American Jewish World

28/01/2025

A new edition of Klezmer on Ice.

Come shvitz with us! We’re teaming up with The Yard Sauna Village for a one-of-a-kind communal evening of Yiddish heymish hygge! On this chilly winter night, warm your body and soul with unlimited sauna sessions and live music from Soul Trouvère, Red Thread, & Zoë Aqua + Ira Temple! $25

27/01/2025

Dan Epstein, writing in The Forward, remembers the great Barry Goldberg.

Music legend Barry Goldberg, who has died at 83, was the only artist to have an album produced by Bob Dylan.

27/01/2025

JTA News:
Dozens of Jewish organizations have signed an open letter to President Donald Trump protesting his planned mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

The letter, published on Jan. 27, demonstrates that as Trump retakes office, a range of major Jewish organizations intend to continue to be vocal in opposing his policies on immigration. The signatories include a range of centrist and liberal Jewish groups with a national presence, including the leadership of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist religious movements. Dozens of local Jewish groups and institutions also signed.

“[W]e write in opposition to your Administration’s plans to launch mass deportations, build massive detention camps, and conduct sweeping raids,” the letter says. “We urge you to chart a different course and change your stated plans for widespread persecution of immigrants. America has long prided itself on being a place of refuge, a beacon of hope for those fleeing persecution and seeking a better life.”

The letter comes as the Trump administration has begun immigration arrests in Chicago and is conscripting the military to deport migrants.

Signatories to the open letter include leading Reform and Conservative Jewish organizations.

27/01/2025

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

JTA News via The Forward:
(JTA) — Eva Szepesi, 92, is traveling this week to the N**i concentration camp she narrowly survived, where her mother and brother were both murdered.

Szepesi, who grew up in Slovakia and now lives in Frankfurt, Germany, is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz alive today. Just 50 of them are expected to be present on Monday at the camp in Poland for a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of its liberation — down from 300 a decade ago and 1,000 a decade before that.

The ceremony comes amid widespread anxiety over whether knowledge about the Holocaust is diminishing as the number of Jews who survived it dwindles. For Szepesi, however, the history has lost none of its power.

The dwindling numbers offer a stark representation of the declining population of survivors who are still able to tell their stories.

25/01/2025

The Guardian:
Freed Israeli soldier, Liri Albag, on Saturday expressed her gratitude to Israelis for their support for the families of captives seized by Hamas in October 2023, in released military footage, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

IDF releases pictures of Liri Albag, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Karina Ariev being reunited with their families

23/01/2025

Former U.S. Senator Al Franken on Trump's pick to lead the Department of Justice (after the Matt Gaetz nomination crashed and burned).

Kash Patel, Donald J. Trump’s choice to run the bureau, has made a series of spurious assertions about the Russia, Jan. 6 and classified documents inquiries.

23/01/2025

Meanwhile, Israel ramps up attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Ever since the ceasefire started on Sunday, this government, through the IDF, and its allies in the settlements, has been doing everything in its power to make sure Israel doesn’t reach the second phase of the deal. Suddenly, Trump says he’s “not confident” the ceasefire will hold.

Last week, Netanyahu said that Trump and Biden both gave “full backing to Israel’s right to return to fighting if Israel concludes that the negotiations on the second phase are going nowhere.” Yesterday, the IDF began a massive operation in Jenin. They know this jeopardizes the deal.

Minister Smotrich, who has been serving as the de-facto Governor of the West Bank since May, said that the operation in Jenin was started as part of a new “goal” for the war, added at his party’s request, “changing the perception of security” in the West Bank.

Smotrich has also vowed his party will leave the government if the second phase of the deal goes ahead as planned. He said Netanyahu agreed to his request, committing to changing the war's course, aiming for full Israeli control of Gaza, and assuring him no aid will get to Hamas.

And so, as we speak, the IDF is again “Gazafying” Jenin, complete with airstrikes and destruction of infrastructure, after blockading checkpoints all throughout the West Bank. Their stated reason? "To continue preserving the IDF's freedom of action throughout Judea and Samaria.”

