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OP-ED: What Israeli Chief Rabbi David Lau really said about the Pittsburgh shooting

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Rabbi David Lau, Israel's chief Ashkenazic rabbi, is shown on March 29, 2018. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Rabbi David Lau, Israel's chief Ashkenazic rabbi, is shown on March 29, 2018. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Rabbi David Lau, Israel’s chief Ashkenazic rabbi, is shown on March 29, 2018. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

(JTA) – Israel’s Chief Rabbinate may deserve a lot of the criticism it gets from non-Orthodox Jews in this country, who see their official expressions of Judaism disrespected and their followers disenfranchised by the rabbinate’s tight hold on Israel’s religious affairs.

But it appears that Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau did not deserve headlines, including one in JTA, suggesting that he refused to identify the site of the deadly shooting in Pittsburgh as a “synagogue.” [The JTA article in question has been removed from the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin website.]

In fact, according to a translation of his full interview with the Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon, Lau did use the Hebrew word for a synagogue – “beit knesset” – to refer to synagogue’s like Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, and at the same time offered a full-throated, and even perturbed, dismissal of those who would make such petty distinctions at a time of tragedy. [Read more…]

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OP-ED: Is ‘non-Jew’ an insult?

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NEW YORK (JTA) — A few months ago I wrote a humor piece titled “Don’t eat off the seder plate, and other tips for non-Jews attending their first seder.” It drew a miffed response from a rabbi friend who often works with interfaith families and suggested, “it’s time to drop terms like ‘non-Jew’ and gentile.”

At the time, I scoffed. Yes, it is a little weird that a people who represent less than 0.1 per cent of the world’s population define everybody else as “not us.” It’s like someone with lactose intolerance saying he doesn’t eat “dairy ice cream.” Which is technically true, although it tends to over-privilege Tofutti. [Read more…]

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Federations rally around pluralism – but wish they didn’t have to

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Young people at the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly in Los Angeles, November 12, 2017. (Courtesy of JFNA)
Young people at the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly in Los Angeles, November 12, 2017. (Courtesy of JFNA)

Young people at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Los Angeles, November 12, 2017. (Courtesy of JFNA)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) – Leaders of North America’s Jewish federation movement kicked off their annual conference here Sunday with a tribute to the 1987 march on Washington that brought out hundreds of thousands of people in support of Soviet Jews.

The film and testimonials by refuseniks were moving, but felt a little like those perennial tributes by the New York Mets to their 1986 championship team: a reminder not only of what was, but what’s gone.

The rescue of Soviet Jews and their resettlement here and in Israel was a high point for the network of Jewish philanthropies and advocacy groups represented by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), whose annual General Assembly (GA) was to conclude Tuesday afternoon. [Read more…]

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Rabbi leads a team of spiritual first responders in storm-tossed Texas

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Rabbi Shira Stern of Marlboro, N.J., is a disaster spiritual care provider for the American Red Cross. (Courtesy of Stern)
Rabbi Shira Stern of Marlboro, N.J., is a disaster spiritual care provider for the American Red Cross. (Courtesy of Stern)

Rabbi Shira Stern of Marlboro, N.J., is a disaster spiritual care provider for the American Red Cross. (Courtesy of Stern)

(JTA) – It was a day before Hurricane Harvey was due to make landfall, and Rabbi Shira Stern knew she was headed for Texas.

As a director of Disaster Spiritual Care for the American Red Cross, she knew there would be people who would have other needs beyond shelter, beyond medical care, beyond a hot meal and a place to dry out. She met people just like them after floods devastated part of West Virginia in 2016, and when Superstorm Sandy pounded her own state, New Jersey, in 2012.

So after a circuitous two days of travel she found herself in Dallas, overseeing a team of chaplains in the shelters set up for families chased out of Houston by flooding that so far has claimed 46 lives and destroyed tens of thousands of homes and businesses. [Read more…]

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Op-Ed: President Trump just asked us to be fair to white supremacists

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President Donald Trump speaking to the media at Trump Tower in New York City, Aug. 15, 2017. Looking on, from left, are Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council; Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin; Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao; and Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump speaking to the media at Trump Tower in New York City, Aug. 15, 2017. Looking on, from left, are Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council; Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin; Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao; and Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

U.S. President Donald Trump speaking to the media at Trump Tower in New York City, Aug. 15, 2017. Looking on, from left, are Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council; Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin; Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao; and Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) – There was a moment in his “neo-Nazi, neo-Shmazi” news conference where you might have found yourself thinking, maybe U.S. President Donald Trump is right.

On the narrow question of who was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, a prosecutor might note that punches were thrown by white supremacists and left-wing activists, neo-Nazis and members of the Antifa resistance.

“I think there’s blame on both sides,” is how Trump put it in his news conference Tuesday in New York.

