override. This is similar to the reason why laws prohibiting child marriage have been upheld, despite some religions that encourage it.

Ironically, another potential victory for religious conservatives might open the door to a Jewish abortion exemption. Several Supreme Court justices appear willing to strike down a vaccine mandate in New York State that allows medical exemptions but bans religious ones, Saperstein noted. While Jews have historically opposed such religious carve outs, they may now turn to that line of argument in legal battles over abortion.

“If you allow exemptions for anything you should allow it for people who have a legitimate religious claim,” Saperstein said, “and here the Jewish claim would be very strong.”

The post This rabbi made the religious case for abortion 30 years ago — it didn’t go well. appeared first on The Forward.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — An array of Jewish groups across the country are kickstarting into action to protest and potentially challenge the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that had enshrined the right to an abortion in the United States.

The 6-3 decision released Friday has many Jewish activists buzzing about how to respond to the bombshell ruling that they find a major setback to women’s rights and in some cases an infringement on religious Jewish law.

The National Council of Jewish Women, a Jewish women’s rights group founded in 1893, said it would hold a virtual vigil on Friday afternoon before launching into actions next week that would include training Jewish groups on how to mount challenges.

“Today is a time to mourn,” said NCJW’s CEO, Sheila Katz. “After Shabbat, we will act.”

The decision also portends profound differences among Orthodox groups over how to function in a post-Roe world. The haredi Orthodox Agudath Israel of America welcomed the decision, while the Orthodox Union stood by its statement from May, when a draft version of the decision was leaked, saying that the umbrella group could neither “mourn or celebrate” the reversal of the 1973 ruling.

But most American Jews back abortion access, and Jewish groups have already taken steps to counter the decision after the draft decision was leaked.

RELATED: What do Jews say about abortion? Your primer as the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade

Katz said her group would launch briefings for Jewish organizations on the ramifications of assisting women seeking an abortion, state by state.

“We can’t provide legal advice to organizations but we can recommend that organizations seek out legal advice, particularly if they are in states where abortion has been overturned,” she said, referring to a number of states that have enacted “trigger” bans on abortion to go into effect once the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. “In some of these states, there’s legal ramifications for trying to help somebody have an abortion and everybody should know what that looks like in their states and how they’re impacted.”

The Women’s Rabbinic Network, a constituent of the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis, in a statement pledged continued support for women seeking an abortion, and for those providing the service.

“We fully support those who have sought and are seeking abortion care and will continue to advocate for a world where they are able to do so safely, wherever they are, without fear of retribution,” it said. “We pray for the safety and wellbeing of the abortion care providers and health care workers who will be forced to decide what they are willing to risk in order to serve their patients and communities in places where abortion is now illegal.”

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of the liberal rabbi activist group T’ruah, tweeted: “Remember that when Roe v Wade came out, the right wing refused to accept their loss. They spent 50 years laser focused on un-losing. We must do the same in order to protect lives and bodily autonomy. The road will be long, but we cannot give up or turn away.”

While there is broad religious Jewish objection to abortion in cases without serious cause, Jewish law prioritizes the life of the mother.

Some commentators have already noted how this could allow for Jewish-based challenges to the state abortion bans that will quickly snap into place. A synagogue in Florida this month sued the state to stop a new anti-abortion law from going into effect in July. The suit is filed on the grounds of religious discrimination.

A number of Orthodox groups and figures argue that liberal Jewish groups overstate the protections Jewish law offers to pregnant women. These groups argue that state laws with exemptions considering the life of the mother are adequate and that abortion under Roe v. Wade was constituted, devalues life.

The statement from Aguda, the umbrella group for haredi Orthodox synagogues and organizations, wholeheartedly endorsed the Roe v. Wade reversal as a celebration of life.

“Agudath Israel of America welcomes this historic development,” a statement said. “We pray that today’s ruling will inspire all Americans to appreciate the moral magnitude of the abortion issue, and to embrace a culture that celebrates life.”

Yet even among the Orthodox, there were differences and a degree of anxiety at what the overturn of Roe v. Wade could bring. Jewish scholars across the religious spectrum agree that mental health should precipitate an exemption to abortion bans, although they disagree about what may constitute a mental health crisis. Not every state includes a mental health exemption for pregnant women seeking an abortion, and at least one, Georgia, explicitly excludes it. 

Some Orthodox scholars hold that rape triggers an exemption; a number of states also lack an exemption for rape.

“Jewish law prioritizes the life of the pregnant mother over the life of the fetus such that where the pregnancy critically endangers the physical health or mental health of the mother, an abortion may be authorized, if not mandated, by halacha and should be available to all women irrespective of their economic status,” the Orthodox Union said in its May statement.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the Orthodox Union’s executive vice president, said in an interview that states excluding mental health from the abortion calculus, as Georgia does, would be a cause for concern.

“Absolutely, when there will be mental health issues that impact the life of the mother” abortion should be allowed, “and, yes, in that event we would we would be concerned about that,” he said.

But he added that the court’s decision was an opportunity to consider the value of life in a number of spheres.

“You know, there are definitely concerns,” he said. “But there may also be an opportunity here to shift the discussion of life to a more responsible space.”

NCJW was also planning a rally in Washington, D.C., when Congress reconvenes after the summer; their rally in May attracted more than a thousand protesters. Democrats have said they will make the repeal of Roe v. Wade an issue in the midterm elections. 

Katz also wants Jewish organizations to set an example by giving women reproductive leave that would accommodate the extended time needed to get an abortion the reversal of Roe. v Wade would trigger.

Within a week or so of the leaked decision in May, the NCJW almost immediately entered a partnership with the National Abortion Federation, which raises funds for women who want abortions. That process is set to become more expensive in states with restrictive laws ready to kick in, requiring women seeking abortions to take time off work and pay for travel to where it is permitted.

The funds the NCJW raises for the National Abortion Federation “will help people across state lines, it’ll help fund abortions for people who can’t afford it,” Katz said.

Within minutes of the court decision, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington said that it was ready to assist such actions: Maryland, one of the JCRC’s constituent states, has liberal abortion laws and is the closest state to a number of states that do not.

“We will work in coalition to ensure that the state is prepared to welcome and serve the thousands of additional women who will travel to our state to seek medical care and exercise reproductive rights,” the JCRC said in a statement. 

The Washington D.C.-area JCRC said it would push back against further restrictions on abortion access in Virginia, and it would lobby to keep Congress, which has a degree of jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, from imposing abortion restrictions on an overwhelmingly liberal population there that rejects such restrictions.

“We will also mobilize our local Jewish community at the grass-roots level, connecting synagogues and individuals to meaningful opportunities to support women seeking abortions in our region,” the D.C. chapter’s statement said.  

Such grass-roots initiatives may soon proliferate in Jewish communities. “We are outraged by this decision, which we do not believe represents the will of the people nor is in the best interest of the country,” said the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for Jewish public policy groups.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post ‘After Shabbat, we will act’: American Jews gear up for wave of post-Roe activism appeared first on The Forward.

This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. Download and print our free magazine of stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday.

There is a special skill, or perhaps an innate gift, that many rabbis have, to take the weekly Torah portion and apply it to whatever is going on in the news or in their communities. I don’t know if they have a class on this in Rabbi School, but I’m constantly struck by the combination of the Torah’s flexibility and our teachers’ modern-day insights.

And so it was on Tuesday, when I visited Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., for a talk about journalism and antisemitism, and Rabbi Aaron Alexander introduced the program with a few words about this week’s portion, Sh’lach L’cha.

You probably know the story. Moses sent 12 men, one from each tribe, to check out the promised land. They returned laden with plump grapes, pomegranates and figs, and confirmed it was  indeed flowing with milk and honey. But they also saw fortified cities and giant people. The community fears they’ll be unable to conquer the land, or settle in it. Appalled by their lack of faith, God banishes the Jews to 40 years of wandering in the desert.

It’s commonly thought of as the story of the spies. But the Torah never says “spy.” It uses the Hebrew word latur — to explore, to seek. Many scholars call the 12 men scouts, or simply schlichim, representatives. Rabbi Alexander had a different take.

“Moses sends out, essentially, journalists, into the land of Israel,” he suggested. “The men were asked to do an essential function in society: to learn about something that nobody knows about so that people and leadership can make decisions about what to do next.”

