Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
New Holocaust Museum To Include History Of Jewish Resistance By Marc Gronich
photo Credit: Courtesy of CDJHM
Aerial view of artist's rendering.
Plans are in the works for a $5 million Holocaust memorial in the town of Niskayuna, Schenectady County, to be completed in 2023 on a two-acre site donated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.
The Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial is being designed as an educational tool to eliminate anti-Semitism and boost the teaching of the Holocaust, which gets only a passing mention, in public schools.
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"The memorial is going to be a very attractive, interesting and educational memorial," said Dr. Stephen Berk, a history professor at Schenectady-based Union College and expert in all things related to the Holocaust. "I think people will make their way to see it. School districts will come, word will come out and I think people who are traveling in the vicinity of Schenectady will make sure to see the Holocaust memorial. This memorial will last long after you and I are pushing up the daisies."
CDJHM exit
In a series of webinars Berk hosts, the latest one focused on the Jewish resistance during the 1940s.
"There was a great deal of resistance," Berk firmly noted. "The resistance involved hundreds of thousands of people. We have got to throw this idea, this concept, of the Jews went like sheep to the slaughter into the trash bin of history. It simply is not true. The memory of these people – men, women and children – who faced an apocalypse the likes of which the world had never known, facing incredible odds in absolutely desperate circumstances. We must remember them and we must let their memory inspire us to deal with what may be some very difficult days ahead."
"The difficult days ahead" that Berk alluded to include "a digital clock in Tehran that counts down from the year 2040 because it says Israel will be destroyed and must be destroyed…. Israel is the only country in the world that is designated as a country that is to be destroyed by another country."
That was true in the 1940s as well.
"In the words of Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), in a telegram he sent to SS Commanders in the Ukraine, he said, 'We must kill them [the Jews] down to the last child in the cradle.'"
Berk spoke in stark detail about the resistance most people do not remember or never knew about.
"We know now, 76 years after the Second World War, we have memoirs, we have the testimony of thousands of Holocaust survivors, we have diaries, we have German documentation," Berk told a virtual audience. "In at least 100 of the ghettos there was armed resistance. The iconic ghetto resistance [came] in Warsaw: April 19th, the first night of Passover, 1943, 700 young men and women from various organizations possessing very little in the way of weaponry, 30 rifles at the most, one machine gun and probably 50 pistols. Arrayed against them are several thousand Ukrainian and German soldiers with tanks and flame-throwers and a multitude of machine guns. The people who rise and revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto know they don't stand a chance in hell. Not one chance in a million. What they are trying to do is to continue the way they lived.
"The slogan in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940 down to its destruction in the late spring of 1943 is 'to live with honor and to die with honor.' Those men and women, nearly all nearly very young, from various organizations, fought to enhance the reputation of the Jews. Their revolt was unlimited.
"Many of them thought it is better not to fight in the ghetto where it is hopeless – so let's go out to the forest. The forest of Lithuania, Belarus, eastern Poland, and many were told there would be 20 to 30,000 Jews fighting in the forest of Eastern Europe," Berk added.
There is more to tell than the armed revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto.
"There are different kinds of resistance," Berk said earlier this moth. "The Nazis did not allow any educational facilities to function in the ghettos. Yet, the Jews in the ghettos created underground schools for teenagers, for young people. There was even a Jewish underground medical school in the Warsaw Ghetto. They tried to stage cultural events. Then there were the religious people who clung to their religion. I told you about some religious people who were too passive but others were not. At all levels, rabbis resisted the Nazis in their own way. It wasn't armed revolt. They did what they could. They clung to their faith.
"When one looks at the obstacles of resistance, one is astonished that there was any resistance at all. The obstacles confronting the Jews in the ghettos, in the concentration camps and in the extermination camps, to say was formidable would be a great underestimation. Jews were fighting in the ghettos. The most remarkable thing of all were the Jewish revolts in the three extermination camps."
Berk made a point that the revolts included women as well.
"In 1943, in [the death camps of] Sobibor and in Treblinka, the Jews revolted. In Sobibor it was a Red Army soldier who had been captured and was put in Sobibor. This was Alexander 'Sasha' Pechersky, the man who led the revolt. Pechersky was a Jew.
"In Treblinka the Jews led the revolt. The most famous of those revolts, that becomes almost iconic, is the revolt in Auschwitz. On October 7, 1944, the Sonderkommandos revolted – [they were] a special group of Jews. They were not volunteers.
