Wednesday, March 13, 2024

 

Thoughts on Down Under      March 7 2024


For video recording:

https://youtu.be/aMgc4rCARtI?si=AsyL9vmESj7-EYcx

 

    3 weeks of quiet, away from the daily news. Ofra’s brother & wife from Houston, Dror & Helene Zadok , took Ofra’s sister & husband, Ilana & Yitshak Birger, to get them out of Israel for some peace & quiet after the loss of their grandson in combat and us along with them, to  Australia & New Zealand. Sargeant Nadav Issachar Farhi.



No sooner do I come back to LA, and in my email box, a notice about a swastika drawn in front of the home of a Jewish resident , Leah Grossman, of West Hollywood.

Here’s the report by LA Times: ( Follow the link)

Jewish woman says camera caught neighbor drawing swastika on her seltzer

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-05/woman-says-neighbor-drew-what-appeared-to-be-swastika-on-groceries

 

Bizarre, as he draws the swastika, is caught on camera, and is then caught on camera denying he did it.

 

Equally disturbing is that the man in question is a respected Methodist Minister, who had a position with the region as a superintendent. The Church leadership apologized for his actions ( sent to the Board of Rabbis)

***********To my community,
On behalf of the California-Pacific Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, I reaffirm our commitment to antiracism, including antisemitism. I am praying for peace and healing to those in our communities and beyond, who have been hurt by the recent actions of the Rev. Mark Nakagawa. …As we do our work of the supervisory process, I remind us all that acts of hate and racism should not be a part of our response, particularly to Jewish communities and Japanese communities.  I pray for healing for all those impacted and call us to live in life-giving support for one another.
We remain committed to stand with and be in service to all our neighbors. Please pray with us for all who are in pain.Grace y paz,Bishop Dottie Escobedo-Frank,Resident Bishop of the Los Angeles Area

The Swastika is a weird one, neither Nazi, facing right, nor Buddhist, facing left, but going in both directions! It’s not some other symbol in Japanese, as I can tell.



We can assume that the minister, who should have known better, was afflicted with some mental imbalance, as was the US serviceman who self- immolated in protest of the Gaza War. Yes, unbalanced people do unbalanced acts, but it is very balanced movers and influencers who drive the  Useful Idiots.

Here is the bigger atrocity around the corner:

https://www.wfp.org/news/sudans-war-risks-creating-worlds-largest-hunger-crisis-warns-wfp-chief#:~:text=Over%2025%20million%20people%20across,interference%20by%20the%20warring%20parties.

“The war in Sudan risks triggering the world’s largest hunger crisis,” warned the Executive Director… today, the people of Sudan have been forgotten. Millions of lives and the peace and stability of an entire region are at stake.”Over 25 million people across Sudan, South Sudan, and Chad are trapped in a spiral of deteriorating food security. …

Will anyone be self-immolating when the world’s largest planned mass starvation begins?

 Will there be marchers blocking the 101 in protest?

More about useful idiots later.

 

So, our trip starts in Sydney, Australia.

Friday night, we had a delightful Shabbat dinner at a local Chabad in Paddington, with Rabbi Danny Yaffe and his Rebbetzin, Sara Tova. 26 visitors all crammed into a small living room, but with plenty of good food and good spirits—and all of us still reeling from Oct 7. One was a survivor of the Nova Festival, who had just been away when the attack took place, one from England, a professor of Medicine, who reported on what Jews in England were feeling.

On Shabbat Morning, Dror & Helene, got to the main synagogue for services and a delightful Kiddush lunch. They could get it because they read the instructions for visitors, which requires a valid passport loaded on to the synagogue’s website in advance. It’s ironic that we could get into a synagogue in Muslim Morocco on Shabbat, without such security clearance

 



As you can tell, not really packed. Most of Sydney’s Jews live elsewhere near Bondi Beach.