And those 12 reporters did the job they were asked to do. They observed, they gathered facts — and fruits — and they shared what they had seen.

Disaster struck, Rabbi Alexander noted, when they were pushed to interpret beyond the facts, and when their audience brought its own beliefs and biases to bear.

There is a line in the portion, “efes ki az ha’am,” which is generally translated as “but all this is for naught, because the nation there is too strong.” Efes is Hebrew for zero — as in, we have zero chance. Efes is where the reporters venture into editorializing.

“‘Efes‘ is like a pregnant pause, it’s like a ‘however, I have to share with you something that’s different from what I just said,'” Rabbi Alexander explained. “Efes is the only word that is suspect, that maybe changes it from direct reporting to someone giving it their own spin.”

We are blessed, today, to have brave journalists literally risking their lives to bear witness to the atrocities of the war in Ukraine, to corruption in the Philippines, to this week’s horrific earthquake in Afghanistan and, yes, to the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To have investigative reporters who hold power to account and follow the story wherever it goes, without fear or favor. To have people who dig deep to explain the motivations and document the repercussions of mass shooters in Buffalo and Uvalde, to explore the vast and specific impacts of today’s landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

And to have a talented, mission-driven team here at the Forward continuing a 125-year tradition of telling the American Jewish story, fully and fairly, broadly and deeply, warts and all.

But we are struggling, as a society, to honor that hard, crucial work for what it is. We have somehow allowed truth to become an elusive, flexible concept. We have let too many independent news outlets languish and become beholden to advocates less concerned with fairness and facts than with their personal and pre-determined agendas.

We are too busy keeping score — Is this article positive or negative? Does this development help or hurt my political position? Will this be good or bad for the Jews? — to allow ourselves to learn something new, to understand another person’s perspective, to gain a more nuanced view of our complicated and broken world.

“Nobody ever negates the reality of what was in the land,” Rabbi Alexander noted about the Torah’s scouts/spies/reporters. “They’re villains because we tell this story through the lens of faith, not through the lens of truth.

“It’s like everything gets immediately amped up,” he added, and “we can only read stories from our personal bias, we are now judging everything from some subjective experience of the world that allows us to see right and wrong in a way that’s getting cloudy.

“In a world in which truth is, unfortunately, a moving target,” the rabbi said, “we rely, desperately, on people to trust journalists.”

I had written this much of today’s column before the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was announced this morning shortly after 10 a.m. I thought about switching gears, but I’m not sure I yet have anything new to say about abortion beyond what I wrote when the draft opinion was leaked, about revisiting the 1998 murder of an abortion doctor, and of course my own abortion story, which I told in this space last fall.

And in many ways, the abortion ruling only underscores the argument about our need for high-quality, independent journalism rooted in facts, especially on the issues that cleave our communities. Here are just a few of the Forward articles we have published in the seven weeks since it became clear the court would overrule Roe:

We will continue to cover the lawsuits Jews have filed challenging new abortion restrictions in places like Florida, and otherwise seek to understand what this new reality means, through our Jewish lens. We will go to the places where the future is unfolding, like the scouts sent to the promised land in Sh’lach L’cha, this week’s Torah portion.

I’ve been thinking since my chat with Rabbi Alexander about what those 12 reporters in the story could have done differently. What if they’d interviewed the people in that foreign land, rather than just observed them from afar?

That’s what differentiates reporters from scouts or spies; we talk to people, we listen to their stories with empathetic ears, we try to walk in their shoes, we work to reconcile their narratives in order to distill the truth. Instead of describing those people as “giants” and projecting that the Jews would be “grasshoppers in their eyes,” reporters would have developed a more three-dimensional view, would have heard their voices and shared their stories.

And what if Moses had sent some women among the 12? They would have gone beyond the fortified city walls to penetrate the homes inside. They would have talked to the mothers and wives and daughters of those “giants.” They would undoubtedly have returned, as the men did, with grapes and pomegranates and figs. And a fuller, fairer truth.

Your weekend reads

You’ll undoubtedly be reading a lot this weekend about the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, so here’s some counter-programming. Download the printable PDF or click on any of the headlines below to read online:

Watch: Journalism in a Time of Antisemitism

That Adas Israel talk where Rabbi Alexander made the connection between the Torah portion and our humble profession was a historic occasion, at least in my family. It was the first time that I have spoken publicly about journalism with my sister Debbi Wilgoren, a 33-year veteran of The Washington Post, where she is now deputy national security editor. We spoke about the different ways mainstream publications like the Post and the Forward handle stories like Buffalo and January’s hostage-taking at a Texas synagogue — and how we both got into this racket.

The post This week’s Torah portion is all about the importance of independent journalism appeared first on The Forward.

The witnesses who have testified at the Jan. 6 House Committee hearings have spurred a variety of emotions, ranging from indignation over what they recounted to admiration for how they responded. But none of the witnesses, I believe, has touched these registers as deeply as Rusty Bowers.

As many Americans now know, Bowers is the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives. After Joe Biden won Arizona by a razor-thin margin in the presidential election of 2022, Bowers, a self-described “Reagan Republican,” became a person of intense interest at the White House. In the weeks leading to Jan. 6, he was besieged by calls from White House officials, including Donald Trump, attempting to persuade him that the election results in Arizona were fraudulent.

Bowers was not persuadable. Shortly after the election, as he and his wife were returning home from a meeting at their local Church of Latter-day Saints, Bowers received a call from the White House. Both Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, repeatedly told Bowers that the voting results were fraudulent.

With his wife next to him, Bowers asked for evidence of the tens of thousands of illegal Mexicans and dead Arizonans who allegedly voted for Biden. Trump and Giuliani promised to send him the list of names of the banned and buried. When committee member Adam Schiff asked if he ever received this list, Bowers replied with an eloquent “Never.”

He proved yet more eloquent when Schiff asked Bowers what he felt when he realized that the president of the United States was asking him to violate his official oath. “Anything that would say to me you have a doubt, deny your oath, I will not do that,” Bowers replied. He added, “It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired, of my most basic foundational beliefs. And so, for me to do that because somebody just asked me to is foreign to my very being. I — I will not do it.”

This was, for several reasons, a remarkable statement. First, it echoed Martin Luther’s closing words in 1521 before the Diet at Worms, which had accused him of heresy. If those judging him could not provide scriptural proof to counter his beliefs, Luther declared, “I neither can nor will retract anything, for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.”

For the philosophically inclined, Bowers words also echoed, a century after Luther, Benedict Spinoza’s response to his excommunication by Amsterdam’s Jewish community for his heretical thoughts on the nature of God and free will: “I gladly enter on this path opened to me, with the consolation that my departure will be more innocent than was the exodus of the early Hebrews from Egypt.”

Second, Bowers was neither a Protestant — which Luther eventually became — nor a Jew — which Spinoza eventually un-became — but a Mormon. The Church of Latter-day Saints does indeed believe the Constitution is divinely inspired. Through this document, explained Dallin Oaks, a senior church elder and former law clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren, God gave “his children moral agency — the power to decide and act.” For good measure, Oaks added that its divinity is manifest in its insistence that we “are to be governed by law and not by individuals, and our loyalty is to the Constitution and its principles and processes, not to any officeholder.”

Third, by making faith the source of his resistance, Bowers made uneasy at least one of those without faith. As one of the faithless who has long wondered about the foundations of morality, I envied what Bowers described as his own “foundational” conviction. In his faith, he found an immovable anchor, while in my skepticism I find what seem to be moving sands.

But when it comes to faith, c’est compliqué. Skeptics like myself tend to side with Voltaire, who might have been a believer (this, too, is complicated), and might have written (once again, a complicated matter), “Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

In the end, faith is fixed at the hip to religious belief. The former makes no sense — both to the faithful and faithless — without the latter. But this is not the case with reverence, which is the fourth and final reason to remark on Bowers’ testimony. In his opening statement, he quoted from Reagan’s 1981 inaugural address. The newly elected Republican president marveled at how, since its founding, America hosts an orderly transition of power every four years: “In the eyes of many in the world, this every four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.”

Our nation’s tradition of following “the outcome of the people’s will,” Bowers explained, “means a lot to me.” Tellingly, the Salt Lake Tribune described this attitude as “reverential.” It is telling because reverence is both a virtue and a feeling. As the former, it was practiced by Bowers; as the latter, it was what we experienced as we listened to Bowers.