"These were people who came off the train. Always men, always Jewish men. In the eyes of the Nazis they looked like they were in fairly good shape. They were put in the vicinity of the gas chambers. Their jobs were to take the Jews and undress them, move them into the gas chambers and then once the murders had taken place they go into the gas chambers, pull out the victims – the Jewish men, women and children – shave the hair of the women; then there was a subgroup known as the dentists, some were actual dentists, opened up the mouths of the victims and pulled out the gold and silver fillings.
"This is a very efficient apparatus on the part of the Germans. Some of the Sonderkommandos were killed, sometimes every 90 days. Then in late September, early October 1944, the Sonderkommandos said enough is enough. We have to save ourselves and we have to somehow stop the killing.
"On October 7, 1944, the Sonderkommandos in Crematorium IV attacked the Germans who were stationed there. They killed several of them and destroyed the crematorium and the gas chamber. There were five crematoria and gas chambers in Auschwitz. One was in Auschwitz I and the other four were in Auschwitz II.
"This was not an all-male endeavor," Berk continued. "All sorts of men are involved in it but so too are the women. The women are very much involved. The women are the couriers and make munitions and pass the munitions on to people. The Auschwitz revolt was only made possible because of a group of Jewish women working in a German munitions factory in Auschwitz. They smuggled out the black powder. One of the heroic women was Róża Robota, a young woman from the eastern part of Poland. She smuggled the black powder to the Sonderkommandos, and that was used to blow up the crematorium. There is a good deal of female participation in the resistance movement.
"We're talking about revolts in a number of places: The killing field that is in Birkenau. The revolt is a massive one. In the end there is a massive breakout. It doesn't end well. The Nazis hunted down all of them. There were no Jews who escaped from that revolt. Some managed to escape from Treblinka and Sobibor. From the Auschwitz revolt no one really survives. Again, this is a heroic act.
"The idea that the Jews went like sheep to the slaughter is absolute nonsense. Narishkeit, foolishness. The Jews did fight back. We all know about Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Yitzhak Zuckerman, people in Bialystock, people in Vilna.
There were some branches, however, within the Polish underground movement that spent more time in hunting down and killing the Jews then they did hunting down the Nazis."
Berk also discussed the Soviet incursion at the end of the war.
"The Red Army liberated Auschwitz and most of the other concentration and extermination camps. The contribution of the Red Army still gets mired down with residual anti-Russian sentiment. You have to talk about Stalin, who was the leader at the time and called the shots. One thing is for sure. Stalin did not give a damn about the Jews. He was an anti-Semite. If the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, it was not done deliberately but because Auschwitz was in the line of advance. Nonetheless, it was the Red Army that liberated Auschwitz and took the casualties. It was the Red Army that put an end to the gassing.
"Most of the people in Auschwitz had been forced out in December 1944 and January 1945. On January 27, 1945, when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, there were 7,000 Jews. They would have died had the Red Army not come. Credit should be given where credit is due."
Dr. Michael Lozman, an orthodontist and president of the Capital District Jewish Holocaust Memorial, said, "The Holocaust memorial is designed to honor the six million Jews who were killed by the Nazis and to teach about the Holocaust, about the effects of hatred, bigotry and prejudice and about the importance of remembering what our responsibility is to help make this a better world. Our mission is strongly committed to education because education is a key to make change happen."
To contribute to this memorial, send a check made out to CDJHM to P.O. Box 9410, Niskayuna, NY 12309.
As many Jewish baseball fans know, four players were tagged by the media as Jews (Alex Bregman, Max Fried, Joc Pederson and Garrett Stubbs) in the 2021 World Series won by the Atlanta Braves over the Houston Astros. Some have just one Jewish parent and are far removed from any observance of Judaism, and are willing to play on Yom Kippur. Like most non-orthodox Jews, their Jewish life ended at their bar mitzvah – assuming they observed it at all.
Stubbs was the backup to the backup catcher and had no at-bats while Bregman, Fried and Pederson made Jewish history by figuring in the same play in Game Two of the World Series. Houston third baseman Alex Bregman hit a Max Fried pitch to right field, which was caught by Joc Pederson. Something to remember for Jewish fans. But now let's also take the time to remember the Jewish players who died in 2021. Some, up in age as I am, will remember following them during their playing days.
born in 1931 to European immigrant parents. The Yankees outbid the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, who also wanted to sign the big six-foot-four pitcher hoping to attract more Jewish fans. After a couple of years in the Yankees organization, Cohen was obtained by the Cubs who hoped to give him a big league shot in 1952. However, the Korean War was raging and Cohen was drafted to wear a military uniform.
