Oberlin College Finally To Return Drawing Stolen By Nazis To Heirs Of Jewish Holocaust Victim, After 17-Year Refusal
This is an update to our October 1, 2023, exclusive report, Oberlin College’s 17-Year Refusal To Return Artwork Stolen By The Nazis From A Jewish Holocaust Victim.Mark Regev: Addressing the Nazi skeleton in Ireland's closet
See that post for full details on a drawing, Girl With Black Hair, by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, stolen by the Nazis from Fritz Grünbaum, a prominent Jewish art collector and cabaret artist, who was forced under duress to sign over rights to his collection as part of the Nazi confiscation of Jewish property, while interned at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where he died in 1941. The Grünbaum heirs tried in vain for 17 years to get Oberlin College to return the drawing, including multiple demands and a civil lawsuit. But it was a recent criminal seizure warrant out of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and attendant bad publicity that appears to have swayed Oberlin College finally to give up the stolen property.
ArtNews is reporting that a settlement agreement was signed and the Girl With Black Hair will be returned:
The Allen Memorial Art Museum at Ohio’s Oberlin College and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh will voluntarily return works by Egon Schiele to the family of Fritz Grünbaum after the Manhattan District Attorney’s office issued warrants for them last month….
The two stipulations about the returned works were signed by Carnegie Museums president and CEO Steven Knapp as well as Oberlin College vice president, general counsel, and secretary Matt Lahey.
Emails to plaintiffs’ counsel and Oberlin College’s media relations about the settlement and dismissal have not been returned as of this writing.
We will update this post as more information becomes available.
Most Israelis did not notice that last month Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin visited Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan. Had they paid some attention, they could have seen Martin playing the good global citizen, doing his part to promote peace and justice in the Middle East. If they looked deeper still, they may have been struck by Martin’s refusal to address the Nazi skeleton in Dublin’s closet.Variety magazine to hold star-studded Hollywood summit on antisemitism
Ireland’s foreign minister received a red-carpet welcome in Israel. In addition to his counterpart Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, Martin was received by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog – whose grandfather, Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, was Ireland’s chief rabbi.
Martin’s Arab hosts were similarly gracious: in Ramallah, he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and in Amman with King Abdullah II.
Martin leads Fianna Fáil, the political party that dominated Irish politics for most of the 20th century. Above being foreign minister, Martin serves as deputy prime minister (Tánaiste). Until December 2022, he was Ireland’s prime minister (Taoiseach), but relinquished the post to Fine Gael Party head Leo Varadkar as part of the coalition agreement between them.
Possibly, it is Martin’s leadership of Fianna Fáil that has made it especially difficult for him to honestly confront his country’s shocking behavior at the end of World War II.
Sympathy for the devil
For almost five decades, Eamon de Valera was Ireland’s preeminent politician. He was the Irish Republic’s founding father, serving (nonconsecutively) as head of government for some quarter-century and as head of state for an additional 14 years. De Valera established and ruled supreme over Fianna Fáil.
On May 2, 1945, Irish newspapers carried headlines with the news of Hitler’s suicide. On that same day, and despite advice to the contrary from his senior foreign policy advisers, prime minister de Valera personally visited Germany’s legation in Dublin. There he expressed Ireland’s condolences on the passing of the Führer to Eduard Hempel, the Nazi regime’s senior diplomatic representative.
By then, the horrors of the Holocaust were widely known; the Nazi death camps having been liberated one after another by the advancing Allied armies.
The first major extermination factory liberated by the Red Army was Majdanek, on the night of July 22-23, 1944. The Soviets reached Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest site of industrial mass-murder on January 27, 1945. American forces entered Buchenwald on April 11 and Dachau on April 29. The British freed Bergen-Belsen on April 15.
As these liberations received press coverage worldwide, de Valera could not claim he was unaware of the genocide perpetrated against the Jews. Nonetheless, he chose to honor Hitler, knowing that he was not obliged to do so – later, he would admit that he “could have had a diplomatic illness” that would have prevented him from signing the German condolence book.
If de Valera erroneously believed that Ireland’s neutrality in World War II necessitated an official visit of commiseration, he could have sent a low-level government representative. Instead, he went himself, asserting: “I certainly was not going to add to his [Hempel’s] humiliation in the hour of defeat.”
Publicly paying respects to the Nazi leader did not prove a disqualification from high office in postwar Ireland. De Valera continued to serve as prime minister and leader of the opposition, going on to be elected president in 1959.
Variety magazine is holding a star-studded Hollywood summit focused on addressing antisemitism through “inclusive storytelling, thought leadership and advocacy.”
Actor, producer and SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher will deliver an opening keynote address at the daylong event on Oct. 18. Subsequent panel discussions will cover topics ranging from the history of Jews in Hollywood to combating antisemitism through comedy and social media.
“The reason we decided to pursue something of this magnitude and scale is simple, yet vital and urgent,” Claudia Eller, Variety’s chief production officer, said in a statement on Thursday. “We wanted to encourage candid discussions about antisemitism, its disgraceful proliferation in the modern era, and how to encourage more thoughtful and accurate representation throughout the industry. Our hope for the day is to bring people together to make change happen.”
One panel is titled “The State of Antisemitism” and features prominent TV producers. Another, led by film historian Neal Gabler and “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner, will tackle the industry’s Jewish history and antisemitism during its early years. Tiffany Haddish, Ike Barinholtz, Alex Edelman and Marc Maron will participate in another panel on how to use comedy to open up discourse on contemporary antisemitism. Julianna Margulies will discuss her own personal experiences of antisemitism.
Variety will also publish a series of online essays in conjunction with the event, including writings by Maron, Kiss frontman Gene Simmons, Beanie Feldstein, Mayim Bialik, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and more.
Jpost Editorial: We thank them for coming to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles
Some 4,000 Christian pilgrims from 90 countries – including Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Iran, Indonesia, Fiji, and North Korea – participated in Wednesday’s March of the Nations through downtown Jerusalem. Dressed in their countries’ colors, they sang, danced, and handed out flags and souvenirs to the thousands of Israelis and tourists who lined the streets for the 68th annual Jerusalem Parade.Jonathan Tobin: The world notices when Jews behave badly
At a time when antisemitism and anti-Israel prejudice have again surfaced around the world, their support for Israel should not be taken for granted, and we thank them for coming here to celebrate what they call the Feast of the Tabernacles, hosted by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ).