 

This is something you can’t miss seeing in Sydney:



It is the Sydney Tower, towering above the Westfield Mall and the name, Westfield, in huge letters at the top. Just about every mall in the US today is operated by Westfield, a company created by two Holocaust survivors, Frank Lowy and John Saunders( Schwartz). It is a reminder, that when you have gone through the worst that humanity can imagine, survive it, and have nothing to start with, then you have the drive and inner strength to achieve just about anything, as our own Joe Alexander can affirm!

From Sydney , we hopped on to a cruise ship and made our way down south. The first Friday evening, the cruise line, Princess, set up a room for Shabbat service, and a third of the crowd were a group of Israelis who had survived the October 7 massacre and were now getting out for some fresh air. Their group leader led us in a tribute to those who were no longer alive, our sister in law  read a poem about her grand-son, and I was volunteered to lead  Shabbat service for Anglo Jews who spoke no Hebrew and Israeli secular Jews, who almost never set foot in a synagogue.

We headed on to Melbourne.

 

Melbourne has a larger Jewish community, and here I was able to meet my long-lost grand-daughter to my mother’s cousin. She, Tony Platus, her brother and her father, and their cousins, are the closest living relatives on my mother’s side, family that I had made contact with only after my mother had died. The entire clan is in Australia! How they found me is a long story and I will retell it some day in the future.

 

I am not giving a travelogue- suffice it to say, we continued to Hobart to visit Kangaroos and Tasmanian devils, on to New Zealand fiords, and some of the coldest summer weather, beating a San Francisco summer. On, around to Dunedin, Wellington and Taurunga for the geysers.

Clearly, no visit is complete without visiting the Maoris.

Australia Aboriginal – 3% of Australia

Native Americans-2%

But Maoris-17%. This gives them a great amount of political clout, something that Aboriginals and Native Americans lack. Furthermore, there is a great deal of intermarriage, almost half of Maoris reporting European or other ethnic heritage as well. Maoris were also quick to pick up key elements of Euro culture, and now, there is a reverse process. There is a prevalence of use of Maori names and even common phrases , and Maori language is an official language, alongside English. I found this same self-identification in Morocco, there, with the Berber, or Amazigh, indigenous peoples, and with it, with ‘ indigenous” Jews who settled that region over 2000 years ago, long before the Arab conquest.

This brings me to the topic of “ Indigenous”.

Aboriginals of Australia are the record holders, having arrived from eastern Asia about 65=70,000 years ago. Native Americans came here from north east Asia perhaps 14,000 to 30,000 years ago. In that sense, the Maoris are Johny-come lately. Arriving in New Zealand from other Polynesian islands, by their own accounts, around the 1300’s, beating the Europeans by some 500 years, not much more.

This now brings me to the topic of indigenous, and why only Jews are not allowed to identify as indigenous, despite a continued Jewish presence, and continued attempts at return, going back longer than the Arab conquest, longer than the Roman conquest, back to the early Israelite tribes over 3000 years. But we are also a diaspora, and hence in a precarious position always.

Here is an indirect Maori tie-in:

Greeks and Jews: Two Diaspora Peoples

The histories of these two groups reveals the sinister implications of an ideology that holds that some people are more “natural” to a place than others.

 

 I assume, from the author’s name, that she is Greek indigenous.


Katherine Kelaidis

https://quillette.com/2024/03/01/not-being-indigenous-doesnt-mean-you-dont-belong/

 

While many groups considered indigenous have lived within the same territory for thousands of years, others have not. Likewise, many ethnic groups that are not considered indigenous have lived in their ancestral regions for millennia. For example, the Māori did not arrive in New Zealand until around 1200 CE, which is roughly the time of the Fourth Crusade. By contrast, the Parsis, usually considered a Persian diaspora group, arrived in India before 800 CE. The Diné (Navajo) people arrived in the American Southwest around 1400 CE, around the same time as the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottomans. Meanwhile, the Han Chinese can trace their ancestry to populations who arrived in the Guanzhong and Yellow River basins around 4,500 BCE.