According to the philosopher Paul Woodruff, reverence is “is the well-developed capacity to have feelings of awe, respect and shame when these are the right feelings to have.” It is what we feel when we are reminded of something greater and better than us. This can be an aesthetic or ethical ideal, such as the notion of beauty or the notion of justice.

At the same time, reverence reminds us of our all-too-human limitations. In turn, our all-too-important sense of personal humility and public modesty are reinforced. Or, rather, should be. As the reasons for the hearings reveal, this is far from always being the case. But as the deeds of Rusty Bowers also make clear, we still have reasons for reverence.

The post Following the path of Martin Luther and Spinoza, Rusty Bowers makes the case for reverence appeared first on The Forward.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, an argent champion of abortion rights, expressed her disappointment in the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe V. Wade on Friday by reading, from the House floor, the work of an Israeli poet and lyricist about about not giving up on your country. Pelosi read, “I have no other country” as a poem, though it is also a famous song in Israel.

“I am personally overwhelmed by this decision,” Pelosi said. “From time to time I quote this poem by Ehud Manor. He’s an Israeli poet. I met his wife when I’ve been in Israel.”

Pelosi then began to read: “I have no other country even though my land is burning.” The poem ends: “I shall remind her and sing into her ears until she opens her eyes.”

Pelosi then said: “Clearly we hope that the Supreme Court would open its eyes.”

She had stopped in the middle of the poem, looking straight into the cameras as she repeated, for emphasis, the line she had just read: “My country has changed its face.”

I have no other country

“I have no other land,

Even if my land is burning.

A simple word in Hebrew penetrates

Into my veins, my soul.

My body aches. My heart hungers,

But this is my home.

I will not be silent, now that my land

Has changed her appearance.

I will never forego reminding her of this,

And I will sing it in her ears,

Until she opens her eyes…”

Here “I have no other country” is sung by Israeli pop star Ninet Tayeb.

The post Pelosi responds to Supreme Court abortion ruling by reciting reciting Israeli poem appeared first on The Forward.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade. The decision ended constitutional protections for the right to an abortion that had been in place for nearly 50 years. Abortion opponents have fought for decades to outlaw the procedure. Abortion will now likely be banned in about half of the states.

Here is a sampling of reaction from the Jewish community.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs: “Prohibiting abortion access is contrary to Jewish law, traditions, and our principal value of saving a life; it enshrines specific religious imperatives in American law. Judaism compels us to stand for all life, and we prioritize the life and health of a pregnant person.”

Abortion access is a Jewish value.

Abortion care is health care.

We dissent.

— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) June 24, 2022

Since 1980—as a matter of religious & personal liberty—ADL has supported the right of women to full access to reproductive care. Today’s decision overturns 50 yrs of constitutional protection for an individual’s right to determine whether to terminate a pregnancy or bear a child.

— ADL (@ADL) June 24, 2022

Hadassah: “Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, reaffirms its unwavering support for full and complete access to reproductive health services and the right to make decisions based on each woman’s religious, moral and ethical values. Hadassah will continue to fight for federal and state legislation affirming and protecting reproductive rights.”

#SCOTUS has stripped away the fundamental right to abortion that has been reaffirmed for decades.

This is an affront to all we stand for as Jewish Americans. We will not stop fighting for reproductive justice & that means we must elect more Democrats.

Full statement to follow.

— Jewish Dems (@USJewishDems) June 24, 2022

For our entire existence, Lilith has made the case that anti-abortion forces and antisemitism are closely linked. We abhor this decision and stand with patients who need safe, legal and accessible abortion https://t.co/Ke0I8YpWTE

— Lilith Magazine (@LilithMagazine) June 24, 2022

My great grandma died from an abortion in 1918. A Jewish woman in Romania didn’t have many options for proper care, but Judaism has always held that abortion is is a personal choice.

Abortion bans are against my religion. @NCJW #RoeVsWade#mybodymychoice #AbortionIsHealthcare https://t.co/Mq7X35rntm

— Yael Ridberg (@RabbiYRidberg) June 24, 2022

The post ‘Abortion access is a Jewish value’: Reaction to overturning of Roe v. Wade appeared first on The Forward.

SARASOTA, Fla. (JTA) – A judge in Florida approved a $1.2 billion settlement just hours before the one-year anniversary of the residential tower collapse in Surfside on June 24, which killed 98 people.

Condo owners will split the estimated $96 million in proceeds from the sale of the land where the Champlain Towers South stood. The victims’ families and residents who were injured from the building’s collapse will share an additional billion dollars in compensation. 

While Miami Judge Michael Hanzman said this was the most complicated case he had seen in his 35-year career, he called the outcome “remarkable.” No victims or their families chose to opt out of the settlement, and Hanzman said the decision avoided the need for a trial that could have lasted a decade.

Family members of the 98 victims gathered Thursday night to mark the moment at 1:22 a.m. when the building began to collapse last year. First lady Jill Biden is scheduled to speak at a public memorial event on the site on Friday. 

The town of Surfside, where nearly half of the 6,000 residents are Jewish, has for decades served as a meeting place for geographically-separated Jews. Miami has a large percentage of Hispanic Jews, many of whom come from families that came to the area after leaving Cuba, Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post $1.2 billion Surfside settlement for families and unit owners approved day before one-year anniversary appeared first on The Forward.

אַז מע הערט הײַנט ייִדיש אויף די גאַסן פֿון ברוקלין, איז דאָס אָפֿט נישט בלויז אַ חסידיש ייִדיש, נאָר דווקא אַן אונגעריש ייִדיש. כאָטש זייער אַ סך גאַליציאַנער, פּוילישע, און אַפֿילו ליטווישע חסידים רעדן הײַנט אויך ייִדיש, האַלט זיך די שפּראַך בעסער בײַ די אונגערישע. מע זעט, למשל, אַז די מערסטע אונגעריש־חסידישע פֿרויען רעדן עס צווישן זיך, בשעת אַ סך פֿרויען פֿון די אַנדערע גרופּעס רעדן מער ענגליש.

אַז מע רופֿט די חסידים „אונגערישע‟, הייסט עס נישט, אַז זיי קומען דווקא פֿונעם הײַנטיקן אונגערן, וואָס איז אַ רעלאַטיוו קליין לאַנד (כאָטש ס’איז פֿיר מאָל גרעסער ווי מדינת־ישׂראל). דער ייִדישער באַגריף פֿון „אונגערן‟ איז דאָס אַמאָליקע גרויסע קעניגרײַך אונגערן פֿון דער צײַט פֿאַר דער ערשטער וועלט־מלחמה, וואָס נעמט אַרײַן גרויסע טיילן פֿון רומעניע, סלאָוואַקײַ, אוקראַיִנע, קראָאַטיע, און אַפֿילו עסטרײַך. אין דעם פּרט איז דאָס ייִדישע „אונגערן‟ אַ ביסל געגליכן צו דער ייִדישער „ליטע‟, וואָס איז אָן אַ שיעור גרעסער ווי די הײַנטיקע מדינה ליטע, און נעמט אויך אַרײַן ווײַסרוסלאַנד און גרויסע טיילן פֿון רוסלאַנד, אוקראַיִנע, לעטלאַנד, און פּוילן. די ייִדישע „ליטע‟ דעקט זיך מער־ווייניקער מיטן ליטווישן גרויס־פֿירשטנטום אין מיטל־עלטער, וואָס איז געווען איינע פֿון די גרעסטע מלוכות אין אייראָפּע.

ווען די עסטרײַך־אונגערישע אימפּעריע איז זיך צעפֿאַלן און די נײַע לענדער זײַנען אויפֿגעקומען אויף דער געוועזענער אונגערישער טעריטאָריע, זײַנען זייער אַ סך עטנישע אונגערן פֿאַרבליבן אויף יענער זײַט גרענעץ. אַ סך ייִדן אויף דער טעריטאָריע פֿונעם הײַנטיקן רומעניע, אוקראַיִנע, און סלאָוואַקײַ האָבן ווײַטער געלעבט אין אַן אונגערישער קולטור־סבֿיבֿה, און דערפֿאַר געפֿינען זיך דאָרט אַ סך צענטערס פֿון די „אונגערישע‟ חסידים. סאַטמער און קלויזנבורג זײַנען ביידע שטעט אין דער הײַנטיקער רומעניע, מונקאַטש איז אין אוקראַיִנע, און נײַטרע איז אין סלאָוואַקײַ.