“We were never received so warmly by the Israelis watching the Jerusalem March. And the small incidents against Christians in recent days and weeks have zero chance of affecting the generational shift towards Christian love and support for Israel and the Jewish people in our day,” David Parsons, ICEJ’s vice president and senior international spokesman told The Jerusalem Post. “We truly appreciate being able to share in the joy of this unique biblical festival with our Jewish friends and will not be deterred from loving and standing with Israel.”
Following several spitting incidents by Jewish extremists against Christians, ICEJ voiced its thanks to Israeli leaders and the country’s chief rabbis for “their strong statements of support for religious freedom in this country and their disapproval of recent acts meant to humiliate or harm Christians.”
“We must be the first to admit there is a much longer, painful history of Christian hostility towards the Jewish people. But thankfully, there has been a sea change in Christian attitudes concerning the nation and people of Israel in our day,” ICEJ added.
Feast kicked off on the shores of the Sea of Galilee
The ICEJ’s eight-day Feast kicked off on the shores of the Sea of Galilee last weekend, with two nights of worship concerts beside the scenic harbor at Ein Gev, then moved up to Jerusalem for six days of events, whose highlights were the colorful “Roll Call of the Nations” at the Jerusalem Pais Arena on Sunday, Israeli Guest Night on Tuesday, and the popular Jerusalem March on Wednesday. Israeli Guest Night featured a variety of musical performances for what was termed “an evening of solidarity with our Israeli friends.” IDF military hero Avigdor Kahalani delivered a greeting to mark the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, and the gathering was also addressed by Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel and ICEJ President Dr. Jürgen Bühler.
Sadly, the appetite for stories of Jewish misbehavior is also always proportional to the intensity of antisemitism, such as the present, when there is a rising tide of Jew-hatred around the globe. That is primarily manifested in efforts to delegitimize the one Jewish state on the planet. Thus, it is a given that anything that makes Jews appear in a bad light or abusing their majority status in their own homeland will be highlighted by a media culture that is already predisposed to attack Israel.Melanie Phillips: Spitting in God’s eye
To these unfortunate factors, we must now add another motive for giving the spitting incidents more attention than they might otherwise deserve: the secular-religious divide.
The protest movement against the Israeli government’s judicial reform is driven more by resentment on the part of the secular liberal sector of Israeli society towards the religious than any real concerns about the future of “democracy.” Given the absurdity and oppressive nature of the official Orthodox rabbinate that has control of life-cycle events and the refusal of the haredim to serve in the military or take part in the economy, some of that resentment is justified. But as the events of the last week showed, in which the city of Tel Aviv has sought to effectively forbid public prayer services by Orthodox Jews and secular activists have assaulted and disrupted such services, this anti-religious spirit is one motivated primarily by intolerance for the religious than anything else.
That is why the left-wing press in Israel, such as Haaretz and Times of Israel, which have carried the water for a movement that is rooted in the desire of the secular liberal elites to defend their last bastion of unaccountable power—Israel’s Supreme Court—have been so quick to treat the spitting incidents as more evidence of the inherent badness of their religious and nationalist political foes.
I don’t sympathize with those on the Israeli right who pointed out that more Israelis were arrested for spitting at Christians than for attacking religious Jews who had the temerity to pray in public. The spitters are despicable and deserve whatever is coming to them. But those who consider the spitters to justify a new variant of politics that can be fairly described as anti-Judaism are no better than the rabbis they condemn.
In a world where the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs in China is ignored and anti-Jewish terrorism is considered so commonplace as to hardly rate a mention in the press, let’s not pretend that this story is anything more than a lamentable curiosity. The desire to hype it out of all proportion to its actual importance is every bit as disgusting as the act itself.
However, wrote Schneider, in a recent online interview, the ICEJ’s president Dr. Juergen Buehler spoke approvingly of a report on the spread of messianism in Israel: “That is an exciting report. There is a new openness even in Israel.”
Schneider stated, “It cannot be ruled out that these well-publicized events and the massive appropriation by evangelical Christians of Jewish traditions have contributed to the recent uptick in incidents of Jews targeting Christian clergy in Jerusalem and demands by fringe Jewish elements to pray at the Stella Maris Monastery—where the tomb of Prophet Elisha is believed to be located—which have engendered general outrage and the intervention of President Isaac Herzog and Chief of Police Yaakov ‘Kobi’ Shabtai.”
In other words, while the Israeli authorities have been ignoring the increase in Christian missionary aggression—whether through naivete, sloppiness or fear of provoking a diplomatic rupture with the Christian world—religious Jews protesting it have been getting it in the neck.
Yet on Wednesday, thousands of Jews of all stripes came out to welcome the annual march through Jerusalem of Christians from around 80 nations—the pinnacle of the ICEJ’s week-long Feast of Tabernacles.
Ultra-Orthodox spectators, among others, expressed their delight that so many from around the world had come to Israel.
Schneider would say these cheering crowds failed to perceive the darker agenda behind the march. Yet it is also undeniable that Christian Zionists are among the most passionate supporters of Israel in the world, and are largely responsible for U.S. support for the Jewish state.
Anti-Christian hooliganism by Jews should be condemned and dealt with. But if the delicate balance between faiths in Israel is to be maintained, Christian missionaries must be pulled back, too.
Once more for all the slow kids.
— Dumisani Washington (@DumisaniTemsgen) October 6, 2023
If the only time you have anything to say about how Christians are treated is when Israeli Jews are involved, then you couldn't care less about how Christians are treated (or with religious freedom).
You just have a problem with Jews.
Roger Waters mocked Jew murdered by Nazis, new CAA antisemitism doc
After Campaign Against Antisemitism’s first documentary on Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters, entitled The Dark Side of Roger Waters, the organization has released a second documentary on X Friday after further evidence came to light against Waters.CAA releases Roger Waters’ “Dirty k ” e-mail and interviews with former associates in new exposé documentary
The second documentary, entitled Another Brick in the Wall, features new evidence against Waters as more witnesses have begun speaking out.If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands who watched The Dark Side of Roger Waters, you’ll want to watch the follow-up: Another Brick in the Wall.
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) October 6, 2023
Then find out more at https://t.co/7F6c6M3nk1 pic.twitter.com/yCTun4sisL
Findings of the new documentary
The new documentary, featuring lighting designer Marc Brickman, describes how Waters mocked Brickman’s dead grandmother who was murdered by Nazis. Waters had put on a façade of an old ‘babushka’ type, with offensive accentuations. After the impression was complete, Waters would tell Brickman “Now you’ve met your grandmother, how do you feel now?”
