Shalom friends! #dafreactions Mo’ed Katan 16! The Sages process hurt feelings by self isolating!😱 PLUS! I have a special message of support for rabbi hiyya💕 #dafyomi #jewtok #jtwitter #thedaf4 pic.twitter.com/wN4u8yUS49
— (((Miriam Anzovin))) (@Anzovina) January 28, 2022
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we honor the victims and survivors of one of the darkest periods in our history. But it’s not enough to remember — we also need to have the courage to speak out against acts of bigotry and hatred whenever we see them.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 27, 2022
This is absolutely absurd! Shame on this school board ⬇️ https://t.co/fqnphFQaOI
— (((Rep.Alma Hernandez,MPH)))💉😷 (@almaforarizona) January 27, 2022
The board cited the inclusion of the words “God Damn” and drawings of “naked pictures” in “Maus,” though the pictures are of mice.
A Tennessee school board barred schools from teaching a beloved graphic novel about the Holocaust in an unanimous vote the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The move to ban Art Spiegelman’s Maus, first reported by The Tennessee Holler [http://tnholler.com/2022/01/mcminn-county-bans-maus-pulitzer-prize-winning-holocaust-book], is the latest in a wave of book banning sweeping the country, particularly school districts in conservative areas.
The McMinn County school board’s 10 members voted to axe Maus from curricula and school libraries, citing its use of the phrase “God Damn” and its drawings of “naked pictures,” though those are cartoon mice.
School members said the ban was not related to the book’s depiction of the Holocaust as it tells the story of author Spiegelman’s father in German concentration camps, with Jews depicted as mice and Nazis as cats. Serialized over nearly a decade, it was collected in a book that in 1992 became the first, and so far the only, graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Asked for comment on Wednesday evening, Spiegelman sent The Daily Beast a bookmark he designed for Banned Books Week a few years ago:
The multinational firm Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, announced on Tuesday that in the wake of severe losses, it will fire 1,500 workers around the world and split off its ice cream division from its food division.
The move follows Ben & Jerry’s decision to break its contract with its Israeli licensee, who refused to stop selling the company’s ice cream in Judea and Samaria.
The U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Colorado and Arizona have decided to remove investments from their pension funds in Unilever, because the company was found to violate anti-BDS laws that passed in those states.
“Unilever continues to run away from its responsibility as a parent company,” said Avi Zinger, director-general of Ben & Jerry’s Israel, the Israeli licensee. “Instead of taking responsibility and canceling the boycott, Unilever prefers to put its head in the sand and ignore the fact that it is solely in charge of all the companies it owns, including Ben & Jerry’s worldwide.”
Zinger said that Ben & Jerry’s Israel would continue to struggle against the banning of sales in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and will use all tools at its disposal to persuade Unilever to assume the necessary responsibility.
Last week, it was reported that Unilever’s stock plunged 20.7% in the six months since it informed Zinger that his contract was ending.
This amounts to a $26 billion loss, according to Channel 12 News, which first reported on the story. Losses were reportedly due to numerous factors, including a failure to reach profit targets.
Unilever is spinning off Ben and Jerry’s. The Unilever stock is down significantly since taking a pro-BDS position. This move is a clear signal that BDS aligned companies are more of liability than an asset. https://t.co/CXMlaUKwZE
— Yehuda Friedman (@YehudaJFriedman) January 25, 2022
Over the weekend, Kennedy appeared at an anti-vaccine mandate protest in Washington D.C. During his remarks, the son of late-Senator Robert F. Kennedy said of these fascist mandates, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”
Obviously, he was making the hyperbolic point that you could hide from the Nazis but not these mandates.
Anyway, Kennedy’s been a public figure since birth, so he could not have been surprised or traumatized by the fake media’s hypocritical reaction, and he did eventually issue an apology.
But what must he have thought when his own wife — his wife! — took to the Twitters to drop him in the grease?
“My husband’s reference to Anne Frank at a mandate rally in D.C. was reprehensible and insensitive,” Hines tweeted. “The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything. His opinions are not a reflection of my own.”
Beit HaRav Kook, the Rabbi Kook Museum, has published a newly unveiled photograph of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, the first Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of pre-state Israel. The picture was taken during Rabbi Kook's meeting with the mayor of Chicago, William Emmett Dever, during his visit to the United States in 1924.
In early 1924, a delegation of rabbis arrived in the Port of New York, which included Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Avraham Dover Shapira, and Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein.