The IDF also said the operation was meant “to destroy and neutralize terrorist infrastructure and 'ticking time bombs.'" But “terrorist infrastructure” for a guerilla organization embedded within a civilian populace - is just regular infrastructure. If Hamas militants drive on a civilian road, is that road now “terrorist infrastructure”?

These aren’t hypothetical situations. Yesterday, the IDF was seen destroying the roads around Jenin Government Hospital. Patients were reportedly given 8 hours to evacuate. On foot, of course, since the road was just peeled away by bulldozers. This is Gazafication.

When Smotrich says “Funduq, Nablus and Jenin need to look like Jabalya,” he means it. He’s spent the past 2 years normalizing brutal war tactics against people living under direct military occupation. Now, the same Gazafication has the added ‘bonus’ of endangering the ceasefire.

23/01/2025

JTA News:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come to the defense of Elon Musk, days after the billionaire and prominent Trump ally was accused of delivering N**i salutes at a presidential inauguration rally.

One hour later, the world’s richest man was cracking Holocaust jokes on social media.

“Elon Musk is being falsely smeared,” Netanyahu wrote on Musk’s own social media account, X, Thursday morning. He avoided addressing Musk’s gesture directly but went on to call the tech mogul “a great friend of Israel.”

Netanyahu pointed to Musk’s visiting Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and advocating for what he said was “Israel’s right to defend itself against genocidal terrorists and regimes who seek to annihilate the one and only Jewish state.”

The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt blasted Musk’s N**i jokes after remaining silent on his hand gesture.

21/01/2025

Pres. Trump "didn't think it was a good service."

PBS News:
With President Donald Trump in attendance, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, gave a sermon at a prayer service Tuesday morning at Washington National Cathedral focused on national unity.

She said they gathered “to pray for unity as a people and a nation — not for agreement, political or otherwise — but for the kind of unity that fosters community across diversity and division.”

She ended her sermon with a direct appeal to Trump, to have mercy on LGBTQ+ people and undocumented migrant workers: “You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”

The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, ended her sermon with a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.

21/01/2025

JTA News:
In one of his first actions as president, Donald Trump canceled sanctions targeting dozens of far-right Israeli individuals and settler organizations accused by the Biden administration of violent extremism against Palestinians.

The rescinding of the sanctions appeared on a long list of executive orders signed by Trump immediately after his inauguration on Monday, many of which focused on undoing policies enacted by his predecessor in the White House.

The move delivers a victory to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which regarded the sanctions enacted by Biden last year as an inappropriate intervention into the internal affairs of an allied country. Israeli officials had repeatedly asked the incoming president to lift them when he entered office.

Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is associated with the settler movement, thanked Trump in a post on social media.

Trump also canceled a Biden order blocking sanctions on the International Criminal Court amid his flurry of day-one executive orders.

21/01/2025

Victor Perez, z"l.

20/01/2025

Musk bought Twitter and then restored the accounts of previously banned neo-N**is.

The Forward:
“My heart goes out to you; it is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured,” Elon Musk said at an inauguration event at the Capitol One Arena. Then he thumped his hand on his chest and extended his arm straight out in what looked, to many online, like a Sieg Heil salute.

Online, Musk’s supporters defended the gesture, saying it was simply a gesture illustrating the sentiment of “my heart goes out to you” by touching his heart and then pointing to the crowd. But many others compared the stiff-armed salute to photos of N**i soldiers saluting Hi**er.

The tech billionaire stiffly extended his arm to the crowd twice in a gesture similar to a N**i salute during Trump's inauguration event

19/01/2025

JTA News:
Three women whom Hamas held hostage in Gaza for more than 470 days are returning to Israel as a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war went into effect on Sunday morning.

The women were all alive and exited on their own from a Hamas vehicle, according to footage streamed from Gaza. Representatives of the Red Cross met them there in preparation for returning them to Israel, where their families and medical professionals are waiting.

