Poland's Education Minister, Przemysław Czarnek, has initiated efforts to extradite Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian Canadian, who was recently honored in the Canadian Parliament for his service during World War II. The controversy arose when it was revealed that Hunka had served in the Nazi SS Galizien formation during the war.
Two and a half days before Yom Kippur, a jumbotron advertisement on a truck outside the Anti-Defamation League’s offices in New York urged Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL CEO and national director, to heed the theme of the High Holiday.
“It is time to repent and resign,” stated the ad, sponsored by the Jewish Leadership Project. “ADL CEO must go.”
Avi Goldwasser, co-founder of the JLP, told JNS that the nonprofit began using truck ads, which it contracts out, in the past year.
“It’s much easier than getting people to protest and make big signs,” he told JNS. “The truck moves around, so you get to educate more people.”
Goldwasser said that JLP recently dispatched a truck at Princeton University, which was covered in the student newspaper. And it is sending a truck to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where a “Palestine Writes” literary event from Sept. 22-24 is featuring several antisemitic speakers.
JLP ad campaigns have also targeted Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, he said.
“They get a lot of attention,” he said. “We like trucks.”
The aim, according to Goldwasser, is to get a response from the leaders of organizations that the ads target. “Yom Kippur is coming. It’s a big chance, Jonathan,” he said to Greenblatt, repeating the text of the ad: “Repent and resign.”
Goldwasser has no delusions that he and his colleagues have the power to get Jewish leaders to resign.
“It’s sort of the drip method,” he said. “You keep pounding. At some point, if he has any honor, if he has any shame, he may reconsider how helpful he is to the Jewish community, if he has any integrity.”
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and his wife have been indicted on charges of bribery.
Federal prosecutors on Friday announced the charges against the 69-year-old Democrat nearly six years after an earlier criminal case against him ended with a deadlocked jury. The latest indictment is unrelated to the earlier charges that alleged Menendez accepted lavish gifts to pressure government officials on behalf of a Florida doctor.
The Senate Historical Office says Menendez appears to be the first sitting senator in U.S. history to have been indicted on two unrelated criminal allegations. Menendez faces reelection next year in a bid to extend his three-decade career in Washington, and as Democrats hold a narrow majority in the Senate.
Lawyers for Menendez and his wife haven’t responded to messages seeking comment.
The first time Menendez was indicted, he had been accused of using his political influence to help a Florida eye doctor who had lavished him with gifts and campaign contributions. Menendez appears to be the first sitting senator in U.S. history to have been indicted on two unrelated criminal allegations, according to a list maintained by the Senate Historical Office.
The new charges follow a years long investigation that examined, among other things, the dealings of a New Jersey businessman — a friend of Menendez’s wife — who secured sole authorization from the Egyptian government to certify that meat imported into that country meets Islamic dietary requirements. Investigators also asked questions about the Menendez family’s interactions with a New Jersey developer.
Menendez faces re-election next year in a bid to extend his three-decade career in Washington, and as Democrats hold a narrow majority in the Senate.
At first glance, anyone entering the Jerusalem event hall last week might have thought they stumbled upon another festive event or a toast for the New Year. But it didn’t take long to realize that this was not just another party; it was a special celebration of freedom for 53 former agunot who had been trapped in their marriages by their recalcitrant husbands and were now liberated, thanks to the efforts of the Yad La’isha Legal Aid Center for Agunot. The gathering marked their beginning of the New Year as free women.
“I’m not really a party person, it’s not my thing,” said Gilat from Ma’ale Adumim. “But at this party, I find myself shedding all my burdens and feeling completely liberated because there’s nothing like the joy shared by women who have finally gained their freedom after a long struggle. "Among the celebrants was S., freed this year after a six-year struggle as an aguna. S, who married relatively young, suffered severe physical abuse by her husband from the very beginning. She was afraid to leave, but after their young son, who was late to start speaking, cried out “Mommy!” during one of her husband’s violent episodes, “It horrified me that my child’s first word in life was a cry of fear and terror, and that led me to the realization that I had to leave,” she recalled.
Even after their separation, S’s husband continued to wield violence against her, both physically and through threats. Progress was made when a social worker referred her to Yad La’isha, part of the Ohr Torah Stone network of educational institutions and social programs, which provides specially trained advocates and social workers dedicated to releasing and empowering victims of get abuse through four branches across Israel.
“Fortune favored her,” said S’s Yad La’isha advocate Dina Raichik. “Her state-appointed social worker took part in one of our lectures on get-refusal and thought that maybe, after so many years, we would be able to help her. To our delight, S can now begin this new year as a free woman, looking forward to building her future – and that of her children,” Raichik says.
Six years have passed since 53-year-old Gilat was freed by Yad La’isha, after five years of being a “chained woman” due to her husband’s refusal to grant her a get. Gilat sees the importance of continuing to celebrate the joy of women who have been released and, as important, continuing to support those who are still trapped. “Unfortunately, there are still many women waiting, and some of them joined us to celebrate and rejoice for those who finally received their get. We pray that they, too, will receive their freedom this year or at least by the next ‘get-celebration’,” she noted.
“It’s hard to put into words the excitement I feel when I see these courageous women celebrating their triumph in a battle for what so many of us take for granted – the right to autonomy and freedom,” said Pnina Omer, director of Yad La’isha. “There are women here from all walks of Israeli society – secular and religious, young and old, from the upper and lower class – all of them found themselves involuntarily united under the same label: ‘agunot.’ In the end, this problem doesn’t discriminate by gender or population group; any one of us could be the next to enter this unfortunate statistic. We are here today to celebrate the freedom of those women who were released, and to stand alongside those who continue to fight their battles.”