The second documentary has also provided more insight and context into the findings of the first. In the first documentary, CAA found emails proving that Waters had wanted to write “dirty k***” on his famed pig. The singer had also wanted the pig to release confetti in the shape of swastikas, stars of David and dollar symbols.
The second documentary found that the only reason the confetti did not become a reality, is because Waters couldn’t find a confetti maker willing to produce his desired product.
Brickman, who was copied into the emails where Waters described his demands, spoke of his concerns with Waters’ manager at the time. The manager had allegedly responded to Brickman’s concerns by saying that “We don’t think of you that way…as a k***.”
Brickman also described how the song “Tear down the wall” was meant to have footage of an evil looking Hassidic Jew in a playground, surrounding by rubble. The footage was also meant to include “a beautiful angelic Palestinian girl,” Brickman explained.
Brickman said that he asked Waters to explain what it meant, which Waters declined to answer. Five days later, Brickman left.
Campaign Against Antisemitism has today released a documentary which showcases disturbing e-mails that were gathered during an investigation into allegations of antisemitism by rockstar Roger Waters, as well as interviews with former associates of the Pink Floyd frontman.Part 1: The Dark Side of Roger Waters
Mr Waters’ views on Jews have long been of concern to the Jewish community, with a number of well-documented controversies.
Mr Waters has always insisted that he is not an antisemite, but our investigation has revealed e-mails from Mr Waters in which he proposed writing “Dirty k***” on the inflatable pig habitually floated above his concerts and suggested “bombing” audiences with confetti in the shape of swastikas, Stars of David, dollar signs and other symbols.
The documentary also includes interviews with Norbert Statchel, Mr Waters’ former saxophonist, and legendary music producer Bob Ezrin, who produced The Wall, as well as hits for talent from U2 to Kiss to Taylor Swift.
Among various incidents, Mr Stachel says that Mr Waters lost his temper over vegetarian food at a restaurant and demanded that waiters “Take away the Jew food”, that Mr Waters mocked Mr Statchel’s grandmother who was murdered in the Holocaust, and that a colleague warned him not to react if he wanted to keep his job.
Mr Ezrin recounts an incident in which Mr Waters sung him an impromptu ditty about then agent Bryan Morrison, the last couplet of which ended with words to the effect of “Cos Morri is a f***ing Jew”.
The full documentary can be viewed at antisemitism.org/rogerwaters/.
Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, said: “Roger Waters has repeatedly used his enormous platform to bait Jews, but he always claims that he is not antisemitic. We believed that there was further evidence out there to the contrary, and the release of The Dark Side of Roger Waters now puts the evidence we obtained in the hands of the public.
“It is hard to imagine a rockstar emblazoning the N-word above their concerts, but Mr Waters demanded that his crew do exactly that with the K-word. Not only that, but he seems to have spent time humiliating and harassing his Jewish staff.
“One cannot help but watch this film and wonder what kind of person uses their power to this effect. Is Roger Waters an antisemite? Now people can make up their own minds.”
Part 2: Another Brick in the Wall
Another former Roger Waters associate speaks to CAA, as we prepare for rally outside Palladium concert
Following the release of Campaign Against Antisemitism’s documentary last week showcasing disturbing e-mails and allegations relating to the musician Roger Waters, another former associate, appalled by the testimony in the documentary, has now come forward to cast further light on Mr Waters’ conduct.
In this new interview, lighting director Marc Brickman, who has worked with music legends from Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen to Carol King and Duke Ellington, speaks out.
He explains the conversations around the “dirty k*ke” e-mail and how he demanded to know why, if the purpose was to confront hateful phrases, it was only a racist epithet that targets Jews that was due to be included on the pig and no other offensive terms.
He also reveals that the reason that the swastika confetti idea never materialised was only because nobody would make it, and that he was called out by Mr Waters for expressing his reservations.
These incidents and others that he recounts – including the proposed inclusion of an image of “a menacing Hasidic Jewish boy” alongside “an angelic Palestinian girl” – drew Mr Brickman to the conclusion that Mr Waters’ “definition of antisemitism is totally different than anyone else’s”.
Regarding venues, such as the London Palladium, that host Mr Waters, Mr Brickman says: “They don’t care; all they care about is their bottom line.”
Mr Waters’ views on Jews have long been of concern to the Jewish community, with a number of well-documented controversies.
Mr Waters is playing at the London Palladium on Sunday 8th and Monday 9th October.
Aren't we ever so blessed to have Roger Waters to warn us about those Old Testament mass murderers of our days, who have no real connection with Israel anyway? pic.twitter.com/9m96P85dmf
— habibi (@habibi_uk) October 5, 2023
2021. Roger Waters on the Kremlin propaganda channel RT, eager purveyor of Moscow's worst lies.
— habibi (@habibi_uk) October 5, 2023
It is "the only alternative to mainstream media" in the US. It offers "the most balanced look at international politics that I can find".
The heart of darkness for the 21st Century. pic.twitter.com/asGFsPY9vw
Israelis have got their Judaism all wrong, you see. You know, that Talmud thing.
— habibi (@habibi_uk) October 6, 2023
They're out to murder "all the Arabs" and "they'll probably get around to the Christians as well".
An absolutely revolting racist whose career should end in nothing but shame. 2/2 pic.twitter.com/BEJSHHYACe
Rally planned at London theater ahead of Roger Waters’s performance
Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd musician who has long been accused of being antisemitic, is slated to perform on Oct. 8 and Oct. 9 at the London Palladium, owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
More than 4,750 people signed a petition, which notes that Waters “has a long history of baiting Jews.” The petition called on the English composer and musical theater producer who owns the venue and the organizer, Live Nation, to cancel the concerts, in which Waters is scheduled to perform his new version of “The Dark Side of the Moon.”
Both concerts—the first of which is scheduled for the holiday of Simchat Torah—remain advertised on the venue’s website.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism, which released a 37-minute documentary about Waters, is organizing an Oct. 9 protest outside the Palladium.
