My paternal uncle, Aaron, was a figure of mystery, a man I knew only through a photograph in his officer’s uniform. I knew little else about him until one day, when I was ten years old; my father received a letter from his widow Helen. After he finished reading it he told us that Uncle Aaron had left a wife and three children when he died in the war. They lived in Miskolc, a city on the banks of the Bodva River. My parents had met four years after Aaron’s death. By the time my father courted my mother, he had stopped speaking of his late brother. read more

What should we do in the midst of fear and turmoil? How should we respond to extremists who try to divide us, who pounce on fear to promote hatred, racism, and xenophobia? The city of Haifa in Israel responded by celebrating an interfaith religious festival of light, refusing to be drawn into the horrific wave of racism, Islamophobia and violence.

I received an email today from Sharona noting that Haifa’s Jewish and Arab citizens draw hope from the city’s determination to publicly display religious pluralism. She attached these photographs of Haifa and wrote, “Haifa is adorned with lights. I went past these festive decorations on my way to my mother’s house. Just to see the city presenting itself as one is heart-warming. Haifa is special and unique in insisting of being a city of pluralism where all have a place that celebrates all faith festivals. You can tell that the message is getting through when you see the many locals and tourists taking pictures of the lights that include Jewish, Muslims, Christians and Bahia faith tradition. During the month of December this blend of interfaith of lights is called in Haifa the Festival of Festivals. Our friend Jimmy took the photos that I include here. Earlier today I called Jimmy’s mother, who lives in Nazareth to wish her Merry Christmas and she was happy to hear from me.” read more

We light the second candle of Hanukkah at a local senior independent living community with our elders, who were the pillar of their community, who built schools and synagogues, fed the hungry, clothed the needy, and practiced the mitzvah of Tzedakah.

These women and men are a community of immigrants, Holocaust survivors, American born citizens who served their country and promoted freedom and justice. They are a source of strength in our life. They are people of vision, compassion, courage and hope and the light that makes America live up to its promise. read more

Ben Carson likes guns. And he likes people who like guns. And he likes people who like people who like guns. For those of us who don’t like guns, he has no patience. He had no sympathy with those killed last week at Umpqua Community College—if you’re not armed, he complained, it’s your own fault. And he has scant sympathy for Jews killed in the Holocaust. If only Jews had been armed, “the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished.” Makes sense. All the Jews needed to do to defeat Hitler was to organize a comparable military force; let’s say about 10 million men under arms, along with 670,000 tanks and armored vehicles, 1.3 million artillery pieces, and about 230,000 combat aircraft. read more

THE JEWISH PLURALIST WISHES YOU

SHANAH TOVAH

A YEAR FILLED WITH BLESSINGS, HEALTH, AND PEACE

& G’MAR HATIMAH TOVAH

                                            MAY WE BE INSCRIBED IN THE BOOK OF LIFE

MAY WE OPEN OUR GATES TO REFUGEES

AND OUR HEARTS TO OUR FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS

http://www.politico.com/wuerker/2014/06/june-2014/001868-027314.html

For the Moses Cartoon
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/r/reproductive_rights.asp
Self-Ownership—by Ayala Emmett
Republican leaders came to Washington last week to do the people’s business. They were rightly energized by the elections and animated by the fact that they now have a comfortable majority in both houses of congress. There are numerous issues facing the nation in 2015, such as endemic racism, immigration, growing economic disparities, soaring students loans, crumbling infrastructure, failing schools, and global warming. read more

Gertrud J. Lind

https://defending

ARBEIT MACHT* FREI—by Gertrud J. Lind
Reviled German words: “Work Sets You Free” or “Work”, “Power”, “Free”.
Bringing visions of multitudes who slaved behind that gate,
Each one surely praying for the last, to be “frei”.
In the middle of “Macht”, the mighty Nazi power,
They were caught, “frei” only their “Arbeit”, their labor.

Madness reigned behind these words,
And madness and very
Clever calculation drove that “Macht”.
Hate unleashed, unchecked, unchallenged.
Think what it did. read more

Presence and Absence of Naming & Names in Torah—by Matia Kam

Presence and Absence of Naming & Names in Torah
Matia Kam

On Being a Levite

“These are the names of Lev’s sons according to their lineage” (6:16)
“Amram took for a wife his father’s sister Jochebed and she bore him Aaron and Moses”(6:20)

Torah begins chapter six with a list of names and lineages to place Aaron and Moses in the genealogy as the descendants of Kohath, one of Levi’s sons. The list of names starts with Reuben, the eldest, followed by Simeon, who was followed by Levi. This outlines the lineage and takes up the names Amram and Jochebed who were nameless in the previous Parsha (mentioned there only as a Levite man and a Levite woman, and as “the child’s mother”). In this Parsha, in chapter six we have a detailed four-generation family that includes names of Aaron’s wife, his children’s names and his grandson Phinehas. So who is absent from the list? Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron and most significantly Moses’ wife and children are absent. This is curious since the text states twice that the purpose of the list is to describe “Aaron and Moses” (6:26-27) yet it surely strikes us that Moses family is not mentioned. read more

My Mom and Lauren Bacall—by Peter Eisenstadt

My Mom and Lauren Bacall

Peter Eisenstadt

My mom loved Lauren Bacall. Perhaps that is not the right word. My mom was Lauren Bacall. You have to understand that my late mother, Betty Eisenstadt (nee Cooperstein) was not the sort of woman who spent her time pouring over movie magazines or gazing at Hollywood stars. She was a serious young woman. But the similarities were too strong and striking to be ignored.

They were both Bettys. Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske. (My mom was actually born Bessie Cooperstein, but when she was a teenager her sisters told her that Bessie was a name for a cow, not a young woman, and she became Betty.) They were about the same age—Bacall was two years older than my mom. They both were native New Yorkers who grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, or really, in Yorkville, when it still was one of the largest German communities in the city. (My mom remembered her and her girlfriends trying to disturb assemblies of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund by throwing paper bags of horse manure into meetings.) They both attended the same high school, Julia Richman, a “commercial school” that tracked many bright young women, like my mom and Lauren Bacall, away from a college prep, academic track. And perhaps most important, they both were Jews, daughters of immigrants, members of the first large cohort of Eastern European Jews born in the United States. read more

J Street Statement On Gaza Conflict

J Street the Political Home for Pro-Israel Pro-Peace Americans