Some of the websites I like to read

In today’s column, I would like to share with you current editions of websites that I routinely visit as I familiarize myself with Jewish news from around the world.  If you have the time and inclination, I’m certain that the hard-working staffs who publish these websites would very much welcome your readership and support, as, of course, do I. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Chris Jennewein, Donald H. Harrison, Joe Gandelman, Ken Stone, Michael Ordman, Miriam Raftery

Keep our kids safe

Debates and arguments to open or not open schools in September are in full swing, both for secular schools, colleges, and of course, our Jewish day schools. It is obvious that during the present terrible situation opening schools (and, for the same reasons, colleges) is dangerous. It seems that proponents of school openings know the dangers and are still suggesting it, mostly for political reasons. The following are some considerations about the dangers of opening schools this fall, and some alternatives to doing so. [Arkady Mamaysky]

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Arkady Mamaysky, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Leading Italian fascists and their Jewish lovers

Columbia University historian Victoria de Grazia, who has written extensively about women in Fascist Italy (How Fascism Ruled Women), and America’s imperial drive to spread consumer capitalism abroad (Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe), has written a book where its title and subtitle are telling two different, but overlapping, stories. [Mitchell J. Freedman]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History

Call me Father Ginsberg

I know “Father” and “Ginsberg” don’t seem to fit together, but the nuns at All Saints Elementary School in Buffalo, NY, assigned me that title, and you don’t say no to nuns, even if you’re Jewish. Besides, their warm smiles and insistence that I take time off for Jewish holidays made it impossible to argue with them. I taught sixth grade at All Saints for the 1969-70 school year. Since then, I’ve spent 30 of the past 51 years as a teacher, but that year is still my favorite. Go figure. [Michael Ginsberg]

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Michael Ginsberg, Science, Medicine, & Education

Israel has Iran to ‘thank’ for UAE’s friendship

The recent much-heralded decision by the Emirates to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel is a manifestation of the principle that my enemy’s enemy should be my friend. The threat that Iran is posing to Muslim states in the region has forced many of them to seek out Israel as the power that can contain Iranian aggression. Iran may hire stooges like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza to be a nuisance – though not a real threat – to the existence of Israel, but it knows very well that a direct attack would spell suicide for Iran. [Rabbi Dow Marmur]

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Middle East, USA

Learning about farming and sex in the Catskills

Across the road from the colony was “Louis Cohen’s dairy farm.” The only way to tell he was Jewish was the name. He didn’t look Jewish! Louis had a raw bone, muscular body, honed by years of hard farm work. His voice didn’t sound Jewish. He was quiet and soft spoken, a rarity in my heritage, Jewish farmers in America were as rare then as underpaid professional athletes are today. Louie had a fine herd of milking cows grazing in a flat pasture that became my playground. It was great adventure to overturn hard, white granite rocks speckled with black syinite specks and find one or more garter snakes wiggling angrily at being discovered. The rock homes sheltered the reptiles from the hot sun’s rays. I always searched with my head down, carefully avoiding the innumerable “cow paddies.” [Ira Spector]

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Jewish History, Trivia, Humor & Satire, USA

COVID-19 separates couple, threatens Polish restaurant

Marcia Vineberg was almost packed and ready to rejoin her husband.It’s complicated. They had moved from Vancouver to this Tampa Bay community on Florida’s gulf coast 10 years ago to care for her mother, who had fallen. Harriet Rand, 95, died in December. And Gerald Vineberg a Canadian native who spent half of each year as a businessman traveling in Europe and Asia, wound up opening The Nosh Kosher Cafe in Tarnow, Poland, three years ago. Then COVID-19 arrived. [Bruce F. Lowitt]

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Bruce F. Lowitt, International, Travel and Food, USA

Flea markets, bargains, and the obsession of collecting

Rips spent over two decades at the Flea. Dealers, pickers, and vendors had colorful names, backgrounds and vignettes — Jokkho, the Dane, the Diops, the Prophet, the Cowboy, Kervorkian and the more normative, Paul, Frank, Bobby, Mike, Morris, Sophia, and Ethel, the latter being a specialist in Judaica, especially Menorahs, who started as a man and transformed into a woman.  The author is the standout character. [Oliver B. Pollak]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak

Masks, Zoom diminish non-verbal communication

When we are in a conversation with another person our bodies begin to synchronize with each other, our gestures and facial expressions mirror each other. It is when this happens that we begin to truly hear one another. When we are face-to-face, we unconsciously pick up small changes, which give us clues as to what the other is feeling. It might be a slight flush, an enlargement of pupils, a change in voice pitch, a stiffening of the spine, all unconscious reactions to either the subject or the tone of the conversation. We are constantly monitoring peoples’ responses to what we are saying. In texting and emails, we miss the most important part of the interaction, which is the impact our words are making. [Natasha Josefowitz, ACSW, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Natasha Josefowitz

A Word of Torah: Experiencing HaShem with all our senses

We all know the saying, “Seeing is believing!” This means that there is nothing like witnessing something with one’s own eyes to make a dramatic impression. If I see something happen, I know it happened, and no one and nothing can convince me otherwise. I know what I saw. This would seem to be a greater level of internalizing outside stimuli than any other method. The Rebbe shares a remarkable explanation regarding hearing. When we hear something, meaning when a sound penetrates our minds to be analyzed and ultimately understood / grasped by our intellect, it can be a more profound experience than merely seeing something. At the end of the day seeing can fairly be described as a superficial experience whereas hearing is more internalized. [Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort]

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Jewish Religion, Yeruchem Eilfort-Rabbi

Elul: T’shuva – Masters of Return

Elul is the time to press reset, to clear the cache, reformat the hard drive. We blow the shofar every morning of the month in an attempt to awaken our souls from a tepid stupor of habit and mediocrity. We step out of our busy lives to figure out why we are living them. We can only set personal goals when we perceive the disparity between where we are and where we could be. Hopefully, we do this crucial work before we show up in the synagogue on the first of Tishrei (the first day of Rosh Hashana). Get an early start on t’shuva—that way, there’s still time for a rewrite if the first draft of our mission statement is lacking. Imagine hearing on a certain day in the future we can fill a basket with jewels from a king’s treasury. How exciting! It would be dumb to show up with a basket already full of junk, leaving no Room for the king’s gifts. Elul is the time to get priorities straight, clearing our basket so we can fill it with God’s light on Rosh Hashana. [Sam Glaser]

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Jewish Religion, Sam Glaser

America’s prisons are outrageously unjust

The over-policing of America, which results in the disproportionate incarceration of people of color, and the numerous flaws in the judicial system, most particularly highlighted in sentencing disparities by race and class, and habitual offender (aka three-strikes) laws, have contributed greatly to the travesty of the American prison system. It is time for the whole country to demand extensive prison reforms and remove the stigma of the current prison system that dishonors America and puts it to shame. [Alon Ben-Meir]

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Alon Ben-Meir, USA