עס ליגט אַ היסטאָרישע איראָניע אינעם פֿאַקט, אַז די אונגערישע חסידים רעדן הײַנט מער ייִדיש ווי די אַנדערע גרופּעס — ווײַל אין דער אַלטער היים האָבן די אונגערישע ייִדן אָפֿט גערעדט מער אונגעריש ווי ייִדיש, און אין מערבֿ האָבן אַ טייל אַפֿילו גערעדט דײַטש, אָדער אַ געמישטע ייִדיש־דײַטשע שפּראַך. בײַם דור אונגעריש־ייִדישע אימיגראַנטן, וואָס זײַנען אָנגעקומען אין אַמעריקע נאָך דער צווייטער־וועלט־מלחמה און האָבן געשאַפֿן די הײַנטיקע חסידישע גרופּעס, זײַנען געווען אַ סך וואָס האָבן גערעדט ייִדיש מיט אַ שטאַרקן אונגערישן אַקצענט. אויף די גאַסן פֿון וויליאַמסבורג פֿלעגט מען הערן אַ סך אונגעריש פֿונעם עלטערן דור.

וואָס פֿאַר אַ ייִדיש האָבן די אונגערישע ייִדן גערעדט אין דער אַלטער היים? מע קען דאָס הערן אין אַ צאָל אַלטע רעקאָרדירונגען; למשל, פֿון אינטערוויוען געמאַכט פֿאַרן ייִדישן שפּראַך־ און קולטור־אַטלאַס. דער לינגוויסט אוריאל ווײַנרײַך, וואָס האָט פֿאַרטראַכט דעם אַטלאַס־פּראָיעקט, האָט אַליין אינטערוויויִרט אַ סך אונגעריש־ייִדישע אינפֿאָרמאַנטן אין די 1960ער יאָרן. ער איז געווען ספּעציעל פֿאַראינטערעסירט אין אונגעריש ייִדיש, ווײַל ביז דעמאָלט האָבן לינגוויסטן זיך ווייניק פֿאַרנומען מיט אים. די ייִדישע שפּראַך, קולטור, און ליטעראַטור האָבן געשפּילט אַ קלענערע ראָלע אין אונגערן ווי אין גאַליציע, שוין אָפּגערעדט פֿון פּוילן און רוסלאַנד.

אַ דאַנק ווײַנרײַכס אינטערוויוען קענען מיר רעקאָנסטרויִרן אַ רעלאַטיוו פּינקטלעך בילד פֿונעם אונגערישן ייִדיש פֿאַר דער מלחמה. די אַלטע אונגערישע טעריטאָריע האָט זיך צעטיילט אין צוויי גרויסע קולטור־שטחים: דאָס אויבערלאַנד אין מערבֿ און דאָס אונטערלאַנד אין מיזרח. דאָס אויבערלאַנד און דאָס אונטערלאַנד האָבן זיך שטאַרק אונטערגעשיידט אין שפּראַך, קולטור, און רעליגיע. די אונטערלענדער האָבן אין אַ גרויסער מאָס נאָך גערעדט ייִדיש און אַ סך זײַנען געווען חסידים. די פֿרומע אויבערלענדער, ווידער, זײַנען בדרך־כּלל געווען מתנגדים — „אַשכּנזים‟ האָבן זיי געהייסן — און זיי האָבן גערעדט אַן אַנדער דיאַלעקט, אַ מין מערבֿ־ייִדיש וואָס איז שוין אויסגעשטאָרבן. אַ סך אונגערישע ייִדן זײַנען אויך געווען רעפֿאָרמירט אָדער גאָר מאָדערן, האָבן זיי אַוודאי גערעדט אונגעריש, אָדער אַ מאָל אויך דײַטש.

פֿון דעסט וועגן, איז נישטאָ קיין פֿעסטער גרענעץ צווישן אויבערלאַנד און אונטערלאַנד. חסידים און „אַשכּנזים‟ האָבן געוווינט אין די זעלבע שטעטלעך, און אין זייער אַ גרויסן שטח האָט מען גערעדט אַ געמישטן דיאַלעקט, וואָס איז נישט אַהין און נישט אַהער. ווײַנרײַך איז געקומען צום אויספֿיר, אַז אין אַלטע צײַטן האָבן די אונטערלענדער אויך גערעדט אַ מין מערבֿ־ייִדיש, אַזוי ווי די אויבערלענדער, אָבער יענער דיאַלעקט איז פֿאַרשווענקט געוואָרן פֿון די גרויסע מאַסן גאַליצאַנער ייִדן, וואָס האָבן אַרײַנגעוואַנדערט פֿון צפֿון.

פֿאַר אַ סך ערטער אין אויבערלאַנד האָט ווײַנרײַך ניט געקענט געפֿינען קיין שום ייִדישן אינפֿאָרמאַנט, ווײַל די שפּראַך איז דאָרט שוין געהאַט אויסגעשטאָרבן. פֿון דער סלאָוואַקישער הויפּטשטאָט פּרעשבאָרג (בראַטיסלאַוואַ), וווּ עס האָט זיך געפֿונען די באַרימטע ישיבֿה פֿונעם חתם סופֿר, האָט ווײַנרײַך געדאַרפֿט זיך באַנוגענען מיט אַ ייִד וואָס געדענקט עפּעס ייִדישע ווערטער און ווערטלעך פֿון די פֿריִערדיקע דורות. פֿאַר דער צווייטער וועלט־מלחמה האָבן די פּרעשבאָרגער ייִדן שוין גערעדט דײַטש, דער עיקר. אַזוי איז אויך געווען אינעם בורגנלאַנד, וואָס געהערט הײַנט צו עסטרײַך: די אינפֿאָרמאַנטן האָבן נאָך געדענקט אַ ביסל ווי זייערע באָבעס און זיידעס האָבן גערעדט, אָבער אַליין האָבן זיי שוין גערעדט דײַטש.

ווײַנרײַך האָט געפֿונען אַ צאָל גוטע אינפֿאָרמאַנטן פֿון די קלענערע שטעטלעך אין אויבערלאַנד, וווּ ייִדיש האָט נאָך געלעבט. פֿון דעסט וועגן, איז קענטיק אין זייערע רייד די השפּעה פֿון דײַטש און אונגעריש: פֿאַר אַ טייל זאַכן האָבן זיי שוין געהאַט פֿאַרגעסן דאָס ייִדישע וואָרט און זיי ניצן דערפֿאַר אַ דײַטש אָדער אַן אונגעריש וואָרט. ווײַזט אויס, אַז דער אויבערלענדער דיאַלעקט האָט שוין געהאַלטן אין אונטערגיין נאָך איידער די מלחמה האָט אויסגעבראָכן. אין זייער דיאַלעקט מערקט זיך אויך אַ פֿאַרפּשוטערונג פֿון דער גראַמאַטישער סיסטעם, אַז אַנשטאָט „דער/די/דאָס‟ זאָגן זיי געוויינטלעך „דע‟, ענלעך ווי בײַ די הײַנטיקע חסידים. עס קען זײַן, אַז דער פּרט פֿונעם הײַנטיקן חסידישן ייִדיש נעמט זיך טאַקע פֿון די אויבערלענדער, וואָס זײַנען צום טייל געוואָרן חסידים נאָך זייער אָנקומען אין אַמעריקע. אָבער דאָס איז גאָר ניט זיכער, ווײַל אַחוץ דעם האָבן אויבערלענדער נישט געהאַט קיין גרויסע השפּעה אויף דער אַנטוויקלונג פֿון חסידיש ייִדיש.

אַפֿילו בײַ די אונטערלענדישע אינפֿאָרמאַנטן הערט מען אַזעלכע, וואָס רעדן קענטיק בעסער אונגעריש ווי ייִדיש, און וואָס זייער גראַמאַטיק וואַקלט זיך אַ ביסל. די דאָזיקע וואַלקדיקייט איז מסתּמא געווען זייער פֿאַרשפּרייט בײַ חסידים, וואָס זייער ערשטע שפּראַך איז געווען אונגעריש, און אפֿשר האָט דאָס אַליין דערפֿירט צום הײַנטיקן אוניווערסאַלן „דע‟. עס קענען זײַן עטלעכע סיבות פֿאַר דעם זעלביקן פֿענאָמען, און עס לייגט זיך אויך אויפֿן שׂכל, אַז ענגליש האָט געהאַט אַ ראָלע מיט זײַן אַרטיקל the, וואָס ווערט נישט דעקלינירט.

