Western Wall curbs re-imposed amid COVID spike, but up to 10,000 still allowed and Louis Brandeis’s Passionate Belief In Aliyah As Necessary To Jewish Survival By Saul Jay Singer and Morrie Arnovich – A Star In 20th Century Big League Baseball By Irwin Cohen and German Jerusalem by Thomas Sparr review: The golden age of Jerusalem’s Rehavia district and no Jab no Job Rabbi Kanivesky
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.
Western Wall curbs re-imposed amid COVID spike, but up to 10,000 still allowed
Holy site's management to bring back section dividers, limit entrance at a time when tens of thousands expected for Selichot services ahead of High Holidays
By TOI staffPreparations at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for the resumption of group prayers, October 15, 2020 (Western Wall Heritage Foundation)
Up to 10,000 people will be allowed to converge on the Western Wall for traditional penitent prayers later this week, despite skyrocketing COVID case numbers and calls for further limits on gatherings.
The Western Wall Heritage Foundation announced Tuesday that it would reintroduce a series of measures aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus at the open-air holy site ahead of the High Holidays, which usually sees large crowds of worshippers visit.
Dividers will be put up to separate between crowds of worshippers, with total attendance set to be capped at 10,000 people.
The pods will be restricted according to Health Ministry guidelines, the Heritage Foundation said, without specifying further. It also did not specify how it would deal with crowding at entrances or exits to the plaza, where chokepoints are known to form.
Current Health Ministry guidelines forbid open-air gatherings of more than 5,000 people for mass events like concerts, with celebrations capped at 500 people each.
Thousands of Israelis are expected to converge on the site in the days and weeks ahead for nightly Selichot services, which begin Thursday, ahead of the Rosh Hashanah holiday which begins on the night of September 6.
Thousands attend forgiveness prayers (Selichot) at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem early on October 8, 2019, prior to the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The Heritage Foundation recommended that worshippers arrive early at the site in order to prevent crowding at the entrances.
Health Ministry figures updated earlier Tuesday showed that More than 9,800 Israelis tested positive for COVID-19 a day earlier, close to an all-time high of new daily cases since the start of the pandemic. The positivity rate of all those tested on Monday stood at 6.63%, a high not seen since February.
In a bid to bring the surge under control Israel has stepped up its vaccination campaign, including booster shots.
The Health Ministry on Tuesday announced that Israelis age 30 and over are now eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster, expanding the program days after lowering the minimum age to 40.
The new policy is effective immediately and those eligible should turn to their health providers to set up appointments, the ministry said.
"We made sure we have enough vaccines for everyone. The vaccination campaign works efficiently and quickly. Go get vaccinated," Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz tweeted on Tuesday.
Only those who received the second vaccine dose at least five months earlier are eligible for the shot.
Israel is the first country in the world to offer a third vaccine to such a broad slice of its population, as it seeks to combat the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
German Jerusalem by Thomas Sparr review: The golden age of Jerusalem's Rehavia district
GERMAN JERUSALEMThe remarkable life of a German–Jewish neighbourhood in the Holy City 220pp. Haus. £16.99.Thomas Sparr
For many of its Jewish inhabitants British Mandate-era Palestine was a tabula rasa on which they could plan their new utopias. Brawny kibbutzniks built collective settlements on arid, rocky plains, dreaming that one day Comrade Stalin would drop by and hail their achievements. Hard-edged Labour Zionists steadily constructed their state-in-waiting, preparing, too, for the war they knew was inevitable. Meanwhile in Jerusalem, émigré writers, artists and philosophers transplanted the world of German Jewish intelligentsia to a new quarter called Rehavia, known as the "Grunewald of the East", after a leafy suburb of Berlin.