The musician “has repeatedly used his enormous platform to bait Jews, but he always claims that he is not antisemitic,” stated Gideon Falter, CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
So, we decided to take Roger Waters on tour. pic.twitter.com/SaUe7o2mh8
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) October 4, 2023
Cary Nelson: A new stage in the degradation of the American University
The members of the Alliance for Academic Freedom Executive Committee – Cary Nelson (Chair), Susana Cavallo, David Greenberg, Rebecca Lesses, Jeffry Mallow, Stan Nadel – explore the botched launch of The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionismas the latest instance of organised anti-Zionism in the academy. ‘Founded on the rock of anti-Zionist animus,’ and with ‘no other mission or reason for existence,’ the authors identify a project intent on demonising and damaging the Jewish State and on stifling truly free academic expression.
A new purportedly academic enterprise – The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism – on 21 September announced an October 2023 conference with a very explicit political agenda.[1] The event’s two days were to be split between two campuses, New York University and the University of California Santa Cruz, so as to help people on the two coasts attend at least one day in person and organise political action in their respective regions.
NYU and UCSC have both since withdrawn permission for the conference to be physically held on their respective campuses. UCSC distanced itself from the events on 5 September, then, as criticism intensified, issued a revised and more pointed statement on 8 September, declaring ‘at no point in time has UC Santa Cruz endorsed the upcoming conference’. A couple of sponsors dropped out, but one faculty member, Judith Butler, joined the ICSZ Advisory Board despite the debacle.
The organisers are now left with the rather odd formulation that the conference will be held in ‘the intellectual space’ of UCSC and NYU. That could arguably be anywhere or nowhere on earth. The ICSZ’s premier announcement has been a public relations disaster.
ACADEMIC ANTI-ZIONISM AND ACADEMIC NORMS
Yet the whole incident has in fact said a great deal about organised anti-Zionism in the academy, its attraction to antisemitic tropes, and the extreme difficulty of squaring unrelenting anti-Zionism with the norms of academic research and academic freedom. As a result we now have clear evidence that uncompromising statements about academic anti-Zionist goals reveal an unbridgeable chasm between those goals and the norms of the academy. The future of the ICSZ is likely in doubt, but it is important to learn what we can from these unfolding events.
The conference title, ‘Battling the “IHRA definition”: Theory & Activism,’ actually only hinted at its purpose. The conference was to be the opening salvo in a broad war against the Jewish state. The ICSZ is designed to give that war a new level of pseudo-academic respectability and prestige.
With immense relief, I would like to share some huge news with my incredible friends and supporters:
— CUNY PROF (@CUNY_Prof) October 6, 2023
Nearly one year ago --and to my utter shock-- CUNY placed me under investigation for having the temerity to file an antisemitism complaint that, in small part, connected to BDS… pic.twitter.com/piMk3szSbh
Ted Deutch: Combating antisemitism on college campuses like UPenn
On the Friday before Yom Kippur, I had the privilege of joining hundreds of Jewish University of Pennsylvania students for a Unity Shabbat. Organized in the wake of an attack on Penn Hillel and ahead of a conference featuring well-known antisemitic speakers, we gathered to light candles, sing, and celebrate Shabbat.Ritchie Torres to UPenn: “Stop Sponsoring Events That Normalize Known Antisemites”
During this holiest time on the Jewish calendar, rather than preparing for the upcoming Yom Kippur fast, this diverse and strong Jewish community was instead focused on fighting antisemitism, preserving a welcoming and safe environment for every Jewish student on campus, and, most importantly, being proudly Jewish.
In the lead-up to last month’s Palestine Writes event, many of Penn’s Jewish students voiced grave concerns about invited speakers with long, established histories of spewing antisemitic hate against Jews and Israel. In raising these concerns with University officials, the students made clear that while they acknowledged the event’s stated goals of celebrating Palestinian arts and culture, it was very upsetting that the organizers chose to provide a platform for speakers with known histories of peddling antisemitism. While University officials – after urging from Jewish student leaders – reaffirmed their commitment to fighting antisemitism, the inclusion of these speakers still sent a chilling message to the campus’ Jewish community.
For college students, campus is not just the center of their academic experience, it is also their home. While campuses should, of course, be places where principles of freedom of speech are honored, universities must speak out forcefully when hate descends on campus. University leadership must make clear that they do not condone any form of hate speech or bigotry, nor do they welcome it on campus. A toxic atmosphere for Jewish students can quickly escalate, as we saw just a day before the Palestine Writes event was set to begin, when someone walked into Penn Hillel shouting antisemitic hate and violently ransacking the lobby.
What's the solution?
So, what’s the solution? What did I tell the parents of Jewish students and Penn alumni?
Our best way forward is to empower and support Jewish students. It is their voices and perspectives that are the most powerful in responding to antisemitism on their campus and among their peers.
It is our duty to make sure that the leadership at Penn – and on campuses across the country – fosters an environment that ensures Jewish students’ safety and allows Jewish life to thrive. Simply providing resources isn’t enough. In fact, some of the students at Penn shared that while the university has tremendous resources available for Jewish students, Jewish students are still sometimes afraid to share their connection to Israel in class. Several said that they had been subjected to antisemitic stereotypes or taunts.
Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) told the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) to “stop sponsoring events that normalize known antisemites” after the university announced that they would be reviewing their policies on outside groups hosting events on campus.
Torres was responding to a Tuesday article from The Philadelphia Inquirer stating that the university hasn’t provided any specifics about the policy review, other than that the university will still allow controversial speakers to come to campus and that the university will also be implementing antisemitism awareness training. The university’s announcement came after the Palestine Writes Literature Festival was hosted on their campus from September 22-24 featuring various speakers that have been criticized as being antisemitic.
“Stop sponsoring events that normalize known antisemites like Roger Waters who, only a few months ago, wore a Nazi uniform at a concert in Berlin,” Torres wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Torres is referencing Waters donning a Nazi-like uniform, an act that the former Pink Floyd frontman has claimed was a statement against fascism.
Torres added: “The appeasement of antisemitism on college campuses is a national scandal. Shame on all the college and university administrators who have chosen cowardice, silence, and expedience in the face of flagrant Jew-hatred. All of you should be held to account for your complicity.”
The university did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment.
UPenn Board of Trustees President Scott Bok told the Inquirer regarding the university’s policy review, “Neither our board nor university leadership want to be in the business of vetting and approving each of the few thousand of speakers who are invited by faculty or student groups to speak on our campus each year. That wouldn’t be appropriate. But our president has indicated that the university will look at some administrative processes to be better aware of who is coming to campus, particularly for large-scale events.”
The university has previously said in a statement that they acknowledge that “many have raised deep concerns about several speakers who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people. We unequivocally — and emphatically — condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values. As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values.”
Does @RiceUniversity endorse blatant antisemitism?