No human population has been anywhere forever. 

One of the hallmarks of the history of diaspora people is their often-outsized influence. It would be difficult to think of two cultural traditions that have contributed more to our global culture than those of the Greeks and the Jews. …

The other hallmark of diaspora histories is persecution. As visible minorities who resist complete assimilation, diaspora people have always been easy targets. They are society’s resident outsiders. It is no surprise that it was the Jews and Romani who died in the greatest numbers during the Holocaust and who continue to be subject to violence and discrimination today. There is evidence to suggest that Hitler took inspiration from the Armenian Genocide, during which the nascent modern Turkish state persecuted Armenians, as well as Pontic Greeks, Christians, and non-Turkish Muslim minorities. The treatment of Greeks in Turkey, Northern Cyprus, and Egypt also follows this pattern.

In some regions, the presence of a Greek, Jewish, or Armenian community predates the arrival of the majority population. But because these peoples have a history marked by diaspora, they are not regarded as indigenous. In fact, they are often accused of practicing “colonialism” in places they have called home for longer than many people identified as “indigenous” have lived in their homelands. For example, Greeks arrived in Egypt in significant numbers with the armies of Alexander the Great around 332 BCE, while Arabs did not arrive in Egypt until the Middle Ages. But that did not stop Arab nationalists of the 1950s from marking them out as “foreigners,” a stigmatization that eventually led to the expulsion of that ancient community. Egyptian Jews and Armenians were similarly targeted and expelled.

To be frank, the world is Had Gadya-the British occupied Moghul India; the Muslims occupied Hindu India; the Indo-European language Indians themselves may have been the result of a gradual occupation of the earlier people of the Indus Valley. The prophet Amos may have been one of the first to recognize that no one is indigenous—the Philistines from Caphtor ( Crete) or the Arameans from Kir ( across the Euphrates).

Now, I turn my thoughts to the anti-Zionist and often anti-semitic protests, around the world, and what we saw in Australia and New Zealand:

I found this notice from the Guardian about anti-Semitic chants at a pro- Israel rally. The blood was still wet on the ground in Israel when this happened:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/10/pro-palestine-rally-sydney-opera-house-protest-australia-leaders-condemn-anti-jewish-chants   Just 2 days after Oct 7 massacre! ..

 

Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese and the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, have condemned pro-Palestine protesters who were filmed chanting anti-Jewish sentiments in Sydney….

Chants heard at the rally included “f*ck the Jews” and “f*ck Israel”. On Monday evening, pro-Palestine protesters marched from Sydney Town Hall to the Sydney Opera House, which was lit up in white and blue in solidarity with Israel. Parliament House in Canberra was also lit up in the colours of Israel’s flag.

So, we too saw some of this in Sydney, probably a crowd of about 1000, maybe 2000 at most, or so marchers, going up and down the main fashion street.


I see one person with a flag of Palestine, then Aboriginal, then Turkish. Ironic mix, as the Turks, central Asian invaders, overran the indigenous Greeks of Anatalia and just a century ago, massacred the Armenian natives and have been fighting the indigenous Kurds, denying them a nation.

 



 

I spied one carrying a sign: Australia for the Aborigines. Since the bearer of the sign was  clearly “ white bread” or commonly here, a “honky”, I wondered if she intended to force all the 30 million European and Asians to repatriate en mass.

I saw a similar protest near the old Post Office building of Auckland. Only a few hundred, but this one much more gruesome and gory:



 

I listen to the speakers rattle off the number of those killed by Israeli forces.  So I hear a number of 400 children killed just in the West Bank in this period . Yet, when I go online to Palestinians sources, I find it much smaller, by a factor of ten.

