American Jewish World

30/10/2024

JTA News:
WARSAW, Poland — In the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto, where Jews were killed and their neighborhood razed during World War II, a Jewish community has never recovered — but a museum has for a decade drawn visitors to learn about their history.

The Polin Museum is marking 10 years since opening its exhibition about the 1,000-year history of Polish Jews. In that lifespan, it rose to fame as one of the world’s leading Jewish museums and a symbol of Poland’s long-deferred recognition of its extinguished Jewish past.

But it also faced down challenges from a government ruled by Poland’s right-wing nationalist Law and Justice party, which sought to remove museum leaders seen as too critical of government policies or unwilling to conform with nationalist versions of history. Law and Justice was overturned by a centrist coalition last year.

During a weekend of anniversary programming in late September, which included a gala, a symphony orchestra concert and curatorial tours, nearly 10,000 people passed through the museum, a modernist building designed by the Finnish firm Lahdelma & Mahlamäki.

The Polin Museum sought to tell the story of the country's Jews even as a right-wing government sought to stifle discussions of antisemitism and complicity.

30/10/2024

A rave review for "Just for Us," which is running at Six Points Theater in Highland Park.

Alex Edelman’s scripted stand-up comedy gets a must-see regional premiere in St. Paul.

29/10/2024

The Times of Israel:
Donald Trump told supporters Monday he is “not a N**i,” using a rally in the final week of a bitter White House race to push back on accusations of authoritarianism, including from a former chief of staff who branded him a fascist.

As he and rival Kamala Harris entered the final stretch of one of the closest US presidential elections in modern times, each candidate and their teams have ramped up the political rhetoric, bringing an already simmering campaign to a boil.

Democrat Harris, who has accused Trump of stoking divisions, was crisscrossing Michigan on Monday while Republican Trump headed to Georgia, another of the decisive swing states, where he said critics are accusing him of being a modern-day “Hi**er.”

Second Gentleman Emhoff charges that GOP nominee would betray Jews and Israel 'if it suited his personal interests,' says he'd like to put a mezuzah on White House if Harris wins

27/10/2024

Trump will hold one of his rallies in Madison Square Garden tonight.

PJ Grisar writes in The Forward:
Donald Trump is making a homecoming to New York, and he’s booked an iconic venue to mark the occasion.

“We just rented Madison Square Garden,” Trump said at a recent rally. “We’re going to make a play for New York.”

Almost immediately this choice of the Garden, the home of the New York Knicks, Rangers and the multi-year residency of Billy Joel, recalled, for some, another rally held at a previous iteration of the arena: the infamous “Pro-American Rally” of Feb. 20, 1939, where red, white and blue bunting hung alongside swastikas.

Donald Trump's planned rally at Madison Square Garden has people wondering if it will resemble the infamous 1939 pro-N**i rally there.

27/10/2024

Phil Lesh, alav ha'shalom.

JTA News:
Jewish affinity for the Grateful Dead has bordered on the religious, with Jewish Deadheads holding prayer and music retreats around the country. “Jews and the Dead relate in that we both wander,” a Deadhead from Jerusalem told JTA during a 2012 retreat at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Connecticut. (A contemporary successor to the Grateful Dead, Phish, is similarly entwined with Jewish cultural and religious identity, according to a recent scholarly book; Lesh performed with his former Grateful Dead bandmates for the last time in a joint concert with Phish.) The fan group behind the seders has continued coming together for holidays, including most recently for a Sukkot concert last week.

Jewish Deadheads mourned Lesh, who played with the legendary jam band for three decades.

26/10/2024

The Times of Israel:
Israel announced early Saturday that it had launched retaliatory airstrikes against Iran weeks after the Islamic Republic’s massive ballistic missile barrage, with the military saying the “precise strikes” targeted Iranian military sites.

After reports of explosions near Tehran began to emerge around 2:15 a.m. local time, the Israel Defense Forces released a statement confirming that it was attacking Iran in response to “months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the State of Israel.”

A second wave of strikes was reported several hours later, with AFP reporters saying continuous explosions and light trails were visible across the sky in central Tehran following the fresh blasts.

Army says airstrikes a response 'to months of continuous attacks'; White House supports Israeli 'self-defense'; report says nuclear facilities and oil fields not being targeted

25/10/2024

Rob Eshman interviews historian Omer Bartov in The Forward.