German Jewish émigrés, known as Yekkes (the provenance of the term is disputed), also settled in Tel Aviv and Haifa, but only Rehavia became, as Thomas Mann described it, a "way of life and thought". As Thomas Sparr notes in German Jerusalem, "a long stretch of time", from the Weimar Republic through Nazi Germany and into the postwar years, became concentrated in Rehavia. "This history extends over a handful of streets, squares, a few shops and cafes, in homes sparsely furnished with grand pianos and music stands, a few pictures and, above all, endless walls of books." For poorer Jews, Rehavia represented art, culture, light and music. The writer Amoz Oz, who grew up in a neighbouring district, recalled:
The Jerusalem my parents looked up to lay far from the area where we lived: it was in leafy Rehavia with its gardens and strains of piano music … where there were recitals, balls, literary evenings, thes dansants and exquisite, artistic conversations.
Sparr, a German writer and editor who worked at Hebrew University in the late 1980s, is an engaging guide, with a fine eye for detail. Ably translated by Stephen Brown, he walks us through apartments, schools and cafes and takes us into the lives of Rehavia's former luminaries and visitors. It's clear that Rehavia deserves a much fuller study, perhaps focusing on a handful of buildings and families, and telling the wider story through them. But for now German Jerusalem is a sparkling introduction with a dazzling cast. Café Atara, on Ben Yehuda street, was Rehavia's social centre, where, according to the actor Gad Granach, "everyone had his waitress … I remember Stella and Zima, who not only knew exactly what each of their regular customers ordered but acted as mother confessors as well".
The book is structured by a series of short…
Morrie Arnovich – A Star In 20th Century Big League Baseball
In the July 23 issue of The Jewish Press I mentioned that our two new favorite players, Jacob Steinmetz and Elie Kligman, are about 6-foot-five. While Steinmetz may have exceeded that figure by an inch, Kligman is an inch over six feet. In the same issue of The Jewish Press, Alan Zeitlin wrote a great article about the two players and commented, "If both players were to make the big leagues they are believed to be the second and third observant players to play in the pros – after shortstop Morrie Arnovich who played in the 1930s and '40s, decades before the first MLB draft in 1965, and was a shortstop for the Phillies and Reds."
Let's take a closer look at Arnovich. Morris was born on November 16, 1910, into an Orthodox family in Superior, Wisconsin. Superior was inferior to the closest big Jewish towns. Milwaukee was 327 miles away and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were closer by about 200 miles. Morrie's parents wanted him to be a rabbi, but Morrie preferred playing baseball and basketball to religious studies. He was good enough to catch the attention of baseball scouts and played semi-pro ball on Sundays to pick up some extra dollars. Veteran baseball minds advised him to not play the infield and concentrate on the outfield only. He starred in the outfield and was signed to a professional baseball contract by the Philadelphia Phillies.
After spending three seasons in the minor league system of the Phillies, Morrie was brought up to the majors in the last weeks of the 1936 season and impressed the manager and coaches by batting .313 in 48 at-bats. The following year, he became a regular outfielder for the Phillies and batted .290 with ten home runs. While Jewish fans were concentrating on Hank Greenberg's efforts to pass Babe Ruth's single season home run record of 60 in 1938 (Greenberg ended the season with 58), Jewish baseball history was made on August 20, 1938.
Three Jewish players involved in the game between the Phillies and New York Giants – Arnovich, Harry Danning and Phil Weintraub – all hit home runs. Danning's Giants edged the Phillies 9-8. Morrie got off to a fast start in 1939 and his five hits in one game on May 17 sent his batting average soaring over .400. But he was worried over the news in the papers and on radio following the ocean liner S.S. St. Louis, which became known as the "Voyage of the Damned." The ship was denied entry to Cuba and desperate pleas to America, Canada and other countries to accept its Jewish passengers were rebuffed. Also in May of '39, the British issued a White Paper that limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to only 75,000 over a five-year period.