Hy Cohen finally made his big league debut on April 17, 1955, and had his last major league appearance on June 2. In between, he pitched in seven games without recording a victory or loss. He was tagged for 28 hits in 17 innings with an ERA of 7.94, and the right-hander earned a ticket back to the minor leagues. Twenty-two days later Sandy Koufax made his major league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
After dreidling around the minors, Cohen finished college and earned a master's degree in education and began a career as a teacher in the Los Angeles public school system, and also coached high school baseball in Southern California. He was married for 66 years and celebrated his 90th birthday before Covid claimed him less than a week later.
Norm Sherry died from natural causes at 89 at a long-term care facility in San Juan Capistrano, California. Along with his brother Larry, they starred at Fairfax High in Los Angeles and were teammates with the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were a Jewish battery as Norm was the catcher and Larry the pitcher. Norm also caught Sandy Koufax and tried to give him some pitching advice. Stubborn Sandy finally listened to his catcher's advice and became a different pitcher.
The transition came during an exhibition game in 1961. Koufax started the game by loading the bases as most of his pitches were wild. Sherry went to the mound and told Koufax to ease up on the ball, don't force the pitch by throwing so hard, relax the grip on the ball and aim for spots. Sandy had heard similar advice before, but this time he listened to his catcher, struck out the next three batters, and didn't allow a hit the rest of the way. Sherry shocked Koufax by telling him he was actually throwing harder by not trying. From that day on the 25-year-old left-hander was reborn as a pitcher.
After a five-year playing career and with a .215 career batting average, mostly with the Dodgers and a short stint with the Mets, Norm Sherry began coaching and managing and was hired as a major league manager with the California Angels in 1976. He was fired a year later and went back to coaching.
Richie Scheinblum had an eight-year big league career spanning 1965 to 1974 with six different teams (Cleveland, Washington, Kansas City, Cincinnati, California Angels and St. Louis), and compiled a career average of .263 with 13 home runs. His best season – and the only one in which he played in over 100 games – was in 1972 when he hit eight homers and batted .300 for Kansas City, becoming the only Jewish switch-hitter to hit .300 or better for an entire season.
On July 20, 1969, U.S. astronauts walked on the moon, and Scheinblum ran around the bases excitedly after hitting his first big league home run. We spent some time together one afternoon in the early 70s by walking around downtown Detroit and talking baseball. Richie was in a slump at the time and reasoned, "A slump is like a cold. No matter what you do it's going to last about two weeks."
After his release as a big league player, Scheinblum played in Japan for Hiroshima in 1975. He was the first Jew to play professionally in Japan and the first player to hit a home run in one game from both sides of the plate. The switch-hitter would also play the following year in Japan. Then it was on to California where he operated a wholesale jewelry business and eventually moved to Palm Harbor, Florida, where he worked as a salesman. Richie Scheinblum was 78 when he died in Florida early in the 2021 baseball season.
The Torah gives us snapshots of Yosef's career: An early rise to prominence in Potiphar's home while he's still a teenager, a leadership role during his 12 years in jail, and then 14 years as prince of Egypt and head of the Federal Reserve, steering the Egyptians through a major economic crisis. From the time he reaches his mid-40's we barely hear from or about him until he dies approximately 65 years later.
It's another 100 years before Yosef reappears on our radar posthumously, when Moshe (the next Jewish prince of Egypt) arranges for the homecoming of his remains. In the interim, Moshe's first 80 years fly by in the pages of our parsha; we learn that he has an early retirement from his own tenure as prince of Egypt, and will eventually hold his own leadership position for 40 years until his death.
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Yosef may have been an early exemplar of what's come to be known in recent years as the FIRE movement: Financial Independence – Retire Early. It's always important to maximize your earnings during your peak years (and beyond). The twist with the FIRE movement is the strategy and objective of accelerating your earnings dramatically in your 20s and 30s so that (like Yosef) you become wealthy enough that you can choose to retire early. Easier said than done, but so goes the FIRE theory.
I'd like to share a different takeaway from Yosef's disappearance off the Egyptian (and Torah's) stage in his 40s. Sometimes in our career we are invited to explore a new opportunity, and are hesitant for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we think we're irreplaceable – how will the company and its clients survive without us? Maybe we are afraid to try something new. Or we don't want to let go of our routines and work friendships. These may have been among the considerations and reservations that Moshe (and many other prophets) had when they were called by G-d. Maybe they wondered how serving G-d or country or taking on a new role would affect them and their families.