כאָטש די אונגערישע חסידים האָבן הײַנט די אייבערהאַנט איבער דער שפּראַך, האָט דאָס נישט געבראַכט קיין גרויסע פֿאַרפֿלייצונג פֿון אונגערישע ווערטער. פֿאַקטיש ניצן זיי זייער ווייניק ווערטער פֿון אונגעריש — און אָן אַ שיעור מער דײַטשמעריזמען. מסתּמא זײַנען צוגעקומען גענוג חסידים פֿון אַנדערע ראַיאָנען, ספּעציעל פֿון גאַליציע, וואָס האָבן געקענט עפּעס דײַטש, אָבער נישט קיין אונגעריש. אַזוי האָט זיך דאָס חסידישע ייִדיש אַנטוויקלט אויפֿן יסוד פֿון עטלעכע אייראָפּעיִשע דיאַלעקטן, און נישט בלויז פֿון אונגעריש ייִדיש. ס’איז אַ קינד מיט אַ סך טאַטעס.

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It’s a warm, sunny morning in June 1982, and Israeli forces have just crossed the border into Lebanon, invading the south of the country to prevent the Palestine Liberation Organization from operating there. In the following weeks, Israeli forces will inflict heavy bombing on West Beirut, expel the PLO and support the election of a new, pro-Israel president. A Lebanese Christian militia will perpetrate the Sabra and Shatila massacres, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians in Beirut refugee camps surrounded by the Israeli Defense Forces. Subsequent international and Israeli investigations will conclude that the Israeli army, which failed to stop the killings, bore at least indirect responsibility.

The invasion marks a particularly dark episode in Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. But at a tony English-speaking school for the children of Beirut’s elite, the only thing that seems to matter are the year’s final exams.

Inspired by director Oualid Mouaness’s own boyhood memories, “1982” depicts the invasion’s first hours as a handful of sheltered fifth-graders and their teachers experience it. Rather than thrusting his protagonists into the midst of great events, Mouaness lets us experience the confusion, fear and even boredom of catastrophe just as they do. It’s a humane and highly realistic strategy — but it doesn’t always make for a propulsive film. 

Our hero is Wissam (Mohamad Dalli), a sensitive fifth-grader who spends his time drawing superheroes and mooning over his rather more mature classmate Joanna (Gia Madi), the only person in the class whose grades are better than his. Even if he can work up the courage to admit his love, something he practices in the bathroom mirror, theirs would be an affair circumscribed by taboos. Within the school, there’s a prohibition against student romances — midway through the film, we learn that Wissam’s best friend was once suspended just for writing a love note to a classmate. Off campus, there are the even more serious military checkpoints that separate their neighborhoods, a testament to the civil war that started long before the invasion. 

Wissam’s teacher, Yasmine (Nadine Labaki, the cast’s biggest name, known for films like “Caramel” which depict everyday Lebanese women) is much more attuned to the outside world. She’s worried for her elderly mother and furious at her reckless younger brother, George, who has just run off to join an unnamed militia, probably the right-wing Christian Phalangists. 

For Yasmine, coping with the crisis means ignoring it and focusing entirely on administering final exams. But her determination to pretend everything is normal tees up conflict with Joseph (Rodrigue Sleiman), her colleague and clandestine boyfriend, who is both more politically engaged and clearer-eyed about the invasion’s consequences for the carefully ordered world of the school. 

“1982” follows this quartet of characters as the invasion becomes impossible to ignore, the all-important final exams giving way to the challenge of returning the children to their homes when the roads are clogged with tanks and telephone service is increasingly spotty. Even as chaos mounts, Mouaness depicts only what a child like Wissam can see and understand. To Wissam, the apparatus of war is immediately legible: When fighter planes appear outside the classroom, he and his otherwise-compliant classmates abandon their exams and flock to the windows. Yet the war’s political backdrop, and the calculations of the increasingly frantic adults, remain inscrutable to him. 

Likewise, although Mouaness allows Yasmine and Joseph a few whispered fights that illuminate their own conflicted relationship, we mostly see these teachers as Wissam does: Their anxiety and their efforts to conceal it are evident, but the things they fear are only implied. (Possibly due to this directorial tactic, and possibly because the film was originally directed at Lebanese audiences, “1982” is light on context clues. If you’re not already familiar with the contours of the civil war and Israeli invasion, you’ll need to do some Googling.) 

Set on an austere yet idyllic school campus in the mountains, “1982” excels when it comes to cinematography. Mouaness manages to make the stone stairs as daunting and the courtyards as sprawling to the viewer as they are to Wissam and Joanna. The camera lingers on small details — a harried secretary’s untidy blouse, a clear sky fringed with acacia trees — mimicking the idle, perceptive gaze of a child. 

Yet the film’s visual landscape also disappoints in the final moments when Mouaness uses animation to show Wissam’s childish belief in Beirut’s invulnerability. It’s a sentimental moment and an ironic one, revealing the chasm between what Wissam hopes for his city and what a modern viewer, burdened by hindsight, knows will happen. For so much of the film, Mouaness has kept his viewers confined to a child’s sensibility. By ending on this falsely comforting note, he restores, all of a sudden, the grim understanding of adulthood.

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The campaign of Gov. Kathy Hochul is touting “unprecedented universal” support from major Orthodox voting blocs days head of what they call her “imminent primary victory.” Her Democratic rivals, Rep. Tom Suozzi from Long Island and Jumaane Williams, New York City’s public advocate, both with close relationships with the Jewish community, have failed to snag a single Orthodox endorsement.

The state’s 1.8 million Jews are estimated at about 16% of the electorate, though most are not Orthodox. 

Earlier this week, a group of 28 Hasidic sects and school administrators in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn endorsed Hochul and her running mate, Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, for re-election in the June 28 primary. The full-page ad, published in the Yiddish-language weekly newspapers, described the incumbent as a person who’s been sympathetic to their religious needs and a reliable ally in government. 

Hochul, a Democrat, has already been endorsed by Jewish faith leaders and influential Orthodox groups in Queens and Nassau County, and earned the backing of competing Satmar Hasidic sects who traditionally split their endorsements in local races, a consequence of a 2006 secession feud. On Sunday, she visited a local Judaica and bookstore in Borough Park and met with Orthodox leaders. 

“I’m honored to have earned the trust and support of the Hasidic and Orthodox communities in our state,” Hochul said in a statement to the Forward. She noted that as the state’s first female governor, and as a lieutenant governor for seven years, she has stood with them in solidarity “through good times and bad.”

The Orthodox community played an influential role in the New York City mayoral primary last year. Mayor Eric Adams, who endorsed Hochul, received significant support from Orthodox voting blocs, though he split the Orthodox vote with Andrew Yang, and attributed his victory to them.

Suozzi, who is lagging behind Hochul in public opinion polls, dismissed the significance of the endorsements in a briefing with Jewish reporters as “purely political calculations.” He said he’s engaged in outreach to leaders of the Satmar community and other Orthodox activists and the impression he got was that they were playing the insider game because Hochul is in office and not based on their actual preferences. 

But Suozzi said he’s not discouraged by the lack of Orthodox institutional support, and that people are inspired by his track record of standing up for Israel in Congress and speaking out on Jewish-related issues. “I’ll get discouraged the day after the election if I have to be,” he said, citing the Yiddish saying, ‘Mensch tracht un Gott lacht’ – man plans and God laughs. 

A Hochul ally, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to talk on the record, slammed Suozzi for second-guessing the decisions made by Orthodox leaders as “disrespectful but sadly not surprising.” 

“These community leaders are standing with Governor Hochul because they know the governor’s commitment to the Jewish community,” the official said. 

A recent poll showed Hochul with a commanding leader – 54% – over Suozzi, who received 18%. Williams, a progressive, polled at 11%. 

Hochul said she is looking forward “to building on our partnership to uplift the Jewish community across New York.” 

Rep. Lee Zeldin, the favorite to win the Republican gubernatorial primary, has received the backing of Nassau County Jewish elected officials. 