Bartov:
I think [the re-election of Trump] may actually fuel the rise of antisemitism of the real kind. The people who killed Jews were from the Right or fascist Right or N**i Right. Trump will empower those elements of antisemitism, obviously also of Islamophobia and other types of racism.

Former President Donald Trump has said he would like generals like Hi**er's, adding to debate over whether he is a fascist.

25/10/2024

Mandolin ace Avi Avital will perform with the Minnesota Orchestra in a program titled "The Best of Bach," Dec. 5-6, 2024.

Mandolin superstar Avi Avital says that “there’s something about the music of Bach that is so absolute, so universal, that the instrument you play doesn’t really matter.” He drives that point home when he borrows concertos Bach wrote for harpsichord and violin. The plot thickens with a serie...

24/10/2024

Trump admires **er. This is disqualifying (along with 100 other things Trump has said and done).

LA Times:
Retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, who was Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, has warned that his former boss, if elected again, would govern like a dictator, that he lacks empathy, and that he has no understanding of the U.S. Constitution.

While other Trump administration officials have criticized the former president, including from the stage of the Democratic National Convention in August, Kelly is perhaps the most high-profile, telling the New York Times in an interview published two weeks before election day that he had grave concerns about Trump’s fitness for office.

“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” Kelly said.

In an interview published two weeks before election day, Donald Trump's former chief of staff said he had grave concerns about Trump's fitness for office.

24/10/2024

The Twin Cities Film Festival will screen "For the Living," a documentary about the and genocides in various places and eras, 7:15 p.m. this Saturday, Oct. 26 at the West End Cinema, 1625 West End Boulevard, St. Louis Park.

The film screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Tim Roper and producer Lisa Effress.

24/10/2024

CNN:
[Kelly] also confirmed to The Atlantic that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hi**er’s N**i generals showed the German dictator during World War II, and recounted the moment.

“‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” Kelly told The Atlantic he’d asked Trump. He added, “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hi**er’s generals?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hi**er’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit su***de after taking part in a plot against Hi**er.”

John Kelly, the retired Marine general who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, entered the 2024 fray in stunning fashion, saying the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and wanted the “kind of generals Hi**er had” in a series of interviews published Tu...

23/10/2024

Frank London’s new album …

22/10/2024

JTA News reports on recent pro-Palestinian protests at the U of M:
Eleven protesters were arrested Monday afternoon at the University of Minnesota after storming an administrative building and vandalizing it as part of an effort to push the university to divest from Israel.

The administration said they caused property damage and restricted access to the building.

The protest is the latest bout of campus activism to result in arrests during a new wave of anti-Israel activity this fall. It echoed a similar demonstration at Columbia University last spring, during the nationwide pro-Palestinian encampment movement, when activists occupied a campus building, leading to a police raid and dozens of arrests.

The Minnesota protest was organized by the campus’ chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, a left-wing activist group that first rose to prominence in the 1960s. The chapter has called on the university to end its policy of “neutrality” in its investing strategy, to divest from the country and to boycott its academic institutions, including by ending study abroad programs there.

UMN had announced a new policy of “neutrality” in August, rejecting calls to divest from Israel.

22/10/2024

The Jewish World has just learned that Raz Segal will speak Friday afternoon at the University of Minnesota and Saturday at Carleton College.

Segal was appointed as director of the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies University of Minnesota. There was a public controversy over his views on Israel and the university rescinded the job offer.

A talk with Raz Segal, Stockton University

22/10/2024

22/10/2024

B’Tselem:
The magnitude of the crimes Israel is currently committing in the northern Gaza Strip in its campaign to empty it of however many residents are left is impossible to describe, not just because hundreds of thousands of people enduring starvation, disease without access to medical care and incessant bombardments and gunfire defies comprehension, but because Israel has cut them off from the world.

Human rights NGOs based in Israel today called on the international community to take action now to prevent Israel from forcibly transferring hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have remained in the Northern Gaza Strip outside of the area, including by denying entry of essential humanitarian a...

21/10/2024

Brian Epstein on "What's My Line."

21/10/2024

Meredith Jacobs writes in The Forward:
Many survivors of Oct. 7 have spent the past year testifying about what happened to them. They find meaning in speaking for those who no longer can — those who were murdered or abducted, as well as those who were silenced by their trauma.