Yosef had committed 14 years of his life to what was likely a very demanding role in the public spotlight, with thousands, if not millions, depending upon him. Perhaps Yosef (with the aid of Mrs. Yosef) decided that it was OK to step down. Maybe he went back to shepherding or another career. Did he retire early and enable his sons and daughters-in-law to achieve prominence in their own careers by helping to raise his grandchildren? Regardless of what he did next, Yosef gives us "permission" to step back from a big role, make the most of roles that he didn't apply for or select, and also to move on from one opportunity to another.
My father celebrated his semi-retirement a couple of years ago by embarking on the daf yomi cycle. (PGBM – Please G-d By Me!) In his merit, I offer one more suggestion inspired by an unnamed talmid chacham quoted in the footnotes to Shemu'os Rei'Ya"h (essays on Bereishis based on Torah taught by Rav Kook). Yosef was a carbon copy of his father in many aspects of his life (as Rashi notes at the beginning of Vayeshev), with one big exception. While Ya'akov was yoshev ohalim, spending much of his life (apart from 14 years in Lavan's home) cloistered in the beis medrash, Yosef spent his peak years rising to greatness in Egypt. After 14 years at his peak (the same amount of time Yaakov had spent dedicated to Torah in the yeshiva of Shem v'Ever) Yosef may have felt that there was something missing in his life – something he needed to address with some urgency. While he likely didn't quit and start doing the daf, and there's no indication that he had (regular) communication with his father, maybe he too became a yoshev ohalim and spent the rest of his days immersed in Torah.
For those who may feel guilty that our career pursuits have left little time for Torah, I'm officially coining a new acronym: FIMT: Financial Independence – More Torah. May we be blessed with the career and financial security to be kovea more time for Torah, and may that time not have to wait until we retire.
Hillel Fuld has always been passionate about technology. After graduating with a degree in political science, he found himself writing user manuals for a large company, which he admits is not an optimal career choice for someone with ADHD.
At the time, Fuld started a tech blog. It was still in the early days of blogging, and his blog blew up. Israeli tech entrepreneurs reached out to him for marketing advice. He provided advice, free of charge, thereby exceeding their expectations. Subsequently, some of these entrepreneurs requested a client-based relationship, and Fuld began to build his marketing business.
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Today Fuld wears many hats. For one, he advises a gamut of businesses – from startups to multinational corporations to non-profits, banks, and even venture capital firms – on company growth, specifically in the realm of PR, social media, content creation, business development and fundraising.
He also contributes to a variety of publications, including Tech Crunch, Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, Calcalist and the Jerusalem Post. He began a Vlog four years ago to acquaint his listeners with the founders and executives behind well-known Israeli tech companies, and he hosts a podcast called Bootstrap.
Fuld is also a sought-after public speaker, and more recently became a corporate ambassador, promoting products from his ambassadorships, such as the Google Developer Program, to his audience.
I spoke to Fuld from his home in Israel to learn more about his work and to hear his insights into the tech startup world.
On Startups: I wanted to understand what differentiates a successful company from a mediocre company. Since Fuld advises a myriad of startups, I wondered if there were some elements a startup could incorporate to help create a formula for success.
According to Fuld, the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is neglecting to do comprehensive competitive analysis and thorough market research. They have what they believe is a phenomenal idea, and they're gung-ho about implementing it. While passion is admirable, Fuld suggests entrepreneurs take a month or so to get to know their competition.
Another crucial element for success is creating a ten-second "elevator pitch." Fuld advises entrepreneurs to determine the one thing that will cause an investor FOMO ("fear of missing out"). This can be anything from the product, the team, the technology, the market, or any other quality that stands out about the company.
The key, Fuld explains, is to create a pitch that gets the listener to identify with the problem, and to subsequently explain how the business intends to solve said problem. Hence, starting a pitch with, "We have an algorithm," may lead to a loss of interest, whereas saying something along the lines of, "Remember yesterday, you lost your daughter at the park, or you landed at the airport and couldn't find your suitcase," will most probably cause listeners to nod their heads as they identify with the pain point.
Fuld also strongly encourages entrepreneurs to build and maintain business relationships. He suggests entrepreneurs spend considerable time networking, even if it's merely receiving feedback on their products from those already in the industry – after all, one door can lead to many others.
Fuld is well aware that some might find his final piece of advice somewhat controversial. Nevertheless, he notes the earlier a business raises capital, the bigger stake goes to investors, since they're assuming risk, and he therefore recommends avoiding external investors early on, whenever possible.