The post Hochul welcomes ’universal’ backing by Orthodox groups appeared first on The Forward.

Almost every night for the past few months, a nondescript crew of yeshiva bochurs has fanned out across New York City, armed with nothing more than MetroCards and buckets to stand on. 

The following morning, the familiar visage of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, peers out at harried commuters from bright green signs hung in a few new places, usually on the back of pedestrian walk signals. Below the picture of the man-turned-myth known to many simply as “The Rebbe,” the signs proclaim, in no uncertain terms and without qualification: 

“MESSIAH IS HERE!”

The Schneerson posters have become inescapable in some New York City neighborhoods — Brooklyn and Manhattan in particular — but they provide no context to the image and those three words, leaving their provenance and meaning a mystery. Are they advertisements for Chabad, the Jewish movement that Schneerson led and which still views him as its lodestar? Does Chabad believe that Schneerson, who died in 1994, is the Messiah? And if the Messiah is here, shouldn’t it be pretty obvious?

The answers to those questions depend on who you ask — even within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, whose membership worldwide has been estimated at around 100,000. Yes, the Messianist branch of Chabad is considered fringe, and synagogues that tout Schneerson as the Messiah — in Hebrew, mashiach or moshiach — comprise a small minority and are not a formal part of the international Chabad network. But mashiach is itself an elusive concept in Judaism, and Chabad members’ beliefs on the matter don’t fit into a neat binary.

Put it this way: A spokesperson for the movement called the posters a “shame” — but it’s students at Chabad’s flagship yeshiva in Crown Heights who are putting them up.

A guerilla campaign

Mendel Shpindler, a 21-year-old self-starter originally from Montreal, is one of those students. He said they started putting up the signs about 10 weeks ago, following in the tracks of Messianist Chabad ad campaigns that date back to the early 1990s.

A few people going out each night, with little organization or planning, have already placed more than 6,000 of the bills, which fit neatly on the back of traffic signal boxes.

“It’s pretty much whoever has the energy to go and do it and take it on himself,” he said, adding that they have another 6,000 to go.

Shpindler is one of about 600 young men in their fourth year of the Chabad yeshiva cycle: three years’ full-time study in Israel followed by one at 770 Eastern Parkway, the iconic former Schneerson home in Crown Heights which now houses Chabad headquarters.

About 30 of them have contributed to the signposting effort, according to Shpindler; they passed a hat around to raise the few thousand dollars it cost to make the signs.

He’s firm in his belief that the Rebbe is the Messiah, and he believes that deep down, every other Chabadnik agrees with him.

“No one would say the Rebbe is not mashiach,” Shpindler said. “If you cornered them, they would tell you, straight up, ‘The Rebbe is mashiach.’ The question is whether to publicize that or not.”

By his own admission, not everyone in the crew was as fervent in their belief. An avowed meshichist, or Messianist, Chabad Jew, Shpindler’s views are on the radical end of the spectrum. For example, he believes Schneerson did not die at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in Manhattan, but in fact is still alive and testing his followers “to see how strong we believe.”

But differences within the group regarding Schneerson’s present condition did not weaken their shared interest in spreading the word that he was mashiach.

The Lubavitchers (a Hasidic Jewish community) out these stickers all over the city. Does not feel like the messiah is here, but u have 2 love their optimism !!! pic.twitter.com/G9go9dGf1c

— katie wright (@katiewr31413491) June 19, 2022

And though hanging posters on public property is illegal, so far, none has faced much resistance from law enforcement.

“We’ve had police tell us it’s illegal, don’t do it,” Shpindler said. “Some police ignore. And some were more like, ‘OK, what is this about?’ like they were interested in knowing. It’s not really enforced as a legal thing. And no one really cares about it too much.”

Support from the higher-ups was another matter entirely. Asked whether he thought the administration at 770 Eastern Parkway would approve of his mission, he said he thought a few would commend him, and others would try to cool his jets.

But he wasn’t doing it for them. He was doing it for his Rebbe.

‘A shame’

In mainstream Chabad, Schneerson, who led the movement from 1951 until his death in 1994, is larger than life, a mystical figure and a talisman of righteousness and religious devotion. His portrait hangs in every Chabad house. Legions of Chabad children are named after him or his wife, Chaya Mushka, and his compiled letters are ubiquitous in Chabad homes. In times of need, some Chabadniks will write a letter to the Rebbe and insert it randomly between the pages of one of the volumes. Whatever Schneerson is writing about on the pages where they placed the letter will provide a clue, they believe, as to how they should address their problem.

Opinion on whether he is the Messiah falls on a continuum. Some within Chabad believe he might be, others believe he will be. And many are content to say they don’t know.

But the movement’s leadership has been eager to formally distance Chabad from the perception that Messianist belief in Schneerson is commonplace in its ranks. In Judaism more broadly, many believe the Messiah will come. But the notion that the Messiah has already arrived is widely considered heresy — and a lot like Christianity.

Told that students at 770 were behind the signs blanketing New York, Rabbi Motti Seligson, spokesperson for Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters, said there was no ban on such beliefs in the yeshiva. But he rejected with disappointment Shpindler’s contention that everyone in Chabad shares them.

“What a shame that this individual is spending his time on speculation that the Rebbe advised against, instead of internalizing the Rebbe’s vision and passion for a world truly transformed,” Seligson said, citing Schneerson’s immense corpus of teachings.

Instead of flyering neighborhoods, Seligson said, a student like Shpindler should be “committing his energies to the Rebbe’s actual directives about how to get there.”

The vast majority of Chabad synagogues in the United States are not associated with the Messianist offshoot. Messianist Chabads are not listed on the Chabad website or discussed in its publications, and Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters won’t send rabbis who espouse those beliefs on shlichut, or official outreach missions. That means the more than 700 Chabad houses on college campuses around the world should not be Messianist, according to Chabad leadership. (One meshichist giveaway is a phrase — “yechi adoneinu” (long live our master) — recited at the end of daily prayer services.)

Nevertheless, yearning and striving for mashiach is a central concern of Chabad, a way of life developed by Schneerson in countless teachings. The Jewish outreach that is Chabad’s signature — free Shabbat meals, street-corner tefillin-wrapping stations — keyed Schneerson’s vision of bringing redemption closer, one mitzvah at a time. (They were also informed by the imperative of ahavat yisrael, or loving fellow Jews.)

‘A global thing’

Feeling the squeeze of rising rent, and inflation, and temperature, New Yorkers might greet the signs skeptically: the Messiah is here? Now?

Shpindler said that while the identity of mashiach is clear, the Messiah — that is, the revival of the dead, the great ingathering of Israel and the reconstruction of the Holy Temple — is a destination we’re still traveling toward.

Among the prerequisites for reaching it, Shpindler says, is a cause the Rebbe sought to advance in his lifetime: the adoption of the seven Noahide commandments by non-Jews, which include prohibitions against cursing God and committing adultery. By using the word “Messiah” rather than moshiach on the signs, and through the mass distribution of business card-sized Noahide explainers in non-Jewish communities, Shpindler is hoping some gentiles will start observing them.

“We want them to be more of a global thing,” he said of the signs.

Of course, Christians picked their Messiah roughly 2,000 years ago. Shpindler says he’s not interested in converting them, but he wouldn’t hate to change a few minds, either.

Not that the signs provide a useful jumping-off point. Shpindler said he regretted that the posters, which one of the other students designed, lacked further instruction. Even without that, though, he felt they were accomplishing something important. 

“There is this concept of just letting people know, getting into their knowledge, mashiach is here — period,” said Shpindler. “And know, this is the man.”

The post Those ‘Messiah Is Here!’ signs popping up in New York? Here’s who’s behind them. appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Just under half of all Democratic senators are seeking the “direct involvement” of the United States in the investigation of the death of a Palestinian journalist who was shot over a month ago while covering an Israeli raid on a West Bank refugee camp.

Twenty-four senators signed a letter sent to President Biden Thursday, three weeks prior to his first scheduled state visit to Israel. It is the largest action yet from U.S. lawmakers seeking an independent resolution to the May 11 killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was an American citizen. Multiple media investigations have independently concluded that she was most likely killed by Israeli soldiers, with The New York Times this week joining the Washington Post, the Associated Press and CNN in reaching the conclusion. 