This is the playing of number tricks that we have to deal with constantly. ( for the mathematicians among you, here is a statistical analysis of the numbers  https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers )

Then, another speaker openly states that it was the Israel Defense Forces that killed , burned, raped and pillaged all of these kibbutzim and villages along the border.

We have all of these verified video recordings made by Hamas terrorists themselves, the testimonies of the actual hostages, yet there is no lie too big for our speakers at these rallies.

So, to finish with a feeling of support, I have this Maori Haka dance answer to the Palestinian protestors:

https://youtu.be/4uxPvrgoo1o?si=VM6HegYL7aSSiixh

 

and a pro -Jew rally in Sydney ( which began just as we had to leave to board the ship):

‘Never again’ pledges as Jews and Christians rally together

Posted on 19/02/2024John Sandeman

https://theothercheek.com.au/never-again-pledges-as-jews-and-christians-rally-together/

A rally in solidarity with Australia’s Jewish Community, opposing anti-semitic activity, drew a crowd of about 10,000 to Sydney’s Domain on Sunday February 18, featuring speakers Scott Morrison, Warren Mundine and a message from Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop, Kanishka Raffel….

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison focused on the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, as the reason to stand with the Jewish community. “


“We say never again in relation to October 7th, because on October seven the free world failed in its promise that there would be a never again. We said there would be never again after the Holocaust. But in one single day, an atrocity was committed on the people of Israel and at a level that we had not seen since the Holocaust.”



 





Monday, January 15, 2024

Unknown Tidbits Of The Intersectionality Of Jews And Blacks In America

 

Unknown Tidbits Of The Intersectionality Of Jews And Blacks In America

 For the video of the discussion

https://youtu.be/xph80wh-aj4?si=kpubkz_a_33AtYpN

Torah portion—this weekend, is Vaera-in Exodus- Ch 9:1.It includes in it the famous phrase, in Hebrew, “Shlach et Ami V’yavduni”- Let my people go, that they shall serve me.”

We all recognize that the phrase “ Let My People Go” became incorporated into a spiritual that had its roots in the struggle of black slaves to be free from their chains. The phrase was made part of the introduction between my Professor, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose memory we honor this weekend:

“At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me.”

Relations between Jews and Blacks have been mixed, especially in recent years, from a Louis Farrakhan or a Kanye West. Some of it stems from the influence of the first Christians to preach to their slaves, way back, and teaching them the “ Christ-killer” narrative.

 Yet, on the other hand, as the words of the song “ Let my People Go”, there was also an identification with ancient Israel.

There was as well a lot of mixing that took place, over the centuries—Alexander Hamilton, one of the great framers of the Constitution, may have been of mixed African and Jewish heritage. A few years back, we did an on-line zoom session with members of the Jewish community of Jamaica, which is very much a mixed-community of Jews of Sephardic and African ancestry.

Here's a reminder: Avinu Malkenu with a Caribbean beat:

https://youtu.be/obuEDvzcQyQ?si=4fzY9rBLnddFMSYL&t=6175

 

 

 One of the founders of the very influential black civil rights movement, SNCC ( Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) , Julius Lester, converted to Judaism, influence by the fact that he had a Jewish great grandfather who married a freed slave. My sociology professor, back in thee 60’s, pointed out that then, the predominant mixed race marriages were between Jews and Blacks. Later, I hope to bring in some outside participants to talk with us about their experience as Jews of Color, or Black Jews, or just plain Jews.

 

So, I want, this Shabbat, to dabble in the theme of intersectionality, to use a contemporary politically loaded word, as it relates to positive connections between our two groups.

First, let’s talk about music. Gershwin introduced Jewish musical themes into a musical about blacks- Porgy and Bess. Al Jolson pretended to play a Negro in blackface, as was done a century ago. But what about the other way around?