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) October 6, 2023
It’s been over a week since Rice PRIDE went public with its decision to cut ties with Houston Hillel — and still no comment from Rice’s administration. Meanwhile, @RiceU_DEI liked the announcement by Rice PRIDE… pic.twitter.com/YALcKyHw1x
Florida senator cautions campus president prior to BDS conference
Rhea Law, president of the University of South Florida in Tampa, received a letter from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) warning about potential chaos prior to an anti-Zionist event on campus at the end of the month.
The Tampa Bay BDS Conference is scheduled for Oct. 27, organized by Students for Socialism and Students for Justice in Palestine. It is being billed as an inaugural event.
“I was proud to lead an effort as governor to implement Florida’s anti-BDS law, which prohibits public entities from entering into contracts with companies that boycott Israel to show the world that Florida does not support those who boycott Israel,” Scott wrote to Law.
In his letter, the senator cited the recent “Palestine Writes” literary festival that took place at the University of Pennsylvania during the last weekend of September and pointed out vandalism that occurred at the school’s Hillel before the event.
He wrote, “This is not the first time that anti-Israel events held on college campuses have led to antisemitic attacks and violence.”
Scott also posted on X, presenting his letter, that “I will ALWAYS stand with our nation’s great Jewish community and NEVER support those who boycott Israel.”
Any organization that tries to attack me by beginning a sentence with “As Palestinian human rights defender Omar Barghouti recently put it …”, is a badge of honor. Barghouti is an unhinged racist and antisemite, as are IJV. He also openly seeks the destruction of the State of… https://t.co/yErFxnRI3p
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 6, 2023
Canada. How have you helped Nazis escape justice? Show the world.
— The Mossad: Satirical, Yet Awesome (@TheMossadIL) October 5, 2023
Petitioning the Government of Canada to Fully Unseal Its Secret Post-Holocaust Records - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/TAuAer4uWB via @Change
Noah Rothman: Marjorie Taylor Greene Locks Arms with the Anti-American Left
Political realignments like the one Americans have witnessed over much of the last decade can be disorienting. But “disorienting” is too soft a word to describe Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rudderless, impulsive embrace of the odiously undiscerning and only nominally pacifist organization Code Pink.Labour Scots by-election winner quit party in protest at Corbyn antisemitism failureIn all likelihood, Greene didn’t devote much thought to the course to which she committed herself. Code Pink opposes Western support for Ukraine’s effort to prevent Russia from conquering and subjugating its people. Greene does, too. Thus, an alliance of convenience was born. But had the congresswoman or her staff dedicated even a moment’s consideration to the implications that accompany their association with Code Pink, they might have thought twice.The war in Ukraine must END!
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) October 4, 2023
Today, I met brave @codepink activists who protested for peace in Bernie Sanders’ office. He had 11 of them arrested!
Peace & free speech shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
We don’t agree on most things, but we do agree Congress should STOP fueling the… pic.twitter.com/uFzenFyMNn
Code Pink is not an anti-war group. It is an anti-Western group — specifically, an anti-American group. Indeed, it’s hard to find an anti-American regime for which the organization won’t go to bat, irrespective of that regime’s commitment to nonaggression.
Its members defended the brutal, abusive, antidemocratic regime of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro when it faced real and legitimate pressure from opposition leader Juan Guaidó, whose shadow presidency the U.S. backed after Guaidó staked a legally valid claim to the presidency. The organization has lent credence to Maduro’s narratives, backed Caracas’s nationalization of U.S.-based corporate property, and looked past the regime’s violent suppression of pro-democracy protests.
Code Pink’s founder, Medea Benjamin, beamed with pride over the role she played in arguing Iran’s case against the world — in particular, against Israel and the United States. The Iranian press was similarly effusive in its praise for Benjamin and her organization. In 2019, the mullahs’ state-run media outlets cited Benjamin’s arguments to justify Iran’s aggressive actions. After all, “the U.S. has military bases around Iran, it is Iran’s right to upgrade its defense capability,” Tehran’s propagandists asserted. What’s more, according to Benjamin, “the U.S. government was not allowed to criticize the Zionists in response to a question about the unequivocal support of the U.S. government for the Zionist regime.” Benjamin allowed herself to be used as a prop by a regime that murders gays and lesbians, oppresses women, and kills American servicemen. And she’s proud of that.
“China is not our enemy,” declared the Code Pink protesters who disrupted a congressional hearing on the threat to U.S. interests posed by Beijing earlier this year. That is not a slogan some random Bernie Sanders voters came up with in a basement; it is an institutional dictum. Code Pink’s organizational viewpoint is that, to the extent that the U.S. and the People’s Republic are engaged in a conflict at all, it is America’s fault. “From sanctions to military expansion, the US is heading towards a dangerous confrontation with China,” the organization insists. “The US believes they can win a nuclear war against China and is preparing for war.” Beijing’s mouthpieces at Xinhua couldn’t have said it any better.
A teacher who secured an impressive victory for Labour in a by-election in Scotland has told how he quit the party under Jeremy Corbyn over his failure on antisemitism because “it became difficult to look my Jewish friends in the eye.”
Michael Shanks was confirmed as the new MP in Rutherglen and Hamilton West after taking the seat in Scotland’s first ever recall by-election from the SNP in a landmark victory for Keir Starmer’s party.
He scored a resounding victory with a majority of 9,446 over the SNP candidate, after gaining over 17000 votes on a 37.1% turnout.
The seat had previously been held by Margaret Ferrier but she was ejected by the SNP after it emerged she had visited local businesses while awaiting the result of a coronavirus test and travelled by train from the Commons back to Scotland after testing positive.
Shanks was announced as Labour’s candidate despite the fact that he had quit the party in 2019, citing Corbyn’s failure both on antisemitism and over Brexit, rejoining again one year later when Starmer became leader.
Opening up on his reason for quitting, he revealed:”I’ve spent years working with different faith groups, particularly around Christian and Jewish relations.
“I know a lot of Jewish people and they were genuinely scared and hurt by the culture that had built up and that wasn’t being tackled by the leadership (under Corbyn).
“It was a deeply personal decision, I found that I found it difficult to look people in the eye who were Jewish and who genuinely couldn’t understand why I would remain in the party.
“It was that the party leadership at the highest levels weren’t tackling it. I took a personal decision to leave, which was incredibly difficult to do.”
Ken Loach, hiding in plain sight for years on end.