It’s the right answer if this is the question: “Who threw punches in Charlottesville?” But it is the wrong answer to every other question raised by the awful events of the past three days. [Read more…]

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Analysis: Tel Aviv is the ‘home of Judaism.’ So is Boston, Sao Paulo, Marseille, Ottawa …

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Ivanka Trump praying at the Western Wall, May 22, 2017. (Mendy Hechtman/Flash90)
Ivanka Trump praying at the Western Wall, May 22, 2017. (Mendy Hechtman/Flash90)

Ivanka Trump praying at the Western Wall, May 22, 2017. (Mendy Hechtman/Flash90)

(JTA) – U.S. President Donald Trump and his staff may have left Israel feeling pretty friendly to the Jews, but man, we don’t make it easy for them.

Flying with reporters from Saudi Arabia to Israel on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that they were “onto the second stop, Tel Aviv, home of Judaism.” Critics were not kind.

Jordan Schachtel of Conservative Review noted that because Tel Aviv does not have the religious significance of Jerusalem, Tillerson “managed to insult the people of Israel – and Jews worldwide.” Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin accused the former ExxonMobil CEO of “bumbling his lines and committing gaffes a junior Foreign Service officer would never make.” And Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of American fumed that “Only those who are blind cannot point to Jerusalem as the centre of Judaism and Israel.” (I am anxiously waiting a comment from the Jewish Institute for the Blind.) [Read more…]

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Analysis – Spicer, Hitler and the Soup Nazi: Why can’t this White House get the Holocaust right?

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Sean Spicer in an interview at the White House apologizing for comments he made suggesting that President Bashar Assad of Syria was worse than Hitler, April 11, 2017. (Olivier Douliery/Pool/Getty Images)
Sean Spicer in an interview at the White House apologizing for comments he made suggesting that President Bashar Assad of Syria was worse than Hitler, April 11, 2017. (Olivier Douliery/Pool/Getty Images)

Sean Spicer in an interview at the White House apologizing for comments he made suggesting that President Bashar Assad of Syria was worse than Hitler, April 11, 2017. (Olivier Douliery/Pool/Getty Images)

(JTA) – We interrupt this Passover to bring you two news bulletins:

Bashar Assad is worse than Hitler.

The Soup Nazi was almost a real Nazi.

Let’s start with the second revelation, since Sean Spicer’s Hitler gaffe about Hitler is probably better known. Entertainment Weekly reported that, according to a former writer-producer for the sitcom “Seinfeld,” the dictatorial chef known as the Soup Nazi in a 1995 episode was almost given a much darker backstory. [Read more…]

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Analysis: Trump, the Jews and the political weaponization of anti-Semitism

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President Donald Trump delivering remarks after touring the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Feb. 21, 2017. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Getty Images)

U.S. President Donald Trump delivering remarks after touring the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Feb. 21, 2017. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Getty Images)

(JTA) – Was that so hard?

At some point in the past week, it looked like U.S. President Donald Trump was never going to use “anti-Semitism” in a sentence. It took a fourth series of hoax bomb threats at JCCs around the country and imprecations from Jewish groups across the ideological spectrum for the president to at last use the “A” word.

“Anti-Semitism is horrible and it’s going to stop, and it has to stop,” Trump said Tuesday morning. “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and our Jewish community centres are horrible, are painful and they are a reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.”

That it took so long for Trump to condemn anti-Semitism after twice being asked about it last week, and coming on the heels of a White House International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that somehow omitted any mention of the Jews, was “mind-boggling” to many groups, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which said so in a tweet. [Read more…]

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Analysis: Why Trump’s universalizing of the Holocaust matters to the Jews

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(JTA) – Where’s Jared Kushner?

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump have often defended his election campaign against charges of anti-Semitism by noting he has an Orthodox Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. Jews on the right are excited about Kushner’s role as a special adviser to the president, assuming he’ll be their advocate on Israel and other Jewish issues. Jews on the left hope Kushner, whose parents were longtime donors to the Democratic Party, will be a check on Trump’s most conservative impulses. [Read more…]

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Analysis: Obama was, for better or worse, the face of liberal Zionism

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President Barack Obama delivering a speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center, March 21, 2013. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
President Barack Obama delivering a speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center, March 21, 2013. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

U.S. President Barack Obama delivering a speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center, March 21, 2013. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

(JTA) – During his campaign for U.S. president in 2008, I wrote a column suggesting that Barack Obama was struggling to connect with Jews because they weren’t sure that he supported Israel’s cause in his gut – that is, in his kishkes. I may have been the first to apply the term “Kishkes Factor” in relation to Obama’s politics and Israel.

Obama himself even heard a reference to the term, at least once. In an interview with the candidate that year, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg asked Obama about “the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you … then everything is suspect.” [Read more…]

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