 

 

 

Tevye der Shvartzer Khazn

The story of Thomas LaRue Jones, the Black cantor from Newark who captivated the Jewish world with his songs BY EDNA NAHSHON

JUNE 16, 2022 Tablet Magazine

The writer notes:

 




“Working my way through a mass of colorful theater posters that featured Yiddish divas and matinee idols, I glimpsed an old black-and-white illustrated placard with a cameo like portrait of a serious-looking young Black man with soulful eyes, dressed in festive cantorial regalia. Titled “Tevye, der shvartzer khazn” (Tevye, the Black Cantor), he was, the undated print declared, “The Greatest Wonder of the World.” A small-type English-language byline at bottom of the poster announced that “Thomas La-Rue” was “the most phenomenal cantor-tenor in America” and “the only one of his kind in the world.” “Tevye,” the renowned Black cantor, the poster announced in Yiddish, “has taken America by storm” with a multilanguage repertoire of Jewish folk songs and cantorial compositions by Yossele (Joseph) Rosenblatt and other Jewish composers.

 

Here is a little visual about him:

https://www.youtube.com/live/bXu_32enBa8?si=RM3gN-7cIQdbf9_X&t=917

Run to 16:29

 

Sample of his singing, on the theme of Jewish suffering and hope!

https://www.youtube.com/live/bXu_32enBa8?si=bhS8B97tmZjDxlLz&t=1620

go to 29:16

 

African Zionism

Today, South Africa is leading the attack against Israel at the international court, part of a historical trend in South Africa of the past several decades. It ignores, not only the role that Israel played in the support given to the newly emergent nations of Africa after colonialism, but also the inspiration that Jewish history gave to prominent leaders of the early civil rights movement:

 

Zionism, Pan-Africanism, and White Nationalism- Tablet Magazine

What we learn about Israel’s ethnocentrism by looking at groups inspired by Zionism

BY SHAUL MAGID DECEMBER 11, 2018

Excerpts

“Black Zionism has its roots before the formal advent of Zionism: in the Pan-African writings of William Blyden and Martin Delaney, and then later in W.E.B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Stokely Carmichael.”

“West Indian-born Edward Blyden wrote about it as a resolution to the slavery question in the 1850s, focusing on the newly founded country of Liberia in1847. Blyden had no particular ideology of Black Nationalism and viewed colonizing Liberia in the way proto-Zionists in the 19th century viewed Jewish immigration to Palestine, as a return to the homeland (although Blyden did not have the messianic tenor of some Jewish proto-Zionists or later Pan-Africanists). Blyden published The Jewish Question, a pamphlet, in 1898 (underwritten by his Jewish friend from Liverpool, Louis Solomon), two years after the publication of Herzl’s Der Judenstaadt, which Blyden read and admired. In 1903, a year before Herzl’s death, Blyden noted in a lecture “West African Problems,” using a biblical metaphor, that the idea of the black colonization of Africa “give[s] to the African the fullest opportunity for self-development and self-advancement.” Blyden viewed Zionism as a model for his idea, coining the term “Ethiopianism”and calling on blacks to return to Africa to redeem it. In The Jewish Question, Blyden writes, “The Jewish question, in some respects, is similar to that which at this moment agitates thousands of descendants of Africa in America, anxious to return to the land of their fathers.”

 

“This idea reached a wider audience in W.E.B. Du Bois, who coined the term “Black Zionism” to describe his Pan-Africanism. Du Bois openly stated, “The African movement must mean to us what the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews, the centralization of race effort and the recognition of a racial front.” Du Bois, an ardent fan of Zionism, pinpointed the racial component in Zionism that many overlooked.”

One of the best defenses of Israel’s right was given by a speech by Martin Luther King Jr, just a short time before he was murdered. I was there then. http://www.rabbinorbert.com/2015/01/selma-king-and-rabbi.html

 

 Rustin, the movie, failed to cover Bayard Rustin’s battle on behalf of Israel, when he and A. Phillip Randolph founded  Black Americans to Support Israel Committee (BASIC) in 1975 . He declared: “Since Israel is a democratic state surrounded by essentially undemocratic states which have sworn her destruction, those interested in democracy everywhere must support Israel’s existence..( https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/bayard-rustin-mlk) “

As a former communist and openly gay, he would have been shocked by the devotion of so many in the LGBTQ community to the cause of Hamas.