— habibi (@habibi_uk) October 5, 2023
Here he is comparing the Israeli ambassador to Goebells in 2011. Yes, really.
The "Palestine Solidarity Campaign" crowd loves it. pic.twitter.com/yLxMUkmwOC
This is the original picture.
— RedBrasco - RedLehi (@redbrasco) October 5, 2023
Again you have been caught lying. pic.twitter.com/oNzH2KJXsd
This makes sense. As we know, Jews are the only minority that are acceptable to blame for causing their own hatred ❤️🇵🇸💪🏽🔥 https://t.co/qZnZH80Zuy
— Rabbi Linda Goldstein (🇵🇸🔥I/P Commentary) (@realrabbilinda) October 6, 2023
When J*ws such as QUNT Zach offer justification for hating other J*ws wherever they live around the globe, it
— Qunts News Network (@QuntsNews) October 6, 2023
makes our job so much easier.
CAUSE: Isr*el is a thing.
EFFECT: That J*w who lives on the outskirts of Yerevan deserved that kicking.
🇵🇸✌🏾 pic.twitter.com/jXISM9T56y
Nabil Jibawi is a pharmacy technician in the Chicago area. He says, “‘Israelis’ and white people are the only people with no culture.” So, he concludes, “Basically, f**k israel, f**k zionists. And free Palestine .” https://t.co/aboCgZ0813 pic.twitter.com/FEwPWmOC9W
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) October 6, 2023
How does Israel suffer from increased dominance of Reuters, AP?
If it is that difficult to fix wire service articles with unprofessional errors, imagine the challenge of getting corrections in articles plagued by anti-Israel bias.Jews account for 17% of religious hate crime victims despite making up 0.5% of the population
When Henriette Chacar started writing for Reuters in January of 2022, HonestReporting revealed her alarming history of spreading misinformation about Israel, including accusing the country of “blatant and systemic racism.”
Chacar defended the Palestinian Authority’s “pay for slay” program that provides stipends to convicted terrorists and their families, endorsed the so-called right of return of millions of Arabs into Israel, and called the Israeli security agency the “S**t Bet.”
Eight months ago, The Jewish Chronicle published internal emails in which Chacar asked then-Reuters Jerusalem bureau editor-in-charge Jeffrey Heller: “Can we conclusively say that Palestinians have mostly targeted civilians?”
“Many Israelis are either in active or reserve duty, and with the prime minister encouraging citizens to carry their guns, the line between civilians and combatants is quite blurred, so I do think it’s a tricky thing to highlight,” she wrote.
Heller replied: “This line of thinking is outrageous, and I will be raising it with our superiors.” But Chacar continues in her job as a Reuters correspondent in the Jerusalem bureau to this day.
That bureau has gone through recent structural changes that have made it less independent and more reliant on decisions made by its Gulf-based Middle East team, especially when it comes to multimedia coverage.
It’s no wonder that last month, when Reuters’ official podcast analyzed “the legacy of the Oslo Accords,” marking the 30-year anniversary of their signing, only Israel was blamed for their demise.
“Cheers from the White House lawn in 1993 as Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shake hands,” the podcast said. “But immediate protests [broke out] back home and Rabin – who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat in 1994 – was assassinated the following year by a far-Right Jewish Israeli opposed to the deal.”
There was not one word about the thousands of Israelis who were killed during and after the Oslo process by Palestinian terrorists, including more than 100 in March 2002 alone, when there were almost daily attacks and suicide bombings in Israeli cities. There was no mention of the many subsequent Israeli offers to the Palestinians nor of their leader Arafat masterminding the Second Intifada.
The AP has not done much better lately with its historical backgrounders. In a reference to the 1972 Munich Olympic attacks in its “on this date” history feature last month, AP lumped together the 11 Israeli victims with their Arab murderers. Such moral equivalence between perpetrators and victims would never happen with the deceased terrorist hijackers in the 9/11 attacks.
When the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) revealed that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas justified the mass extermination of Jews during the Holocaust in a speech to his Fatah Revolutionary Council in August, most media outlets had no issue seeing his remarks for what they really were: gross antisemitism.
But AP said he was merely “accused” of despicable rhetoric with its headline “Palestinian leader’s comments on Holocaust draw accusations of antisemitism from US and Europe.”
AP’s recent coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has also been increasingly problematic, consistently framing Palestinians as victims and Israel as an aggressor. Palestinians who fired upon or stabbed Israeli civilians or soldiers are not identified as “terrorists” or even “gunmen” in their headlines, just as Palestinians. The AP consistently depicts Israel as a foreign element that criminally infiltrated its land. Just last month, an AP article warned that Israel’s decisions could end “the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine.”
If this is what people are reading about Israel in 100 countries, it is no wonder the Jewish state is still fighting an uphill battle for its international image.
As trends in the media continue and AP and Reuters become even more dominant in their coverage of Israel and the wider Middle East, readers must be more vigilant than ever in holding the wire services accountable.
The number of religious hate crimes committed against Jews in England and Wales fell by one fifth (21 per cent) last year but still remain "far too high", new statistics released by the Home Office reveal.Rise of the Nazis - The Manhunt review: Exposing the failure to punish evil
Jews made up 17 per cent of all religious hate crime victims in the 12 months to March 2023, despite comprising just 0.5 per cent of the population in England and Wales.
Overall, 1,510 religiously motivated hate crimes were committed against the Jewish community in this period.
That is compared 1,919 hate crimes targeting Jews in the 12 months to 2022, when Jews accounted for 23 per cent of religious hate crime victims.
In the 12 months to March 2021, there were 1,288 crimes against Jews recorded, comprising 22 per cent of all religious hate crimes documented, while in 2020, that number was 1,205, or 19 per cent.
In total, 8,902 religious hate crimes were recorded in England and Wales in the year to March 2023, up seven per cent from 8,307 the previous year.
Anyone expecting this latest, and I’m assuming last, season of BBC2 docuseries The Rise of the Nazis, to be about the rise of the Nazis, is in for a disappointment.Discovery of Dutch Prince’s Nazi Membership Card Revives Calls for Inquiry
The title fits the first catchment of three episodes, but for the next instalment it should have been ‘The Nazis are Doing Pretty Well’, then ‘The Decline of the Nazis’, and now these three episodes, ‘The Mop-Up’.
With the airing of the final episode, we’re now able to consider the whole project. The original transmission in 2019 still stands tallest in terms of originality, being informative, and filling in gaps of knowledge.