But many of these survivors, especially young women who witnessed or experienced sexual violence at the Nova music festival, have told me over the past year that they feel like they are screaming into the void as they try to counter anti-Israel propaganda and misinformation online.

This weekend, we witnessed the tragic toll that can result from these survivors having to relive the most horrible day of their lives over and over again, from them being stuck in an endless loop of trauma. Shirel Golan, who was rescued by a police car as she fled the Nova site, died by su***de on her 22nd birthday, after twice being hospitalized with acute symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder including disassociation and withdrawal.

Online denial and vitriol against Israelis may have contributed to the tragic su***de of Nova Festival survivor Shirel Golen.

21/10/2024

The Forward:
David McCormick, Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for Senate, praised a self-described Christian nationalist who has trafficked in antisemitic tropes and attended the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as a role model for demonstrating “moral courage,” according to audio obtained by the Forward.

“We need leaders who have moral courage, who are going to stand up to support Israel abroad and support the fight against antisemitism at home,” McCormick said during a Thursday Zoom event with Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Christian nationalist who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022. “And this is about strength and courage, which, you know, is one of the things I admire about Senator Mastriano. He’s got strength and moral courage. And that’s the kind of senator I’ll be as well — someone who fights for what he believes is right.”

Mastriano, a Republican, was criticized for his divisive rhetoric and association with antisemites and conspiracy theorists during his 2022 campaign against now-Gov. Josh Shapiro, who he attacked for sending his kids to a “privileged, exclusive, elite” Jewish day school.

David McCormick, challenger to Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, talked combatting antisemitism on call with State Sen. Doug Mastriano.

21/10/2024

Israeli filmmaker Barak Heymann will speak on Minorities in Israel.

18/10/2024

JTA:
David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who is Jewish, on his radio show Tuesday.

Duke, long one of the country’s highest-profile white supremacists and antisemites, has repeatedly sought political office while spreading conspiracy theories about Jews. In his endorsement of Stein, he said that she was the candidate with the strongest stance against “Jewish power” because she opposed Israel’s military campaign.

Duke cited Stein’s opposition to Israel, and former president Trump’s ‘subservience to Israel and to the Jewish lobby,’ as the explanation for his endorsement.

17/10/2024

Haaretz.com:
Yahya Sinwar's end came by chance. The man more responsible than any other for the October 7 massacre and for the regional war that has erupted was not killed in a clever ploy by the Shin Bet and the Mossad. He wasn't killed in battle with an elite commando unit, and didn't meet his end in a precise airstrike.

He died, according to all indications, in a routine clash in Rafah with an Israeli infantry and armored force, whose troops had no idea the Hamas leader (and Israel's most wanted fugitive) was in the area.

***

17/10/2024

JTA News:
Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the deadliest attack on Israel in its history, was killed in a firefight with Israeli forces.

“Yahya Sinwar planned and executed the October 7th Massacre, promoted his murderous ideology both before and during the war, and was responsible for the murder and abduction of many Israelis,” the Israeli army said Thursday in a statement. “Yahya Sinwar was eliminated after hiding for the past year behind the civilian population of Gaza, both above and below ground in Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address in Hebrew to the nation, said the killing brought the war closer to its end, and once the remaining hostages were released he anticipated a pivot toward regional peace.

“The return of the hostages is an opportunity to achieve all our aims and bring closer the end of the war,” Netanyahu said.

Sinwar's death could accelerate the hostages' release and an end to the war in Gaza.

16/10/2024

JTA News:
Miriam Adelson has delivered on a pledge she reportedly made at the start of the general election season, donating $100 million to a campaign committee supporting the candidacy of Donald Trump, according to disclosures filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission.

The money was distributed to Adelson’s super PAC, Preserve America, which she had seeded earlier this year with $5 million, in a series of installments: $25 million a month in July, August and September and an additional $20 million at the end of September.

A major funder of pro-Israel politics and a prolific donor to Jewish causes, Adelson, 79, is carrying on a legacy she built with her late husband, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The Adelson family has long been one of the largest sources of campaign money for Republican candidates and has backed Trump during each of the last three general elections. Now, the widow is wielding an estimated net worth of $35 billion on her own. Though seen as more deliberate in her decision-making, she has not meaningfully departed from her late husband’s politics.

Adelson's gift dwarfed the $75 million that Trump received from Elon Musk, until recently the world's richest person.

15/10/2024

Brian Epstein biopic