 

How about African Americans who felt they were the original Jews. Many years back, as a young Rabbinic student, I went on Shabbat to a synagogue in Harlem, The Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, led by Rabbi  Matthews.

 


Black Jews, The Commandment Keepers In Harlem, 1910 (harlemworldmagazine.com)

Black Jews, The Commandment Keepers In Harlem, 1910

JULY 1, 2016

Black Jews started forming Harlem congregations in the 1910s, based on the conviction that Africans were descended from ancient Hebrews and that Christianity was a religion imposed on them during enslavement in America. But few traces of their presence remain in the neighborhood.

(documentary filmmaker Marlaine Glicksman ) Her film in progress, called “The Commandment Keepers,” will be screened on April 17 at 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. It traces the congregation’s history, from the early black rabbis’ sermons and writings about their commitment to Jewish rituals to their followers’ persistence in the face of racism and anti-Semitism.

From Wikipedia

Commandment Keepers



Main article: Commandment Keepers

The founder of the Commandment Keepers, Wentworth Arthur Matthew holding a Sefer Torah.

Wentworth Arthur Matthew founded the Commandment Keepers Congregation in Harlem in 1919.[5] Matthew was influenced by the non-black Jews he met as well as by Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. Garvey used the Biblical Jews in exile as a metaphor for black people in North America. One of the accomplishments of Garvey's movement was to strengthen the connection between black Americans and Africa, Ethiopia in particular. When Matthew later learned about the Beta Israel—Ethiopian Jews—he identified with them.[59]

Today the Commandment Keepers follow traditional Jewish practices and observe Jewish holidays.[35] Members observe kashrut, circumcise newborn boys, and celebrate Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, and their synagogue has a mechitza to separate men and women during worship.[60]

The Commandment Keepers believe that they are descendants of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.[61] Matthew taught that "the Black man is a Jew" and "all genuine Jews are Black men",[62] but he valued non-black Jews as those who had preserved Judaism over the centuries.[5] Matthew maintained cordial ties with non-black Jewish leaders in New York and frequently invited them to worship at his synagogue.[63].

Some years back, I served as a Rabbi in Newport News, Virginia. Across the James River was the city of Portsmouth, and I was told that there had been a  community of Black Jews there. At one time, when I was driving through the countryside, I saw what looked like an abandoned church that had a very visible Magen David in the window, but I could not determine if that was the synagogue. However, I did find some references to them online:

  • Rabbi Capers C. Funnye Jr. is the spiritual leader of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago. He is also the first cousin of former First Lady Michelle Obama. He was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, but his family moved to Portsmouth when he was a child. He attended I.C. Norcom High School and Norfolk State University before joining the Israelite movement.
  •  
  • Louise Lucas is a state senator and a civil rights activist in Virginia. She is also a member of The Links, Incorporated (Portsmouth Chapter), a national organization of Black women who are committed to civic and cultural engagement. She identifies as a Black Hebrew Israelite and follows the dietary laws of the Torah.
  •  
  • Michael Twitty is a culinary historian and a James Beard Award-winning author. He is known for his work on exploring the African roots of Southern food and culture. He is also a Black Jewish convert who practices Conservative Judaism. He was born in Washington, D.C., but he has traced his ancestry to enslaved Africans who lived in Portsmouth and other parts of Virginia5 .

As I pointed out, we have our own very important intersectionality between our communities, whether it be Jews who are descended from the ancient communities of  Ethiopia, like our two young technical crew, or Jews who come from more recent Jewish heritage, or Jews who themselves chose to formally join Judaism, whatever their original ethnicity or religion. Welcome aboard.