Perhaps too much effort was made trying to connect the modern political landscape to the ruthless rise of Nazism, showing how a democracy can transform to a dictatorship.
Yet compared to the typical narratives of films and series concerning the Second World War it was relatively uncharted territory.
So too with the aftermath of the war, which these three hours focus upon. Specifically the fate of the surviving Nazis.
Nuremberg, Eichmann’s capture and trial, and Nazi hunters are subjects that have certainly been covered before, but this is the first time I’ve seen the topic presented as a whole. As such, it serves as an excellent primer.
Opening on British Army footage of what troops encountered upon liberating Bergen-Belsen, hearing English accents in that setting, ties us to images it’s still difficult to process - even when you know what to expect. For those soldiers facing what must have previously been unimaginable, the question would soon turn to how to deal with the perpetrators.
The scale was massive. With 7.5 million armed personnel captured, Captain Victor Cross and his unit were given a list of 70,000 names to track down. Top of the list was Rudolph Hoss, commandant of Auschwitz, who was initially in custody but was let go under a different name.
The discovery of a Nazi membership card in the name of late Dutch Prince Bernhard, a German who married into the Dutch royal family in the 1930s, revived calls on Friday for an inquiry into his ties to Adolf Hitler’s party.Neo-Nazis harass state representative during speech in Central Florida
Prince Bernhard, the grandfather of Dutch King Willem Alexander, died in 2004. He consistently denied having been a Nazi although he did acknowledge membership of several Nazi military units, saying it was common for men of his age at the time.
While there always was suspicion that he was a Nazi Party member, “the discovery of Prince Bernhard’s original NSDAP membership card is a new part of a painful chapter in Dutch history,” the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) said on Friday.
It called for an investigation by the Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies (NIOD).
“That Bernhard was a member is not so much what caused the shock: most Dutch people had expected that by now. But that he continued to deny it until his death weighs much more heavily for people,” the CIDI said in a statement.
In interviews with the De Volkskrant newspaper shortly before his death, Bernhard had repeated his denial: “I can state with one hand on the Bible, I was never a Nazi,” he said.
The Dutch government confirmed the card was found but has resisted calls for an inquiry.
Born in 1911 as Bernhard von Biesterfeld, he became a Dutch citizen and later flew combat missions for the Allies against Germany during the war.
The card, which showed Bernhard first joined in 1933, was found by historian Flip Maarschalkerweerd, the Royal Information Service said. Maarschalkerweerd told national broadcaster NOS he was surprised that the prince had saved the card he had denied having.
“He was a collector, and palaces have enormous attics and basements,” he said. “Perhaps he forgot he had it.”
A group of neo-Nazi activists protested on Wednesday in Cocoa, Fla., in Brevard County about 45 miles southwest of Orlando, during a speech given by state Rep. Randy Fine (R-District 33).Despite Personal Prejudice, Richard Nixon Did the Right Thing on Israel
Fine, who is Jewish, has introduced HB269 legislation in Florida that criminalizes targeting Jews and other minorities.
One of the half-dozen men reportedly waved an antisemitic flier in Fine’s face and demanded to know what claim printed on it was false.
“He then proceeds to unleash a stream of invective about Jews and wanted to know why I wouldn’t debate him,” Fine said.
The men’s shirts bore the letters “GDL”—the initials of the antisemitic hate group the Goyim Defense League—atop a black “Totenkopf,” the skull symbol utilized by the SS division of the German Nazi Party.
Deputies from the Brevard County Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene, and the men dispersed. Fine said he has not decided about whether to file charges; he was untouched in the encounter but a “little shaken up,” he acknowledged.
The Goyim Defense League has raised its national profile in recent years by dropping anti-Jewish fliers in suburban neighborhoods and protesting in public, including above major highways in Los Angeles and Orlando, Fla., and even at the entrance of Disney World.
For many, President Richard Nixon remains a villain. Until this very day, the journalist Carl Bernstein, who alongside Bob Woodward helped uncover the Watergate scandal, never misses an opportunity to blast the late president. Indeed, tapes of Nixon’s paranoid tirades and witness testimony confirm that the disgraced president expressed antisemitic sentiments.50 years on, divided Israel remembers the war for its survival
Nixon was a volatile person who ranted not only against Jews, but also against Ivy League graduates, African-Americans, hippies, and others.
However, should a president be judged only by his words?
A few years ago, The Washington Post confirmed that President Harry Truman made antisemitic remarks in private and in letters sent to his wife and friends.
Yet, Truman recognized the State of Israel just minutes after David Ben-Gurion declared the country’s independence, despite objections from close aids and confidants such as his Secretary of State, George Marshall. Truman admired Marshall tremendously, but strongly believed in the plea of the Jewish people and the international legal framework that created Israel, which was defined by the principle of the right to self-determination.
President Lyndon Johnson was a Southern democrat who had anti-Black prejudices. However, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, effectively ending the Southern states’ Jim Crow segregation laws.
Richard Nixon was paranoid and prejudiced. However, he was also a pragmatist who understood what was at stake in the Cold War, particularly during the Yom Kippur War.
Israel faced an existential threat in October 1973, as its leaders were captives of a misguided concept (“Hakonseptzia”), according to which the Arab States were unprepared and would not attack Israel.
Israel was so dreadfully unprepared for the Arab attack that the then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan repeatedly warned in the first stage of the war that “the Third Temple is in danger,” alluding to the existential threat Israel faced.
Those words had significance not only for the Jewish residents of the State of Israel, but for world Jewry, who viewed Israel as a guarantor of global Jewish security.
Although the war itself induced an immediate sense of national unity, many Israelis also felt a profound shock that the country had been left exposed, fighting for its life as Syrian and Egyptian tanks poured across the battlefield.'Spirit of solidarity' saved Israel during Yom Kippur War, says Ehud Barak
Coming a few years after the 1967 war in which Israeli forces defeated their Arab neighbors in less than a week, capturing territories where Palestinians now seek statehood, the cost in lives and the unpreparedness of the country in 1973 sparked recriminations that have continued to this day.
Israeli forces, helped by US airlifts of supplies and equipment, battled numerically superior Syrian and Egyptian formations backed by the Soviet Union before a UN-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting after some three weeks.
Over 2,600 Israelis including Zwebner's brother were killed, the largest loss of life Israel has ever suffered in a single war. On the other side, no exact casualty figures are known but estimates run as high as 15,000 Egyptian and 3,500 Syrian dead.