As the Jews of Europe were looking for avenues of escape, the Jewish community of Philadelphia was staging "Morrie Arnovich Day" on a scheduled Sunday double-header between the Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates. The Associated Press wrote, "A crowd of 13,000, including his father, Charles, 54, of Superior, Wis., saw Arnovich, the National League's leading hitter, presented with a complete fishing outfit between games. It was the first time Arnovich's father has seen him play in the major leagues." Morrie had two hits in eight trips to the plate in the twin bill that the teams split.
Morrie was honored to be one of three Jewish players to participate in the 1939 Hall of Fame Dedication Game at Cooperstown, New York, in 1939, along with Moe Berg and Hank Greenberg.
But the biggest honor was being elected by fans to the National League All-Star team in July at Yankee Stadium. Deeply disappointed he didn't get in the game, he still enjoyed being around baseball's greatest stars of the time and went on to have his best season with an average of .324.
Arnovich was dealt to the Cincinnati Reds during the 1940 season and went to the World Series with the Reds. He saw action in game four against the Tigers in Detroit; he was hitless in two at-bats but received a World Series share and ring as the Reds won in seven games. After the season, the Reds sold Morrie to the New York Giants where he would be part of Jewish baseball history in the 1941 season.
On September 21, 1941, four Jewish players were in the starting lineup for the New York Giants. Arnovich was in left field, rookie Sid Gordon in center field, Harry Danning was catching and Harry Feldman was pitching. The game only took one hour and 39 minutes as the Giants won 4-0. Morrie spent the next four baseball seasons in military service. Discharged in January 1946, the 35-year-old Arnovich signed on with the Giants again, but was released after playing in only one game as it was obvious that he didn't have the mobility he had before he entered military service. But Morrie was on the Giants long enough in 1946 to be one of five Jewish players on the team that year. The others were, Harry Feldman, Sid Gordon, Goody Rosen and Mike Schemer.
Arnovich had a career batting average of .287 and played in 590 big league games, all in the outfield. While he played on Shabbos and most Yom Tovim, he stayed away from non-kosher foods to the best of his ability.
The popular Morrie signed on with the Cubs organization as player-manager in four different minor league towns before returning to his Superior hometown. He kept busy by scouting for the Phillies, operated a jewelry store and sporting goods store with his wife, Bertha, coached various sports teams in the area, and was active in the town's small Jewish community, and served as president of the Hebrew Brotherhood Congregation. A heart attack claimed Morrie on July 20, 1959, four months shy of his 49th birthday.
Top ultra-Orthodox rabbi: Unvaccinated teachers should not come to work
Rabbi Haim Kanievsky says teachers have an obligation to get vaccinated and should be suspended from work if they don't do so.
Coronavirus Commisioner Dr. Salman Zarka meets with Rabbi Haim Kanievsky on Tuesday
(photo credit: HEALTH MINISTRY)
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, the leading Ashkenazi non-hassidic ultra-Orthodox rabbi, has told school principals in the sector that if school teachers are not vaccinated against COVID-19, they should not teach.Kanievsky's comments were made amid an increasing rate of coronavirus infection in the haredi community resulting largely from the reopening of ultra-Orthodox educational institutions at the start of the Jewish month of Elul on August 8.The rabbi made his remarks in a meeting with coronavirus commissioner Dr. Salman Zarka on Tuesday. He and other leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis have repeatedly called on the haredi public to get the vaccine and booster shot.
Louis Brandeis's Passionate Belief In Aliyah As Necessary To Jewish Survival
Louis Dembitz Brandeis is best known for serving as the first Jewish Justice of the United States Supreme Court after his nomination by President Woodrow Wilson and for playing the key role in developing the constitutional right to privacy.
He is also remembered for looking out for the interests of the common people and for serving as a powerful advocate for the idea that the law must adapt to the prevailing social order. Before his elevation to the high court, he represented interests that had previously been disfavored in the law, including consumers, investors and taxpayers, and he fought to curb the power of large banks, money trusts, powerful corporations, monopolies, public corruption and mass consumerism, all of which he felt were manifestly detrimental to American values and culture.