On Comparing Yesterday's, Today's and Tomorrow's Tech: The tech industry is an immensely different space than when Fuld began his tech blog a decade and a half ago. I wanted to understand how Fuld views its evolution and what he believes the future will bring.
For one, Fuld believes that the tech market is highly saturated. Entrepreneurs who have an idea for a product today can safely assume it has already been done in some form. Fuld doesn't necessarily think the noise is a bad thing, although it makes it more difficult for a company to stand out.
Another difference, he says, is that valuations are much higher than they were 14 years ago. Tech companies are achieving numbers and scale like never seen before.
As for the future, Fuld expects "the next big thing" to be drones and a more sophisticated form of human-computer interaction. He believes our fraternization with our phones, which look like slabs of glass in the palms of our hands, will be seen as primitive and archaic in a few years, and instead we'll be using some sort of wearable device that enables us to interact with our computers more intuitively.
On Interviews: Among the people Fuld considers most inspirational are two legends that have had a deep impact on the tech and business worlds: Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, and Marc Andreesen, investor and inventor of the first widely-used web browser.
Fuld shared some lesser-known stories these individuals recounted to him. For example, Wozniak told him about the time a teacher came into the garage where Apple started to ask for a computer for her students. Steve Jobs, another co-founder, declined the request. Wozniak disagreed. Jobs still refused, so Wozniak took money out of his own pocket and bought the computer he had just built to give to the teacher.
Another example: While Andreesen invests in Israeli ventures, his company has a "one office rule" (Silicon Valley), and he doesn't have an official presence in the Jewish state. However, Fuld noted that Andreesen mentioned to him, when his company decides to open a second office, it will be in Tel Aviv.
Mental Health: Fuld is passionate about mental health. From a business perspective, mental health is one of the few industries that tech hasn't yet disrupted. However, Fuld purports that some of the Israeli tech companies focusing on mental health are producing incredible products and/or services.
On a personal level, Fuld's brother, Ari Fuld, hy"d, was murdered in a terrorist attack in 2018. Before collapsing, he chased and shot the terrorist, thereby ensuring he wouldn't injure others. This horrific tragedy, coupled with Covid, propelled Fuld towards the mental health field. Fuld recognized the pandemic exacerbated mental health challenges in a general sense, and he felt he had a choice. He could either sweep his mental health challenges under the rug, or he could use his platform to de-stigmatize mental health. He chose the latter.
In Fuld's opinion, we will have reached full de-stigmatization when it will be as acceptable for a person to say he is declining a dinner invite because he is sad as it would be for him to say he is declining a dinner invite due to a broken leg.
Final Thoughts: As our interview winded down, Fuld shared that, prior to Covid, he looked to work with companies that produced solid products or services and had good, smart people at the helm. Today, he says, the most important thing to him is working with good people who have a long-term vision and an impactful and meaningful mission.
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
Israelis receiving their fourth coronavirus vaccine, January 3, 2022.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST
The fourth dose of the coronavirus vaccine protects those aged 60 and over more than three times as much against severe illness and twice as much against infection compared to those who received only three doses, according to initial findings released by the Health Ministry on Sunday.
The comparison was done between about 400,000 people who received the fourth dose and about 600,000 people who received the third dose at least four months ago.
Last week, preliminary results of a study conducted by the Sheba Medical Center revealed that although the fourth dose of the vaccine increased the level of antibodies in the blood, it did not seem to offer protection against infection by the Omicron variant.
In an interview with KAN Reshet Bet radio, Prof. Ran Balicer, who heads the committee of experts advising the Health Ministry on COVID, stressed that the Green Pass is not effective when it comes to Omicron as it is meant to create spaces safe from infection and it is unable to do so with the latest variant. The Green Pass regulations are set to expire at the end of this month and the government is reportedly planning not to renew them.
Balicer recommended that public places be allowed to implement a new sort of Green Pass requiring both vaccination and antigen tests, especially places where high-risk people are located such as old-age homes and hospitals.
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
Did vaccines prevent 20,000 COVID deaths in Israel?
January 23, 2022
A Pfizer vaccine is prepared at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic in Bellingham, Wash on June 3, 2021. (AP/Elaine Thompson)
After 8,300 deaths, Professor Itamar Grotto says death toll would have been three times greater without vaccines.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
Former Health Ministry deputy director Professor Itamar Grotto announced on Sunday that Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine has saved some 20,000 Israeli lives and that the death toll in the Jewish state would have reached 30,000 (rather than the some 8,300 where it currently stands) had it not been for the jabs.