“We believe that, as a leader in the effort to protect the freedom of the press and the safety of journalists, and given the fact that Ms. Abu Akleh was an American citizen, the U.S. government has an obligation to ensure that a comprehensive, impartial, and open investigation into her shooting death is conducted — one in which all parties can have full confidence in the ultimate findings,” reads the letter, which was spearheaded by Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen.

The letter adds that U.S. intervention is needed because “it is clear that neither of the parties on the ground trust the other to conduct a credible and independent investigation.” The Palestinian Authority has accused the Israeli military of intentionally targeting Abu Akleh, a claim fiercely disputed by Israel; Israel has said it needs the Palestinian Authority to hand over the bullet that killed her in order to complete its investigation.

Jewish senators who signed the letter include progressives Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Brian Schatz of Hawaii. Other notable signatories include Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The letter is also addressed to Jewish Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Jewish Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

The letter follows an earlier bipartisan letter from Jewish Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican Sen. Mitt Romney that also urged the U.S. to play a more active role in an Abu Akleh investigation, as well as two letters from the House: one from 57 House Democrats that called for an FBI investigation and another, bipartisan letter that pushed the Palestinian Authority to hand over the bullet.

Haaretz reported that AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, had distributed talking points intended to squash the latest Senate letter on Abu Akleh. According to AIPAC, the letter “implies both Israeli culpability and inability to conduct an objective, thorough investigation of the incident.”

Abu Akleh’s killing and its aftermath have created an international firestorm and further inflamed already deadly tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli police almost toppled her coffin when they charged mourners who turned her funeral into a protest, and the delayed official Israeli investigation has upset many outside observers.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who recently called for new elections after his coalition in the Knesset dissolved and has hinted he will not run again, told The Times this week that he did not know who fired the bullet that killed Abu Akleh. Bennett said, “What I do know is that Israeli soldiers definitely do not shoot intentionally. Never will Israeli soldiers intentionally target reporters.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

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(New York Jewish Week) — Orly Gottesman began selling gluten-free flour as a labor of love when her then-boyfriend, now-husband Joshua Borenstein was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2007. Over the ensuing decade, she grew from a hobbyist to a skilled baking professional, selling her unique blends to various bakeries and home bakers around the country.

But Gottesman really found her groove in 2018, when the couple were visiting family in New Jersey and decided to take a trip to the Upper West Side. There, near the corner of 82nd Street and Columbus Avenue, they passed a bagel shop for rent.

“I think we should take this,” Borenstein told Gottesman. “You have all these people buying your flour blends and bakeries using your blends. No one can execute the final product the way you can.”

It was then that the idea for the gluten-free and kosher restaurant and bakery Modern Bread & Bagel was born. The eatery opened at 472 Columbus Ave. in February 2019 and now turns out some 2,250 gluten-free bagels every day to rave reviews. Former New York Times restaurant critic Mimi Sheraton once wrote that a good bagel should give your jaw “a Sunday-morning workout” — thanks to an intense chew that’s almost always courtesy of high-gluten flour —  Modern Bread & Bagel’s gluten-free bagels prove there are exceptions to the rule.

In fact, its bagels have been named among the best in the city by no less an authority than Mike Varley, an intrepid New Yorker who recently published the results of a massive bagel tasting project, Everything Is Everything. After sampling and reviewing bagels from 202 shops during epic treks through the five boroughs, Varley placed Modern Bread & Bagel in a tie for third place for all of New York, and ranked it the second-best bagelry within the borough of Manhattan.

“The store experience is wonderful, it’s clean and contemporary,” Varley told the New York Jewish Week about Modern Bread & Bagel. “The staff is warm and welcoming and the bagel itself has a different quality to regular bagels. It is doughy and crusty. The topping composition is fantastic. And the fact that it doesn’t contain gluten makes for a much less heavy experience.”

Gottesman relished the review. “It was a real testament to accomplishing our mission of opening a bagel shop that ‘just so happens to be gluten-free,’” she said. “The bagels are what put us on the map.”

While “gluten-free” has evolved into something of a buzzy health trend — similar to the “fat-free” craze of the 1990s — the need for gluten-free products originates from a very real medical condition: celiac disease, in which the body has an immune response to gluten. When Borenstein was diagnosed it was relatively rare, though awareness of celiac disease has grown markedly since then. According to recent estimates, more than 2 million Americans have the condition.

Back in 2007, however, the celiac diagnosis was devastating to then 20-year-old Borenstein. “Josh told me he was lucky to have met me before all this happened,” Gottesman recalled. Borenstein, said Gottesman, is “a real foodie” whose family owns Chompie’s, a chain of bagel restaurants in Arizona. Having celiac signaled the end of his consumption of any sort of wheat product.

But Gottesman wasn’t ready to give up on Borenstein’s love of bagels. By 2010, the couple were married and living in Paris for Borenstein’s job. Gottesman didn’t speak French and didn’t have a work visa — and therefore had a lot of time on her hands. “I thought, when in Paris, take baking,” she said. Gottesman found an English-speaking patisserie owner and she took baking classes there.

Gottesman was a natural and eventually became the shop owner’s apprentice. After about a year, she decided to enroll in culinary school — landing at the Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts Institute in Sydney, Australia, where the couple relocated, again for Borenstein’s work. The move to Sydney “ended up being a blessing in disguise,” Gottesman said. “The program in Australia was so much more open to me exploring the gluten-free side of baking than was the Paris program.”

By 2014, Gottesman had completed her baking studies and moved to Arizona for a year to develop gluten-free products for Chompie’s. She created a line called Orly the Baker and made gluten-free bagels, challah rolls, rugelach, babka and cookies.

She returned to Australia in 2015 and worked in a commercial bakery, wholesaling a variety of gluten-free items for local bakeries and cafes. At the same time, she developed a line of gluten-free flours, Blends by Orly, designed to be used for a variety of different baking applications. She introduced her line of specialized flours to the market by traveling to the United States regularly to participate in trade shows and cooking demonstrations.

But when the couple stumbled across that for-rent sign in Manhattan, they decided it was time to open their own shop. They both felt that the Upper West Side was the right place to start. “It has a big Jewish customer base and we are dealing with bagels and Jewish food,” Gottesman said. They decided to make Modern Bread & Bagel kosher to further “reflect our values,” she said.

Gottesman’s bagels are made from her Manhattan Blend, which contains the ancient grains millet and sorghum. This particular gluten-free flour variety includes high-protein, gluten-mimicking ingredients, and she adds xanthan gum to the mix to give stretch to the dough.

The amount of water Gottesman uses in her bagel dough is also carefully calibrated. “If there is too much, it becomes fluffy. Too little will make it dry. You need the right balance of water to dough to yeast ratio,” she said. It took Gottesman three years to develop the right proportions.

Gottesman’s efforts paid off, and Modern Bread & Bagel now fills an important niche. Jessica Hanson is a celiac disease advocate who was diagnosed 11 years ago, and she clearly remembers what “regular” bagels taste like. “We are a family that really loves bagels,” she said. “When I was diagnosed with celiac disease I mourned the loss of bagels.”

Hanson, who lives in Woodside, Queens, considers Modern Bread & Bagel “a magical place.” As she told the New York Jewish Week: “My husband eats gluten and he absolutely loves bagels as well. He can’t tell the difference between that and a gluten-containing bagel.”

“People with celiac disease are used to having to ask a million questions about food preparation,” Hanson added. “When you get something that is so specific to family, culture and NYC and you know it is safe to eat, that’s really meaningful.”

For Gottesman, who now lives in Englewood, New Jersey, such accolades represent the fulfillment of a long-held dream. “It was really important to us to have a space that does not stigmatize gluten-free food,” she said. ”There are times that I get really jaded and discouraged. This is a hard business. But then you hear from people that this product is changing their lives. They are so appreciative.”

Just as the gluten-free bagels are a savior to celiac disease sufferers, during the pandemic lockdown the bagels also saved Gottesman’s business. “We became inundated with people asking if we could ship the bagels to them,” she said. “The bagels were the focal point of our business. They set us apart.”

These days, Modern Bread & Bagel sell out of their bagels nearly every day —  thanks to a combination of in-store orders, mail order and orders from her wholesale clients, Black Seed Bagels and Ess-A-Bagel. A second Manhattan Modern Bread & Bagel location opened earlier this month on West 14th Street, and a third location will follow in Woodland Hills, California next month.