Much revered today, Brandeis was then a broadly despised figure who was characterized as a "radical" – and much worse – by the major media and whose elevation to the high court was opposed by six former presidents of the American Bar Association. However, it is indisputable that a huge factor in the opposition to his nomination was unadulterated anti-Semitism.
In response to the wide-ranging protest against him, the Senate held its first ever Judiciary Committee hearing on a Supreme Court nominee. One-hundred twenty-five days after his nomination – still the all-time record for a nominee to the high court – and after months of ugly and hard-fought debate, Brandeis was ultimately confirmed on a 47-22 vote, which he saw as a vindication of his Zionist activism.
He went on to serve for 22 years, often taking minority positions to challenge the old order and to write into law "the hopes and necessities of present-day America." He believed in the federalist idea that it was both a moral imperative and a practical necessity for the federal government to disperse power to the states, and he became a great defender of the First Amendment in general and free speech in particular.
Mini collection of Brandeis stamps and labels.
Brandeis (1856-1941) was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents who, shocked by the anti-Semitic riots that erupted in Prague, left for the United States. Though his extended family practiced Judaism, albeit in a non-Orthodox form, his parents were Frankists (an 18th-19th Sabbatian religious cult which recognized Jacob Frank as the Jewish messiah) who celebrated the main Christian holidays as part of their community.
Brandeis was influenced greatly by his uncle, Lewis Naphtali Dembitz, who regularly practiced traditional Judaism and was known as "the Jewish Scholar of the South." Lewis, who was an avid follower of Theodor Herzl and was actively involved in Zionist activities, encouraged his nephew to enter Harvard Law School, where he graduated first in his class after two years. Ironically, given his later progressive career path as "the People's Lawyer" who rallied against Big Business, Brandeis became wealthy by serving as a corporate lawyer at a time when the free-enterprise system was being transformed into a structure of corporate monopoly.
Although Brandeis was wholly assimilated and never belonged to or attended any synagogue, did not observe Jewish holidays, including even Yom Kippur, and was otherwise entirely remote from the institutions of Jewish life, his "Jewish consciousness" was nonetheless raised by two experiences in his mid-fifties.
First, as arbitrator in a strike in 1910 involving the overwhelmingly Jewish New York garment industry, he encountered and was impressed by the Jewish idealism and democratic spirit of the East European Jewish masses. As a result, he became more connected to the Jewish people and their way of life, and thus learned much about his people's heartfelt hopes for a homeland in Eretz Yisrael.
Second, after an August 13, 1912, meeting with Jacob De Hass, the editor of a Boston Jewish weekly who also served as Herzl's secretary, De Haas essentially became his personal guide to Zionism and convinced him that American and Zionist ideals were wholly complementary. Visiting Eretz Yisrael in 1919, he emotionally declared that "the ages-long longing and the love is all explicable now." Yet, inexplicably, this was to be his only trip there.
In this original document, Brandeis wrote: "The need of the Jewish Organization is Men, Money and Discipline." [Note that his handwriting has been broadly recognized as very poor, at best, and, in many cases, virtually indecipherable.]Considering the promotion of economic development in Eretz Yisraelas a high priority, he helped to create and organize the Palestine Economic Corporation to promote self-supporting projects there, and he established the Palestine Endowment Fund to administer funds for self-supporting projects.
Brandeis became a leader in American Jewish life, joining the Zionist Organization in 1912 and accepting the chairmanship of the U.S. Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs (1914-18), which changed his life. He became arguably American Jewry's greatest Jewish leader and was viewed by American Zionists as both their prophet and high priest, as he introduced much-needed organizational efficiencies to the American Zionist movement; raised unprecedented funds for it – including his own donations, which exceeded over $1.6 million (in early 20th century dollars) – and transformed it into an effective political force. He also served as honorary president of the Zionist Organization of America (1918-1921) and of the World Zionist Organization (1920 – 1921).