After three lockdowns, a blanket ban on foreign tourists lasting nearly 18 months, and widespread vaccine mandates alongside a digital COVID passport system restricting entry for unvaccinated people to leisure venues, Israel is leading the world in the number of per capita daily infections.Israel has signaled that it appears ready to abandon some of these hardline policies,. Their epidemiological necessity has come into question, as the vaccine seems to be ineffective at stopping new infections and spread of the Omicron strain.
But according to Grotto, the reason Omicron is not devastating Israel's population has nothing to do with the variant causing milder illness; rather, it's because so many Israelis are vaccinated.
"Certain sections of the public and even among the experts now watching the Omicron wave claim that this is proof that it is a mild disease 'like the flu', but this is a false claim, because it does not take into account the important effect of the vaccine, which prevents serious illness and large-scale mortality even now in the face of the Omicron wave," he wrote in his report.
According to European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) data, which includes data from Israel, 90 percent of the deaths of unvaccinated people attributed to COVID occurred in people over the age of 60.The ECDC "found that the mortality prevention rates [in the over-60 age group] from the vaccines are 60 percent after one dose and 95 percent after two doses," Grotto wrote.
Between December 2020 — the beginning of vaccinations in Israel and abroad — and November 2021, Israel ranked third in the number of deaths avoided as a result of vaccinations, and 15,662 deaths were prevented during this period in Israel, he added.
"During this period, 3,972 people over the age of 60 died in Israel, and without the vaccines, 19,634 people would have died in Israel."
The findings come as a widely hailed fourth coronavirus jab roll-out has been disappointing, with researchers from Sheba Medical Center finding that the second booster shot does not create a significant amount of antibodies effective against the Omicron strain.
What those who accept the 'stolen land' myth don't understand by JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Woke culture demands ritual acknowledgements about Native Americans. Those, however, who think this should also apply to Palestinians don't understand that Jews are indigenous in Israel.
January 21, 2022 / JNS) One of the tragicomic if all too prevalent customs of contemporary woke corporate culture is the way many groups and corporations now open meetings with ritual acknowledgments that they are on "stolen land." It involves the convener of the gathering to begin any proceedings by first stating that those speaking are "on the lands" of whatever Native American tribe once lived there as the indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent.
That is part of the context of the claim that the State of Israel was built on "stolen land," a phrase that was used by Hussain Altamimi, one of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's staffers when he smeared it as a "racist-European ethno-state." Unsurprisingly, Altamimi didn't lose his job when this came out. Why would AOC fire someone who reflects the same hatred of the Jewish state that she and other "Squad" colleagues have often expressed?
This is a commonplace myth spread by those who believe in intersectional ideology, which deems the efforts of all oppressed "people of color" to resist the racist oppression of those possessing "white privilege" to be part of one great righteous struggle.
Part of the problem with this facile and toxic idea is that whatever you think the answer to the question about the identity of the rightful owners of the North American continent might be, the notion that Jews are merely "European" or non-indigenous to the Middle East or the land of Israel is a lie.
Unfortunately, individuals who accept and spread that lie are not confined to those who work in the offices of radical members of Congress, even if their bosses are one of the young rock stars of the Democratic Party who are planning on taking it over once the current octogenarian leadership departs. These myths are widely accepted throughout academia and the mainstream media. They are reflected in the coverage of Israel in which, as one recent article in The New York Times about a Jerusalem property dispute put it, the Jews were accused of trying to "Judaize" their own ancient capital.
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That specific controversy involves a Palestinian family that was living on land they didn't own in a Jerusalem neighborhood Jews lived in before they were thrown out in 1948 by Jordanian invaders. Other properties in the area are claimed by those who represent the original Jewish owners, but this one involves state land that will now be used to build a school for Arab children with special needs. Indeed, some Palestinians believe that the family evicted by Israel stole it from them.
Yet that didn't prevent the Biden administration from condemning Israel in this instance. Nor did the facts stop officials from trying to exert pressure on Israel to allow Palestinian squatters to remain on land owned by Jews. The notion that Jewish rights in Jerusalem can be negated by the intransigence of Arabs who don't accept the legitimacy of the Jewish presence anywhere in the country is something even those liberals who claim to support Israel are ready to accept.
Regardless of the theoretical benefits of a two-state solution that Palestinians have repeatedly rejected or about the wisdom of enforcing Jewish property rights in areas of Jerusalem, the Jews aren't "stealing" land in Jerusalem. Nor are they invaders in a country in which they have lived for three millennia and from which they will never again allow themselves to be expelled.