“It is deeply inspiring and encouraging to bear witness to the women who have suffered for so long to be able to come together and celebrate the new year and their newfound freedom,” noted Rabbi Dr. Kenneth Brander, President and Rosh HaYeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone. “The plight of agunot trapped in abusive or dead marriages is one of the most pressing challenges of the Jewish world. Our Yad La’isha advocates will continue for as long as necessary to encourage preventative prenuptial agreements and push forward with their creative thinking and exceptional expertise to release as many women as possible. Part of our prayers this holiday season should be focused on the hope that many more trapped women will be able to break the chains of abusive relationships that entrap them and be given the gift of new lives of happiness and freedom.”
You would think that an attorney general who has presided over the embarrassing debacle of the Hunter Biden investigation would express contrition, or maybe a little anger at the underlings who have shamed him, when he is hauled before a congressional committee to explain his failures.
But alas, Merrick Garland is just another Mr. Magoo.
His department is ablaze but he knows nothing.
The nation’s chief law enforcement officer has no special insight into the malfeasance unfolding under his nose.
He is just an oblivious bystander, unperturbed by the tyrannical turn the DOJ has taken under his leadership, persecuting his boss’s political enemies and coddling the crooked president’s crooked relatives.
Even though Garland used to be a judge, he makes no judgments at all.
He professes to have no view about US Attorney David Weiss’ farcical five-year “investigation” of the president’s 53-year-old son Hunter.
“I promised the Senate that I would not interfere,” he told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
“I have not intruded or attempted to evaluate that, because that was the promise I made to the Senate.” What an honorable man, keeping his promises.
But he’s the ship’s captain. There is a fire in the hold, the vessel is going down, and he doesn’t even trouble himself to find out what happened.
“Have you had personal contact with anyone at FBI headquarters about the Hunter Biden investigation?” asked Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Members of Neturei Karta, an extreme anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly today.
Nobody told me there’d be days like these… Strange days, indeed. Most peculiar, Mama!
In his classic play The Trial of G-d, Elie Wiesel argues that the defense of G-d may at times be the work of Satan.
A clear example of this erupted in the last week, when God’s self-proclaimed defenders asserted, in the service of a physically dangerous and theologically dubious philosophy, that the Chumash’s own words are heresy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israeli pilgrims to stay away from Uman this year because of the continuing war in Ukraine.
Echoing Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky, Netanyahu explained that there are not enough shelters in Uman for the local population, and certainly not for the tens of thousands of Jews who travel there annually for Rosh Hashanah.
But most “damning” was his assertion that “G-d has not always protected us, not on European soil and not on Ukrainian soil.”
This is not an opinion; it is a fact.
Six million Jews died in Europe during the Shoah, and countless others in pogroms in Ukraine and elsewhere in earlier centuries. Whether or not this fits neatly into theological boxes is irrelevant; it is historical reality and cannot be denied. Sadly, these were times when G-d did not protect us.
As it happens, synagogues around the world read about this exact possibility just days ago in the weekly Torah portion:
“I will display anger against them on that day, and abandon them, and hide My face from them, and they will be devoured, and many evils and troubles will come upon them…” (Devarim 31:17)
It is impossible to fully understand when and why G-d hides His face; while the Chumash explains that it is often a punishment for idolatry, the Talmud elaborates that the reality is more complex. Nevertheless, the fact that G-d is often hidden - and sometimes frightfully hidden - is an historical certainty anticipated by the Torah itself.
Like the Devil in Wiesel’s play, certain public religious figures and politicians immediately rushed to G-d’s defense, declaring Netanyahu’s words heretical, and claiming, against the words of the Chumash, that G-d has always protected the Jewish People.
The editor of the Hebrew magazine Mishpacha tweeted,
“When the ‘head of the camp of the faithful’ opens his mouth with words of serious heresy - and all in an official statement from the Prime Minister's Office - the entire theory of sweet Israel collapses like a tower of cards. In a place where there is desecration of the divine Name and rude and impudent speech toward G-d - we don’t give Bibi any respect.”
United Torah Judaism MK Yisrael Eichler went further, asserting that the Holocaust was caused by the “Zionists,” not by G-d’s hiddenness, and saying that Netanyahu was ignorant. Sadly, these are not lone voices; many other supposedly religious individuals made similar claims.
Let’s not forget that Netanyahu was not discussing abstract theology, but dissuading people from going to a country which is currently at war with an unpredictable Russia.
The United States State Department issued a travel advisory that begins, simply and in bold letters, Do not travel to Ukraine due to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
In echoing this warning, the Prime Minister was following the strict Torah requirement to do whatever is necessary to save lives. I do not approve of much of Netanyahu’s program, but in this particular instance he was right, and advocated an approach in line with Torah Judaism.
When a secular Prime Minister who does not observe Shabbat or keep Kosher supports following the Torah requirement of “You shall live by them” (Vayikra 18:5) and repeats the theology of divine hiddenness that we publicly read days ago, while those who claim to represent a religious worldview argue that words of Torah are absolute heresy… When religious journalists and politicians state that the book of Deuteronomy and history’s clear verdict are not authoritative, and instead advocate a shallow theology that violates Torah norms and thought and puts people’s lives in danger…
We have begun to learn that merely claiming allegiance to the Torah has little or nothing to do with actually following G-d’s word. It has little or nothing to do with representing an authentically religious viewpoint. It has little or nothing to do with being a true servant of G-d. Superficial theology and dangerous interpretations of the Torah remain the work of Elie Wiesel’s Devil, no matter how large the kippah on those who advocate them.
Strange days, indeed
by Scott Kahan