Some commentators criticize Brandeis' Zionism, totally devoid of G-d and with never a reference to the Bible or rabbinic authorities, as more a manifestation of his progressive American idealism than Judaism. While accurate, this essentially secular philosophy was actually a godsend for the Zionist movement, which drew far more supporters by appealing to their Americanism.
Brandeis's leading role in securing President Wilson's approval of the Balfour Declaration (1917) is well known, but less known is the fascinating back story of how his motive and inspiration for doing so came from Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the man who single-handedly revived the modern Hebrew language.
Ben Yehuda was then in America to raise funds for what became his seminal Hebrew Dictionary. During his speech at a massive reception arranged for him, he argued passionately for a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. In the audience was Brandeis who, impressed with the Hebrew lexicographer and his pure Zionism, invited him to repeat his speech to an assembly of America's leading Zionists, who were all inspired and impressed by Ben Yehuda.
Brandeis: "No one may speak for all Jews."
Determined to seize the moment and to take advantage of his friendship with the Supreme Court Justice, Ben Yehuda convinced him to urge President Wilson to recognize the legitimate right of Jews to their ancestral homeland. Brandeis asked if there existed sufficient infrastructure in Eretz Yisrael to establish a sovereign state and, receiving his assurances that there indeed was, he repeated Ben Yehuda's arguments to a highly skeptical Wilson and ultimately convinced the president to support the Balfour Declaration.
Although Brandeis was a leader in promoting Jewish interests, both at home and abroad, and his words generated substantial attention and carried great weight even outside the Jewish community, he never presumptuously assumed that he had the right to speak for all Jews on any subject, as evidenced by the December 29, 1939, correspondence exhibited here. Responding to a plea from a correspondent that he, as a Jewish Supreme Court Justice and a leader of American Jewry, should take an unspecified "beneficial" position on behalf of Jews, he writes:
Re yours of 26th, my thanks for your thoughtful letter. Kindly write me of the "simple" "measures which would have a beneficial effect."
Except from your letter, I know nothing of the occurrences or the persons to which it refers. Obviously, no one has more authority to speak "for all Jews" than you would have to speak for all Protestants or for all Catholics.
Brandeis's Call to the Educated Jew.
Brandeis saw Zionism as a solution to the anti-Semitic pogroms and atrocities in Europe and Russia while at the same time being a way to "revive the Jewish spirit." At a time when most American Jews feared supporting the Zionist cause, lest they be seen as unfaithful to the United States, he challenged such allegations of "dual loyalty" and argued, "Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with Patriotism . . . loyalty to America demands that each American Jew become a Zionist." Exhibited here is Call to the Educated Jew, a pamphlet containing the text of the address that he delivered at the Menorah Conference on November 8, 1914.
The purpose of the Menorah Movement, which originated at Harvard University in 1906, was to win for the field of Jewish history and culture its rightful place at Harvard; to provide an opportunity for Jewish students to participate more fully in Jewish life; and to dispel misconceptions about Jews and Judaism. The group was formally neutral on essentially every Jewish issue, including Zionism, but, in his address to the group, Brandeis expressed the passionate Zionist views that came to characterize his oratory on the subject.
Perhaps unusual for a non-practicing Jew, he presented a strong belief that, due to assimilation, the Jews cannot survive in the Diaspora, even in the American "Goldena Medinah," and that the only chance for the Jews to survive as a people is in Eretz Yisrael:
Mind, body, and character are Jewish qualities that have not come to us by accident but were developed by three thousand years of civilization and nearly two thousand years of persecution; developed through our religion and spiritual life; through our traditions; and through the social and political conditions under which our ancestors lived. They are, in short, the product of Jewish life . . . The Torah led the "People of the Book" to intellectual pursuits at times when most of the Arayan peoples were illiterate. Religion imposed the use of the mind upon the Jews, indirectly as well as directly, and it demanded of the Jew not merely the love, but also the understanding of G-d. This necessarily involved a study of the law . . .