Five years later, Israel signed a peace deal with Egypt, its first with an Arab country, then with Jordan in 1994, followed in 2020 by normalization agreements with two Gulf states under the Abraham Accords.
For many front-line soldiers, the war remains a traumatic event but the feeling many express five decades later is pride in having helped save their country.
"I had a meeting with my friends this week which really made me emotional, but you feel very much like you saved the existence of Israel," Zwebner said.
For Zwebner, who himself opposed the judicial overhaul, a lesson of the 1973 war was that people had to be prepared to think for themselves rather than blindly accepting what leaders of any kind said.
"I think it's good ultimately so leaders don't think that whatever they do is just taken for granted and that they are allowed to do anything."
Ehud Barak was a 31-year-old graduate student at the School of Engineering at Stanford, California, in early October 1973 when he was woken at 4am by a call from the Israeli embassy in Washington.Picks A Brazilian Jewish Writer’s Return to Jewishness in the Wake of the Yom Kippur War
Picking up the phone, he heard the voice of Motta Gur, the embassy’s military attaché. “Ehud, there is a war at home. But I don’t think we’re missing a serious one,” he said.
Barak would go on to become prime minister in 1999, but back then he was a lieutenant-colonel in the Israeli special forces, having just ended his term as commander of Sayeret Matkal, the equivalent of the British SAS.
“What do you mean by we?” Barak responded. “You’re here in a formal role, you have a job to do. I’m a young career officer in the chain of command, I cannot afford to miss even a non-serious war.
"So I’m flying back and I’ll call you from New York.”
By the time he got to New York, Barak saw around a thousand other young Israelis who had, like him, rushed there to try to get a seat on the only El Al 707 set to depart for Israel.
He called Gur back as promised, who told him: “You’re right, we’re missing a very serious war. The Syrians are already at the gates of Nafach.”
Barak understood well the severity of the situation: Nafach was the Syrian village where Israel’s central command post for the Golan Heights was located.
Knowing that their flight could only accommodate 170 people at most, the El Al station chief asked him to advise them on who should fly. “I had to choose from the thousand people,” he said.
“I chose the pilots and the commanders who had just left the army. And unlike me — I was called formally by the embassy — they just heard about it and immediately left whatever they’d been doing: studying at universities, visiting family, working as firefighters in the forests of Canada, whatever. This spirit of solidarity is what saved Israel in this war.
Today widely regarded as Brazil’s greatest female author, Clarice Lispector was born Chaya Pinkhasova Lispektor in 1920 in the Ukrainian shtetl of Chechelnik. Her family brought her to the Brazilian city of Recife only two years later. In 1973, after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, the Rio de Janeiro paper that employed her as a columnist fired her—along with its other Jewish journalists. Julia Kornberg writes:Yom Kippur War Explained 1973: A Brief History
Lispector never quite denied her Jewish roots, although she more often than not distanced herself from them, and promoted a fanciful non-Jewish etymology for her surname: Lispector, she said, meant “lilies on the breast,” suggesting that “lis” came from “fleur-de-lis” and “pector” from the Latin “pectus.” (Other more plausible origins include the Ashkenazi name Spector, meaning teacher’s assistant, or lis-inspektor, Ukrainian for forest inspector, a common Jewish profession at that time.)
Lispector took up translating as a way to make up for the lost income from the [newspaper] firing. She was heterodox in her choices. In her archives at Casa Rui de Barbosa, in Rio, you can see manuscripts of her translation of Yukio Mishima from the English translation into Portuguese and Hedda Gabler from “the Spanish, English, and French.” But the most important translation project she took on was Bella Chagall’s memoir of her Lubavitcher childhood in Vitebsk, Burning Lights.
Bella Chagall was born during Hanukkah in 1889, and Burning Lights is punctuated lovingly by Jewish holidays. In 1939, on the brink of catastrophe in Europe, her impulse was to return to her roots and her people’s God. Lispector’s decision, amid heightened anti-Semitism, to translate Chagall’s memoir of her Yiddish-speaking childhood into Portuguese seems to have also been a form of return. In 1976, she told an interviewer, “I am Jewish, you know, although I don’t believe that the Jewish people is the people chosen by God. . . . In the end, I am Brazilian, and that’s final, once and for all.”
At the time, Lispector was working on what would be her last book, a beautiful novella, The Hour of the Star. . . . The heroine of the novella, in the sole explicit reference to Jewish history in Lispector’s work, is named Macabéa.
🇪🇬🇮🇱🇸🇾 Yom Kippur War Explained in 3 Minutes: On this day, exactly 50 years ago, October 6th, 1973, Israel was invaded by Egyptian and Syrian forces on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar — Yom Kippur.
Is Israel prepared for another Yom Yippur War?
Maj. Gen. (Res.) Eitan Dangot, Col. (Ret.) Miri Eisin, and Col. (Res.) Kobi Marom discuss the Yom Kippur War and what it means for Israel today – can another such surprise attack happen?
Yom Kippur War Remembered: New immigrants to Israel, and war veterans from the battlefront
Survey for our audience: https://bit.ly/encuesta-news24 50 years have passed since the Yom Kippur War. Two veterans from the battlefront are joining us in the studio today: Alberto Hodara and Isaac Rozen
How did the Arab and Israeli media reported the Yom Kippur War?
Survey for our audience: https://bit.ly/encuesta-news24 Yom Kippur War: We analyze the reports of the Arab and Israeli press during the war.
Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen's resurrecting journey in the Yom Kippur War
Author Matti Friedman details why Leonard Cohen came to Israel to perform for Israeli soldiers on the front line during the Yom Kippur War – and what he took back from the experience.
Klezmer band parades 150-year-old Torah to Capital Jewish Museum
A klezmer band and about 100 people accompanied a 150-year-old Torah, paraded beneath a chuppah canopy, to its new home at the newly-opened Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum.
The scroll is known as the Gotthelf Torah for Adas Israel Congregation’s second president Nathan Gotthelf. The Conservative synagogue in the District purchased the Torah for $8,000 in 1876.
“The sum was said to take a long time to raise,” according to a release about the parade of the Torah. According to National Bureau of Economic Research data, non-farm laborers made an average of $131 a day in 1876, and skilled workers made $148 daily on average.
Not only is the museum a new home for the historic Torah, but it is also a kind of homecoming. The scroll will be displayed in Adas Israel’s historic sanctuary, which is part of the museum complex.
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