With respect to North America, it's true that the Native American tribes that lived on the continent were dispossessed by the Europeans who began arriving there 500 years ago. This process involved larcenous sales of land in which tribe members often had no idea what this meant, in addition to treaty infringements and outright theft, generally accompanied by military aggression and slaughter. What traditional American histories called the "winning" of the continent involved tragedy for the Native American losers.
But few of those now signaling their virtue by paying homage to indigenous tribes who once lived on such "stolen land" are planning on giving their property and homes to their descendants, if any can be found. Indeed, even recognized Native American tribes, some of which are actually interested in getting back some of the places where their ancestors once lived or roamed, have noted the emptiness of these woke pronouncements.
Cynics with perhaps a better understanding of the history of these tribes than those who proclaim their devotion to their memory might also point out that those "indigenous peoples" themselves waged war continuously on each other. Many of the "sacred lands" that some tribes now claim were once sacred to other tribes who were defeated, dispossessed and slaughtered, much in the same manner that white Europeans would ultimately do to them.
The notion that this process of dispossession was immoral rather than merely the way groups of human beings had always interacted with each other since time immemorial—with the strong subjugating the weak—was a modern invention that didn't become widely accepted until the late 20th century. That change in thinking, of course, is a good thing, even if the retrospective pronouncements that some who did it were evil while others were not is both anachronistic and lacking in both context and historical background.
After all, the idea that the world would have been a better place had Europeans never arrived in America—and that the republic that would help rid the world of Nazism and defeat Soviet Communism should not have been created—is absurd as well as ahistorical.
It is ironic that a lot of the same people who believe in open borders for the United States and that all illegal immigrants should be granted amnesty somehow also believe that the Native Americans had a right to exclude white Europeans from immigrating to a mostly empty continent in the past.
Yet even those who are willing to support the proposition that all descendants of immigrants from Europe or elsewhere should divest themselves of stolen Native American property need to realize a key fact about the Middle East: Jews—whether their families came from Europe or are part of the majority of Jewish Israelis who trace their roots to the Middle East or North Africa—are indigenous to the land of Israel. Contrary to intersectional myths, Zionism is not an expression of colonialism or imperialism. It is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Far from being the "apartheid state" that leftists claim, it remains the sole democracy in the region.
Absorbing these concepts is difficult for those who have been indoctrinated in woke doctrines that define Jews as both white and privileged, and therefore, to be disparaged and fought. Just as important, they must also understand that their acceptance of these lies enables anti-Semitism and rationalizes violence—whether from Palestinian terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah, or those who attack American synagogues. Far from being a harmless woke myth, the fallacy about Jews stealing land doesn't merely enable slander; it is the foundation on which most forms of anti-Semitic hate, delegitimization and terrorism rest.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
Israeli Scientists Invent New Diagnostic Test for Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science together with the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer have developed a noninvasive alternative to the current testing procedure used to diagnose inflammatory bowel disease.
At present, people suspected of having inflammatory bowel disease are often required to undergo a colonoscopy, an invasive procedure performed under anesthesia.
The new noninvasive alternative currently in development, however, detects inflammation in the intestines by analyzing a fecal sample.
In the future, stool testing might facilitate the diagnosis of disorders such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis and help monitor their course, as well as enable physicians to select the most appropriate therapy for each patient, according to Weizmann Institute of Science.
The study's findings are to be published this week in the journal Gut.
The idea for this study was born when researchers in the lab of Prof. Shalev Itzkovitz of Weizmann's Molecular Cell Biology Department saw that cells shed from the gut lining of mice and expelled in the feces stay alive for several hours.
"We realized that we could analyze gene expression in cells shed daily from the lining of the human gut, using this expression to learn about potential disease processes in the intestines," said Itzkovitz, who headed the research team.
Dr. Bella Ungar, a gastroenterologist at Sheba Medical Center, led the study in which she and other researchers from Sheba and Weizmann analyzed cells collected from the gut lining of 30 patients with inflammatory bowel disease during the course of colonoscopy.
Some of the cells came from fecal samples taken from the lower intestinal tract, others from biopsies of the gut lining in the same area. The researchers compared the cells collected from the patients with those taken from fecal samples or biopsies of some 30 healthy people who had undergone colonoscopies as part of routine cancer screening.
Using specially adapted RNA sequencing and other advanced methods, the scientists determined which cell types were present in each of the samples. They found that apart from the regular cells making up the gut lining, the fecal samples contained four immune-related cell types associated with inflammation, among them inflammatory monocytes and regulatory T cells.