The fruit of three thousand years of civilization and a hundred generations of suffering may not be sacrificed by us. It will be sacrificed if dissipated. Assimilation is national suicide. And assimilation can be prevented only by preserving national characteristics and life as other peoples, large and small, are preserving and developing their national life . . . [Should we not] have a land where the Jewish life may be naturally led, the Jewish language spoken, and the Jewish spirit prevail? Surely we must, and that land is our father's land: Palestine. . . .
The establishment of the legally secured Jewish home is no longer a dream. For more than a generation, brave pioneers have been building the foundations of our new-old home. It remains for us to build the super-structure. The ghetto walls are now falling. Jewish life cannot be preserved and developed, assimilation cannot be averted, unless there be established a fatherland, a center from which the Jewish spirit may radiate and give to the Jews scattered throughout the world that inspiration which springs from the memories of a great past and the hope of a great future.
The glorious past can really live only if it becomes the mirror of a glorious future; and to this end the Jewish home in Palestine is essential.
Golda Meir's letter mentioning Brandeis.
Given his strong feelings about aliya as being central to both Jewish existence and Jewish life, a theme to which he often returned throughout his life, it is interesting that Brandeis never himself came to live in Eretz Yisrael. Nonetheless, as Golda Meir (she signs here as "Meyerson," as she did not change her name to "Meir" until 1956) argues in the August 30, 1954, correspondence to Yaakov Chazan on her Ministry of Labor letterhead exhibited here – specifically using Brandeis as an example – it is possible to be a loyal Zionist without ever making aliya:
I was very disturbed with your view as published in the recent issue of "Al-Hamishmar" that – "The ultimate purpose of Zionism is aliya," which reminded me due to its tenor the old saying "the end of a thief is hanging," though these cases are inherently different. So I do wish to ask you, what is going to happen if a Zionist is unwilling to make aliya to Israel? Should we deny the title Zionist to the late Judge Brandeis, may his memory be for a blessing – who never ultimately made aliya? On the other hand, there were many American Jews who came to Israel but did not call themselves Zionists [a reference to the many charedi Jews who made aliya but remained firmly in the anti-Zionist camp], [so] how can you make such a generalization?
At the bottom, Moshe Sharett, then Israel's prime minister, wrote: "I cannot understand why she is causing trouble for Chazan." Golda was a great supporter of Ben-Gurion and urged him to return from his 1953 retirement, which he eventually did in November 1955 for a second tenure as prime minister. In contrast, Sharett did everything he could to convince Ben-Gurion to remain in his home at Sde Boker. Al-Hamishmar was the official organ of the Mapai Party for which Chazan was, at the time, an important party leader.
Brandeis Memorial Colony in Palestine. A living tribute to his memory on Jewish National Fund soil.
In 1927, Kfar Brandeis, named for the Supreme Court Justice, was founded as a rural village South of the moshav Hadera with money endowed by Brandeis and his Palestine Economic Corporation. Each of the original 40 families settling there received a farm, 20 chickens and a cow, a share in a joint orchard, and a small one-room home. Ten years later, Brandeis spearheaded the founding of what became Ein HaShofet ("the Judge's Spring," also named for him), the first American-established kibbutz in Eretz Yisrael, for which he raised some $70,000 dollars from American Jews – including his own $50,00 donation. Located about 15 miles southeast of Haifa, it remains an active industrial and agricultural kibbutz today.
Brandeis died of a heart attack in 1941 and, in accordance with his own arrangements, he was buried beneath the portico of the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His largest bequests after providing for his family were to the Palestine Endowment Fund and Hadassah, and the Brandeis Memorial Colony was established in Eretz Yisrael the following year as a haven for Jewish Holocaust survivors.