“Everyone wants to do something in their lives that is meaningful,” said Gottesman. “The series of events that happened in my life, from meeting Josh to his celiac diagnosis to our travels around the world, culminated in this moment.”

“God,” Gottesman added, “has a plan.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post How this kosher, gluten-free bakery creates some of New York’s tastiest bagels appeared first on The Forward.

There is just one clinic in the state of Alabama providing gender-affirmative medicine for trans youth, and it is jointly run by two pediatric endocrinologists — one doctor who is Muslim, and one who is Jewish.

It has not been easy providing care for trans youth in a deeply conservative (and Christian) state like Alabama, but despite the challenges, these doctors have successfully treated hundreds of patients for gender dysphoria, most of whom were referred to the clinic directly from the psychiatric unit after suicide attempts.

All that changed in early May, when the state criminalized the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in elementary schools, students ages K-12 using a bathroom that does not correspond to their biological sex, and the administration of puberty blockers and hormones “for the purposes of attempting to alter the appearance of or affirm the minor’s perception of their gender” to persons under the age of 19 by medical professionals.

With a stroke of the pen, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey made it a felony for doctors to provide care to trans youth, meaning the providers could face jail time for practicing medicine.

Barely a week later, a federal judge put an injunction on this part of the law, allowing medical providers to prescribe these medical treatments for minors.

I recently spoke to the two doctors about what their work has been like since then, what practicing gender-affirming medicine is like in the Deep South, and the effect bills like these have on trans youth.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What have the last several months been like?

Dr. Morissa Ladinsky: This bill has honestly been years in the making.

What was unprecedented is that this act issued a felony charge for any physicians using evidence-based, guideline-driven standards of care to alleviate gender dysphoria.

Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif: During the one week the law was in effect, Morissa prepared for the court cases and hearings while I filled prescriptions for up to a year’s supply of the estrogen and blockers, and six months of injectable testosterone so that our patients wouldn’t have to do without.

We discussed sending some of our patients to Atlanta or Nashville to ensure they had no interruption with their medications in the long term.

Dr. Morissa Ladinsky: Hussein was working 14-, 15-hour days, making sure each patient had refills set before the law took effect.

Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif: Some patients didn’t show up to clinics, even though we still held them as normal. One family told me that they were afraid to come to the clinic because they felt it would be more traumatic for their kid to come and to hear that our work had been criminalized.

Speaking to families who have concerns about their child’s care is easier than trying to address lawmakers. Families are usually concerned about a particular point, whereas these laws are coming from all directions. Lawmakers will come up with any excuse they can.

Dr. Morissa Ladinsky: This bill in Alabama was not an issue elevated by constituent concerns, and does not address a true threat to public safety. As doctors, we’ve been practicing this medicine for decades, and now we face felony convictions for providing care.

What is it like speaking to families who are apprehensive about what all of this means, or to whom the concept of being trans is new?

Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif: I think parents are very comfortable in general with puberty blockers, but they certainly have reasonable worries about the long-term effects of testosterone or estrogen, that if their child changes their mind, the effects desired now to treat their gender dysphoria may not be desired in future. But I have yet to have a patient experience the desire to “detransition.”

Oftentimes, a family’s hesitation or worry about having a trans child stems more from, “How will my religion, and my congregation, view this?”

How did you each get into this work?

Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif: 25 years ago, I would have families come to me and ask, “Can you test the hormones of my kid? They’re saying they’re a boy or a girl.”

These were always very awkward visits: I would examine the child, and there was nothing pathologically different about them in their sexual organs, but clearly, there was something going on. I would do the test, and tell their parents I don’t find anything wrong.

Until one patient, maybe 13-14 years ago, was referred to me who came out as trans. The girl came with her mother, who was armed with documentation from her daughter’s therapist and the latest medical journal articles on transgender youth. Her child was not yet in puberty, but at the age when it usually begins.

I began learning everything I could. I started her daughter on puberty blockers, and maybe two or three years ago, she had surgery and completed her gender journey.

That trans child brought another and another and another. By 2015, the population of transgender youth I was seeing was growing very fast. In a meeting with the new chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alabama [at] Birmingham, I told him that this population of trans kids that I’m seeing is growing rapidly, and asked him, “Where do I go from here?”

He suggested I start a clinic, and told me he had the perfect person to be my partner … his wife.

Dr. Morissa Ladinsky: I had been a front-line community-based pediatrician in Cincinnati, and I was seeing kids with deep dysphoria. When they would come in for their annual checkups, and we had to examine their sexual organs, they would freeze up completely. I was seeing chronic mental health issues and health conditions that stemmed from anxiety and depression around an issue of gender dysphoria I wasn’t yet aware of.

Then there was a very public suicide of a trans girl, Leelah Alcorn, in Cincinnati in 2014. She died walking in front of a truck on a highway I took every day to work.

Her suicide note was posted online within hours of her death, and it went viral, resonating with kids across the state. I took care of many kids from her area, and when I read her note, I realized that all of the issues I had been seeing in kids had a name — gender dysphoria. I realized we need to do these kids justice.

Leelah died by suicide right as I was getting ready to relocate to Birmingham, and I get a call from Hussein asking if I wanted to set up an interdisciplinary transgender health team. I said, “Oh hell yes.”

Hussein is beloved in this institution — he’s won numerous teaching awards — and through him, I’ve learned how to lead a clinical team. Our clinic’s team now includes us, a pediatric adolescent gynecologist, a psychologist and a chaplain, and most importantly, we have created an environment where each person’s professional opinion is valued equally. That makes the outcome for our patients better when, as their doctors, we have the safety to debate, discuss, teach and learn from each other.

How do your individual backgrounds influence your work?

Dr. Morissa Ladinsky: We are raised as Jews to always be using any advantage we have to work alongside the marginalized among us, and even put ourselves on the line to underscore their wholeness, their health, their ability to enjoy what life has to offer.

Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif: Issues of transgender treatment and management are generally accepted by Muslim scholars. Culturally, it’s still very difficult and taboo, but generally, religious scholars find a way to accept it.

Islamically speaking, being trans is better than being gay if you are trans in a binary way, meaning that you transition to become a trans man or trans woman and fully adopt the gender presentation of the sex you’re transitioning to. For people who identify as nonbinary and not wholly male or female, it is more complicated.

Like most religions, including Judaism, faiths prefer a binary. I have some understanding of Islamic legal thinking, so if I have to, I can stand on it if I am challenged on my work, but it doesn’t really come up.

Both of you are non-Christians practicing gender-affirming medicine in a majority Christian population. What is that like?

Dr. Morissa Ladinsky: I didn’t realize the depth of the differences between Judaism and Islam versus Christianity until I moved to Alabama.

Here in the deep, deep South, the “Bible Belt” term really conveys the essence of the Christian belief system: that the words on that page are the words of God, not mutable, changeable or interpretable in any other way.

This is a very foreign space for both of us, whose traditions share a sustained textual inquiry, and it’s very painful to witness sometimes. It makes our job harder working with families around the gender journey, as they’re navigating a loss of hope that they cannot realize who they are without losing their faith community.

It’s not a surprise that divisive cultural wedges take root in conservative, Republican, religiously homogeneous states where the words on the page matter in such a literal way.

Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif: We come from traditions with pretty sophisticated mechanisms of interpretation that have lasted for thousands of years. So the challenge that we may deal with in relatively young churches is the acceptance of the literal Bible, but without the depth of history of interpretation to navigate it.

Dr. Morissa Ladinsky: Here in the South, the literal nature of the Christian Bible affects everything, including how families interact. If you disagree or behave in such a way (i.e., being gay or trans), you’re going to have to make sure it’s hidden and not seen by others in your faith community.

This was really jarring for me, and I realized what a big deal it is to grow up as a Jew, where the words on the page of the Torah are derived from an oral tradition and we have centuries of practice in interpreting and aligning its teachings with modern society.

Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif: Morissa and I are at a disadvantage because we’re not Christian and we are working with a majority Christian population. There is a diversity of thought among Christians that we have to educate ourselves on, and that’s where our chaplains come in. They understand more where the various Christian interpretations are coming from on trans people, so if they don’t have the answer for one of our patient’s families, they can find someone to help us and reach the answer.

I have to accept my limitations. I need to respect where they come from and not argue too much. I don’t have the right to argue in a religion that I don’t belong to.

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