By means of algorithms developed in Itzkovitz's lab, they then identified distinct expression patterns, or RNA signatures, of the cells in each sample. These signatures helped reveal the exact proportion of each immune-related cell type in the gut lining; no less important, they enabled the scientists to determine whether or not a person had an active case of intestinal inflammation.
The fecal samples proved to be more reliable in this respect than the biopsies.
"A biopsy can miss inflammation because it provides a snapshot of the narrow spot from which it was removed, whereas a fecal sample contains cells shed from the entire lining of the gut," Itzkovitz explains. "Moreover, a fecal sample can sometimes be more revealing than the examination of the lining during colonoscopy, which is done by eye, because certain forms of inflammation produce no visible signs."
Reading out the RNA signatures of cells from fecal samples can be crucial for selecting a personalized therapy – for example, administering drugs designed to block only the types of substances triggering inflammation in a particular patient, rather than suppressing that person's entire immune system.
Such therapies already exist – new biological drugs that bring dramatic relief to some patients with inflammatory bowel disease – but it's currently impossible to know in advance which drug will help which patient.
Overall, these drugs still work in only about half of those who receive them. Knowing which subsets of inflammatory cells are responsible for the disease process and which genes they express could improve the effectiveness of therapies, giving physicians crucial information before they prescribe the drugs.
In addition, having a quick and simple way of assessing intestinal inflammation may help determine when the therapy is needed and when it can be stopped.
Ungar points out that the fecal RNA signature method is different from medical tests developed in the past to check the stool for signs of intestinal inflammation; one of them, for example, measured the levels of a protein called calprotectin.
Those tests were not highly reliable, and thus colonoscopy has remained the gold standard for evaluating inflammation in the intestines, even though it's invasive and requires cumbersome preparation. The new Weizmann-Sheba method could provide testing for inflammation that is less invasive, much cheaper than colonoscopy and at least as reliable.
Also participating in the study were Miri Yavzori, Dr. Ella Fudim, Dr. Orit Picard, Prof. Uri Kopylov, Prof. Rami Eliakim, Dr. Chen Mayer, Prof. Iris Barshak and Prof. Shomron Ben-Horin of the Sheba Medical Center; Dr. Dror S. Shouval of Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel; Dr. Yishai Levin and Dr. Alon Savidor of the Nancy and Stephen Grand Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine; and Dr. Shani Ben-Moshe, Dr. Rita Manco, Stav Dan, Adi Egozi and Dr. Keren Bahar Halpern of Weizmann's Molecular Cell Biology Department.
Prof. Shalev Itzkovitz's research is supported by the Helen and Martin Kimmel Institute for Stem Cell Research; the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust & Wolfson Foundation; and the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.
500-Year-Old Letter Offers Rare Look into the Life of Legendary Kabbalist
(JNS) The National Library of Israel is making available to the public for the first time a 500-year-old letter shedding light on the life of one of the most influential kabbalists in Jewish history.
The letter, which is being made public in honor of the late Jerusalem collector Ezra Gorodesky, is "worth its weight in gold," said Yoel Finkelman, curator of the library's Judaica collection.
The writer of the missive, named David, wrote to Rabbi Isaac ben Solomon Luria Ashkenazi, known as "Ha'ARI hakadosh" in Jewish religious circles, during the rabbi's sojourn in Egypt in the sixteenth century.
The letter's purpose was to enlist the rabbi's support for an emissary who had been dispatched from Tzfat to raise money among Diaspora Jews for Jews living in the Holy Land. Although the kabbalist was known for his simple, even ascetic, lifestyle, he was an important figure whom Jews asked for advice, even on financial and national matters.
The letter was preserved because it had been used to bind another book, a common practice before the invention of cardboard. Bookbinders would take paper or vellum pages from worn-out volumes and stick them together into dense stacks that would serve as stiff enough material for book covers.
Gorodesky, who devoted his career to the painstaking work of picking apart the old bindings and revealing the treasures within, died of COVID-19 in 2021. While he donated many pages from his collection to the National Library, the letter to Rabbi Ashkenazi is among his most significant finds.
"This letter, which is worth its weight in gold, is part of the precious collections in the National Library, which comprises a national source of information about the Jewish history of Israel," said curator Finkelman.
"The letter, which was preserved in an unusual manner in the binding of old books, is a major discovery about the influence Ha'ari had, not only in the field of Kabbalah but also worldly matters," he added.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Israel Hayom.