The women, civilians abducted when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, were the first hostages freed from among 33 set for release over six weeks, according to a ceasefire deal struck last week. They are:

• Emily Damari: The only British citizen to remain in Gaza, Damari, 27, was shot on Oct. 7 but seen alive in Gaza by other hostages who returned. She was abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

• Romi Gonen: Taken hostage from the Nova music festival, Gonen, 24, was shot on Oct. 7 but seen alive in Gaza by other hostages who returned.

• Doron Steinbrecher: Taken hostage from her home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Steinbrecher appeared alive in a video released by Hamas in January 2024.

The women seized on Oct. 7, 2023, are the first of 33 Israelis set for release over a six-week ceasefire.

17/01/2025

The Forward:
David B. Parker, a professor of history at Kennesaw State University, looks at the upcoming Trump inauguration and the resurgence of Christian nationalism:

"... in the summer of 1790, [President George] Washington and some of his advisors visited Rhode Island, which had finally ratified the U.S. Constitution and thereby formally joined the United States, and met with Moses Seixas, warden of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, who delivered a letter welcoming the president. In a response to the letter, Washington wrote that 'the Government of the United States … gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution, no assistance,' and he noted that everyone, including 'the Children of the Stock of Abraham' — language Seixas himself had used to refer to Jews — 'shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.' That last line, from the Hebrew Scriptures, was one of Washington’s favorites; he used it nearly 50 times in his correspondence."

Christian nationalism has shaped the presidential oath of office, which President-elect Donald Trump will take at his Monday inauguration.

17/01/2025

NewsChannel 5:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — An East Tennessee man with ties to a neo-N**i group has been arrested in conjunction with a stunt he pulled Monday evening at Nashville's Gordon Jewish Community Center, NewsChannel 5 has learned.

Travis Keith Garland, 31, was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Maryville, Tennessee, on a warrant for criminal trespassing, according to Metro Nashville police. Detectives with the MNPD Specialized Investigations Division later took out an assault warrant for putting a Jewish Community Center security guard in fear as he tried to get Garland off the property.

An East Tennessee man with ties to a neo-N**i group has been arrested in conjunction with a stunt he pulled Monday evening at Nashville's Gordon Jewish Community Center, NewsChannel 5 has learned.

17/01/2025

The Times of Israel:
WASHINGTON — US President-elect Donald Trump says the hostage-ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas better be finalized before his inauguration on Monday and says his involvement was crucial for the negotiation.

“We changed the course of it, and we changed it fast, and frankly, it better be done before I take the oath of office,” Trump says in a podcast interview with Dan Bongino.

Trump also says “we shook hands, and we signed certain documents, but it better be done.”

* * *

15/01/2025

Israeli right-wingers are disenchanted with Trump before he begins his second term in office.

JTA News:
The pundit on Israel’s right-wing news channel was visibly anxious.

One American president, said Yuval Malka, presented a “window of opportunity” for Israel to have free rein across the Middle East. But the other, he cautioned, was fickle, appearing to love Israel but liable to leave it in the lurch and constrain its military might.

The president Israelis should fear? Donald Trump.

“Remember what I’m saying: Don’t be impressed by Trump, and don’t be impressed by his taking office,” Malka, a former military police official, said on Israeli Channel 14 this week. “We needed to, and we still can, take advantage of the window of opportunity in the gaps between the outgoing administration and incoming administration to do everything we think we need to do, both in Gaza and Iran.”

Some of those who praised Trump in both Israel and the United States are trashing the hostage deal he is championing as he reenters office.

15/01/2025

The Times of Israel:
President Joe Biden says the US-backed pressure on Hamas and weakening of the Iran-backed Axis of Resistance against Israel led the terror group to agree to today’s hostage release and ceasefire deal.

“We’ve reached this point because of the pressure that Israel built on Hamas, backed by the United States,” he says in a White House address announcing the deal. He highlights Israel’s October killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the killing of the terror group’s senior commanders along with thousands of its fighters, and the destruction of its military formations.

He recalls how the US twice helped Israel thwart missile attacks from “Hamas’ strongest supporter, Iran.”

Netanyahu won't speak until it's 'final,' official says * Cabinet set to vote tomorrow to approve terms * Agreement set to commence Sunday; first 3 hostages to be released then