The purpose of the delegation was to raise funds for yeshivas in Europe and Israel. In practice, the visit strengthened the connection of the young American Jewish communities in the United States and Canada with the longstanding Jewish communities from Europe and Israel. In addition to the donations collected, the rabbis' visit accelerated the trend of young people from America to travel and study in yeshivas in Israel and Europe.
The audience in the United States was particularly interested in Rabbi Kook, because he represented for them the Land of Israel and religious Zionism. The rabbinical delegation was received with great respect wherever they went. Mayors met with them, and receptions were held in their honor.
Rabbi Kook even met with then-US President Calvin Coolidge. In fact, Rabbi Kook was the first official Jewish representative to meet with the President of the United States.
Although he had already spoken to the mayor of New York in English, Rabbi Kook preferred to use an interpreter during his conversation with President Calvin Coolidge. Rabbi Kook opened the conversation with an apology for the inconvenience of holding the conversation through an interpreter instead of entirely in English. Later in the conversation, Rabbi Kook thanked the President for the support of the two houses of Congress for the Balfour Declaration, which meant the recognition of the right of the Jewish people to establish a state in the Land of Israel. The president promised that the United States would do everything in its power to help build the Land of Israel. At the end of the conversation, Rabbi Kook expressed to the President a hope that the United States would remain a power of idealism and freedom.
Two orthodox Jewish men were viciously attacked on Wednesday evening in front of a Stamford Hill bakery.
Video footage released by London Shomrim showse two men exiting the bakery, as a man passes by them. The man appears to address them as he passes, but it is difficult to ascertain as his mouth is covered by a scarf.
After he passes, both men turn around and seem to recoil defensively. After a moment, the man comes back into the camera view and starts pummeling both men.
As the men begin to back off, the attacker advances and violently punches one of them in the face, knocking him to the ground. As the second man looks down at his friend in concern, the attacker then begins punching him, repeatedly hitting him in the face area while following him down the sidewalk.
When the first victim finally musters up the strength to stand up and start escaping, the thug then leaves the second victim to go chase after the first victim again.
Shortly after that the attacker casually walks off.
The two victims were treated by Hatzolah, while the suspect was later apprehended by Shomrim and then arrested.
Israel is involved in trying to defuse growing tensions between the US and Russia over the latter’s build-up of troops on the Ukrainian border, Army Radio reported on Wednesday morning.
According to the report, the Biden administration requested that Israel serve as a mediator in an attempt to thwart a major crisis between the two world powers.
The report added that Israel is avoiding any public statements about the tension between Russia and Ukraine, both of which have large Jewish populations, out of fear that public support for either side could lead to a surge in anti-Semitism.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected an offer from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to mediate between him and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Prior to Bennett’s trip to meet Putin in Sochi, Russia in October 2021, Ukrainian senior officials requested that Bennett assist Kyiv in mediating with Moscow, even suggesting that a summit be held in Jerusalem.
The Ukrainian officials noted that “Israel has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine.”
Bennett did bring up the suggestion during his meeting with Putin but Putin not only turned him down but also expressed harsh criticism of Zelensky, Israeli officials later said.
About 165,800 Holocaust survivors currently live in Israel, most of them over 80 years of age, according to data published by the Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be observed today, Arutz Sheva reports.
The data show that 15,324 Holocaust survivors died the past year, an average of 42 per day.
Also included are animated representations of Dovid Hamelech’s palace and Chizkiyohu’s water tunnels.
Hebrew-language viewing is available gratis at www.tod.org.il/virtual/tour.html.
An ancient amulet made of lead and written in ancient Hebrew was found among the remains of the excavation carried out at the archeological site on Mount Ebal in Samaria, where the biblical-era altar of Joshua bin Nun is located.
The amulet is inscribed with the letter Alef and a mark reminiscent of a lotus flower.
The Book of Joshua describes how the Israelite General who commanded the conquest of Canaan, built an altar on Mount Ebal, acting on instructions from Moses after the Israelites had crossed the Jordan River.
Haifa University archaeologist Adam Zertal, who passed away in 2015, identified the remains of an altar found at the site as the one described in the Bible, where Joshua distributed the land among the tribes.
The Belz Hassidut Education Committee met on Monday with the director-general of the Education Ministry and top education officials in an attempt to formulate a unique model for the Belz Talmud Torah institutions that would be fully budgeted by the state and include core curriculum subjects such as Math and English, Reshet Bet radio reported on Wednesday.
